Islamic Studies. Kojo Pavic

Perspectives
Teaching Islamic Studies in higher education Issue 4 July 2012
Perspectives is the magazine of the Higher Education Academys Islamic Studies Network.The Islamic Studies Network brings together those working in Islamic Studies from a wide range of disciplines to enhance teaching and learning in higher education by: hosting events and workshops; providing grants to develop teaching and learning; and encouraging the sharing of resources and good practice. For information on all our activities, visit www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk. Perspectives is a forum for those involved in teaching Islamic Studies in higher education to share practice and resources. As well as updates on Islamic Studies Network activity, Perspectives publishes articles on a wide range of topics related to Islamic Studies in higher education. If you would like to submit an article, highlight a set of teaching resources you have used or developed, or write a review of a book, lm or other media, please contact us at islamicstudies@heacademy.ac.uk. Perspectives is distributed free of charge to members of the Islamic Studies Network and is available online at www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk.To join the network, please visit our website.
Contents
3 4 6 News 7 Feature 12 Feature 14 Resources 15 Resources Contents Welcome: looking to the future News from the Islamic Studies Network and recent activity in the disciplines Innovative sources for assessing Middle Eastern and Islamic History Islamic Law in the Law School: the challenges of integration Resource facilitating students research on media representations of Muslims C R Pennell Edward Phillips Anna Piela John Canning
Guidelines for links with local Muslim communities Deirdre Burke Supporting collaborative higher education programmes in Islamic Studies How to build bridges between universities and Muslim colleges in Britain: collaborative partnerships and new curricula Mohammad Mesbahi Alison Scott-Baumann and Sariya Contractor Malcolm Todd, Max Farrar and Clare Young Andrew Brown Mark Van Hoorebeek
19 Feature 23 Feature
30 Resources Islamic Studies research blog 31 Resources End-of-life issues in Islam and Judaism 32 Resources 34 Report 36 Feature 41 Review Comparative Sharia Law: the development of teaching materials in the area of sharia-compliant financial instruments and intellectual property Social scientists analyse key issues in Islamic Studies: HEA Islamic Studies Network seminar Framing Muslims: an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the representation of Muslims Review of Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating a Global Islamic Business
Clare Young
Amina Yaqin and Peter Morey Omneya Abdelsalam and Sara Navid
Welcome: looking to the future
Dr John Canning In 2007 the then Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that 1 million would be made available to boost Islamic Studies in UK higher education. The eventual outcome of this funding allocation was the setting up of the Islamic Studies Network in 2009 for a period of three years. The Network has run events, funded projects, published Perspectives, set up Special Interest Groups and, most importantly in view of the Networks aims and objectives, brought together Islamic Studies scholars from a range of institutions, disciplinary backgrounds and area interests. As a non-specialist the Network has been a fascinating journey of learning about Islam from Muslim and non-Muslim scholars alike. It has been wonderful to see scholars challenging one another about their teaching and research activities. Although discussions have been heated at times, they have always been friendly. As the end of the Networks funding approaches, questions of sustainability and legacy come fully into view. Fifty-eight individuals and organisations responded to our online consultation earlier this year, which was a great encouragement. We consulted on five main options including an association for Islamic Studies, a council of subject associations and a virtual network led by the Higher Education Academy (HEA). We will keep members of the Network updated on the next steps as they develop. Whatever the future holds there are opportunities for Islamic Studies scholars.
The HEA continues to offer funding for workshops and projects that are open to those working in Islamic Studies, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) is currently consulting on the future of its strategically important and vulnerable subjects programme. Islamic Studies colleagues in Scotland have agreed to meet at least once a year. The 2011 higher education White Paper, Students at the heart of the system, foresees an increased role for private providers, which may offer opportunities for private Muslim institutions and their publicly funded partners. In this latest issue of Perspectives the theme of public-private partnerships is developed by Alison Scott-Baumann and Sariya Contractor, and Mohammad Mesbahi provides a case study of the relationship between Islamic College and the University of Middlesex. With an emphasis on assessment, C R Pennells article on teaching Middle Eastern history at the University of Melbourne offers helpful insights into the issues of teaching the subject to students from a variety of academic, religious, social and ethnic backgrounds. Edward Phillips focuses on the challenges that a constrained Law curriculum poses to the integration of Islamic Law among the study options. Amina Yaqin and Peter Morey tell us about Framing Muslims, a project about representations of Muslims in the UK, whose findings will appear in a forthcoming book. We have reports from the Networks funded projects, an overview of a workshop on Islam in the social sciences from Clare Young, and Malcolm Todd and Max Farrar report on their Islamic Studies research blog. I am pleased to report that Lisa Bernasek has now returned as the Academic Co-ordinator for the Network. I will be working with Lisa and our Islamic Studies colleagues to ensure a sustained and prosperous future for Islamic Studies in the UK. I would like to thank all who have supported me in my Acting capacity and I would particularly like to single out my colleague Erika Corradini for doing such a great job editing Perspectives in Lisas absence.
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News from the Islamic Studies Network and recent activity in the disciplines
Project reports and teaching resources from the Networks funded projects are now available on our website. These materials cover a wide range of disciplines and teaching interests, including History, Religious Studies, Law, Political Science and Literature. Please consult the projects or resources section of the website you are sure to find something of interest that can be adapted to your own needs. The Network has run a number of successful events in 2011-12. These included a workshop organised in conjunction with the Muslims in Britain Research Network on Research-Led Teaching on Islam and Muslims in Britain. This interdisciplinary event took place on 11 January 2012 at the University of Leeds and was attended by 30 people from across the country and different fields. A workshop on Islamic Studies in the social sciences took place on 9 December 2011 at Sheffield Hallam University please see a full report on this event later in this issue. Our second annual PhD workshop took place on 8-9 February 2012 at Aston Business School. This two-day workshop offered an opportunity for PhD students to showcase their research in Islamic Studies and to discuss issues related to career development. Speakers included Rob Gleave, Hugh Kennedy and Emerald Publishing. A workshop on Collaborative Partnerships for Islamic Studies in Higher Education was held at SOAS on 11 April 2012. This workshop brought together those involved in or interested in developing partnerships between public and private higher education institutions for a day of stimulating discussions. Reports and materials from these and further workshops, including an Islamic Law special interest group meeting and an expert seminar in the social sciences, are available on the Network website.
www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk
Innovative sources for assessing Middle Eastern and Islamic History

Dr C R Pennell University of Melbourne General considerations I have been teaching Middle Eastern History at the University of Melbourne in Australia since 1996. For most of that time my core subjects have been the Modern Middle East (which has become essentially a 20th-century history of the regions as more and more contact hours were whittled away through course restructuring) and a medieval subject covering the period from the Prophet through to the fall of Granada (c. early seventh century to late 15th century).These subjects have moved around at second- and third-year level, though since the latest restructure the medieval subject has been taught at second-year level and the modern subject at third year. For some years I have also been teaching a seminar on the history of jihad attended by students from the fourth-year undergraduate Honours stream and the first-year MA stream. I will not discuss this here. Two important constraints affect how I teach and assess these subjects: time and the nature of the student body. The time pattern is rigid these subjects are both taught over one semester of 12 weeks. Every week, students have a 90-minute lecture period together and an hours tutorial, in groups of about 20. For each subject they have to write the equivalent of 4,000 words for assessment, some of which must be submitted in the three to four weeks following the end of the semester. Generally there is more than one assessment task in each subject, and a common pattern for teaching History at Melbourne has been two pieces. One of them is often a longer piece of work towards the end of the semester, usually a researched essay. The other, often a shorter one, is submitted after the teaching period: traditionally, this has been a review essay, in which students are asked to summarise one or more themes in the topic they have studied, or a document exercise used for the same purpose. Until recently, virtually every lecturer also included an element of tutorial participation, in the assessment, but the University has strictly limited this to 10% of the total mark and has made discouraging noises about its continued use, on the grounds that it is not quantifiable and cannot be second-marked if challenged. Many lecturers (including me) agree with this principle, and a frequent alternative is a weekly tutorial journal submitted through the class website, in which students outline what they found particularly interesting or intriguing in that weeks tutorial. Although this is a common pattern in History, the Arts Faculty does allow a lot of latitude in how assessment is managed and we are free to experiment. I have always preferred to keep the biggest piece of assessment for the non-teaching period at the end, because it seems more sensible for students to write in depth when they have finished the teaching semester. I do use document exercises as the shorter piece of assessment, which I set at about two-thirds of the way through the semester. The big question is what the major piece of assessment should consist of. The nature of the student body helps to determine this. For all of its history, the University of Melbourne has been an upper-middle class university, drawing a large number of its students from private schools, especially in the arts. But recently this has begun to change, although rather gradually. In 2007 the University adopted a new scheme of study, developed out of an amalgamation of the Bologna model, the US American graduate school model and local requirements.This introduced much more crossdisciplinary and cross-faculty teaching. Students from non-arts faculties were obliged to study some arts subjects (and vice versa). Many of these students, and particularly those coming from the Commerce and Science faculties, have opted for History subjects.These faculties were already more heavily populated by international students (principally from China, South-East Asia and India) and by Australian students from non-Anglophone backgrounds (again Chinese, South-East Asian and Indian, but also Vietnamese, Somali and of various Arab nationalities, especially Iraqi, Lebanese and Egyptian). Among arts students, more students are coming from state schools in the less-well-off areas, beginning a gradual process of changing the overall
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demography of our own students: many of them are from similarly non-Anglophone backgrounds. This has affected how I teach and assess subjects dealing with the Middle East. Firstly, the traditional researched essay may have worked well for students from an arts background, although I am rather doubtful about its overall value, because it seems that we are repeating the same assessment semester after semester and year after year. It certainly drills students in the skill of writing researched essays, but that is not necessarily very useful as their sole skill and doesnt stretch them into new ways of considering ideas and evidence. It also bemuses students from science and commerce backgrounds. Secondly, the new scheme of study has increased numbers in my subjects. My Modern Middle East subject always has well over 100 students and marking that number of essays of say 2,500 words in a short time is a heavy burden. Another consideration in teaching the history of the Middle East in Melbourne is that Australia is much further away from the relevant region than Europe is. A student in Britain could be in most Middle Eastern countries after a four- to five-hour flight, but most likely a Melbourne student would still be in Australia after that time. In addition, our news coverage of the region is patchy to say the least, and the region doesnt have the immediacy that it does in Europe, except when a war breaks out. The result is that very few students have been to the region or have more than a fragmented knowledge of it. What they do know originates from a sense of intermittent crisis, largely seen through the lens of international relations. Those students who, while born in Australia, come from Middle Eastern family backgrounds may have visited their parents country of origin, but what they know is generally limited to that one country and to religious matters. Virtually none of them has much of an overall grasp at all. In short, there are no landmarks to fix on and no knowledge of the life or peoples of a region that is largely defined politically. That is not to say that students have no opinions about the region: this is an area where the inherent political sensitivities are obvious. Ideologically, students cross a range from fervent supporters of Israel (there is a large and politically active Jewish community in Melbourne) to equally convinced supporters of radical proPalestinian positions. The large Muslim community in the city and the University is ideologically varied in its outlook. It is against that background that I designed the assessment for both subjects. The Modern Middle East module A more general problem with teaching the
history of the modern Middle East is that it is easy to leave out the human element. Most of the textbooks we use Cleveland and Buntons (Cleveland and Bunton 2009) and Rogans (Rogan 2009) books, both of which are excellent are political histories. Like most (all?) general histories of the region they are concerned with elites and it is hard to see how they could do otherwise: the power of the state and its rulers so much define how the non-elite inhabitants live that ordinary people cannot be discussed until an understanding of the political structures is in place. What is often referred to as the Arab street is by that very term reduced to a generality or a statistic (literacy, income distribution and so on). It is the teachers job to get the people back in. I wanted students, as individuals, to try to understand what had happened to individuals, to sharpen up their consciousness of the realities of the history of the region. My answer was an assessment built around a simulation. The opportunity for the simulation was offered by the enormous flow of refugees that virtually every country in the Middle East has produced in the decades since the end of the Second World War: Kurds from Iraq; Palestinians from Israel and the Palestinian Authority; Islamists from Egypt, Libya and Syria; Shiites from Iraq; trade unionists from Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia; secularists and Islamists from Algeria; Marxists, royalists and secularists from Iran; homosexuals and feminist activists from many countries. Each one of those refugees has his or her own reason for running, but in each case the explanation illustrates the nature of their society and government. When they arrive in a country of refuge, they tell their stories, in the first place to the local authorities, who then decide whether they believe them and whether the situation is dire enough to give them refuge. Most countries initially reject large numbers of claimants who then appeal their cases, often over a period of years. This produces a huge quantity of historical information about the relationship between the individual and the state and the effects of Middle Eastern governments policies on their citizens (or perhaps better to say their subjects?). But it is not enough on its own: some refugees do not tell the truth and in many cases the nature of their problems need explaining to non-experts. This is where the simulation is situated. Students are asked to play the role of an expert witness in the British refugee appeal tribunal. When they arrive in Britain and apply for political asylum, refugees must give an account of the reasons for their flight. This becomes a formal written statement that is sent to the Home Office, where it is assessed and very often turned
down. The letter of refusal gives reasons for this, which can include issues of credibility but usually focus on the idea that the refugee is not currently in danger, or has left for reasons other than danger (for example, economic reasons). When the matter is referred to an appeal tribunal the refugees legal advisers generally seek a report from an academic expert witness to explain the circumstances surrounding the refugees flight. Students are asked to take on this role of expert witness. They must provide a reasoned submission to the tribunal explaining the circumstances. They are usually hired and paid by the lawyers who represent the refugee, but their job is to be a witness, not an advocate, to inform the tribunal, not to argue in favour of the refugee - that is the lawyers job. Indeed, some cases may not even seem deserving: Baathist supporters of Saddam Husseins regime may be unpleasant, but they may still be in danger in post-Saddam Iraq. An expert witness must be dispassionate, just as an expert on bloodstain analysis must be dispassionate in a criminal trial. To do the project (2,500 words), a student must choose an individual from a list of refugees. The student is provided with a reconstruction of the refugees account of the circumstances in which he or she fled (including details about family background, ethnicity, political ideology and a summary of events leading up to the flight) and a letter written from a fictitious Home Office explaining the grounds on which the application has been rejected. This letter is based on the letters of refusal that refugees are sent. The student is expected to deal with the points raised in the Home Office letter and to answer the points it makes, by referring both to the material in the refugees account and to the general historical context. I have used real people, greatly anonymised. Names (if they are apparent at all) have been changed and personal dates and events have been adjusted. But I have kept the relativities: someone born in 1975 and married in 1998 will be changed to someone born in 1977 and married in 2000 and social determinants changing professions but respecting social class (a lawyer may become a doctor, but not a carpenter; a port-worker may become a bus driver but not a lawyer and so on). Above all, I have kept the bases of identities, because that is the point: a homosexual remains a homosexual; a Kurdish communist remains a Kurdish communist; a woman remains a woman. The sources for the stories are the reports of the appeal tribunal itself, where the details are often given in the judgements (determinations, as they are called) along with the reasons for refusal. That
is one reason why I originally chose to use British cases: the reporting was often so detailed and there were a great many of them. Australian cases have typically been reported in less detail and they also carry with them a local political burden, about how refugees are dealt with here, that I wanted to avoid in this exercise. These considerations have changed in recent years: British reported determinations have become less and less detailed and more focused on questions of law rather than personal background. There is an alternative source, though: the reports of the refugee tribunal in New Zealand1, which are meticulous both in their analysis of individual cases and in painting in the background. A great many of these cases can be found, in a raw form, on the tribunals websites (though the British2 one is also increasingly difficult to use) and even more so from the case law database of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is part of an even larger database called Refworld3, which also provides background information on human rights in different countries. In summary, students need to do their own research in published sources (books and articles) and also in the mass of human-rights guidance provided by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the US State Department, the British Home Office, the Canadian government and so on. There are some clear objections to this project. I do think I have obscured identities sufficiently to protect individuals, in particular by further anonymising publicly available case law papers that are already anonymised in relation to name. Secondly, I have chosen the individual cases on the principle that the facts of their story have been accepted as being true by the tribunal. Students do not have the experience to judge otherwise and must proceed on the basis that the facts are as they are stated. Finally, in relation to subjects, a huge class of refugees are ignored: the hundreds of thousands who never make it to Europe, Australasia or the United States. These people never fall into the view of their tribunals and collections of case documents. That is inevitable, but some data are better than none at all and the cases we do have are at least a starting point. The Early Islam module The other subject, on the early Islamic period in the Middle East, poses similar problems for students in relating to something real, when the textbooks are distanced not only in space and culture but also in time. It is very difficult
1 2 3
https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/IPT/RefugeeProtection/ http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/courts-and-tribunals/tribunals/special-immigration-appeals-commission/decisions.htm http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refworld/rwmain
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for young Australians to have much intellectual contact with seventh- to 15th-century Arabs. Yet, some students have been to the region, and many more want to go (virtually all of those doing the subject, probably because they would not be doing it otherwise!) and for both groups some of the most striking evidence of the lives and thinking of early Muslims comes in the buildings and monuments that they have left: they are gripped by the extraordinary architectural heritage of early Islam. The project for these second-year students (2,500 words) uses buildings, monuments or places as hooks on which to hang an understanding of early Islam. In a way, this is analogous to the individuals featured in the Modern Middle East subject. Students are asked to write what is effectively an encyclopaedia entry about a particular building or group of buildings in which they describe its construction and development in historical terms. The central questions they must answer include: Why was this building built? Why was it built here? What historical circumstances led to its construction? What was its purpose? What does it tell us about the political and religious environment of its time? Most importantly, students must demonstrate what they are saying by using visual material, not simply as illustrations but as part of the narrative of their writing. They must use pictures, maps, plans or drawings, and their text must make it clear why they have included them. The text and the images must mutually support each other. This requires a big step of historical imagination, and exposes them to new techniques, which can be used in other contexts. Because it is a research project students have to consult various secondary sources. Primary sources are obviously difficult to access for people who do not speak Arabic or another Middle Eastern or North African language, but in a sense the images become the equivalent of primary sources and there are extensive collections of architectural images on the web. A very important one is Archnet4, which is partly funded by the Aga Khan Foundation with a huge digital collection based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but there are many others. Students are expected to reference the sources of their images in the same way and to the same depth as they would a piece of information or a quotation. But they are told very clearly that the quality of their project will be judged not on finding rare or recherch or spectacular images or written sources, but
on the quality of those images as evidence for understanding the building. I provide a list of buildings, for three reasons. Firstly, it allows me to vary the buildings each year for example, some years the Dome of the Rock is in; in others it is replaced by the Umayyad mosque. Secondly, it allows me to make sure that there is a wide geographical spread and variety of buildings the walls of Marrakesh, the al-Qarawiyyin mosque, the al-Azhar mosque, the Damascus Maristan, Shaizar castle (we often examine the reminiscences of Usma ibn Munqidh in tutorials) and so on. Thirdly, I include in the list only buildings with a substantial literature in English (most Australian students do not have any foreign language) it is extraordinary the extent to which academic writing on these buildings is defined by the language of a former colonial power! Though there are, of course, some exceptions. There are some obvious limitations to this project, too. Firstly, only certain monumental buildings have survived: the dwellings of the poor are harder to identify. Secondly, all the buildings have been much rebuilt, and students are expected to show that they understand that the form and purpose of the building may change over time. Conclusion I have given only a general account of the projects in each year and I should stress that classroom discussion extends the question of how to do them often in unexpected directions. With the assistance of our history library specialist, we run a special tutorial in each semester to show students how to find specialised sources. The librarians who have taken part find it very rewarding as it uses their expertise and develops it in directions that they have not gone before. This is all the more important for the students, of course: the aim is to introduce them to a wide variety of types of sources for writing history, beyond the normal books and journal articles. Finally, these projects provide an answer to a question over which university teachers agonise: they are extremely hard to plagiarise! References Cleveland, W.L. and Bunton, M. (2009) A History of the Modern Middle East. 4th ed. Boulder: Westview Press. Rogan, E. (2009) The Arabs: A History. London: Allen Lane.
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http://archnet.org/library/images/
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Islamic Law in the Law School: the challenges of integration

it is best taught as a pervasive, integrated component of the entire Law School curriculum. To do the former would be to misunderstand the essential nature of the subject: an understanding of the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 and the Human Rights Act 1998 is as much an essential ingredient of Criminal Law and Land Law as it is of Public Law. This is not, by any means, to rule out a specialised Human Rights module. It does, however, achieve three objectives. First, it means that the entire student cohort (not just a self-selecting minority) is introduced to the fundamentals of the subject. Second, it has the added benefit that a specialised course offered as an elective can draw on the fact that the students opting in are doing so fully aware of the configurations of the course. Equally important, the teacher can proceed on the assumption that some of the fundamentals, at least, of the course have already been assimilated. Integration The primary pedagogic challenge that Islamic Law presents to the Law School, therefore, is whether there is sufficient academic and vocational/ professional justification for integration, or whether it should be offered, and always remain, as a stand-alone elective. The discussion should move on from whether Islamic Law and its more specialised divisions (such as Islamic Family Law and Islamic Banking) should be offered up to the vagaries of student choice and, instead, centre on the deeper issue of whether the essentials of Islamic Law, like human rights, should be integrated across the entire Law curriculum. To emphasise the point: is it still possible to teach Family Law in 21st-century Britain and ignore Islamic Law completely? Can students opting for Banking Law remain justifiably ignorant of the financial might of the Islamic finance markets? The revision of the Law curriculum at the University of Greenwich in 2004 provided the opportunity to experiment with integrating Islamic Law within a compulsory course, that of Legal Method. It was decided that a course on Legal
Dr Edward Phillips University of Greenwich Introduction The traditional three-year Law School curriculum is depressingly constrained.The core subjects prescribed by the legal professional bodies must be taught and examined if students are to obtain what is quaintly referred to as a qualifying legal degree. While there is a certain measure of academic space for specialised courses, usually as an elective in the final year, it is increasingly the case that student choice has been restricted by the need to complete the compulsory core.This, in turn, means that students have to make invidious choices, given that in the majority of Law Schools in England and Wales the credit system means that the number of electives that can be studied are restricted to three or, at the most, four. For instance, opting for modules such as Family Law, Medical Law, Company Law and Employment Law means that the student is unable to choose Human Rights Law, Financial Services or Insurance Law. And this usually means that courses on Islamic Law can only ever be regarded as not just specialised but minorityinterest electives.There are, of course, honourable exceptions, especially with the tiny minority of Law Schools offering four-year Law degrees, but that is what they are: exceptions. An analogy may be drawn with the teaching of human rights. The pedagogic decision that has to be made is whether human rights should be taught only as a stand-alone elective or whether
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Method could not be complete without, at least, an introduction to Islamic Law. Consequently, after the more or less stereotypical topics dealt with by any course under the Legal Method/English Legal System rubric, the course takes the following configuration: A set of lectures and seminars on law, ethics and morality, where issues, inter alia, of the intersection of law and religion are explored. This is followed by a brief overview of religious legal systems, including Ecclesiastical Law and Jewish Law. The focus then shifts to an introduction to the sources of Islamic Law and the main schools of Islamic Law and teaching. This set of lectures then concludes with an overview of a number of topics. Depending on the time available, this usually includes marriage and divorce, inheritance and the fundamentals of waqf (religious endowments). Just as with other matters pertaining to the English legal system, all first-year Law students thus proceed with a basic understanding of the essential features of Islamic Law. Crucially, Islamic Law has not been introduced as a remote, standalone system of law but as something that is part of an integral whole. Leaving aside the question of whether these students may then later choose to undertake a specialised elective on Islamic Law, they will at the very least have an acquaintance with a number of fundamentals of the subject. Challenges The immediate challenge is one of resistance from both sides of the academic divide: students and faculty. Specialised options on Islamic Law may be ignored, if not marginalised, by the mainstream. On the other hand, integration demands, at the very least, a tacit collegiate acceptance by Law faculty as well. The experience at Greenwich indicates that collegiate acceptance is not an issue, while course monitoring and evaluation procedures have not revealed any resistance from the student body to integration in the Legal Method curriculum. On the contrary, it has engendered a desire for a specialised elective to be made available. While this demand cannot be met for the moment, a compromise has been reached by allowing a limited number of final-year students the opportunity to do an optional finalyear dissertation on aspects of Islamic Law. The more difficult challenge arises from the fact that even this limited method of integration is dependent on the subject-specialist knowledge of a very limited number of staff. Most members of
the faculty would not consider that they possess the fundamentals necessary for full integration. The compromise adopted at Greenwich is for specialist teaching on Islamic Law, as described above, to be centred on lectures delivered by staff with the necessary specialist knowledge, while seminars, delivered by other staff, focus on the wider issues of law, ethics and morality. The limitations of this method of integration are obvious. The chief of these is the very real problem of time constraints, while the pedagogic objection might well be that it deals with surface learning rather than deep learning and understanding. In addition, there is the added perspective of ensuring academic rigour. There are no complete answers to these objections, suffice to say that in the 2011-12 academic session, the scheme at Greenwich will be subject to peer review, while more detailed and specific evaluation will be sought from students. At the same time, there is an ongoing discussion to take integration forward into a number of other mainstream courses. The two possibilities are Family Law (where issues of Islamic Family Law may be integrated into the syllabus) and Equity and Trusts (where the principles of waqf may be studied as an essential part of the principles relating to charitable trusts). It is hoped that the development of these initiatives will be reported on at a later stage.
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Resource facilitating students research on media representations of Muslims

As a result, I have developed a bite-sized undergraduate research resource specifically aimed at Islamic and/or Media Studies students, where all stages of the research process are succinctly discussed, with a focus on the practical side of research illustrated with examples from a research project that I conducted especially for this purpose. Drawing on my previous research on Muslim womens discussions in online discussion groups, for the research project whose function it is to illustrate the advice in the resource, I selected the topic of media representations of Muslim women during the socalled burka ban controversy, where all European media argued vociferously whether Muslim women had the right to cover their faces. The resource briefly covers different types of research, including writing the literature review, with a special focus on how to critically analyse academic texts, and a range of research methods from content analysis through qualitative focus groups and interviews to analysis of onlinebased discourses. Furthermore, it discusses different types of analysis that can be applied to the generated data. As one of the objectives is to provide a bite-sized resource that can be searched and accessed quickly, its two features are particularly important: it contains signposts to relevant chapters in academic textbooks and seminal journal papers as well as a student research reading list; and, in order to facilitate the use of the resource on the go by students who often have time constraints on their study, the resource is available to download in an electronic format suitable for use on e-book and mobile phone readers. To sum up, this resource is expected to provide support to Islamic and Media Studies students who engage in smallscale research, and it does not claim to be a comprehensive research guide; instead, it is easy to access and provides succinct research advice accompanied by signposts to more extensive research textbooks. The resource is available at: http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk
Dr Anna Piela University of Strathclyde The rationale behind this resource emerged from my experience teaching Islamic Studies and Media Studies to different cohorts of students including second- and third-year undergraduates as well as postgraduates.Their coursework indicated that the students had difficulties not only with critical analysis of literature, but with data analysis as well. As I repeatedly commented on lack of critical thinking in the essay feedback, I suspected that the students in spite of university-provided support they had received on essay writing did not really understand the process of critical analysis, nor its importance in academic work. All available research methods textbooks had a strong emphasis on qualitative and quantitative methods of data generation, but offered much less advice on how to interpret data. In addition, most textbooks were large volumes, which put off students looking for specific information on critical analysis. My conversations with students confirmed my idea that a small-scale resource specific to their field of study would help them in their academic work.
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Guidelines for links with local Muslim communities
talks for different school key stages, they may be unsure what to do for university students. Thus, it is necessary to have a discussion with the Faith Informant who will talk to students, to work out what the aim of the visit is and decide how this aim can be met. 2. Content for talk This concerns the content to be covered in the talk and the depth required. Places of worship have experts within the tradition, who possess the knowledge we seek to access on visits, in such cases it is just necessary to clarify the level required. However, in some cases the individuals who possess the depth of knowledge required may not have English as their first language, and thus struggle to find the words to convey their knowledge to students. Thus, it is essential to provide some details about the study students have undertaken on Islam prior to the visit, and to discuss the input desired during the visit. Field visits within disciplines: Law (Ian Fox-Williams) In this section of the project Ian Fox-Williams explored aspects of Law that may be enhanced by engaging with local mosques and the Muslim community in the introductory study of Islamic legal theory and the sharia. He noted that the ability to engage with the local Muslim communities could lead to greater awareness of the increasing relevance of Islamic studies in contemporary society. He anticipated a range of benefits for Law students through engagement with local Muslim communities. In relation to Islamic Law the local imam would be able to provide examples of interpretation, and show the type of counsel given to members of the Muslim community.This would allow for a linking of the theory and practice of sharia.To be able to engage, and operate collaboratively, with the local Muslim communities it is vital that issues of cultural difference and sensitivity are borne in mind.
Dr Deirdre Burke University of Wolverhampton The aim of this project was to produce guidelines to help staff from a variety of disciplines to prepare for and undertake student field visits to local mosques and Muslim community centres. Many subjects touch on aspects of Islam and students would benefit from first-hand contact in order to ask questions, clear up misconceptions and gain an up-to-date perspective on topics under study. However, for tutors who are not experts in Islam or for those who have never arranged a visit to a masjid, the guidelines provide background information and guidance to help set up and conduct a visit for students. This report provides a summary from several sections of the guidelines so if this is all you read you will gain some guidance to set up a visit and prepare students for it. However, the aim is that this short summary will entice you to consult the full guidelines, which can be accessed via the Islamic Studies Network webpages1 or the Islamic Studies Network collection in HumBox2. Ways to get more out of visits 1. Negotiate to have a shared understanding about the aim and purpose of the visit University student visits to places of worship occur less frequently than school visits. Thus, while many places of worship have developed
1 2
http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/ http://humbox.ac.uk/3171/
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Perspectives
Making contact with Mosques The Muslims in Britain website provides details about mosques in relation to the theme and the management of mosques, which may be useful in deciding which mosque to approach3. The website allows you to search by city to see local mosques, with details including pictures. There are a number of different terms to refer to religious officials within the Muslim community. You are likely to ask to speak to or to address communication to the secretary or the imam of the mosque. Imam is the term most widely used in Religious Education circles, so is likely to be the term students learnt at school. Preparing students for a visit In order to get the most out of the visit students should be encouraged to think about the questions they want to ask in relation to the focus of their studies.They may need some guidance on the focus and phrasing of questions, or you may find that during the visit time is spent asking very general questions about Islam rather than focusing on learning outcomes central to the visit.The purpose of the visit is to learn about Islam and Muslims, so generally advise students to avoid questions that seek to compare Islam to other religious traditions. Guidance on the preparation for and etiquette during a visit to a mosque should remind students of the need to behave appropriately within the precincts of the mosque. This would cover loud behaviour, smoking and dropping litter. Removal of shoes occurs on entry to the mosque, and there will be shoe racks inside the entrance. (It might be a good idea to check that all students have turned off their mobile phones at this stage.) Guidance on clothing and modesty should advise students to cover their heads and to wear long, loose-fitting garments that are not transparent. Females should cover their arms, legs, chest and neck. Decoration within mosques avoids pictures or images of living creatures, so visitors should also follow this in their dress. In addition it is advised that clothes with large slogans on them are not appropriate in a place of worship. Visitors are asked to respect cultural understanding of male/female interaction within Islam. Your group may be invited to observe communal prayer and directed to sit at the side or back of the prayer hall. Separation of your group into male and female may be appropriate for such activities. In addition to quiet observation, visitors should not sit with their feet pointing towards the mihrab at the front of the prayer hall.
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(Students or staff who need to sit on a chair can be catered for.) The full guidelines provide hyperlinks to a range of electronic resources that can be used to prepare students for a visit or to follow up a visit. These include an audio glossary, short clips from Religious Education websites, and interactive materials designed for undergraduate students such as Prideauxs An Introduction to Islam: quizzes and activities (2010). References Chryssides, G.D. and Geaves, R. (2007) The Study of Religion. London: Continuum. Gilliat-Ray, S. (2010) Muslims in Britain: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hussain, A. and El-Alami, K. (2005) Faith Guides for Higher Education: A Guide to Islam. Leeds: The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. Available from: http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/ publications/Islam.pdf [16 April 2012]. Muslims in Britain (2011) UK Mosque/ Masjid Directory [online]. London: Muslims in Britain. Available from: http://mosques.muslimsinbritain. org/maps.php [30 January 2012]. Prideaux, M. (2012) An Introduction to Islam: quizzes and activities [online]. Leeds: University of Leeds. Available from: http://arts.leeds.ac.uk/ introductiontoislam/ [30 January 2012]. Resources to support visits The Coexist Foundation: http://www. coexistfoundation.net/en-gb/home/1/home.htm HumBox collection Muslims in Britain: http:// humbox.ac.uk/3177/ [This contains a range of materials to support teaching.] The Islamic Studies Network: http://www. islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/[This website provides a range of resources to support teaching and learning about Islam and Muslims.] REfuel Islam: http://www.refuel.org.uk/reaudio/ [This provides an online audio guide to pronunciation of religious terms.] REonline Muslim Places of Worship: http://www. reonline.org.uk/ks2/topiclist.php?6-82 Truetube Holy Cribs: The Mosque: http://www. truetube.co.uk/ethics-and-religion/religioustraditions/holy-cribs-the-mosque
http://mosques.muslimsinbritain.org/
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Supporting collaborative higher education programmes in Islamic Studies

collaborative initiatives between the providers of Muslim faith leadership training and mainstream further education and higher education institutions, stated that the government has a key role to play in supporting the developments and improvements which providers of Muslim faith leadership training seek and in facilitating closer partnerships and relationships between Muslim institutions and publicly-funded institutions (Mukadam et al. 2010, 13). Dr Mohammad Mesbahi The Islamic College Introduction Europe is now home to about 38 million Muslims, or about 5% of its population (PEW Forum 2009). In our multicultural world this minority has preserved its culture and way of life, with patterns of dress, manners, food, family relationships, social care, community relations, professional practice and other developments. On the same basis, Dr Siddiquis report (Siddiqui 2007) on Islam in universities in England to the Minister of Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education indicated that teaching and research programmes need to be re-oriented and stated that Britain could give the lead to Europe in such a re-orientation (Siddiqui 2007, 6). As Siddiqui writes: of special interest to policy makers and community leaders, are (a) how far Islam can be integrated within the secular/ humanist ethos; and (b) how future leadership of Muslims can be formalised at higher educational levels so as then to provide a controlled position for Islam (Siddiqui 2007, 8). Dr Siddiqui also states that there is a need for the community and the universities to find ways to cooperate and collaborate in order to widen the influence of higher education among Muslims (Siddiqui 2007, 35). The Mukadam . report (2010) to the Department for Communities and Local Government, exploring the possibilities of This article aims to highlight such collaborative work between an Islamic institution and a publicly funded university. Our experience The Islamic College was established in 1998 to promote a sound, objective understanding of Islam and aims to offer an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to Islamic Studies for those interested in acquiring a critical, constructive and comprehensive understanding of issues and topics related to Islam with an additional insiders perspective. To accomplish and realise these aims, the Islamic College has collaborated with a partner also committed to such a high quality learning experience, namely Middlesex University. On its website the University clearly states: The University is committed to ensuring that students studying for University qualifications with its partner institutions, both in the UK and overseas, enjoy an equivalent student experience, and achieve appropriate standards (Middlesex University 2011). Given Middlesex Universitys reputation worldwide as well as the Islamic Colleges expertise and good practice in the field, there has been an excellent opportunity for recruiting students for the range of programmes and qualifications delivered at the Islamic College and leading to Middlesex University qualifications1. The success of the Islamic College is based on this important partnership and the positive approach to collaborative work with Middlesex University and also its dialogue with other faiths and cultures
Validated and currently on offer to students: Certificate in HE, Diploma in HE and BA (Hons) in Islamic Studies; Certificate in HE, Diploma in HE and BA (Hons) in Muslim Cultures and Civilisation; PG Diploma and MA in Islamic Studies; PG Diploma and MA in Islamic Law; PG Diploma and MA in Comparative Philosophy: Islamic and Western; MProf and DProf in Muslim Cultures and Civilisation. Subject to validation and offered from September 2012: foundation year in Quranic Arabic; Certificate in HE, Diploma in HE and BA (Hons) in Hawza Studies (Islamic Ministry). Subject to Academic Programme Planning Group approval offered from September 2012: PG Diploma and MA in Islamic Finance. 19
Perspectives
including a number of religious institutions partnering Middlesex University. We believe that through such collaborative work and the exchange of ideas and good practice in teaching and learning, students have a unique opportunity within the British higher education system to learn, develop and further understand about the challenges faced by the Muslim community in the west and have the possibility of attaining additional knowledge and skills leading to higher education qualifications and better employment prospects. The prerequisite to collaborations It goes without saying that all publicly funded universities in the UK would be accountable for the quality and standards of all awards that they offer or have made including those under collaborative arrangements carrying their name. A process of institutional approval would be the absolute prerequisite to any collaborative work, essentially to see if the nature of the two institutions are compatible with each other. Through this process, all external institutions including those proclaiming to be Islamic, would be judged by the University to establish whether they are suitable organisations within their criteria with which to form a collaborative relationship. This would lead to the establishing, approval and maintenance of the academic quality and standards to be delivered by the external institution meeting the requirements, and are comparable to those delivered directly by the publicly funded University. Subject to institutional approval being recommended, the University collaborative panel will also be responsible for the subsequent approval of the related academic provision and approval of the collaborative delivery arrangements of the proposed Islamic Studies programme of study within the specific nature and scope of the collaboration. Institutional approval may be completed prior to the actual programme approval and the approval of the collaborative provision and the delivery arrangements or may take place concurrently, if the University feels confident for that to happen. Obviously since this leads to a legally binding agreement, signed by both parties, stating the roles and the various responsibilities of each partner, the process is time-consuming and should not be hastened by either institution. In addition, since Islam and Education would always invoke ideas of other social, political and intellectual aspects (Panjwani 2004), it is important to remember that one size does not fit all.
The following documents would be necessary for the discussions to move forward: the mission statement (or equivalent), the strategic plan, the prospectus, most recent statement of audited accounts or annual report and/or bankers references, information on funding of students, a written statement covering the legal status of the institution, a diagrammatic representation of the institutions organisational and internal structure, and a written statement covering the governance and management structure of the institution including the membership and terms of reference of its governing body and most important internal committees. These would accompany a description of the quality assurance arrangements currently in place for internal programme approval, curriculum development, teaching and learning methods, feedback to students on assessed work, tracking student progression and achievement, programme monitoring, collection and evaluation of student feedback, recruitment of students, student academic support and guidance and student pastoral support, as well as information on management and administration of the assessment process and academic regulations. Further material needed would be information about recruitment and monitoring of performance for teaching staff, staff development policy, description of the physical, learning and human resources relevant to the proposed link, the student charter (or equivalent) of the institution, the equal opportunities policy, and insurance arrangements, if any, that the institution has in force in respect of its responsibilities and liabilities towards students. Finally, reports relating to academic quality and standards from funding bodies or external quality assurance bodies should be presented to support the process. Concluding thoughts The programmes offered at the Islamic College and its collaboration with Middlesex University have been successful essentially because they are well-constructed and viable, which will play an important strategic role in promoting mutual respect and understanding in a multi-faith society. This has enabled us to negotiate the boundaries of an inclusive, secularist and humanist society with proposals from our Islamic community concerned to bring about what Professor Tariq Modood (2011) has termed as creating a new, ongoing We. Our programmes are ambitious in that they seek to help form an organic intellectual cadre of Islamic convictions to act in the educational and other key social and political spheres. It is believed that a key element in
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collaborative work involves the cultural exchanges taking place in the boundaries of Europes Muslim minorities and the societies and polities they are embedded within. These relations have become increasingly fractious due to assimilationist and ethno-centric nationalist discourses. Mukadam et al. have stated in their report that sharing of experience is of critical importance not only within and between Muslim communities in Britain but also with Muslim communities in other countries (Mukadam et al. 2010, 65). I would conclude that by challenging and attempting to overcome such obstacles, and with the support of the all important collaborative work, new channels of communication will open, hopefully leading to a new outlook in Islamic Studies altogether. References Middlesex University (2011) Learning and Quality Enhancement Handbook: Section 1 - An overview of quality and enhancement activity at Middlesex University. Available from: http://www. mdx.ac.uk/aboutus/Strategy/quality-standards/ handbook/section1.aspx [16 April 2012]. Modood, T. (2011) Multiculturalism: not a minority problem. The Guardian. 7 February. Available from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/ commentisfree/2011/feb/07/multiculturalism-notminority-problem?INTCMP=SRCH [16 April 2012]. Mukadam, M., Scott-Baumann, A., Contractor, S. and Chowdhury, A. (2010) The training and development of Muslim Faith Leaders: Current practice and future possibilities. London: Department for Communities and Local Government. Available from: http://www. communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/ pdf/1734121.pdf [2 February 2012]. Panjwani, F. (2004) The Islamic in Islamic Education: Assessing the Discourse. Current Issues in Comparative Education. 7 (1), 19-29. Available from: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/ Issues/07.01/71panjawani.pdf [2 February 2012]. PEW Forum (2009) Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the Worlds Muslim Population. Available from: http://pewforum.org/ docs/?DocID=450 [2 February 2012]. Siddiqui, A. (2007) Islam at Universities in England. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/ AboutUs/sis/islamic/ [16 April 2012].
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How to build bridges between universities and Muslim colleges in Britain: collaborative partnerships and new curricula
societies like Britain, and such debate often polarises the secular and the Islamic as mutually exclusive and antithetical to each other, as in Huntingtons theory of the clash of civilisations. In fact, many combinatory ways of functioning as British Muslims are being developed by new generations of professional, academic Muslims. Assumption of compatibility is more appropriate than incompatibility: changes in the Arab world will create emerging markets, increase competitiveness among western powers for these new markets and require trade activity generated with Britain that is underpinned by understandings of Islam. Over the last five years we have worked on three approaches to improving practical understanding in British higher education between Islamic and secular cultures: first, looking at partnerships between Muslim colleges and mainstream universities (Mukadam et al. 2010); secondly, working with Muslim women to develop modules that can be taught within mainstream courses (Scott-Baumann and Contractor 2011) and thirdly, investigating the health of Arabic teaching in Britain (ScottBaumann and Contractor 2012). We will comment briefly on each in turn, in order to propose a way forward.
Dr Alison Scott-Baumann University of Lancaster
Dr Sariya Contractor University of Derby Introduction
There are around 45 Muslim institutions in Britain that provide higher education, Within Britain there are demands for better, including those that provide intensive training more inclusive understandings of Islam and the programmes in core theological learning. Yet west. Internationally there are major changes our Government-funded research indicates afoot in the Arab world and it is likely that these that there are currently only four fully validated changes will have a significant impact on British academic collaborations that exist between Muslims, who hold loyalties to the umma (the British universities and Muslim institutions, and worldwide Muslim community) as well as their our evidence suggests that such relationships allegiances to Britain. It is difficult to predict have specific capacity to improve employment what form this impact will take, but all the more mobility and social integration of British Muslims1. necessary to ensure that proper channels for Such collaborative partnerships, where they exist, intercommunity and interfaith dialogue and do improve the range of pedagogies and courses debate are open: there is already considerable offered while moving towards a more vibrant, debate about secularism and Islam within pluralist fair and economically viable Britain.
These partnerships are: (1) University of Aberdeen and Al-Maktoum College of Higher Education; (2) University of Gloucestershire and Markeld Institute of Higher Education; (3) Middlesex University and Islamic College; (4) University of Winchester and the Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri Community.
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Perspectives
Our work on the teaching and learning of Islamic studies in the UK builds on the Siddiqui report (Siddiqui 2007). At the higher education level there are two main players in this sector. There are UK universities that offer graduate and postgraduate courses in various aspects of Islamic Studies or the study of Muslim communities. There are also Muslim institutions seminaries and colleges that take a more confessional approach and that offer non-validated courses in Islamic Sciences, most of which are not recognised in UK academia. Although these courses are rigorous and require high levels of student effort, they are not quality controlled and they lag behind in pedagogy. Our previous work involved interfaith testimonials and indicates that both these groups of individuals - UK universities and Muslim institutions - will benefit from collaborative work and links which can potentially lead to cross-fertilisations of pedagogy and intellectual context. This in turn will facilitate more inclusive courses that bridge confessional and academic approaches and that may help to address the perceived divisions between faith and secularism. In the long run such courses can educate and support professionals, academics and practitioners who are more aware of the sensitivities of developing and sustaining integration and social cohesion in pluralist Britain. Such work indicates that there is scope to create bridges (Scott-Baumann and Contractor 2011) and permeable membranes (Contractor 2012) between Muslim communities and their pluralist societies living in the west, particularly in Britain. Nevertheless differences within and between communities remain and such differences need to be understood, faced and discussed, even if full understanding may remain impossible: the French Protestant philosopher Paul Ricoeur argued, indeed, that each of us may experience major difficulties in meeting our ethical goals in our daily lives; there can be conflict even within one person. He expressed this as a form of schizophrenia, in which it may often be impossible to reconcile completely ones belief system and ones position within a secular world (Ricoeur 1998, 2 and 6; Scott-Baumann 2009). However, Ricoeur believed that it is imperative to keep such debate going, and we believe that such high aspirations can be achieved by direct impact on mainstream curricula. Previous research The authority and legitimacy of education is a major issue, and religious or secular groups may take different paths: the religious authority of Islam is vested in the Quran and the Sunna as
interpreted by different schools of thought and much emphasis is placed on moral as well as intellectual development through religion. The legitimacy of western education is vested in the validation mechanisms of state examination bodies and the university sector, and secures jobs and salaries. In our research we see an increasing interest among young British Muslims in attaining both intellectual and moral forms of education and in an education that is recognised and accredited and leads to qualifications that may enable them to play an active part in British society. The pleading below comes from a young scholar trained in a dr al-culm, a Muslim seminary in Britain. I meet blank walls every time, I cannot get any training, I am rejected every time, because I have done my theological training and it is not recognised. We are being exploited really, because we have done years of high level training and nobody takes any notice of it; no-one values it. As a British citizen she wants to be devout and also wants to be able to use higher qualifications to secure a job and a salary. As with many young Muslims her attitude reflects a new Britishness. Yet it also reflects the views held by many young adult Muslims, who would like to become part of the British higher education scene. Even if they are not trained as religious scholars, they feel uncomfortable with the secular nature of the modern university. This young scholar told us that for her and for many young Muslims like herself the ideal situation would be to attend Islamic theology courses that retain the ethos, religious morality and intellectual values of Muslim seminaries, but that also embrace the quality assurance, pedagogy and criticality of a university course. This request can be perceived as impossible to put into practice, and also invites us to reflect upon a complex situation: it may be argued that the British university scene would lose its objectivity if it changed for a small minority; it can also be argued that applying criticality to ones faith could weaken a religious persons faith significantly. However, we would go even further and propose that these risks are not only worth taking, but can be of great benefit to modern British society, as there are many secular individuals who are also uncomfortable with certain trends associated with secularism. Moreover, there is a perceived academic and public need to discuss and debate these issues, as demonstrated for example by the publication of books such as Alain de Bottons recent text
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Religion for Atheists (2012) and the major, fiveyear, AHRC/ESRC-funded research programme Religion & Society2, which aims to facilitate research and knowledge exchange about the significance of religion in modern society. There is also good evidence to demonstrate the value of bringing together Islamic Studies academics, scholars and practitioners (including professionals who may have aspects of Islamic Studies in their work) to discuss good practice and practical implications of such collaborative linkages. Such work would follow on from three relevant and interrelated research projects undertaken by this team:
re-orienting Islamic Studies programmes at first degree and postgraduate level to make them more relevant for women and men who wish to undertake faith leadership responsibilities as teachers, chaplains, scholars; setting up a senior fellowship or scholarship programme enabling imams and Muslim scholars to undertake MBA and other Masters-level courses in areas such as community development, interfaith relations and social policy.
(2) Women: The Higher Education Academy (HEA) funded a project on Muslim women in British higher education (Scott-Baumann and (1) Collaborative partnerships: The Department Contractor 2011). This research built on the of Communities and Local Government (CLG) CLG work and specifically explored womens funded a review of Muslim faith leader training in issues. It suggested four bridging modules that the UK. The research set out to explore various potentially can enable collaborative linkages and models for the training of Islamic scholars in the also give Muslim women employability skills. UK, and ways and means through which existing Often, women in Muslim communities do not facilities may be acknowledged, contextualised have access to mosques and even when access and enhanced as part of pluralist British society. is present, this does not automatically give them The report was submitted to the Secretary of access to faith leaders who have the necessary State for Communities and Local Government pastoral skills to address womens subjects or in October 2010 and is available online resolve their problems. While the attitude and (Mukadam et al. 2010). In a research area that is work of many mosques towards its women is marred by political tensions and suspicions, our broadly supportive, it is clear that patriarchal methodology considered relationships of trust attitudes and cultural understandings of womens as central to the research process. We knew position within Islam continue to persist in that there were areas for improvement within certain British Muslim communities. Within social the Muslim institutions we were researching, but structures the availability of gender-specific also recognised their contributions to British facilities, including schools, medical facilities, etc, society. This resulted in unprecedented access is crucial to the development of women, and and our team cumulatively visited over 35 Muslim education and medicine are two professions that seminaries that were representative of the Muslim women are being encouraged to qualify denominational demographics of British Muslim for (Scott-Baumann 2003). However, this makes communities Deobandi, Barelwi and Shia. Based the need for women scholars even more urgent, on our empirical work and also consultations as women may prefer to consult other women with scholars, academics, practitioners and policy rather than men. makers our research project made a number of recommendations for various stakeholders While there is provision for theological training including the higher education sector, which we for Muslim women, there are concerns that present below: such women (climahs) tend to be invisible in mainstream society and may not be encouraged Institutions of higher education should consider, to be active as community leaders in their in consultation with local, regional and national own groups or in wider society. It is important Muslim organisations: to acknowledge that these women can fulfil pastoral, counselling, teaching, chaplaincy and developing bridging curricula that necessitate leadership roles, specifically by and for women and facilitate comparisons between western, and which will have wider ramifications within pluralist curricula and Islamic higher education; the Muslim community and beyond. developing a three-year Honours degree in Islamic Studies and Sciences, which would Research with young Muslim women in build on, though not be narrowly dependent Britain indicates that they question cultural on, the traditional Shia and Sunni syllabi; practices when such practices can interfere developing a two-year foundation degree, with their life choices. Often their knowledge perhaps employment-based, in Applied of and adherence to Islamic principles are Theology; their strongest allies in contesting patriarchal
http://www.religionandsociety.org.uk/
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Perspectives
representations of Islam. Muslim womens religiosity, which is a source of strength for many women, can also become a cause for suspicion especially when caught in the secular versus religious debate (Scott-Baumann 2011). Muslim women from many different educational, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds want greater access to Islamic knowledge, so that they may be able to voice their opinions in an educational framework that supports their faith (Contractor 2011; 2012). They also seek access to knowledge and skills that are available in mainstream universities. With this in mind, we worked with a group of Muslim women academics and activists and created draft modules for a comparative approach that looks directly at areas considered difficult in regard to Muslim-British relations: law, gender, pastoral care and interfaith dialogue. For example, students who study Gender Studies could be asked to compare and contrast Islamic principles on gender emancipation with feminist epistemologies; or students who study inter-community dialogue could look at two or more faith communities theological and cultural perceptions of the other. (3)Arabic: The HEA-funded project on Arabic in higher education and Muslim institutions has recently been completed and demonstrates clearly that the study of Arabic language in higher education can be developed further through combining expertise from mainstream and Muslim institutions of higher education. Moreover there is knowledge in students prior learning of Arabic at Muslim institutions and elsewhere (Scott-Baumann and Contractor 2012). Our findings show that, in relation to communication, diglossia is an issue, ie which version (Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or a regional variety of Arabic) has more status and is more accepted. MSA and spoken Arabic seem to fulfil different purposes: MSA is necessary in order to learn local Arabic and it is essential to be exposed to dialects for communicating easily in daily situations. MSA can be used as a basis for learning classical Arabic for Quran studies. The sample of British Muslim students we interviewed described themselves as different from their parents generations because they are learning classical Arabic and MSA in order to be able to not just read the Quran, which is something their parents are usually able to do, but also to be able to understand its meaning without having to depend on translations. The colloquial versus MSA issue is complex, as is the question of which colloquial Arabic to learn while still in the UK. The use of an intermediary form of spoken Arabic (mutawassit .)
may be a solution as a form of pedagogy to demonstrate the differences between core and regional linguistic features. While MSA is the common written version of Arabic, mutawassit. (middle way, average) is a technique that is a sort of compromise of all major dialects used for speaking; if Arabic speakers from different dialects converse, they either consciously or unconsciously use a mutawassit . approach, which eliminates the extreme forms of their dialect and centres the sounds and syntax. Mutawassit . is not a separate dialect, but a middle way, a courteous habit deployed by Arabic speakers to render their particular form of Arabic more accessible to speakers from other regions of the Muslim world. It has considerable heuristic value, as it clarifies the core language system in conversation and reduces the emphasis on regional specificities. Conversation should be integral to Arabic language courses and could be enhanced by use of mutawassit . , which emerges naturally if several tutors converse who come from different parts of the Arab world. Yet it is clear from our findings that students believe access to Arabic is limited in Britain, and the conversation classes are taken by whoever is available in a university or college department, which may not reflect the dialect exposure of the year abroad. Collaborative ventures between mainstream universities and Muslim colleges could surely increase the number of Arabic speakers available for teaching and conversation. All three research projects also provided informal evidence of some of the hindrances that are restricting collaborative activities from expanding. As Baroness Warsi recently argued, at anecdotal level Islamophobia has now passed the dinner party test, in the sense that it is considered acceptable to express anti-Muslim views3. Presumably this is considered acceptable because of the perceived threat of terrorism. Our findings also demonstrate the dearth of higher education opportunities that are available for Muslims (and others) who wish to enhance both their understanding of Islam and their effectiveness as British citizens (Mukadam et al. 2010). The way forward We believe the next step is to share our findings with the academic community of British universities, the Muslim colleges, other religious representatives, interfaith experts and members of civil society. This approach would necessitate working with academics from both Muslim institutions and universities to identify and develop understandings of the roadblocks
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12235237
that prevent partnerships, and to also explore ways to dismantle these roadblocks. Possibilities for the impact of our original research findings for civil society and higher education need to be explored. We hypothesise that there may be as yet untapped value both economic and social in establishing collaborative activities with private sector employers, and their views with regard to employability skills as part of discussions around shared curriculum development should be sought. Such cross-fertilisations could potentially benefit academic and non-academic research users. The sharing of expertise could become a catalyst to increase the number of partnerships between UK universities and Muslim institutions, to increase the range of comparative studies of Islam and secularism and to consider how Arabic teaching and learning can be enhanced by collaborative ventures. Direct impacts of such work are envisaged as increased employability skills, recognised qualifications, and routes into higher education and career pathways for students who study traditional Islamic science. Wider implications of the project include policy impacts around community cohesion and preventing violent extremism, intellectual crossfertilisation, income generation for universities and an enhanced skills pool for employers. Beneficiaries of this research will include: 1. academics and Muslim institutions involved in Islamic Studies, sociological studies of Muslim communities and Islamic sciences; 2. p olicy makers working in fields such as integration, community cohesion, equality and diversity, and preventing violent extremism; 3. employers; 4. students who wish to have recognised qualifications and employability skills; 5. U K universities that may benefit intellectually and also from income streams created by collaborative partnerships. This approach examines both existing good practice and existing roadblocks to the development of collaborative partnerships between UK universities and Muslim institutions, and is predicated on the belief that this research must be brought to the attention of the higher education sector (both Muslim institutions and UK universities) and civil society (including business communities and other faiths) in the interests of a fair, vibrant, diverse and economically robust Britain.
Conclusions Economic and societal impact is our core goal, having researched pluralist society and Muslim minority issues in a sustained, consistent and effective manner (Scott-Baumann for 15 years; Contractor for five). Ethnic minority groups are often perceived in media parlance in a negative manner and we suggest that this should be seen as an opportunity both to facilitate a fairer society and to create new markets in the higher education sector, as well as working towards a workforce better educated in understanding the Muslim world. We also see opportunities in contextualising such integration work within new coalition government agendas, such as the Localism Bill and the community right to buy and right to challenge, which may facilitate setting up of new educational establishments. Governmental initiatives for the big society can provide universities with opportunities for integration of different communities with each other and new skills sets for a new order in world trade. We have a vision for higher education opportunities that will empower private sector players (including key interfaith figures, the buoyant Muslim business sector and the Muslim educational sector) to work productively with mainstream British universities in order to bridge the gulf between Islamic and secular pluralist approaches. Our research creates new opportunities for defining a new British identity, for economic growth within universities and within the new, exciting international opportunities developing for trade in emerging markets in various parts of the Muslim world. We are confident that discussions of our research findings will reveal opportunities to universities that they have not hitherto grasped. References De Botton, A. (2012) Religion for Atheists. London: Hamish Hamilton. Contractor, S. (2011) Marginalisation or an Opportunity for Dialogue: exploring the Hijab as a Discursive Symbol of the Identity of Young Muslim Women. In: Gabriel, T. and Hanan, R. (eds.) Islam and the Veil. London: Continuum. Contractor, S. (2012) Muslim women in Britain: Demystifying the Muslimah. London: Routledge. Mukadam, M., Scott-Baumann, A., Contractor, S. and Chowdhury, A. (2010) The training and development of Muslim Faith Leaders:
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Current practice and future possibilities. London: Department for Communities and Local Government. Available from: http://www. communities.gov.uk/documents/communities/ pdf/1734121.pdf [16 April 2012]. Ricoeur, P. (1998) Critique and Conviction. Transl. K. Blamey. Cambridge: Polity Press Siddiqui, A. (2007) Islam at Universities in England Meeting the Needs and Investing in the Future. Available from: http://www.hefce. ac.uk/AboutUs/sis/islamic/ [16 April 2012]. Scott-Baumann, A. (2003) Teacher Education for Muslim Women: intercultural relationships, method and philosophy. Ethnicities. 3 (2), 243261. Scott-Baumann, A. (2009) Ricoeur and the hermeneutics of suspicion. London: Continuum. Scott-Baumann, A. (2011) Unveiling orientalism in reverse. In: Gabriel, T. and Hanan, R. (eds.) Islam and the Veil. London: Continuum. Scott-Baumann, A. and Contractor, S. (2011) Encouraging Muslim women into higher education through partnerships and collaborative pathways. Southampton: HEA Islamic Studies Network. Available from: http://www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk/ islamicstudiesnetwork/projects/display?id=/ projects/alldetails/islamicstudies/Aug_2010_ Alison_Scott_Baumann [16 April 2012]. Scott-Baumann, A. and Contractor, S. (2012) Arabic language and Islamic Studies: who studies Arabic and how can these skills be used at university and beyond? Available from: http:// www.llas.ac.uk/projects/6359 [16 April 2012].
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Islamic Studies research blog
What we aim to achieve Following on from previous work conducted by Farrar and Todd that explored themes and issues academic staff were teaching about in the wide area of Islamic Studies in the social sciences, we are now developing an online resource that focuses upon student research. The aim is that undergraduate and postgraduate social science students who are studying a course or module on Islam can access this resource for ideas and information.The online guide will provide a range of resources to students who wish to undertake an original piece of research on issues related to Islam.This may be for a nalyear project or dissertation. As part of this resource, we are incorporating accounts from a number of expert commentators talking about why it is important to study Islam through the lenses of the social sciences.These expert inputs will be supplemented by accounts from social science students who have already produced assessed work in the eld of Islamic Studies.We expect that this resource will inspire more students to engage with this important area of study.The resource can be used across the HE sector for those staff and students who are interested in Islam from a social science perspective. How we are doing this When approaching the design and build of the website, it was natural to keep it informal and easy to navigate. As the website is also geared towards inspiration and guidance, a blog and magazine format via WordPress was chosen to best reect the aims of the project.The content is continually evolving, making the blog format ideal, as well as providing a natural way of linking to a wide variety of media such as YouTube and external news feeds. An overly structured format, with contributions and articles organised into strict topic areas was considered counterproductive to the nature of the project. Each contribution can be tagged and classied depending on what is discussed, enabling staff and student contributors to intuitively organise content, and users to utilise research skills insearching for articles, in both the standard search function as well as via visual displays of tags and categories.This also links back to the nature of research itself, especially in social sciences where topics are regularly interlinked. Separation of areas on the website has occurred in line with the nature of the information, such as an area for external links as well as an area dedicated to a growing collection of recommended texts with reviews. The blog is available at: http://islamicstudiesresearchblog.wordpress.com/
Professor Malcolm Todd Leeds Metropolitan University
Professor Max Farrar Emeritus Professor, Leeds Metropolitan University
Clare Young Sheffield Hallam University
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End-of-life issues in Islam and Judaism
Andrew Brown The Woolf Institute, Cambridge The aim of this Woolf Institute project, now titled Diversity in End-of-Life Care: A Muslim/Jewish Case Study, was to develop a cross-disciplinary educational programme tailored to the needs of healthcare professionals, those in higher education, particularly in the elds of Islamic and Jewish studies, and also members of the wider academic community who are dealing with the end-of-life issues.The one-day pilot programme was delivered on 15 June 2011 at the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead in collaboration with the Royal Free Hospital. The aim was to improve participants understanding of: the role played by religion in medical performance; how Islam and Judaism can contribute positively to a wider societal debate on how to provide appropriate healthcare to an increasingly diverse population; the extent to which Muslim and Jewish patients rely upon their religious beliefs to cope with illness and death; how end-of-life issues play out differently in different contexts and situations; the difference between theological and nonreligious secular understandings of death; the care of Muslim and Jewish patients and their families around such issues as gender etiquette, moment of death, post-mortem issues, deathcertication and release of body and burial. The Woolf Institutes Centre for Public Education, which researched and delivered the course, employs a methodology that is practice-based, context-specic and process-driven. Its projects are developed through a process of careful consultation with all relevant parties, resulting in a programme agreed by all.The gathering of case studies is a key part of its method because it grounds all conversation and analysis in the lived experience of participants. Because human relationships are at the heart of the Woolf
Institutes work, there is always an element of the unknown and the unexpected built into its projects space to see what happens when people start to talk, and the exibility to incorporate these as it happens developments into our work without losing focus. The day began with a general introduction to current National Health Service and General Medical Council guidelines followed by an introduction to the key normative sources of authority in Islam and Judaism as well as their basic principles of decision making in matters concerning end of life.There then followed an exploration of a number of key subject areas in both plenary and small group settings all centred upon case studies. Subjects covered were: the role of chaplains, withholding and withdrawing treatment and hydration and nutrition, denition of death, cultural versus religious issues, specic Muslim and Jewish care needs, death certication issues, post-mortem examinations, planning for the end of life and conscientious objection of healthcare professionals. The 25-minute video we have made available as an educational resource gives an example of our course content and methodology at work in our discussion of Islamic, Jewish and medical denitions of death. http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/resources/audiovisual.asp
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Perspectives
Comparative Sharia Law: the development of teaching materials in the area of sharia-compliant financial instruments and intellectual property
assumptions such as the price of oil, but, however portrayed, the area provides a wide range of job opportunities. The Comparative Sharia Law module aims to provide lawyers and managers from the respective Law and Management Schools a skill set that is grounded by a solid foundation of basics, while incorporating an international scope that includes the potential needs of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) states3; a grouping of 57 states each with specific Islamic finance and intellectual property agendas. The growth of the sector will provoke further comment especially against the contrasting backdrop of a potential world economic downturn. The demand for talent from the job market will increase as further diversity is developed within the Islamic finance and intellectual property sector. This diversity will be multiplied as the Muslim states individually tailor their finance and intellectual property provision to fit their unique situation and accompanying long-term goals. The transferable skills that are present in the materials that have been created from this project, which include faith-based arbitration and knowledge of sharia boards, should place the students taking this module in good stead within a competitive job market. The granularity of the material has also been considered although teaching materials usually form structured sequences of information and activities to promote learning, it is also important that the materials can be broken down so use, re-use and modification can take place using the digital resources or media assets. The formats used are wide ranging. For example, the questions and feedback for Comparative Sharia Law are in a Questionmark proprietary format (.qpack) these have been converted into the non-proprietary .qti format. The same process has been followed for the sound, pictures, video and software files used in the materials offered by the project.
Dr Mark Van Hoorebeek Bradford University This project continues to create and release in Open Educational Resource (OER) format materials related to sharia-compliant financial instruments and intellectual property1. Growth in the Islamic financial markets continues to feature heavily in the news across the world; these markets rely on a wide spectrum of financial instruments to provide a range of options for organisations and individuals to trade. Despite the overall bleak financial outlook the Islamic finance sector has received continuing predictions for growth. One of the most recent comes from the Financial Times in June 2010 (Warwick-Ching 2010), which outlined that: There are over 500 financial institutions offering Islamic Finance in over 80 different countries, this ranges from retail banks to investment banks and asset managers. A recent estimate puts the Islamic Finance industry [at] $1 trillion [dollars] worth of assets and predicts that it will grow at between 10-15 per cent per annum. This $1 trillion figure provides a hook for news companies and thus it has been widely used. Future forecasts are also predicting growth: Credit Suisse2 expects Islamic finance to be worth $3 trillion in 2016 (Leins 2011); other estimates have reached up to the $5 trillion mark. These figures may be based on various
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References Leins, S. (2011) Global Trends: Integrating Islamic Values into Finance: Thematic Research. Available from: https://infocus.credit-suisse.com/ app/article/index.cfm?fuseaction=OpenArticle&a oid=300559&lang=EN [12 August 2011]. Warwick-Ching, L. (2010) Beginners Guide to Islamic Finance. Financial Times. 14 July. Available from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8c9bc2fc-884511df-a4e7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1UPZxOqxc [7 August 2011].
1 2 3
http://www.jorum.ac.uk http://www.credit-suisse.com/uk/en The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the second largest inter-governmental organisation after the United Nations and has membership of 57 states spread over four continents. 33
Perspectives
Social scientists analyse key issues in Islamic Studies: HEA Islamic Studies Network seminar
compared the approaches of two of the key figures in the study of Islam, Ernest Gellner and Clifford Geertz, in his paper, Gellner and Geertz as two approaches towards understanding Islam and Muslims and their implications for teaching and learning. Looking at these two paradigmatic approaches of what it means to be a social scientist, Dr Imtiaz started with the work of Gellner, particularly Flux and Reflux in the Faith of Men, found in Muslim Society (Gellner 1983). Gellners classifications and definitions of both High and Low Islam prove to be exaggerated and difficult to develop into an overall thesis on Islam, coming as they do from one historical example. Geertz, in his book Islam Observed (Geertz 1971), approached Islam by continually questioning and interrogating any definitions he came across. Whereas Gellner seemed to be confined by his thesis of strict categorisations, Dr Imtiaz notes Geertz found more understanding in casting doubt upon all he came across. Madeline-Sophie Abbas (University of Leeds PhD student) shared her PhD research, in her presentation How do British Muslims respond to 9/11 and 7/7? Abbas conducted 26 indepth unstructured interviews with men and women from Leeds and Bradford. Many of the participants discussed categories that others - the media, politics and society - imposed on them, and how this affected their own identity. The label of moderate Muslim proved inadequate to describe participants identities and how they defined the world around them, with moderate changing its meaning depending on the speaker. Fundamentalism and radicalism also came under strong objection from the participants, and Abbas commented upon the need to unlearn categories. On discussing the strategies the participants took to find their identity in a hostile environment, communication proved to be the key approach. The practice of preparing to answer any question, as well as enter into dialogue with the local community, echoes Dr Imtiazs discussions on methodological doubt when discussing
Clare Young Sheffield Hallam University On 9 December 2011 the HEA Islamic Studies Network hosted a seminar, held at Sheffield Hallam University, that was a chance for academics and students alike to get together, share ideas and boost the knowledge base, especially in the area of teaching and learning. As someone very new to this field of study, I felt that this statement was particularly apt. With three papers and discussions, there proved to be an overall similarity in the theme of knowledge: how much knowledge Muslims and non-Muslims have, what kind of knowledge is possessed, where did it come from? The issues around ignorance and knowledge and their effects on fear and understanding have direct parallels in both global and educational contexts. Another theme that surfaced through each of the papers was that of categorisations - of being aware of, questioning and redefining categories, whether that be as a social scientist in search of understanding or a Muslim in search of identity. Professor Max Farrar, consultant for the Islamic Studies Network, chaired the event and made sure there was plenty of time throughout the day to discuss the papers in depth, and to get to grips with the issues that arose. From a personal perspective as a graduate, the papers themselves proved illuminating as to the ways in which Islam can be studied and observed through the social sciences. Dr Atif Imtiaz (Academic Director, Cambridge Muslim College)
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Islam, as well as the three states of knowing - of, about and knowing. The participants are similarly dissatisfied with the classifications placed upon them, and are moving themselves from a state of knowing about Islam to knowing Islam in an effort to enlighten those who only know of Islam. Dr Ayla Gl (University of Aberystwyth) had a different approach in her paper, Arab Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa: An Opportunity for the Turkish Model? However, it proved to investigate an extension of knowing. In understanding Islam, Dr Gl discussed the secularisation of Turkey, and how this historical and sociological process can be studied and examined in comparison with the Arab world. Again, categories and definitions are at play. In Turkish discussion the recent uprisings are referred to as exactly that, Arab uprisings, and not Arab Springs, as it is not considered a seasonal or cyclical event but a new process. Similarly, the uprisings alter definitions of a Muslim world that was assumed to prefer totalitarian regimes, rather than democracy. Similarly, there was a discussion over how the Turkish identified themselves were they Turkish, Muslim or European? There of course proved to be no direct answer, as the definition changed depending on the group of people you were in discourse with. This echoed from all three papers. Gellner observed Islam from one Moroccan example; Geertz studied Morocco and Indonesia; Abbas participants came from England; and Dr Gl compared Arab and Turkish Muslims. The major implication for teaching and learning, and especially in dealing with Islamophobia, can be seen through this very notion of the wide diversity of Islam. Many students may not be aware that the Islam found in Morocco could be different from the Islam found in Leeds or Turkey. There also exists an interesting comparison between how students can go about questioning the world around them and how tutors can support them - what do they know or think they know about Islam? Where did their knowledge come from? What is the history behind this mode of thought? Students can be encouraged to consider what it means to be a social scientist - what are they bringing to the discussion? And do their own categories hold up to close scrutiny? Working in e-learning, I am most interested in the social media implications that came from the event. Dr Gl noted the intense use of social media in the Arab uprisings, influenced by From Dictatorship to Democracy (Sharp 2011). In the
wider context, Dr Gl acknowledges that it is not the first time new media has been used. However, when considering what Abbas notes as her participants need for discussion and dialogue, certainly social media can be a useful tool in reaching out and educating many. In planning and creating a website for Islamic Studies research, I found social media and Web 2.0 tools to be particularly useful in finding, collecting and viewing videos, articles and pictures that went towards educating students (and especially myself). There are many different ways of creating safe areas online where open dialogue, as Abbas mentioned, can take place moderated blogs or wikis are an example. I certainly feel that many students could benefit from attending events such as this. Much can be done through simply listening to papers such as the ones presented at this event. Experiencing the discourse that exists already can have a profound effect on their understanding of the issues at hand and inform their own social science practice. References Geertz, C. (1971) Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gellner, E. (1983) Muslim Society. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharp, G. (2011) From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. London: The Merlin Press Ltd. Green Print.
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Framing Muslims: an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the representation of Muslims

those who see the policy outlook of successive governments in relation to minorities as having led to segregation, ghettoisation and worse. The Framing Muslims network, led by Dr Peter Morey of the University of East London and Dr Amina Yaqin of School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), is an international research network that has run since 2007, for much of that time with the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project fosters and supports research into the cultural, Dr Amina Yaqin artistic, social and political structures that frame School of Oriental and African Studies contemporary debates about Muslims in the west. One of its key aims has been to bring Dr Peter Morey together experts in various fields to interrogate University of East London the way Muslim subjects have been positioned and spoken for, and how the communities At the start of 2012 a ComRes opinion poll1 concerned have responded to these externally found that twice as many people blamed the imposed definitions. The project has taken the media for creating a climate of fear around Islam form of workshops, a seminar series, author in the UK as blamed far-right groups or Muslims readings, interviews and associated events themselves. Coming at the same time as the organised by others on the Framing Muslims Leveson Inquiry into press ethics and misconduct, theme. the findings prompted the Islam Channel to launch its own Alternative Leveson Inquiry, with Activities, events and resources the specific brief to look at anti-Islamic bias in the media, and with plans to appoint a judge, call We held a well-attended inaugural workshop witnesses and so on just like Leveson itself2. at SOAS in September 2007, where speakers included Reina Lewis, Maleiha Malik, Tariq The surveys findings, and reactions to it, illustrate Modood, Annelies Moors, Elizabeth Poole, the contending narratives that have evolved Tariq Ramadan, Ziauddin Sardar and Emma about Muslims in Britain in the last decade or so. Tarlo. This was followed by a regular series of Muslims have come to be seen as a problematic double-handed seminars with paired speakers, presence in western countries and been made addressing themes relating to the interests of the subject to scrutiny, surveillance and new security project such as Islamophobia, multiculturalism legislation. At the same time, calls on Muslims and Muslims, security and citizenship, Black to prove their allegiance to the nations of the Internationalism and Islam, and Islam and civic west rather than to some presumed distracting responsibility. Framing Muslims also collaborated transnational umma have encouraged reactions with the Inter-University Post-Colonial Seminar whereby many Muslims have rediscovered Series, run by Professor Susheila Nasta of The their Islamic identity and argued for it either Open University (OU) Post-Colonial Literatures as a guarantor of good behaviour and civic Research Group, to convene a series of talks on responsibility or, in extreme cases, of the the theme of Post-Colonial Muslim Cultures. incompatibility of Muslim values and democracy. There were five sessions beginning with an In the current controversy over multiculturalism, author reading and conversation with the Muslims take pride of place in the arguments of Booker-Prize-nominated novelist Mohsin Hamid.
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1 2
http://www.comres.co.uk/poll/499/ahmadiyya-muslim-association-uk-islamophobia-survey.htm http://www.alternatiaveleveson.org.uk
Further collaborations with the OU resulted in a joint workshop with their Making Britain project, entitled Muslims Making Britain, focusing on the historical and contemporary literary and cultural contributions of South Asian Muslims to British society. Participants included Humayun Ansari, Aamer Hussein, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Salman Sayyid, Sara Wajid and Ali Zaidi.
and international contiguities. Our contributors expertise, covering a range of academic disciplines, as well as insights from practitioners and activists, have helped to build up a composite picture both of the way in which Muslims are caught and framed by certain agendas that repeat themselves across the world having to do with security, terrorism, citizenship and ideology but also brought us The projects interest lies in intercultural relations, to consider the way in which Muslims have not least because we see those contending fought back to create spaces of their own, narratives about Muslims as having a dialogic, particularly in the new digital media and in mutually shaping quality that determines the popular and youth culture. parameters of current debates. This also means that we seek to include comparative international Our own approach as scholars takes its bearings perspectives. So, in 2009, we organised a one-day from literary and cultural studies, postcolonialism, conference addressed by Ivan Kalmar, Annabelle psychoanalysis and cultural studies, as well as Sreberny, Ziad Abu Zayyad among others from the empirical quantitative and evaluative called Others Within and Without: Muslims, Jews work presently being undertaken in the social and European Identity. A further workshop at sciences. Project publications have included a the end of the year explored Perspectives from special issue of Interventions: International Journal Britain and North America, and drew in Haideh of Postcolonial Studies on Muslims in the Frame Moghissi, Pnina Werbner, Sherene Razack, Nabil (Morey and Yaqin 2010), featuring essays on Matar, Hishaam Aidi and Steven Salaita. Indeed, multiculturalism, Hollywood images, newspaper as an international network, Framing Muslims has photographs and the US TV drama 24. On the built a body of knowledge based on the work of literary front, we have co-edited (with Rehana a range of scholars located at home and abroad. Ahmed) a forthcoming essay collection, entitled Events have been staged and papers given in the Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing United States at the University of California, (2012), which includes essays on Salman Rushdie, Irvine, and at Michigan State University, and at Hanif Kureishi, Leila Aboulela, Monica Ali and the Free University, Berlin. We have also been others. pleased to nurture the work of young scholars such as the PhD candidates Madeline Clements One of our main areas of emphasis has been and Maruta Herding who participated in a New media representations. We have been keen Directions event in Milton Keynes. both to analyse and extend our understanding of stereotyping to take into account those A key research and teaching resource exists in specific, recurring tropes that attach themselves the form of the network website: http://www. to Muslims on screen and in print. Our work, framingmuslims.org. This site contains an archive including close textual readings and the of all our events, including a number of audio theorisation of multiculturalism, is helping to podcasts of talks by speakers in the seminar build a more precise picture not only of the series. It also contains links to forthcoming and stereotypes themselves, but also of the media related events and a hot topics section where practices and contexts from which they emerge. the latest related news stories can be discussed. It would be gratifying to think that work such The archive has been widely used and cited by as this which has overlaps with such recent other scholars and forms a clearing house for the publications as Petley and Richardsons Pointing work of the network. We are also on Facebook the Finger (2011) would prompt a greater and Twitter. degree of self-reflexivity among press and media practitioners. At least the collated resources Mapping representations now exist for informed self-scrutiny and more critically aware media practices. The network Thanks to the valuable contributions of this has made a real contribution to extending first-rate roster of contributors, the network has knowledge in this area and laid the foundations been able to begin the process of mapping the for further work. representation of Muslims in various contexts of culture and politics since 9/11. This is, of course, From all this has emerged a new theorisation a vast area: much bigger than any single project of the relationship between stereotyping and could hope to cover. Nevertheless, we have cultural, as well as political, representation begun to explore in some detail a few national that we advance in our Harvard University
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Press book, Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11, published in the summer of 2011. This book blends those insights from different disciplines to offer for the first time a holistic account of representation and power when it comes to Muslims. Most contemporary attempts to address this issue have focused on one or two particular genres of representation to construct an argument for the inherent bias and negative stereotyping such forms are deemed to reproduce. Our interest, rather, lies in attempting to produce an interdisciplinary understanding of the representation of Muslims in the diaspora, both by various mainstream media and by those invested with the power to speak from within on behalf of a notionally homogeneous set of interests. We are concerned with how these representations operate within carefully regulated agendas and how they often work to reproduce those ideological assumptions they are supposedly in the business of interrogating and deconstructing. We therefore pay attention to the processes by which such images are constructed, those features that are used again and again, becoming a default signifier for the mistrusted Muslim, and how their circulation takes place within different cultural modes of practice and against particular political backgrounds. Interdisciplinary perspectives In the years since 9/11 the full force of sociology, political science, anthropology, religious studies and history have all been brought into play to explore the supposed schism by which relations between Islam and the west and the place of Muslims in the west have been violently reconfigured. Such disciplinary work has already shed important light on the contextual markers of our current situation. What it has been less consistent in acknowledging and exploring is the textual transmission by which reductive images of Muslims are circulated. For all the muchvaunted (and recently criticised) multiculturalism of urban metropolises, it is still the case that large portions of the populations of nations in the west rarely if ever knowingly meet a Muslim. Yet surveys consistently show a high level of suspicion and mistrust across the board in these countries. This amount of hostility and fear cannot be understood without due attention being paid to those texts journalistic, dramatic, televisual, literary and so on by which images of Muslims are transmitted to various audiences. In our book we draw on the insights of a number of academic disciplines. But we also attempt
to bring together, synthesise, question and go beyond their boundaries. We would go so far as to say that, while work in a single discipline can increase our knowledge of the subject, a fuller understanding along with the potential for meaningful interventions to change a situation in which Muslims are still habitually stereotyped can only come from a multidisciplinary approach that is aware of the textual transmission of such images while, at the same time, recognising its own involvement in the longer history of these very same representations. This is a history that dates back to first contact between Christianity and the new religion of Islam emerging from Arabia in the seventh century. From the early, somewhat baffled musings of John of Damascus, through the medieval period when Christian views of Islam as a heresy fed the political imperatives of Europe leading to the crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries, through to the Renaissance when the durability and allure of Islam were noted by European thinkers and dramatists certain core tropes and images recur. These have often to do with the intransigence of Muslims in the face of the Christian revelation, the decline into despotism of Muslim civilisation, and the circumscribed position of women. Even with the secularisation of western polities after the Enlightenment, that projects root in classical Greek and Roman antiquity meant that new models of civil society advocated by European philosophers still took Islam and Muslim cultures as their antithesis: a process only accelerated by European colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. We trace how many of these images, in fact stereotypes, have persisted in the 20th and into the 21st centuries. Thinking through these historical representations and their rejuvenated presence in cultural forms post 9/11 has made us reflect on their significance in the context of key contemporary issues such as multiculturalism, and in light of the conventional language of media forms such as television drama, docudrama, radio, the internet and performance art. Chapters in Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11 deal with each of these cultural forms, while also setting them against the backdrop of an emerging political and public consensus on what the key concerns are about Muslims and their cultural practices. For the title of our project and book we deliberately chose the provocative word framing, employing a term from Communication Studies. As Maxwell McCombs has described it in
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relation to news media, the frame is: the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphases, exclusion and elaboration. They suggest what is relevant and irrelevant, at the same time promoting certain types of approved interpretation and response (McCombs 2004, 87-89). In other words, not only do the frames that govern debate around Muslims tell us what the issues are, they also prompt and shape consequent actions. We can trace this nexus at work in journalism, television drama and the utterances of politicians in the post-9/11 and 7/7 period. The frame has the effect of closing off debate, of channelling it into ever narrower courses, while also determining what kinds of voice will be recognised and gain a hearing. Trust, cultural dialogue and multicultural textualities
and impact-maximising activities involving the public, community bodies, media practitioners and policy makers, with a view to developing a suite of research, teaching and practice resources fostering a greater understanding of inter-community trust. Among our partners in this new initiative are the Dialogue Society, the Muslim Institute, Engage and the British Library. Our focus will be on trust between Muslims and others in the majority non-Muslim nations of the United Kingdom and the United States, and we will employ a tripartite approach, applying questions around trust to three overlapping research strands: politics and society, art and literature, and business and finance. These areas have been chosen because they have seldom been set in dialogue and experiences of trust and trust building from one field of activity may well have a transferable applicability to another.
The main research questions we seek to address include the following: how is trust built The latest phase of the project attempts to between Muslims and other communities; why explore spaces beyond the frame and to does trust sometimes breakdown; how do consider the issue of Muslims, trust and cultural cultural differences around trust complicate dialogue. Recent high-profile interventions by or facilitate dialogue; and how has trust been politicians in the west declaring the failure of imagined in artistic and cultural practices? multiculturalism have had, as their very thinly These questions will be nuanced and refocused disguised context, mistrust in those Muslim according to the cultural practice under scrutiny: communities that have been growing in western for example, the question of trust building will Europe and the United States since the end be differently inflected in the arena of cultural of the colonial era. While a large amount of production, where professional practices and expediency and projection may be read into such aesthetic and commercial judgements are preutterances, the sense that multiculturalism has eminent; in politics and society, where laws, their been a flawed experiment and the idea that implementation and their possible amendment unintegrated Muslims are evidence of this has are at issue; and in business, where transactions become a truism of much journalism and media and relationships are governed by contractual coverage too. arrangements. Nonetheless, the basic building blocks of trust have some commonality, and Important work, particularly in the social pitfalls and potentialities from one arena may sciences, is ongoing to identify the domestic and profitably inform another. Contributors will be international factors leading to Muslim alienation invited to nuance and extend these questions, within western society. Thus far, however, political, while always retaining the central focus on cultural and philosophical questions of trust Muslims and intercultural trust and dialogue. how it is built, how it operates and how it can be undermined have largely been overlooked in Hence we are interested in Muslims in situ within broader debates in favour of a rush to judgement nations of the west that often see themselves and a clamour for decisive action of one kind or as the organic product of longstanding Christian another. and secular development in which religion-based identity claims sit uneasily. As well as everyday We are building on the success of the first cultural relations, we are interested in the texts phase of Framing Muslims to put together that emerge from this context. Peter Morey is an international multidisciplinary network of at present working on a study of Islamophobia scholars, practitioners and stakeholders to and the novel, while Amina Yaqin is exploring the explore questions of trust in the relationship politics and culture of Pakistan and its diaspora. between Muslim diaspora populations in the In the combined activities of the network, we west and the societies around them. We are will be paying attention to the forms in which planning a number of scholarly events in the Muslim self-expression emerges, whether literary, next three years, while also engaging in outreach artistic, musical, social or economic. Along with
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Perspectives
colleagues from other universities, we have identified an emerging methodology for looking at what we call multicultural textualities, drawing on the hermeneutic traditions of the humanities as well as the empirical insights generated by the social sciences. This new work, the next phase of the Framing Muslims project, will allow us to understand how the pressures on intercommunity relations generated by global and national political preoccupations, impact on the production and reception of Muslim texts and practices. This is yet another instance of the rich new seams that can be worked when humanities and social science paradigms are brought together. We would welcome the interest of anyone who might be interested in joining us in what we consider this crucial and timely work. References Ahmed R., Morey, P. and Yaqin, A. (2012) Culture, Diaspora and Modernity in Muslim Writing. London and New York: Routledge. Morey, P. and Yaqin, A. (2010) Muslims in the Frame. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. 12 (2). Morey, P. and Yaqin, A. (2011) Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 9/11. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. McCombs, M. (2004) Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion. Cambridge: Polity. Petley, J. and Richardson, R. (2011) Pointing the Finger: Islam and Muslims in the British Media. London: Oneworld.
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Review of Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating a Global Islamic business

of the religion with regard to the topics of focus for the book, ie marketing and branding. The book provides a very practical guide with lots of examples that can be very useful for any student interested in case-study work, extending the understanding of theoretical ideas into practice through case studies. It also provides good coverage of the characteristics of Muslim markets across the globe. It serves as a good reference for studies undertaken with regard to Muslim populations, considering religious adherence, market segmentation and brand perception by Muslims across the world. Although the findings from these studies are interesting and useful, limitations of the study approaches should be acknowledged, especially regarding the generalisation of countries along market segments. The book covers a range of marketing and branding techniques and can accommodate new professionals as it is very easy to read and to follow. It provides a good introduction for anyone interested in marketing and branding and brings to attention the key factors and aspects that need to be considered and the perception of Islamic brand labels such as halal. It also advises on factors to consider in building a successful Islamic brand, such as use of Islamic values with universal emotional appeal and introducing ethical business models, as well as utilising western techniques and benefiting from them. It highlights the ethical aspects connected with Islamic business models and the requirement to embed corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the business strategy, while accepting the profit maximisation principle. It also highlights the importance of cultural differences and perceptions of different values and ideas across countries and their impact on the way a brand should be designed and marketed. There is, however, a recursive theme of the Muslim consumer throughout the book it is not focused on Islamic marketing but on the Muslim buyer instead. Aspects of marketing and branding techniques are not analysed from
Dr Omneya Abdelsalam Aston Business School Sara Navid Aston Business School Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating a Global Islamic Business. Paul Temporal. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia), 2011. 256 pages. ISBN: 978-0-470-82539-6 (hardcover, 23.99). This is an interesting book that highlights issues related to marketing and branding for Muslim populations. It caters for Management and Marketing students as well as practitioners. It provides a good introduction covering the main pillars of Islam and the axioms of Islamic economics. It also provides the views of Islam on consumerism and establishes the position
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Perspectives
an Islamic perspective, ie in light of the Islamic teachings or world view; instead the existing conventional techniques are related to real-life examples of businesses focusing on Muslims as the target market. The references to the values held in Islam do not have any mention of sources where support for such values in the religion can be found; these statements are not supported by evidence and the points made can be difficult for someone with no Islamic background to accept or appreciate as stemming from religion. The book could be improved by strengthening the conceptual framework of Islamic marketing and extending the discussion on the Islamic perspective of marketing and branding and how it guides these aspects of business. It also needs to refer to primary sources of the religion when it discusses Islamic values. This would prove to be very useful to someone not from a Muslim background in understanding where the values mentioned regarding Islamic economics stem from and the reasons behind them. In addition, the book implies that sharia compliant and sharia based are equivalent. Sharia-based can be seen as a level up from sharia-compliant transactions, where the essence and the spirit of the law, beyond compliance, are followed reflecting substance over form.
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Editorial Board Lisa Bernasek Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic Studies Network John Canning Acting Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic Studies Network Erika Corradini Academic Co-ordinator, LLAS Karen ORourke Communications Manager, Higher Education Academy
Islamic Studies Network project team Sara Bath Project Officer, Higher Education Academy Lisa Bernasek Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic Studies Network Grahame Bilbow Head of Arts and Humanities, Higher Education Academy John Canning Acting Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic Studies Network Joe Clark HEA Associate, Business and Management Erika Corradini Academic Co-ordinator, LLAS Max Farrar HEA Associate, Social Sciences Heather Jackson Head of Organisational Effectiveness, Higher Education Academy Shaheen Mansoor HEA Associate, Law Malcolm Todd HEA Associate, Social Sciences
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Contact us
Islamic Studies Network The Higher Education Academy Innovation Way York Science Park Heslington York YO10 5BR +44 (0)1904 717500 islamicstudies@heacademy.ac.uk www.islamicstudiesnetwork.ac.uk No. 4 | July 2012 ISSN 2047-0312 The Higher Education Academy, 2012 The views expressed in Perspectives are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the Islamic Studies Network or the Higher Education Academy. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Editorial Board. Such permission will normally be granted for educational purposes provided that due acknowledgement is given.
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Perspectives

Teaching Islamic Studies in higher education Issue 4 July 2012

Welcome: looking to the future

Innovative sources for assessing Middle Eastern and Islamic History

https://forms.justice.govt.nz/search/IPT/RefugeeProtection/ http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/courts-and-tribunals/tribunals/special-immigration-appeals-commission/decisions.htm http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/refworld/rwmain

Islamic Law in the Law School: the challenges of integration

Resource facilitating students research on media representations of Muslims

Guidelines for links with local Muslim communities

Supporting collaborative higher education programmes in Islamic Studies

Dr Alison Scott-Baumann University of Lancaster

Dr Sariya Contractor University of Derby Introduction

Islamic Studies research blog

Professor Malcolm Todd Leeds Metropolitan University

Professor Max Farrar Emeritus Professor, Leeds Metropolitan University

Clare Young Sheffield Hallam University

End-of-life issues in Islam and Judaism

Framing Muslims: an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the representation of Muslims

Review of Islamic Branding and Marketing: Creating a Global Islamic business

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