Assoc. Prof. Yaşar Çolak was born in Trabzon in 1964. He graduated from Trabzon İmam Hatip High School and Ankara University Faculty of Theology. He successively served at the Presidency of Religious Affairs  as Imam-Khatip, Preacher, Inspector, Head of the Directorate of Religious Publications and Religious Affairs Counselor at the Embassies in London and Washington, D.C. He possessed a Master’s Degree in Islamic Studies from the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the Victoria University of Manchester in the United Kingdom (1994) and completed his Ph.D. in Islamic History at 19 Mayis University, Institute of Social Sciences (2006). From 2011 to 2018, he served as the president of the Diyanet Center of America (DCA) in Lanham, Maryland. Between 2018 and 2023, he taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the Department of Islamic History adn Arts at Ibn Haldun University in İstanbul. He obtained the title of associate professorship in 2022. His research interests include early Islamic historiography, different methodological approaches in Western Islamic history studies and the Muslim minorities. Since the beginning of 2023, he has been conrubuting to the Thematic Ansclopedias Project initiated by the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation Islamic Research Center (İSAM).