one size doesn’t fit all: considerations on the teaching of islamophobia as an academic subject

PerspectivesTeaching Islamic Studiesin higher education

Issue 3 | November 2011

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No. 3 | November 2011

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PerspectivesTeaching Islamic Studies in higher education

1 Welcome Welcome John Canning

2 News Network activity and discipline-specific activity Erika Corradini

3 Feature One size doesn’t fit all: considerations on the Chris Allenteaching of Islamophobia as an academic subject

4 Resources Developing approaches that support the Max Farrar andstudy of Islam within social science curricula Malcolm Todd

5 Interview Interview with Professor M.A.S. Abdel Haleem Ramon Harvey

6 Resources Accessing Muslim Lives Siobhan Lambert-Hurleyand Marilyn Booth

7 Resources Islamic Law in the Law School: Anicée van EngelandImplementing a New Pedagogy

8 Resources Teaching the history of Muslim rural societies Yossef Rapoport

9 Resources Starting to study Islam Melanie Prideaux

10 Viewpoint Reflections on Islamic pedagogy Glenn Hardakerat the University of al-Qarawiyyin and Aishah Sabki

11 Review Muslims in Britain: An Introduction Marta Bolognani,by Sophie Gilliat-Ray University of Bristol

12 Events calendar

Welcome

John Canning

Welcome to the third issue of Perspectives: teachingIslamic Studies in higher education.

The Islamic Studies Network has undergone somemajor changes since the last issue. John Canningfrom Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies (LLAS)will be co-ordinating the Network until Lisa Bernasekreturns to work in March 2012. Despite the windingdown of the Higher Education Academy’s SubjectCentre Network we are delighted thatShaheen Mansoor who worked with the Law SubjectCentre (UKCLE) and Malcolm Todd and Max Farrarwho worked with Sociology, Anthropology andPolitics (C-SAP) are able to continue working for theNetwork. We would like to take this opportunity tothank Steve Probert and colleagues at the SubjectCentre for Business, Management, Accountancy andFinance (BMAF) and Gary Bunt and colleagues atthe Subject Centre for Philosophical and ReligiousStudies for their contributions to the Network.Although he will not be working directly for theNetwork any longer, we are delighted that Gary hasnow joined the Network’s Advisory Group so we cancontinue to benefit from his knowledge andexpertise. We would like to take this opportunity towelcome Joe Clark from the Association of BusinessSchools (ABS) to the Network project team. The ABSwill be undertaking activities previously carried outby the BMAF Subject Centre. Although new to theproject team, Joe has worked closely with BMAF inthe past and was involved in some of their IslamicStudies activities last year.

Chris Allen opens this latest issue of Perspec-tives with some considerations on teaching

Islamophobia in UK institutions. His article offers anexcellent overview on the pedagogy of this subjectand provides a list of teaching resources that may beused in teaching this topic together with insightsinto his own experience.

Max Farrar and Malcolm Todd continue on thetheme of resources for teaching about Islam byreporting on how they have been working inconjunction with academic staff in social sciences todevelop a number of case studies in support of thestudy of Islam in social science curricula. In thecourse of their discussion, they provide links to twocollections of cases along with a number of issuesencountered by staff in their teaching and ways inwhich they addressed these issues.

Ramon Harvey interviews his doctoral supervisorProfessor M. A. S. Abdel Haleem, the King FahdProfessor of Islamic Studies at the School of Africanand Oriental Studies (SOAS) and an expert inQu’ranic studies. The interview offers an overview ofhow Qu’ranic studies have developed in the UK inthe last ten years together with thoughts about howthe research landscape in this area might be in thenear future.

In the resources section Anicée van Engeland,Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Marilyn Booth, YossefRapoport, and Mel Prideaux provide their views onteaching and learning in a range of disciplinary areasincluding Law, biographical writing, History andReligious Studies. In Viewpoint, Glenn Hardakerand A’ishah Sabki tell us about their own experienceof pedagogy at al-Qarawiyyin University in Fez,Morocco. Finally, Marta Bolognani reviews SophieGilliat-Ray’s new book Muslims in Britain: AnIntroduction.

Don’t forget to join our mailing list if you have notalready done so. You can follow the Islamic StudiesNetwork on Twitter @heaisn.

John [email protected]

3 Perspectives

News from the Islamic Studies NetworkRecent activity of the Network

Two regional workshops were held in Cardiff andLeeds on 17 and 27 May 2011, respectively. Bothevents were aimed to bring together teachers ofIslamic Studies from a wide range of disciplines(e.g. Theology and Religious Studies, History,Politics, Literature, Sociology, Anthropology,Law, Business and Finance) and were highlyinterdisciplinary. Documents related to these eventsare available from the Events page of the ISNwebsite (http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk)by clicking on the link to the relevant workshop.

Another regional workshop ‘Teaching IslamicStudies in Scotland’ was held in Edinburgh on 21October 2011. This offered an opportunity forpractitionersto network, share practice, update colleagues ondevelopments since the last workshop, and discussregion-specific issues in the teaching of IslamicStudies. Please visit the website to downloaddocuments related to this event.

Reports and materials from two of the fundedprojects can now be consulted online on theNetwork website, these are Encouraging Muslimwomen into higher education through partnershipsand collaborative pathways conducted by AlisonScott-Baumann and Sariya Contractor andComparative Sharia Law: The development ofteaching materials in the area of sharia compliantfinancial instruments and intellectual property byMark Van Hoorebeek. Reports can be downloadedfrom the Projects section of the ISN website. Interimreports from the remaining 12 projects are alsoonline and available for consultation.

External evaluation of Network activity wascompleted in 2010-11 and is now published onour website and can be downloaded from thehomepage. The evaluation highlights that the workof the Network has so far been very successful!The Islamic Studies Gateway funded by the JISCproject has now been completed and a link to it isnow available from the News section of the ISNwebsite as well as from the JISC project website.The project Fihrist: The Gateway to Manuscripts inArabic Scripts has sought to compile a catalogue formanuscripts in Arabic script housed in some of the

major archives in the UK and beyond. This projectbuilds on the significant work already funded byJISC and uncovers major ‘hidden’ Islamicmanuscript collections held at Oxford, Cambridge,Birmingham and Yale university libraries, the Schoolof Oriental and African Studies and the WellcomeLibrary.

4 www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk

Dr Chris AllenUniversity of Birmingham

Since the publication of the Commission on BritishMuslims and Islamophobia’s (CBMI) 1997 report,Islamophobia: a challenge for us all, there has beena clear recognition of the role that good educationcan play in helping to combat Islamophobia. In fact,it has been a recurrent focus in a wide range ofdifferent reports and policy documents ever since.Most recently, last year’s report from the EuropeanMuslim Research Centre (EMRC) based in theUniversity of Exeter highlighted the need for what itdescribed as “public education” (Githens-Mazer andLambert 2010, 202). This was particularly relevant forthose involved in higher education: “as academicswe believe we have an important role to play in thiseducation process” (Githens-Mazer and Lambert2010, 203).

But how exactly do we go about this giventhat Islamophobia – both as a topic and as asocio-political phenomenon – remains emotive,can inflame sensitivities, has the potential to bedivisive, and is openly contested by some in theacademic, political and social spaces?

Drawing upon my experience of the topic ofIslamophobia and related themes into the teachingof a number of different undergraduate modulesacross different disciplines such as ReligiousStudies, Sociology and Social Policy, in this articleI attempt to offer some personal perspectives tohopefully support those faced with the task ofincorporating similar themes into their own teachingschedules. Over and above everything else, theinherent complexity of Islamophobia needs to beconsidered. As something that I never fail toacknowledge, it is best captured by the pointedobservation of Marcel Maussen when he states that,“‘Islamophobia’ groups together all kinds of differentforms of discourse, speech and acts, by suggesting

Recent activity in the disciplines

Law: Resources from the Islamic law curriculumdevelopment project are now online and can beused and downloaded from the Network websiteand the UKCLE website: http://www.ukcle.ac.uk.The second meeting of Islamic Law Special InterestGroup (SIG) took place on 6 July 2011. A programmefor the day may be consulted on the UKCLE websiteunder Events. The main topics addressed by the SIGwere teaching and learning Islamic Law in UKuniversities and the construction of a bibliographicresource containing bibliographic references forIslamic Law and Finance.Business and Law: BMAF and UKCLE held a

joint workshop on 15 June 2011 aimed atparticipants willing to develop an ability to locatebibliographic materials for research and teachingand learning in Law and Finance. Details of and aprogramme for the day are available from the Eventssection of the UKCLE and BMAF websites.Languages and Area Studies: Progress on

projects funded by LLAS can be found underProjects on the LLAS website: http://www.llas.ac.uk.Social Sciences: A workshop on teaching about

Islam in the social sciences took place on 24 June2011 in Birmingham. A programme for the day andrelated resources can be found on the Events pageof the C-SAP website:http://www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk.Two collections of case studies related to Islam andthe social sciences are now available on the C-SAPwebsite. These resources are described in furtherdetail by Farrar and Todd in this publication, seeDeveloping approaches that support the study ofIslam within social science curricula, pp. 00-00.

Forthcoming activity

The Network is organising three cross-disciplinaryworkshops in 2011-12. The first one of these eventsis in January at the University of Leeds (date tbd).Details about the other two will be published on theISN website in due course. Descriptions for theseevents are available on the website under Events.The workshops are aimed at specialists andnon-specialists who teach on modules related toIslamic Studies in an interdisciplinary way.

A two-day residential event will take place inFebruary. This workshop is aimed at PhD studentsand will give them an opportunity to showcase theirresearch activities and teaching interests as well asto address issues related to life as a postgraduate.The event aims to be a forum for interdisciplinarydiscussion. A programme is available on the ISNwebsite. Final reports and all materials from the 12funded projects will be made available online inFebruary 2012.

Calls for projects to be conducted oncollaborations between public and private HEIsand/or student guides to Islamic Studies will bepublished shortly.

One size doesn’t fit all: considerations on the teaching of Islamophobiaas an academic subject

that they all emanate from an identical ideologicalcore” (2006, 42). While referring to Islamophobia asa concept and phenomenon more generally, theproblem is equally applicable to education andteaching.

The first step to addressing this complexity is tomake any teaching meaningful. By meaningful Imean that it has to go beyond the superficial, to becritical and enquiring. In stating this, I am suggestingthat the teaching of Islamophobia has to beundertaken in the same way as any other academictopic. It can neither be overblown nor unfounded,but grounded in the body of seminal research that isbeginning to emerge in this field (I have included anindicative list of key texts at the end of this article).If this is not achieved, the result will be as Hall et al.(1978) wrote about the way in which racism wassometimes presented. For Hall et al., understandingsof and engagement with ‘race’ and racism becameoverwhelmed and obfuscated by phoney andpatronising approaches. Some of these wereoverinflated or were unnecessarily accusatory;others wallowed in negativity by superficiallyreminding everyone ‘just how bad racism is’ withoutmaking a conclusive argument as to what it was orwhy. For this reason alone, any consideration ofIslamophobia within the educational and academicsettings has to be contextualised and grounded inorder to avoid repeating past mistakes.

As far as I am aware, there is not, as yet, anyBritish undergraduate module that focuses solelyon the phenomenon of Islamophobia or anti-religionphenomena more widely1. This presents thoselooking to teach Islamophobia with both challengesand opportunities. The major opportunity is that yourteaching can be as innovative and ground-breakingas you dare imagine as there are few precedents tocompare against. This opportunity needs to betempered, however, by the realisation that it isextremely likely that your teaching of Islamophobiawill need to be ‘shoehorned’ into existing modules,some of which might not necessarily or immediatelylend themselves to such a topic. Such shoehorninghas, in my own experience, seen me attempting to

1 A search on the Islamic Studies Network module database (http://is.prs.heacademy.ac.uk/) produced no results in relation to thetopic of Islamophobia.

5 Perspectives 6 www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk

incorporate Islamophobia into such modules as‘Introduction to Multiculturalism’, ‘Islam’, ‘SocialInequalities’, ‘Muslims in Europe’ and ‘Social Issues’among others, all of which I feel benefit from havinga contemporarily salient topic incorporated intothem.

Given the acknowledged complexity ofIslamophobia, making the right decision about whatto include becomes vitally important. ConsideringIslamophobia in a Social Policy module such as‘Social Inequalities’, for instance, might besignificantly different to how the same topic isaddressed in a Religious Studies module such as‘Islam’. In the latter, it might be that contemporaryIslamophobia is contextualised within a historicalframe, considering the similarities and differenceswith, say, theories of orientalism or how historicalevents such as the Crusades continue to provide aframework of meaning within which contemporaryhatred can be duly exploited. In the former, it mightbe that the focus is on the way in which thesocio-economic status of Muslim communitiesimpacts on prejudicial and discriminatory processesthat have the capacity to disadvantage in education,employment and housing. It is absolutely vital,however, that when addressing Islamophobicdisadvantage – if indeed such a thing exists – thefocus remains on ‘Muslims’ and that lazyassumptions that equate the experience ofPakistanis, Bangladeshis and so on with all Muslimsper se are avoided. Relevance and focus aretherefore essential prerequisites in the planningrequired by those looking to incorporate teachingabout Islamophobia into their schedules: a point thatis made all the more pertinent by the likely need toshoehorn.

This, in my opinion, is outweighed by the uniqueopportunity that teaching Islamophobia offers. Giventhat it is a relatively new field, it offers academics theopportunity to explore and hopefully incorporate newlevels of innovation not just in the way in which thesubject is engaged, but so too in relation to teachingmethods. As well as academic resources, I haveused newspapers and magazines, websites and

other online resources, films and televisionprogrammes to engage students and to initiatediscussions. Films such as The Siege (1998) andFour Lions (2010) have both proven useful in my ownteaching, as have television documentaries includingAre Muslims Hated? (Channel 4 2005) and the nowinfamous Undercover Mosque (Channel 4 2007).Likewise, the Daily Mail, Daily Express and morerecently the Daily Star regularly provide interesting –and extremely challenging – starting points fromwhich group discussions can be easily initiated.

There are other ways in which to initiate similardiscussions. A particularly good and relativelyunexplored resource is YouTube. As well as allowingaccess to a wide range of different televisionprogrammes, YouTube also offers a wide range ofdifferent films and clips that present a vast array ofdifferent perspectives on Islamophobia. The greatestvalue of YouTube is that it is immediate andundeniably contemporary. Something that happensliterally the day before can be found in some formor other on YouTube. Students, I have also found,particularly like the irreverence of YouTube. I havehad a good response to two particularly provocativeclips that have appeared on the site in the past year.The first is ‘Dude you have no Quran [sic]’2, which Iused to consider the proposed burning of a Qur’anby Pastor Terry Jones in the US and the extent towhich freedom of speech and expression mightallow such acts to be undertaken; the second is thereworking of an interview with a supporter of theEnglish Defence League (EDL) by Press TV3, whichIhave used to introduce the growing Islamophobiaand anti-Muslim campaigns of the far right both inBritain and elsewhere in Europe. Both clips areentirely irreverent and will not be relevant to allstyles of teaching or indeed all disciplines, but theyhave been extremely useful for me in beginning toengage students in highly controversial and emotiveissues. Another approach I employed was to showthe cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that werepublished in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Postenin 20054. Recognising the sensitivity of the images,I made all students aware at the start of the lecture

2 http://tinyurl.com/2g9s76q

what I was going to show them. I again madeeveryone aware before showing them to the groupso that students had the opportunity to leave shouldthey find them offensive. Maybe surprisingly, none ofthe students left. However, showing the cartoons didallow for any mysticism that surrounded them to bealleviated and for a number of questions to be airedfrom which interesting discussions ensued. In all ofthese instances, however, the resources were thencontextualised and theoretically framed to ensurethat they were not seen to be mere flippancies ornovelties. In this way, the teaching remainsmeaningful.

Being aware of the highly emotive nature ofIslamophobia and its ability to polarise opinion issomething that also needs to be taken intoconsideration. Within academic institutions, I believethat we have a responsibility to promote freedom ofspeech. Consequently, there may be occasionswhen we encounter views being expressed thatmay appear to be extreme or even offensive. Likeany such comments, unless these views can beexpressed they cannot be challenged, so I amreluctant to be prescriptive about what people canand cannot, should and should not believe. However,these views should always be rooted in academictheory and evidence, not polemics, and so there is aneed for us to challenge any misrepresentations,inaccuracies and, at worst, mistruths that may findexpression.

One way, I believe, I have been able to achievethis has been through creating an environment thatis conducive to open and honest academic andmeaningful dialogue: a ‘safe space’. These ‘safespaces’ allow all students to participate at the levelthey feel comfortable with, to be able to share ideasand thinking in an environment where challengingand controversial issues may be discussed in aninclusive and sensitive yet critical manner. On thisnote, I always stress that we need to go beyond the‘politically correct’ and that if errors or mistakes aremade – for example using the wrong terminology ina discussion – then we are in an environmentwhere students can be made aware rather than

reprimanded or corrected. This in itself is a learningexperience for many, but can only exist if thelearning environment is non-confrontational andnon-threatening.

In providing this brief overview, there are no ‘offthe shelf’ or ‘one size fits all’ approaches availableto teaching Islamophobia. While I have focusedprimarily on teaching Islamophobia in a socialscience context in this article, the recent editedcollection by Sayyid and Vakil (2010) highlightsthat the topic has a much wider resonance andintersection with other disciplines and subjects: inSport, Law, Geography, History, Politics and more.On the one hand, teaching Islamophobia will alwaysbe for some a controversial and contested topic;one that some within the academic sphere willdismiss and reject in much the same way thephenomenon is dismissed and rejected by some inthe social and political spaces. But on the otherhand – and this is where where the realopportunity and value lies – teaching Islamophobiaoffers very real and tangible opportunities. It allowsacademics to engage in and help shapeunderstanding and learning about a relativelynew and under-researched phenomenon: as areminder, the term ‘Islamophobia’ has only been inthe popular lexicon for the past 20 years or so. Itallows academics to innovate in relation to theirteaching: to explore new methods, experiment withdifferent approaches, and to facilitate learning byusing a diverse range of contemporary resources.And as the EMRC highlighted, it also providesacademics with the opportunity to make a very realcontribution towards combating potentially the mostdangerous and insidious discriminatoryphenomenon in today’s Britain.

3 http://tinyurl.com/68t3h3q

4 Rose, F. (2005) Muhammeds ansigt. Jyllands-Posten. 30 September; since publication the link to the relevant pages has beenremoved from the internet.


Teaching Resources

Allen, C. (2010) Islamophobia. London: Ashgate.

Allen, C. and Nielsen, J. (2002) Summary report onIslamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001.Vienna: European Monitoring Centre on Racism andXenophobia.Barker, M. (1981) The new racism:Conservatives and the ideology of the tribe. London:Junction Books.

Channel 4 (2005) Are Muslims hated? Off-airrecording. 8 January 2005. Videotape.

Channel 4 (2007) Undercover mosque. Off-airrecording. 15 January 2007. Videotape.

Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia(1997) Islamophobia: a challenge for us all. Report ofthe Runnymede Trust Commission on BritishMuslims and Islamophobia. London: RunnymedeTrust.

Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia(2004) Islamophobia: issues, challenges and action.Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books.Daniel, N. (2000) Islam and the West: the making ofan image. Oxford: Oneworld Publications.

Fekete, L. (2009) A suitable enemy: racism, migrationand Islamophobia in Europe. London: Pluto.Geaves, R., Gabriel T. and Haddad Y. (2004) Islamand the West: a post September 11th perspective.London: Ashgate.

Githens-Mazer, J. and Lambert R. (2010Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime: a LondonCase Study. Exeter: University of Exeter.

Kundnani, A. (2007) The end of tolerance: racism in21st century Britain. London: PlutoPress.

Poole, E. (2002) Reporting Islam: media representa-tions of British Muslims. London: IB Tauris.

Rose, F. (2005) Muhammeds ansigt. Jyllands-Posten.30 September.Sayyid, S. and Vakil A. (2010) Thinking throughIslamophobia: global perspectives. London: Hurst &Co.Sheehi, S. (2011) Islamophobia: the ideological cam-paign against Muslims. Atlanta: Clarity Press.

Shyrock, A. (2010) Islamophobia, Islamophilia.Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Films

The Siege (1998) Directed by Edward Zwick. USA:20th Century Fox.Four Lions (2010) Directed by Chris Morris. UK: FilmFour.

Bibliogrpahy

Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia(1997) Islamophobia: a challenge for us all. Reportof the Runnymede Trust Commission on BritishMuslims and Islamophobia. London: RunnymedeTrust.

Githens-Mazer, J. and Lambert R. (2010)Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate crime: a LondonCase Study. Exeter: University of Exeter.

Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J.N. andRoberts, B. (1978) Policing the crisis: mugging, thestate and law and order. London: Macmillan.

Maussen, M. (2006) Anti-Muslim sentiments andmobilization in the Netherlands: discourse, policiesand violence. In: Cesari, J. (ed.) Securitization andreligious divides in Europe: Muslims in WesternEurope after 9/11 – Why the term Islamophobia ismore a predicament than an explanation. Paris:Challenge, 100-142.Sayyid, S. and Vakil A. (2010) Thinking throughIslamophobia: global perspectives. London: Hurst &Co.


Dr Max FarrarEmeritus Professor,Leeds Metropolitan University

Dr Malcolm ToddSheffield Hallam University

Over the past three years, the Subject Network forSociology, Anthropology and Politics (C-SAP) hasbeen co-ordinating the social science contribution tothe national Islamic Studies Network. In this shortarticle, Max Farrar and Malcolm Todd describe howthey have been working with academic staff in theUK to develop a series of case studies (Farrar 2010;Farrar and Todd 2011) and professional developmentopportunities. They talk about the approach theyhave taken, the themes and issues that haveemerged from this work and the plans they have for2011-12.

Methodology

C-SAP supported the creation of a Special InterestGroup (SIG) to further its existing work in theteaching of sensitive subject matter. This built uponwork that Farrar, Todd and others had developed inthe early 2000s in teaching about ‘race’ andethnicity. The SIG held its first meeting at the C-SAPannual conference in November 2009 and it wasagreed that the teaching of issues related to Islamwere to form a core focus of its activities over thenext three years. In establishing this SIG, Farrar andTodd identified two substantial themes that wouldunderpin the work on Islam: (1) professionaldevelopment for social science staff and (2)supporting curriculum design and development inthe social sciences.

Developing approaches that support the study of Islamwithin social science curricula

Professional development opportunities

C-SAP has long aimed to provide and enableprofessional development opportunities for socialscience staff to extend and share materials forteaching. Our own experience of working withC-SAP (formerly one of 24 HEA subject centres) forover ten years now has been that it is through thisactive renewal of skills and knowledge that teachingstaff can enhance their own didactic work and thestudents’ learning experience. As part of the IslamicStudies Network project to support learning andteaching, we have been offering opportunities toimprove on already-known skills, as well as to learnor share new techniques and approaches toteaching about Islam. We have run workshops andmini conferences to help support teaching staffwithin the social sciences to network and to becomeempowered, confident and enthusiastic aboutteaching in a wide range of areas about Islam andMuslim cultures.

We have seen professional development as acombination of formal and informal learningopportunities for staff. Not only have theseopportunities been meaningful to those involved,but have also been transferable and applicable tospecific areas of interest. We believe this is criticalto allow academic staff space and time to exploreideas and share knowledge.

Enhancement in curriculum design

Enhancement in learning and teaching is “theprocess of taking deliberate steps at institutionallevel to improve the quality of learning opportunities”(Grundy 1987, 115). At the heart of this for us iscurriculum development, aligned with continuousimprovement centred on informed and committedaction. This approach goes beyond being simply aset of plans implemented by considering curriculumto be “constituted through an active process inwhich planning, acting and evaluating are allreciprocally related and integrated into the process”(Grundy 1987, 115). Conceiving of this as ‘academic

development’ and of all those involved (includingteaching staff) as academic developers, places theemphasis on strategy that is co-ordinated andtargeted with purpose, and activity that is inclusiveand collaborative. Our approach at C-SAP has beenunderpinned by the view that continuous reflectionand review of the provision that students andstakeholders receive is central to delivering aresponsive, relevant and interesting learningexperience.

Curriculum development has been regarded byC-SAP as something that is a shared and supportedprocess, and something that holds the potential notonly for improving the student learning experience,but for empowering staff in their ways of thinkingand delivering their subject. Offering support to staffat all stages of the curriculum cycle is key toenabling teaching staff to engage, reflect andenhance their practice. Curriculum design is ameans of challenging existing practice, allowing staffto think in new and different ways (new modes ofdelivery, flexible provision, capacity to match thediversity of student need, for example), as well ashelping staff to consider how to incorporate keyissues connected to Islamic Studies into theirsubject delivery.

Developing a resource base

For this Islamic Studies project, we sent an appealvia email to all those who had engaged with C-SAP’steaching, learning and research projects over theprevious eight years. A small fee was offered forsuitable case studies by those colleagues who werecurrently teaching on topics relating to Islam withintheir courses. C-SAP’s convenors for each of thediscipline areas for Sociology, Anthropology andPolitics circulated this to their own contacts outsideof the C-SAP network making the same appeal.Colleagues attending the May 2010 launch of theHEA’s Islamic Studies Network were also madeaware of this call, and asked to circulate the casestudy pro forma among their own contacts and

networks. On the basis of preliminary informationsupplied, one or two applications were turned down,and 19 were commissioned in the first two phases ofthe project. When the pro forma was obtained, theauthor of each case study was contacted personally,and clarification and additional information wasobtained as necessary. The material was thensummarised and analysed and each case study wasincluded in the two published reports. The casestudy authors were invited to present this work at aC-SAP workshop that took place at the University ofBirmingham in June 2011.

The study of Islam within social science curriculain UK universities

We used research by Bernasek and Bunt (2010) toindicate the relative paucity of modules in Britishuniversity departments of social science that devotethemselves in any way to the study of Muslimsand/or Islam. Where this does take place, accordingto Bernasek and Bunt’s review of module descriptorsavailable online, the pre-1992 universities tend todeliver the majority of them. Nevertheless, Bernasekand Bunt’s report showed the wide variety of topicsthat were covered in the few departments that payattention to these topics. The database of modulesdeveloped by the Islamic Studies Network is nowavailable online5. It provides a very useful resourcefor colleagues seeking to develop new modules onIslamic issues in the social sciences. The casestudies presented in the two published reports willprove extremely stimulating for social scientificcurriculum development.

Volume 1 included these topics currently beingtaught in British universities:– Fieldwork at a Mosque with the Bristol Muslim

Cultural Association (Sociology);– Muslims, Multiculturalism and the State

(Sociology/Religious Studies);– Ethnography of Muslim Societies

(Anthropology/Cultural Studies/Religious Studies);

5 This may be consulted at: http://is.prs.heacademy.ac.uk/


– Morality and Belief in Islam (Anthropology);Anthropology of Islam/Muslim Societies(Anthropology);

– The Inspirational Night Dream in Islam: from theQur’an to al-Qaeda and the Taliban(Anthropology);

– The concept of Islamic civil society in Iran(Politics);

– Marriage, families and Islam(Sociology/Anthropology);

– A Community of Inquiry: talking to Muslims(Philosophy);

– How Muslims and Christians understandconcepts of faith today: a case study on the workof Ali ibn Abi Talib and Søren Kierkegaard(Religious Studies/Philosophy).

Volume 2 added these topics:– Bringing Islam and Religion (back) into Social

Policy Teaching (Social Policy);– Developing undergraduate students’ skills in

qualitative data analysis through the explorationof online Hajj diaries (Psychology);

– The Messages Behind Imam al-Husayn’sMartyrdom: How Shi‘i Muslims Commemoratethe Tragedy of Karbala (Sociology, Anthropology,History, Theology);

– Forced Marriage: an issue for social workers(Social Work, Law);

– International Relations of The Modern MiddleEast (International Relations, Politics);

– Seminar on ‘War on Terror – New Racism orSecurity?’ (Sociology, Social Policy, Criminology);

– Western Studies on the Prophet Muhammad(p.b.u.h.) (Religious Studies);

– Using of Wiki for Teaching ‘Islam and Modernity’Module (International Politics);

– Seminar on Islam and Sexual and ReproductiveHealth Policymaking (Health Sciences);

– Families, sexuality and citizenship in Islam(Sociology, Anthropology, Politics).

We noted the relative absence of modules di-rectly within Sociology courses, but took some com-fort from the fact that Sociology is applied in courses

within other discipline areas. Whereas Volume 1contained several studies from an anthropologicalperspective, we saw less application of anthropologyin Volume 2. We noted that the discipline of Politicsis well represented in the case studies. It wasrefreshing to see in Volume 2 that Islam was a focusfor a methods module – since almost every socialscience course has such a module, this case studyshould have extremely wide relevance.

What all these case studies have in common isthe emphasis on demonstrating that Islam ismultifaceted, that the practices of Muslims varywidely both within a society and across the globe,and thus students have to be encouraged to face theissue of interpretation at all stages of their learning.This directly links to the point, made by many tutors,that students must be encouraged to approachthese issues critically, learning how to weigh up thevarious interpretations, and apply general socialscientific theories and concepts in their analysis ofIslam and the life-worlds of Muslims.

What are we trying to achieve?

It is important that tutors have clear reasons fordeveloping a module in this field. In Volume 1 tutorsexplained what they wanted to achieve as follows:– to offer predominantly white students new

information about Muslims and Islam (Sociology);– to broaden the study of Islam by placing it in the

context of debates about race, multiculturalismand the state and applying concepts such asdiaspora, identity and hybridity(Sociology/Religious Studies);

– to use ethnographic and cultural materials todevelop an understanding of Muslim societies(Anthropology/Religious Studies);

– to offer analysis of an aspect of Islam that ishardly understood outside Islamic societies(Anthropology);to enlarge the coverage of theexisting Anthropology course;

– to teach on a particular research interest(Anthropology);

– to explain the complexity of one Islamic society(Politics);

– to explain what is similar, and what is different, inMuslim and secular cultures (Sociology andAnthropology);

– to develop a ‘community of enquiry’ oncontentious topics such as terrorism and theveil (Philosophy);

– to encourage interfaith understanding(Philosophy/Religious Studies).

In Volume 2, tutors said they wanted to achievethe following goals:– to help students gain a fuller understanding of

the dynamic role of Islam and religion generally inthe satisfaction and promotion of humanwell-being (Social Policy);

– to develop students’ skills in qualitative dataanalysis while simultaneously fosteringintercultural understandings of Hajj and itsimportance to practising Muslims (Psychology);

– to re-contextualise the tragedy of Karbala frombeing a purely ritualistic event to a morallyappealing historical event accessible for allhuman beings, and achieve a more balancedportrayal of Shia commemorative practices(Sociology, Anthropology, History, Theology);

– to enable students to understand the relevanceof forced marriage as an issue for social workpractitioners while also making explicit thedistinctions between forced and arrangedmarriage and challenging misconceptions aboutIslam being a central force behind forcedmarriage (Social Work, Law);

– to cultivate a critical approach to the study of theMiddle East that recognises that Islam isultimately what Muslims make of it underconcrete international, historical and socialcircumstances (International Relations, Politics);

– to have students engage with personalexperiences in order to gain greaterunderstanding and empathy of some of thechallenges faced by Muslims in Britain. The aimwas to sensitise students to the political andsocial dynamics in post-9/11 and 7/7 Britain,

and to develop positive community relations;– to expose students to alternative perspectives

and to enable them to critique stereotypes andprejudices surrounding representations ofMuslims and Islam (Sociology, Social Policy,Criminology);

– to raise students’ awareness of a range of criticalpoints so they could read and critically assess awestern biography of the Prophet throughMuslim eyes (Religious Studies);

– to create a ‘blended learning’ environment thatpromotes technology-enhanced learning, criticalthinking, independent research and collectiveknowledge construction in the study of therelationship between Islam and modernity(International Politics);

– to have students develop a more comprehensiveunderstanding of the role and influence of religionin sexual and reproductive health policymaking inlow- to middle-income countries (HealthSciences);

– to give students a better grasp on how to applya theoretical and/or conceptual framework toenable a sociological/anthropologicalunderstanding of society (Sociology,Anthropology, Politics).

In Volume 1 we noted a mix of motives: changingstudents’ perceptions, expanding the curriculum(often in an inter-disciplinary direction), contributingto social harmony, developing debate on normativeissues, and merging teaching with research interests.In Volume 2, we saw an even greater emphasis oncountering stereotypes, exposing the complexity ofthe Muslim world, and developing critical thinking.All of these are appropriate to a social sciencedegree programme. Other relevant motives fordeveloping this type of curriculum remain important:to enable the degree to respond to contemporarysocial and political controversies; to demonstratethe relevance of critical social science; to have animpact on social policy and practice; and to respondto students’ interests.


In light of the HEA Islamic Studies Network project,it is also relevant for social science departments toconsider how to respond to HEA initiatives, which inturn reflect a steer from Government. The authors ofthe case studies already have a clear set of motivesfor their work; if the curriculum is to be developedin this area, colleagues have to be given theopportunity to consider their own, and theirdepartments’ pedagogic and ethical motivations.In Phase 3 of our work we shall further concentrateon developing this work more widely across Britishuniversities.

Issues in teaching and learning

Each case study author describes in some detailhow he or she set about delivering their course;again these deserve detailed study. Several generalpoints can be made:– Explicit or implicit in each case study is the

recognition that this is a contested field,intellectually and normatively. Successfulteaching and learning on this topic (some wouldargue on all topics) relies on creating a context inwhich questions can be asked and differencesdiscussed with mutual respect. Understandably,students do not want to expose themselves toaccusations that they are politically incorrect. Thelecture theatre and the seminar room have to beplaces where inclusive dialogue can take place.Two case studies in Volume 2 specifically point tothe tutor’s role in challenging, but notdisempowering students. The ‘community ofenquiry’ approach explained in Appendix B(section 4) of Volume 1 will be particularlyvaluable here.

– The European and wider, global dimensions ofthis field of study are apparent in both volumes ofcase studies. In a multi-ethnic society such asthe UK, British citizens whose families originatedin all parts of the world convert to Islam or haveIslamic cultural backgrounds. Those seekingrefuge here from Islamic countries bringknowledge and experience with them that is

often new to their white, secular or Christianfellows. Settled British Muslim citizens amongour students similarly bring new knowledge andexperience to their white colleagues. It isarguable that lecturers in social science courseshave a valuable resource here, which they canonly effectively utilise if they expand their ownareas of knowledge to comprehend thelife-worlds of these global actors.

– Some colleagues report that some students havedifficulty comprehending the analysis of Islamicsociety being offered to them. This is clearlymost acute when the students have little or nobackground knowledge to draw upon, and/ortheir common-sense knowledge is infused withthe stereotypes they accrue from the mass mediain European societies. An agreed aim of thesocial sciences is critically to examinecommon-sense knowledge. Clearly, thosestudents who take the trouble to study readingmaterials provided before the class are muchmore likely to benefit from the discussion. How toachieve those study habits among all students isperhaps the perennial question for all tutors in allsubjects.

– The problem of comprehension is compoundedby the paucity of published material in this fieldwritten with the needs of secular, Jewish, Hindu,Buddhist or Christian students in mind.Curriculum development in this area urgentlyneeds to consider the production of readers andother teaching materials geared to the needs ofthose unfamiliar with Islam and Muslim societies.

– Providing an excellent starting point for teachersnew to this field, most case studies include abibliography prepared for the course described;these serve as invaluable stand-alone resourcesfor colleagues undertaking curriculumdevelopment in this area of study.

– Successful classes seem to utilise accessiblematerials, particularly those with a personalfocus. Volume 1 case study authors reported theuse of published speeches, videos of peopleencountered in the field, TV documentaries, and,

perhaps most successful of all, a field trip to alocal Mosque, where white students meet a localMuslim for, in most cases, the very first time.In Volume 2, tutors point out that using their ownexperience (as in the Hajj diaries) was wellreceived by students, as were the results oftheir own fieldwork.

– Each case study includes bullet points of ‘whatworked well’ and what concerns were raised bythe teaching process, which provides a usefulsummary of the learning process.

Conclusion and further plans

These case studies provide much detail on howtopics – some specific, some more general – ofinterest to social scientists have been developedwith the aim of scrutinising Islam and Muslims allover the globe. Individually, they will inspire othersocial scientists seeking to enter this field anddevelop their curricula; collectively they provide aresource for whole departments to review thebalance of topics offered within their course. TheHigher Education Academy’s Islamic StudiesNetwork initiative has been spurred by therecognition that Islam as a religion and Muslims as alarge proportion of the world’s population are topicsof enormous importance, which should be fullyincorporated into the courses offered across Britishhigher education institutions. It is perhaps surprisinghow few modules there are within the socialsciences that focus on Islam and/or Muslims, giventheir geopolitical significance and that the socialsciences claim critically to scrutinise society in all itsfascinating complexity. This report has has sought toinitiate discussion on further development of thiscurriculum area.

Picking up on the recommendations in Volume 1,in Phase 3 (2011-12) of this project we aim to:– continue our work to form a network of social

scientists whose teaching already focuses onIslam and Muslims;

– share the best practice through this Social

Science Islamic Studies Network and furtherdevelop its members’ teaching materials.Specific attention might be given to utilising theHEA Islamic Studies Network website as avehicle for sharing existing materials;

– work with information technology specialists todevelop web-based reflections on teaching andlearning about Islam in the social sciences,utilising students’ and tutors’ currentexperiences;

– contact heads of all university social sciencedepartments to seek their support for regionalevents involving their staff, led by members ofthe Social Science Islamic Studies Network,aiming to extend the number of courses thatfocus on Islam and Muslims.

We welcome comments from colleagues in alldiscipline areas on these case studies and on theobservations made here.

Bibliogrpahy

Bernasek, L. and Bunt, G. (2010) Islamic Studiesprovision in the UK. Report to HEFCE by the HigherEducation Academy. Bristol: HEFCE. Available from:http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rdreports/2010/rd06_10/ [last accessed date 26 September 2011].

Farrar, M. (2010) The Study of Islam Within SocialScience Curricula in UK Universities (Vol. 1).Birmingham: C-SAP, University of Birmingham.Available from:http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CSAPpublications[last accessed date 26 September 2011].

Farrar, M. and Todd, M. (2011) The Study of IslamWithin Social Science Curricula in UK Universities(Vol. 2). Birmingham: C-SAP, University ofBirmingham. Available from:http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/CSAPpublications[last accessed date 26 September 2011].

Grundy, S. (1987) Curriculum: product or praxis?Lewes: Falmer Press.


Ramon HarveyPhD candidateSchool of Oriental andAfrican Studies (SOAS)

Your dedication to Islamic knowledge has takenyou from Egypt to the UK, and from memorisingthe Qur’an in the traditional manner to foundingthe only specialised academic journal focusedupon its study. Do you have any reflections aboutthis journey you would like to share?

The first key milestone was learning the Qur’anby heart. This was in the village school, the kutt�b itis called. You go there from the age of five – and inthe village time didn’t matter, you can be there for aslong as you like – I think I must have finished by theage of ten or eleven. Learning the Qur’an of coursewas the most fundamental thing in my life, becauseit governed my career after that. I learnt it all byheart, which meant I was qualified to go to theal-Azhar school, in our area of Egypt called Zagazigin the eastern part of the delta, for nine years tostudy Arabic and Islamic Studies. The interestingthing was that at the end of every year they had toexamine you, in an oral examination of many things,but first of all was the Qur’an, to make sure youhadn’t forgotten it. In addition to this – and this iswhat made me able up to now to know the Qur’anby heart – my father made me promise that I wouldread something of the Qur’an every day.

Then I went to Cairo University and there was abig change there, because in addition to Arabic andIslamic Studies we had scholars who were educatedin France and Britain, so we had comparativeliterature, modern poetry – Romanticism was a veryimportant subject – and modern literary criticism.It was amazing for me when the professor ofcomparative literature introduced us to the Greek

mythology. That experience shaped my future in thatI have two sides to my character: one purely Arabicand Islamic; the other able to feel at home with theEnglish and European literature and way of thinking.That helped me, otherwise I would have remained ashaykh in the old sense, and it must have widenedmy outlook and perspective. I could have been veryconservative, but I am not. It enabled me to open upto others and I feel you gain more by listening toother people and knowing about them. I am nowinvolved in interfaith relations for instance, and I wasgiven the OBE for service to both Arabic literatureand interfaith understanding.

When I finished the four years in Cairo University– again being one of the top students – it was takenfor granted that I would be appointed in the facultyand then sent abroad for a PhD. I was sent here, tothis country, and I worked on modern Egyptianpoetry at Cambridge University; this consolidatedthe linguistic and literary aspects of my training.

When I came to SOAS, I taught mainly Arabiclanguage and literature. But then, there was achange, when I realised that there were people inwestern universities who leave their subject andcome to write about the Qur’an. I said to myself,“Well I know the Qur’an by heart, I have been in thatfor life, I have to concentrate on Islamic Studiesnow.” That led to the establishment of the KingFahd Chair in Islamic Studies in 1995.

There is one thing I would like to say about themixture of disciplines in my education. It made meconcentrate within the Qur’an, more on its languageand style. I consider this the most basic thing. If youwant to understand the Qur’an well, you will have toread the text very closely and understand thelanguage and style, or the linguistic habits, then youcan produce new research. If I have done anything inQur’anic Studies, this is the central core of it.

You are currently King Fahd Professor of IslamicStudies at SOAS and Director of the Centre ofIslamic Studies. What have been the challengesand highlights of the role?

One very important thing in my thinking has beenhow to bring together the scholars of the Qur’an inthe Muslim world who were writing for themselvesand western scholars who were also writing for theirown audience. So we had the two of them awayfrom each other, sometimes knowing nothing abouteach other. That was a challenge for me. I wanted todo something about this and I have done something:the Journal of Qur’anic Studies. This journal aims tobring scholars from the two traditions to worktogether, publish together, meet each other at therelated conference, and to learn from each other.I also consider the journal to be one of my greathighlights here, since I was appointed Professor ofIslamic Studies.

Also very important, has been the MA in IslamicStudies, which I created at the same time as theestablishment of the Centre of Islamic Studies in1995-96. This incorporated a solid base in Qur’an,Hadith and Arabic texts, while being open to modernstudies, so you have modules such as ‘ModernTrends in Islam’, you have politics, economics andso forth. I see this as the future. It also fulfilled thesame aim of bringing together people from differentdisciplines, different areas of the Muslim world anddifferent schools of thought.

Other highlights have included the LondonQur’an Series, which has published translations ofseminal works by the scholar M.A. Draz, as well assomething called the Distinguished Speakers Series.As part of this, I brought over the head of the CopticChurch in Egypt. I am Egyptian myself and I thought,“This is the School of Oriental and African Studies.Egypt is the only country that exists in Africa andAsia.” So we invited the Pope of the Coptic Churchand it was a very great success. Also, of course, mytranslation of the Qur’an, the Dictionary of theQur’an, and a new series of PhD scholarships, whichwe are currently in the process of organising. I aimfrom now on to try to find money for bright ideas.

You are probably most famous for yourtranslation of the Qur’an. Can you tell us whenand why you first decided to undertake this workand why you think it has met with such a goodreception?

After starting the MA in Islamic Studies, andhaving students study my course ‘The Qur’an:Language, Style and Translation’, I asked a group ofstudents here, BA, MA and PhD, “What do you thinkof the existing Qur’an translations?” Nearly all ofthem said, “We don’t read them. They are written ina language that we didn’t read at school, and wecan’t read more than two or three pages, beforeputting it aside.” So I translated one page and gaveit to them saying, “What do you think of this?” Theysaid, “It is better, but it is still…” So I went onchanging it, until they felt that it was very nice. Sothat is a translation based on market research!

Two things mark translations, one is thelanguage, which tends to be overly traditional.Secondly and more important than that are theconcepts in the Qur’an, such as wujūh, that isdifferent meanings of the same word, according tothe context. I have discovered that they keeptranslating the words kāfir and kufr as disbelief,when in fact it isn’t disbelief. I can’t talk about aChristian or a Jew as a ‘disbeliever’, because thesepeople believe in God. You see, you will have to finddifferent terms than this.

The context of the verse is so important. I havefound out, when the Muslims go wrong, and thenon-Muslims go wrong about the Qur’an, it isbecause they ignore the context. I consider thiscrucial. I wrote something called ‘The Sword VerseMyth’. I have discovered in it that Muslim extremistsand extremists amongst journalists and evenacademics in the west, both of them, stand in thesame ground and use the very same tactics ofwrenching a verse from its context and claiming thatthis is the Islamic view. I see now that an evolutionneeds to take place in Qur’anic Studies based onthe context and on letting the Qur’an inform youwhat it means. Because I know it by heart, when Ithink of a verse I find that other verses about the

Interview with Professor M.A.S. Abdel Haleem

M.A.S. Abdel Haleem is the King Fahd Professor of Islamic Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studiesof the University of London. He is the author of the current translation of the Qur’an published by OxfordUniversity Press and is one of the most senior academic scholars of the Qur’an in the world. He is interviewedby Ramon Harvey, who is currently a PhD candidate at SOAS, researching the concept of justice in theQur’an under the supervision of Professor Abdel Haleem.


same theme come to mind like a magnet. Thatinforms my understanding.

When more study is done of my translation,people will begin to realise that more than just theeasy language, which no doubt is very important forthe readers, my translation of the Qur’an containsexplanations. I have provided these through theintroduction, through each chapter’s shortintroduction, and the footnotes, which givesomething people crave for, to show how thingsare connected to one another. Also literalism issomething that has afflicted translations of theQur’an for a long time in so many ways. My feelingwas that if I am going to write a translation of theQur’an into English, it has to be in English, not inArabic English’, or Arabic written in the Englishalphabet!

Islamic Studies as a discipline has developedsubstantially during the course of your career.What long-term changes seem most remarkableto you and what trends have you seen emergingin the past five to ten years?

A significant change is that openness to the areastudies approach has entered the disciplinealongside traditional textual scholarship. This is theattitude now in the Islamic Studies Network: youhave on the one side solid religious Islamic Studies,and on the other side, a numerous community ofscholars, consisting of historians, economists, artexperts, and so on. Both sides are useful, but wemust have in this country, always, people who aresolid in the basic religious and textual studies, as itwas in the era of what are called ‘orientalists’. Thesepeople were good in one thing. They knew how tostudy texts. Even if I didn’t agree with much of whatthey were saying, I respected them for theirscholarship on texts.

It is important to also look at what gave rise tochanges, things like the Iranian revolution, 9/11, andthe ‘Clash of Civilisations’ thesis. They led to peopletaking more interest in the Qur’an and Islam,especially with extremists and terrorists being givenattention in the media. That resulted in greaterinterest not only on the part of the media but also on

the part of scholarship. So you have a number ofencyclopedias written about the Qur’an in the past15 years, for instance. The idea of ‘Clash ofCivilisations’ led to greater dialogue and to interfaithrelations, which is a very active movement at themoment. It also resulted in more people attackingIslam in the west, the media and others, and itresulted in the British Government taking an interestin Islamic Studies and wanting to know more aboutwhat is taking place. Thus with the involvement ofHEFCE, you have the establishment of the IslamicStudies Network, which is a very great achievement.For the first time, we have a record of who is doingwhat in the country as a whole, contacts betweenthese people, conferences and publications likePerspectives. Another trend is a greater number ofsecond generation Muslims coming to study Islam inhigher education, as well as someone like me, as aMuslim, being a Professor of Islamic Studies, andthere are many examples like these. This wasbeyond anyone’s imagination 40 or 50 years ago.Also, the use of IT and digitisation of Islamic sourcesin the Bodleian Library and all the PhD theses writtenon Islam are all new trends that point to a new futurefor Islamic Studies.

How do you think that teaching and research inIslamic Studies at higher education level can bebest developed in the future?

Hopefully, we will have more people studyingIslam objectively. When 9/11 will be behind us forsome time and people will get more settled in seeingthe Muslim world as it really is, not as a threat to thewest, but as a neighbour and a partner in dialogueand trade, we will have more objective academicsworking on Islam. I would like to see more Muslim,western-educated scholars studying Islam, as wellas Islamic institutions like the dār al- culūm add towhat they are doing, so they can become part of thehigher educational system in the future. Finally, weneed to find people with creative ideas, and thenfind funds to put them into action for the benefit ofIslamic Studies and for the benefit of society. We areall here as one community. What we need from nowon is a new way of thinking.

Bibliogrpahy

Abdel Haleem, M.A.S. (2007) The Sword Verse Myth.1st ed. London: Centre of Islamic Studies, SOAS.

Abdel Haleem, M.A.S. (2010) The Qur’an: Englishtranslation with parallel Arabic text. 1st ed. (Englishtranslation first published 2004). Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Abdel Haleem, M.A.S. and Badawi, E. (2008)Arabic-English dictionary of Qur'anic usage. 1st ed.Leiden: Brill.

Huntingdon, S.P. (1993) The Clash of Civilizations?Foreign Affairs. 72 (3), 22-49.


Dr Siobhan Lambert-HurleyLoughborough University

Marilyn BoothUniversity of Edinburgh

Accessing Muslim Lives is about improving theaccessibility of autobiographical writings fromMuslim contexts through translation and digitisationso that they may be better used for teaching andlearning, particularly in higher education. Ultimately,we aim to compile about 200-300 pages of primarysource extracts which will be made available inJanuary 2012 throughhttp://www.accessingmuslimlives.org as part of aninternet-based collection. Students, practitionersand the general public alike will thus be given accessto the wide array of Muslim lives – both male andfemale, historical and contemporary – represented inthese autobiographies. The authors range fromscholars, saints and socio-religious reformers toprinces, bureaucrats, nationalists, educators, writersand actors. The project thus intends to provide arather more nuanced version of the stereotypicaldepictions of Muslims and Islam so widespread inthe current political climate.

So far, we have drawn on two main sources forour materials. The first is bibliographies of our exist-ing undergraduate modules, ‘Muslim Lives:Autobiography, Identity and the Self in ModernIslamic Societies’ at Loughborough University and‘Harems, Homes and Streets: Gender and Space inMiddle Eastern Literatures’ at the University ofEdinburgh. As most of this material is alreadyavailable in published form in English or Englishtranslation, the major concern here has been gettingpermission from publishers to digitise materials stillin copyright for open access. As we are onlyincluding short extracts from published works, wehave sought to facilitate the process by convincingpublishers of the publicity value of the website. This

process is ongoing. Where materials are alreadyavailable online, we will link from our own website.

The second main source for materials has beenparticipants in the AHRC-funded internationaresearch network, ‘Women’s Autobiography inIslamic Societies’: http://www.waiis.org. Whenparticipants were invited to offer materials from theirown research that they would be willing to translatefor the purpose of the website, the response wasoverwhelming. Much of this material, originallycomposed in Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, Farsi, French,Bengali and Punjabi, can only be found in archivesor rare collections and thus is especially difficult toaccess. Of course, the focus of this network meansthat most of these autobiographical extracts areproduced by women. However, as this material is therarest in published contexts, it represents theighting of the usual gender imbalance when it comesto sources for Muslim history. It also means that thisproject will be able to respond to a specificchallenge highlighted in previous issues of thismagazine of making Muslim women’s voices moreaccessible.

The primary source materials offered bymembers of the network include:– a 17th-century autobiographical Sufi treatise

from Mughal India;– an autobiographical poem composed by a

former prostitute in mid-19th century Punjab;– a number of 19th- and 20th-century travelogues

from South Asia, Egypt and Iran;– several memoirs serialised by female

educationalists in women’s journals in Urdu andArabic;

– the memoirs and prison narratives of Turkishnationalists;

– autobiographies originally published in French byfeminists from North Africa and Mali;autobiographical essays composed by Egyptianpoetesses, journalists and Islamist scholars inthe 20th century.We welcome further suggestions or even

contributions of autobiographical extracts fromMuslim contexts to add to this collection.

Accessing Muslim Lives

Dr Anicée Van EngelandLecturer in the School of Law,University of Exeter

The project entitled Islamic Law in the Law School:Implementing a New Pedagogy focuses on thedelivery of Islamic law in a law school; projectleaders also seek to increase students’ employabilityskills by developing contacts with relevantpractitioners in the field of Islamic law.

Islamic law is rarely taught by lawyers in lawschool and when it is, it should be taught in a ‘legal’way, finding a balance between theory and practice.Law schools provide a professional training andhave to develop an Islamic law curriculum that fulfilsthis mission. The School of Law at the University ofExeter opted to work on finding the right balance,with the support of the Islamic Studies Network.

Project leaders opted for an extensive consulta-tion of law firms’ solicitors, barristers and law aca-demics to draft the course syllabi that will be taughtat the University of Exeter starting in 2011. These are‘Introduction to Islamic law for lawyers’ atundergraduate level and ‘Islamic law and humanrights’ and ‘Islamic finance’ at postgraduate level.

The first step was a presentation of the project tothe Islamic Law Special Interest Group in November2010. Academic feedback has been ongoing since,in conversation with universities such as School ofOriental and African Studies, Durham and Warwick.The second step took place in July 2011 in Exeterand London: project leaders met with solicitors andbarristers to understand their expectations andneeds when it comes to Law graduates taking amodule in Islamic law.

Two elements emerged: the first one is a realcontribution from those consulted to practical casestudies and legal decisions. We were advised mainlyin relation to Islamic commercial law and family law.While it became clear that the former is particularlyuseful for addressing the expectations of students

wishing to become solicitors, it is hoped that futurebarristers will acquire knowledge of both. Thesecond element that emerged from the conversationis that there is room for further consultations withbarristers but also public and administrative bodiesin order to develop the practical side of the courseand to further students’ employability potential. Wehave now agreements for three vacation schemeplacements for next Summer and an agreement thatsome of the practitioners consulted will give talks inthe class and will also mentor students.

The course descriptors the practitioners andacademics worked on are now online for comment6.The next step of the project will be to integrate allthe comments in the syllabi in order to finish the firstpart of the project by September 2011. Suggestions,comments and criticisms from practitioners andacademics will enable us to develop a coursedescription that encompasses both the theoreticaland the practical aspects of Islamic law.

Islamic Law in the Law School: Implementing a New Pedagogy

6 The team uploaded the current course descriptors to HumBox (http://www.humbox.ac.uk/), to Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org),as well as to the Islamic Studies Network website (http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk), where they are open to comments.

22 www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk21 Perspectives

Yossef RapoportQueen Mary Universityof London

Pre-modern Islamic societies were overwhelminglysocieties of peasants, and the achievements ofIslamic civilization depended, first and foremost, onagricultural production. Even today, much of theworldwide Muslim population is still rural. Mostcurrent teaching on Muslim societies, however,neglects and marginalises the countryside. Apartfrom Bedouin nomadic communities, which receivesome interest from historians of early Islam and fromanthropologists, the vast majority of past andpresent peasant communities remain unknown toundergraduate and even postgraduate students ofMuslim societies. Most courses of Middle Eastern orIslamic history do not touch on basic questions,such as the social and religious identities of villagecommunities, or the peasant’s relationship to thestate – questions that are central to comparablecourses on European history, and which are crucialfor our wider understanding of political andeconomic institutions in Muslim societies.

This resource aims to fill this gap by offeringteachers in Islamic studies cross-disciplinaryeducational and bibliographic resources on thehistory of the countryside in the Islamic world,delivered through a dedicated webpage. It offers acurriculum, suggested readings and bibliography fora one-term module, aimed at Level 5 (second-year)students, on the history of rural societies in theMuslim world. The readings for this module bringtogether papers from the disciplines of History,Archaeology and Anthropology. The moduleproceeds chronologically from the emergence ofIslam, but also considers thematic issues, with focuson the peasantry and their relations with the stateand transhumant communities.

The resources prepared so far include: coursedescription, rationale and aims; suggested course

structure and readings; suggested coursework;recommended bibliography (pre-modern);recommended bibliography (modern). Theseresources are available in the Teaching section ofthe ‘Rural Society in Medieval Islam’ website:http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/ruralsocietyislam.Through the integrated website, students andresearchers will also have access to some of theoutput of the AHRC-funded project, includingtranslations of sample villages, selected maps, andfree access to a database of fiscal data collectedfrom this unique cadastral survey. They will also beavailable on the Islamic Studies Network websiteand on HumBox.

In the course of the Autumn semester (2011), wewill also upload to the website three, model one-offsessions on rural history and rural society in theIslamic world, which are to be incorporated into ageneral survey of modules on pre-modern ormodern Islamic history. Such a one-off sessionwould include a suggested PowerPoint presentation,as well as selected secondary and primary readingsand questions for discussion.

Teaching the history of Muslim rural societies

Dr Melanie PrideauxUniversity of Leeds

Most teachers of introductory undergraduatemodules on Islam have probably at some point beenshocked at the lack of general knowledge somestudents bring to their studies. Most of us have hadthe experience of marking work and thinking ‘howon earth did you get this far without knowing that?’Although most of the work on these introductorymodules can feel like undoing ‘misinformation’about Islam, this is often related to a lack of coreknowledge students have failed to pick up fromschool Religious Education, the media, or everydaylife in the UK. For those students who arrive lackingbasic knowledge of Islam even the manyintroductory texts can appear daunting.

The Islamic Studies Network has funded aproject to create a web-based resource to assiststudents in preparing for introductory undergraduatemodules in Islam, particularly though not exclusivelyin Religious Studies. The outcome of the project willbe a series of activities, with multiple-choicequestions and other tasks, which students cancomplete prior to starting their module. These willcover the basic information about Islam, includingsome key dates, key terms, facts and people. Therewill also be an activity to identify key countries of theMuslim world. Although primarily developed fromwithin a Religious Studies perspective, it is expectedthat this resource will be useful in other subject areaswhere background knowledge of Islam would bebeneficial.

The resource can be used in two ways. Firstly,the website can be advertised to students viamodule information and act as a stand-aloneresource offered to students to enable them to gainconfidence and check their general knowledge.Secondly, through provision of a printable certificateon completion, module tutors can use the resource

as way of checking that students have achieved abaseline of knowledge before lectures begin.Students can have as many attempts as theychoose at each activity, and the certificate will befor completion, rather than providing a grade of anykind. The intention of the resource is to buildconfidence, rather than identify weakness.

The resource will be open access, and it will bepossible to request the quizzes as downloads sothat they can be used in another form, or adaptedfor institution-specific purposes. Guidance materialwill be available for students and staff, includinggood quality links such as to HumBox:http://www.humbox.ac.uk.The materials produced to date (which are verymuch still in the development stage) can be viewedhere: http://arts.leeds.ac.uk/introductiontoislam/.Feedback and suggestions from both students andteachers would be very welcome.

Starting to study Islam


Glenn HardakerUniversity of Huddersfield

A’ishah Ahmad SabkiBeyondLabels Ltd.

In Viewpoint, Glenn Hardaker and A’ishsh AhmadSabki tell us about their own experience of teachingand learning the Qur’an at the University ofal-Qarawiyyin, Fez, Morocco.

In our time living in the ancient medina7 of Fez,Morocco, we embarked upon a search forexcellence in pedagogy at the University ofal-Qarawiyyin. Al-Qarawiyyin is a university close tothe centre of the Fez medina. It was founded in 859as a religious school. Al-Qarawiyyin is known to bethe oldest continually operating university andpre-dates for example the University of Bologn(established in 1088). It remains one of the leadingspiritual and educational centres for Islamic studiesin North Africa.

Our intention, in conducting this research, was tounderstand traditional excellence in Islamicteachings rooted in knowledge and the sacred.There is limited research into Islamic pedagogy andeven less understanding of the inner workings ofal-Qarawiyyin at a pedagogical level. There are a fewremaining Islamic universities that pre-date westernuniversities and these provide an insight into earlytraditional teaching methods. In addition toal-Qarawiyyin in Morocco, there are the Universityof al-Azhar in Egypt (established in 970-972),Nizamiyya Academy in Baghdad (established in1091), and the more recent International IslamicUniversity of Malaysia (established in 1983). Theseinstitutions provide an insight into the use of

madrasa models in Islamic education. By gainingan understanding of the teaching methods ofal-Qarawiyyin you can see how the madrasa hascontinued to be an important institutional model thatis created for the purpose of education. Typically,madrasas are distinctive in the context of spirituality,architecture, organisation, and teacher-studentrelationship.

A picture by Glen Hardaker

For the purposes of this research, a traditional defini-tion of madrasa has been adopted where themadrasa is synonymous for education that weavesknowledge and the sacred as one. In highereducation madrasas of excellence that still remain,there is a prevailing belief in the inseparable natureof intellectual development and spirituality (Nadwi2007). From our observations al-Qarawiyyin teachersare versed in Islamic pedagogy from a very early ageand as a consequence the methods and techniquesare intuitive to their practice. At the same time,al-Qarawiyyin is open to modern technologies thatsupport the traditional teaching style and curriculum.For example, the use of mobile technologies such aslaptops is increasingly common in the madrasa.Drawing on data from our field research atal-Qarawiyyin in the Fez medina, we provide somereflections on the nature of madrasa education witha brief discussion of the characterising concepts ofIslamic pedagogy and the implications for learning.

Reflections on Islamic pedagogy at the University of al-Qarawiyyin

The al-Qarawiyyin model

In 2011, we spent seven months living andimmersing ourselves in the ancient medina in Fez,carrying out an ethnographic study of al-Qarawiyyinand other madrasas of the medina. The purpose ofthe study was largely descriptive and aimed to learnabout the defining concepts of Islamic pedagogy.Our theoretical research has shown that teaching

methods of particular significance are based on thecharacterising concepts of knowledge and thesacred, and on the development of skills such asorality (both seen as oral transmission from teacherto students and as a traditional mode fortransmitting knowledge in the Arab cultures) andmemorisation of the sacred text. Islamic pedagogy isunderstood by the way these aspects are woventogether. We conducted daily participant

7 Medina is an Arabic word for city but it has become synonymous with an ancient city. Fez is the largest medina or ancient city in theworld. It is also a UNESCO world heritage site.


observations of ‘teaching circles’ over aseven-month period. The participant observationwas achieved from engaging in the daily life ofal-Qarawiyyin and from developing relationshipswith teachers and students of the university.

At al-Qarawiyyin classes are scheduled aroundthe five daily prayers, and the call to prayer (adhān)sets the rhythm of the day. The interconnectionbetween the teaching circles and prayer is central tounderstanding the integral nature of the sacred inknowledge acquisition. Al-Qarawiyyin is an openand flexible space and has the capacity toaccommodate approximately 20,000 people.

Typically classes take place in the form of studycircles of 10-20 students. The open study circles(see picture no 2) visually represent the intimacy ofthe teacher-student relationship and illustrate thetraditional method of teaching that has continuedsince the time of the Prophet Muhammad. The levelof memorisation that students can achieve and theimportance of orality in transmitting the sacred textunderpin the teaching. For example, a typicalstudent of al-Qarawiyyin is able to memorise a pageof text in approximately five minutes. The studycircle is an ideal setting for memorising texts in thatit offers students a familiar environment where theycan gather to recite and memorise the Qur’an andHadith. Physical closeness and small numbers ofstudents become thus key elements to the teachingand learning process, as together they provide anenvironment in which students and teacher feel atease when learning the sacred texts. In this way, theimportance of memorisation clearly impacts on thestudy circles in the context of oral transmission andthe role of the Qur’an and Hadith in the teachingprocess. However, how memorisation and methodsof oral transmission of the sacred texts impact uponknowledge is – and has been in our project andexperience – more challenging to define. Here wemove into reflections on the levels of knowledge inthe context of the seen and the unseen (Nasr 1989).Such issues have been discussed in detail byeminent scholars such as Al-Ghazali as far back in intime as 1094(!) (Dunya 1961) and are outside of thescope of this paper.

The study circles reinforce visually as well aspractically the intimate teacher-student relationship.In the closeness of the study circle, you can see aclear purpose to support ‘authentic’ oraltransmission that is led by the teacher andsupported by student recitation and groudiscussions.

For those inside al-Qarawiyyin the study circlesare open and allow observation and, as relationshipsdevelop, some participation. The characterisingconcepts of Islamic pedagogy clearly need animmersive environment and al-Qarawiyyin with itssurrounding medina offers such an environment. Inour experience we noticed that the pedagogical stylewithin an immersive environment clearly leads, forsome students, to the embodiment of knowledge.At al-Qarawiyyin the surrounding environment isunique compared with most madrasas of Islamichigher learning. We will now explore the uniquenessand also commonality of Islamic pedagogy withmodern pedagogy developments.

Madrasa pedagogy and the student learningexperience

Even though the madrasa is a declining institu-tional model there is an invaluable insight that canstill be gained from research into the concepts of Is-lamic pedagogy that represent the madrasa style ofteaching and learning. Our observations found thatIslamic pedagogy shares many similarities with thecognitive perspective to learning theory. Cognitivism,sometimes referred to as cognitive informationprocessing, expanded on the behaviourist analysis,which is to examine a learner’s mental state.Chomsky (1962) claimed that higher learning couldonly be achieved through a combination ofconditioning and the internal mental state of thelearner, which he argued should also be analysedand understood. This view is extended by researchinto cognitive learning styles that also identifies theincreasing importance of cultural sensitivity (Evansand Cools 2009). The notion of ‘conditioning’ and‘cultural sensitivity’ can also be seen in the contextof the educational environment of al-Qarawiyyin,

where pedagogic strategies for influencing theinternal mental state of the learner are adopted.

The physical environment of the medina in Fezthat surrounds the place of study, al-Qarawiyyin,affects the curricula being offered and thiscomplements work undertaken by Dunn and Griggs(1995) focused on cognition, learning style andcultural sensitivity. This is particularly relevant in theFez medina with physical and cultural separationfrom the modern city of Fez. This is supportedphysically by the architecture (e.g. no access forcars) and culturally by the daily prayer cycle and theway in which this defines for most the rhythm of theday.

A picture by Glen Hardaker

Such an approach to education is also reflected inthe importance of problem-based learning incognitive learning theory. For example, al-Qarawiyyinsupports the belief of knowledge and the sacredthrough the daily recitation of the Qur’an from sunsetor maghrib prayer. For some the education of theday is reinforced by the continual recitation of theQur’an. This is similar to the main mosques of themedina in Fez and is one of the few cities remaining

to sustain this practice. The cognitive perspectiveadopted by many educationalists has similarconstructs of importance and for some anacceptance of spiritual belief playing an importantpart in the cognitive learning process. The conceptof self-efficacy, a learner’s belief that they can posi-tively take action to manage a situation, was centralto the development of the theory. In our experienceat al-Qarawiyyin we felt that the institution’s peda-gogical model provides a unique insight into such anapplication, in particular, through memorisation andthe potential for the embodiment of knowledge.

What is unique to the Islamic pedagogy ofal-Qarawiyyin is the deep certainty of belief in God

and this underpins the oral transmission, thusfacilitating memorisation, and the didactic approachtowards sacred texts. So why is this different fromother religious traditions where there are mansimilarities; for example, the role of memorisationand embodiment in the Christian tradition or theuse of study circles in the Jewish tradition?Al-Qarawiyyin illustrated to us some important

28 www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk27 Perspective

aspects shaping Islamic pedagogy as understoodand applied at that institution including:– the immersive environment of the medina in Fez

has been supported by the medieval architectureof narrow streets that has enabled a car-free city,helping the community continue to follow someaspects of a traditional way of life;

– oral transmission from teachers who aresupported by scholars with lineage to theProphet Muhammad at al-Qarawiyyin. This stillremains integral to the orality that is representedby deep cultural ties and authentication of thespoken word;

– memorisation and repeated recitation enablesthe acquisition of knowledge and leads to itsembodiment. From al-Qarawiyyin ourobservations illustrated how memorisation andassociated repetition move the student closer toGod. From a Sufi perspective this highlightsissues of lifting the ‘veils’ to the unseen;

– for students at al-Qarawiyyin the Qur’antranscribes the word of God from the memory ofthe Prophet Muhammad and his ṣaḥābah8. Thisis fundamental to understanding issues of thecharacterising concepts of Islamic pedagogy.

Concluding thoughts

Our reflections are intended to illustrate theimportance of belief in religious teachings and this iscommon to Islam and other religions. In addition ourresearch and personal experience at al-Qarawiyyinprovides some insight into the role of Islamic beliefin the cognitive learning process that supportsknowledge acquisition (Alavi 2010). Furtherconsideration is needed into how Islamic pedagogycan support the cognitive styles of the learner inimproving the learning experience. Both cognitivetheory and the accommodation of cultural contextare currently under-represented in mainstreamIslamic pedagogy research and we hope to providegreater understanding in this area over time. Furtherpublications from our research in al-Qarawiyyin willprovide some light on the fundamental nature of

Islamic pedagogy and its commonality with otherpedagogical styles, and this should help inunderstanding the construct more. A greaterunderstanding of Islamic pedagogy will restore thecapacity of teaching to form the human person forthis world and the next.

Bibliography

Alavi, H.R. (2010) Nearness to God: A Perspectiveon Islamic Education. Religious Education. 103 (1),5-23.

Bandura, A. (1989) Perceived Self-efficacy in theExercise of Personal Agency. The Psychologist:Bulletin of the British Psychological Society. 2,411-424.

Chomsky, N. (1962) Explanatory Models inLinguistics. In: Nagel, E., Suppes, P. and Tarski, A.(eds.) Logic, Methodology and Philosophy ofScience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,528-550.

Dunn, R. and Griggs, S.A. (1995) Multiculturalismand Learning Styles. Westport, CT: PraegerPublishers.

Dunya, S. (ed.) (1961) Al-Ghazali, Abu Hamid. 1094.‘Maqasid al Falasifa’ (The Intentions of thePhilosophers). Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif.(A precise summary of Islamic philosophy asrepresented by Ibn Sina).

Evans, C. and Cools, E. (2009) Editorial The Use andUnderstanding of Style Differences to EnhanceLearning. Reflecting Education. 5 (2), 1-18.

Nadwi, M.A. (2007) Madrasah Life, A Student’s Dayat Nadwat Al-Ulama. London: Turath Publishing.

Nasr, S.H. (1989) Knowledge and the Sacred.Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

book as a supporting tool for students who may useit as a point of reference when studying variousaspects of the lives of Muslims in Britain.

Although the book focuses mostly on religionand is clearly written from the point of view of aReligious Studies scholar, it will be valuable readingfor students in Sociology, Anthropology and PoliticalSciences as it makes a very useful backgroundreading for contextualising most of the debates thatare currently tackled in those curricula. The book,however, is just as much about the extraordinary(for example, the Rushdie affair) as it is about theordinary (how families provide Islamic education totheir children, for instance).

One of the major strengths of this book, whichwill also help use by students, is the integration ofdifferent types of sources beyond the academicself-referential. Thus we have in the appendix a listof sources such as biographies and films that havebeen used by the author herself to prove thedynamics of Muslim life in Britain.

A special chapter dedicated to gender and youthmakes sense in the context of an academic worldthat is trying to compensate for skewedrepresentations by the media.

If lacunae were to be found in this book, thesewould certainly not be down to Gilliat-Ray, but to thefragmentary state of current scholarship in the UK,as the book well reflects whatever has beenproduced so far. So, if one wanted to know moreabout Muslim associations, for instance, they willhave to wait until a study is published in Britain thatgoes beyond the ‘usual suspects’ like MCB.

At less than £20, this is a book that can be easilyrecommended to students at both undergraduateand postgraduate levels as an auxiliary tool to makesense of the main debates on Muslims in Britain, andalso to help them contextualise historically theissues that are now being debated daily.

8 Ṣaḥābah were Prophet Muhammad companions. There were only a few of his ṣaḥābah that memorised the Qu’ran and embodiedit in relation to actions.

Dr Marta BolognaniGeneral Secretary of theMuslims in Britain ResearchNetwork, University of Bristol

Gilliat-Ray, S. Muslims in Britain: An IntroductionCardiff: Cardiff University, 2010. 336 pages. ISBN:9780521536882 (paperback, £19.99). ISBN:9780521830065 (hardback, £55.00).

Gilliat-Ray’s book may be considered the firsttextbook about Muslims in Britain. Although it isclearly following a Religious Studies framework, itnevertheless can be adopted as an introduction toother social sciences and Politics courses, as itengages with social issues that are currently coveredby many of these curricula.

The book is divided into a ‘historical’ and a‘contemporary’ section, has an appendix forresearchers that refers to non-academic sources forthe study of Muslims, and a glossary.

Gilliat-Ray is aware that her book has clearlymade the choice to privilege the religious identity ofthe population it studies, rather than any otheridentity layer. Given the author’s own awareness ofthis bias, necessary to produce a book that is anintroduction to the field, the reader is not deceived.The bibliography includes a number of relevant refer-ences in case someone wanted help in findingmaterial relevant to the issues discussed on ethnicdistinctions.

The glossary is not as helpful as it could havebeen as it does not contain, in my opinion, the termsthat are likely to confuse students coming to thisfield of study for the first time. For instance, nodefinition of ‘Deobandis’ or ‘Barelwis’ is provided, inspite of this distinction becoming more present injournal articles related to Muslims in Britain. One canargue that a quick web search could serve the samepurpose, but of course the material produced by theinternet may be spurious and will not have the samereliability and critical eye as what might have beenproduced by Gilliat-Ray. This is a shame because itwould have definitely enhanced the value of the

Review of Muslims in Britain: An Introduction

30 www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk29 Perspective

Research-led teaching about Islam andMuslims in BritainDate: 11 January 2012*Location: University of Leeds

Collaborative partnerships for Islamic Studies inhigher educationDate: March 2012*Location: London

Teaching Islamic Studies in WalesDate: 11 May 2012*Location: Aberystwyth, Wales

The Islamic Studies Network is sponsoringcross-disciplinary regional workshops for thoseworking in Islamic Studies and related disciplines athigher education institutions.

These events aim to bring together teachers of Is-lamic Studies from a wide range of disciplines (e.g.Theology and Religious Studies, History, Politics, Lit-erature, Sociology, Anthropology, Law, Business andFinance), and are open to both specialists and non-specialists who teach on modules related to Islam.The events will be an opportunity for practitioners tonetwork, gain a sense of the different ways in whichIslamic Studies is taught in a regional context, sharepractice, and discuss region-specific issues in theteaching of Islamic Studies.

Please register athttp://www.heacademy.ac.uk/islamicstudies.

For further information please visit our website orcontact us at: [email protected].

Events calendar

Islamic Studies Network regional workshops:

Islamic Studies PhD workshopDate: February 2012 (date tbd)Location: Aston Business School ConferenceCentre, Aston Triangle, Birmingham

This workshop will be an opportunity for PhDstudents to network, discuss their teaching andresearch activities, and address issues related to lifeas a postgraduate and beyond.Please register at:http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/islamicstudies.

(*) Please visit the ISN website to find out aboutconfirmed dates

31 Perspective

Lisa BernasekAcademic Co-ordinator, Islamic Studies Network

John CanningActing Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic StudiesNetwork

Erika CorradiniAcademic Co-ordinator, LLAS

Jane HumphreysCommunications Manager, Higher EducationAcademy

Karen O’RourkeCommunications Manager, Higher EducationAcademy

Editorial Board

Sara BathProject officer, Higher Education Academy

Lisa BernasekAcademic Co-ordinator, Islamic Studies Network

John CanningActing Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic StudiesNetwork

Joe ClarkHEA Associate, Business and Management

Erika CorradiniAcademic Co-ordinator, LLAS

Max FarrarHEA Associate, Social Sciences

Heather JacksonHead of Organisational Effectiveness

Shaheen MansoorHEA Associate, Law

Malcolm ToddHEA Associate, Social Sciences

32 www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk

Islamic Studies Network project team