Perspectives Issue 1

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Perspectives

Teaching Islamic Studiesin higher education

Issue 1

November 2010


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2 Perspectives

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.heacademy.ac.uk/islamicstudies.

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 the Academic Co-ordinator for the network,

Lisa Bernasek, at [email protected].

Perspectives is distributed free of charge to

members of the Islamic Studies Network andis available online at www.heacademy.ac.uk/

islamicstudies. To join the network, please visit our

website or email [email protected].


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Perspectives

Teaching Islamic Studies

in higher education

2 Welcome Lisa Bernasek

3 News News from the Islamic Studies

Network

4 News News from the subject centres

6 Feature Teaching and researching Islam

in the UK: some contemporary

challenges

Ron Geaves

11 Resources JISC digital resources for Islamic

Studies

Alastair Dunning

12 Feature Islamic Studies: discipline or

specialist eld? Implications for

curriculum development

Carool Kersten

18 Report Perspectives on Islamic Studies in

higher education

Lisa Bernasek and Gary Bunt

24 Feature She who disputes: the challenges of

translating the views and lived realitiesof those who have been otherised into

policies and the curriculum

Haleh Afshar

30 Resources Islamic law curriculum project takes

the sharia challenge

Shaheen Mansoor

32 Feature Designing modules for research-

based teaching in Islamic Studies

Ayla Gl

38 Review Four Lions Maxim Farrar

40 Events calendar


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2 Perspectives

Lisa Bernasek

Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic

Studies Network

Welcome to the rst issue of Perspectives: Teaching

Islamic Studies in higher education. Perspectives is

the magazine of the Higher Education Academys

Islamic Studies Network, and is a forum for those

involved in teaching Islamic Studies to share

practice and resources. Along with updates on

Islamic Studies Network activity, Perspectives

publishes articles related to Islamic Studies in

higher education on a wide range of topics.

For the rst issue we have a number of pieces

that will hopefully pique your interest and perhaps

cause some debate. Professor Ron Geaves provides

a thought-provoking article based on his many years

of experience teaching and researching Islam in the

UK, with a particular focus on the contemporary

context and political climate. Professor the Baroness

Haleh Afshar calls for interdisciplinarity as a wayto bring more attention to womens voices and

experiences within mainstream Islamic Studies. Both

authors raise some of the ethical issues and other

considerations involved when individual research

interests and government policy agendas coincide.

In articles focused more closely on teaching

practice, Dr Carool Kersten and Dr Ayla Gl share

their experiences. Dr Kersten reects on the state of

Islamic Studies as an academic eld, and explores

the conceptualisation of curriculum development

and its implications for Islamic Studies. Dr Gl

provides a rich account of the process of designing

two modules for Islamic Studies within an

International Politics department, and argues for

the importance of a research-based and student-

centred approach to teaching.

We also have a report on some of the

discussions that took place at the Islamic Studies

Networks inaugural event in May 2010, and we

highlight resources for Islamic Studies teaching and

research that are available from JISC and from the

UK Centre for Legal Education.

We hope you enjoy the rst edition of

Perspectives. If you would like to contribute to a

future issue by writing an article or case study,

reviewing a book, lm, or other media, or by

reporting on a set of teaching resources you have

used or developed, please get in touch.

[email protected]

Welcome


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3 heacademy.ac.uk/islamicstudies

Recent activity

The inaugural event for the Islamic Studies Network

was held on 2526 May 2010 in Birmingham. The

event attracted 62 participants with a wide range

of disciplinary interests, who generated interesting

discussions over the two days. Papers from two of

the three keynote speakers can be found on pages

6 and 24. The full event report can be downloaded

from the Resources tab of our website: www.

heacademy.ac.uk/islamicstudies.

There are now over 200 people subscribed to the

networks JISCmail list ([email protected]).

The list is used to send out updates on network

and sector-wide activity, and is a discussion base

for issues relating to Islamic Studies in higher

education. Activity updates and information on

funding opportunities, recent publications and

resources are also provided in our quarterly online

newsletter. If you would like to be added to the

JISCmail list or receive the newsletter, please email:

[email protected].

Forthcoming activity

The network is organising four regional workshops

in 201011, the rst of which was held at the

University of Edinburgh on 22 October. The

workshops are an opportunity for Islamic Studies

practitioners to network, gain a sense of the

different ways Islamic Studies is taught in a

regional context, and discuss region-specic

issues. The events are open to both specialists

and non-specialists who teach on modules related

to Islam. Future workshops dates and venues

are: 10 December 2010, University of Oxford; 9

March 2011, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

(Lampeter); and 26 May 2011, University of Leeds.

We are also organising a two-day workshop

for PhD students in Islamic Studies on 1617

February 2011 in Birmingham. This event will be an

opportunity for postgraduates to network, discuss

their research and teaching activities, and address

issues related to life as a postgraduate and beyond.

If you are interested in attending any of the

workshops, please email us at: [email protected].

The network has issued two calls for project

funding this year, with two projects being funded in

the rst round: Dr Mark Van Hoorebeek (Lecturer in

Law, University of Bradford) is developing teaching

materials in the area of sharia-compliant nancial

instruments and intellectual property; and Dr Alison

Scott-Baumann (Reader Emeritus, University of

Gloucestershire) and Dr Sariya Contractor (Muslim

Chaplain, University of Gloucestershire) are

investigating how to encourage Muslim women

into higher education through partnerships and

collaborative pathways. Further information about

these projects can be found on the Projects tab of

our website (www.heacademy.ac.uk/islamicstudies).

The successful projects from the second funding

call will be announced in January 2011.

News from the Islamic Studies Network


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4 Perspectives

Along with contributing to cross-disciplinary

network activity, colleagues from the Higher

Education Academy subject centres are

developing subject-specic activities for the

academic year 201011. Below are some of the

highlights for further information, please consult

the Islamic Studies Network website (www.

heacademy.ac.uk/islamicstudies) or the website of

the relevant subject centre.

In addition to the ve subject centres below, the

History Subject Centre (www.historysubjectcentre.

ac.uk) is supporting the network and will contribute

to specic activities as appropriate.

Business, Management, Accountancy and

Finance Network (BMAF)

BMAF will hold the rst meeting of its Special

Interest Group for Islamic Studies on 23 March

2011 at the University of Northampton. Colleagues

with an interest in any aspect of Islamic banking,

nance, management and related areas are

welcome to attend. This workshop will followon from discussions held at the Islamic Studies

Network inaugural event in May 2010 and will

be an opportunity for participants to discuss

approaches and share materials. Please register

via the BMAF website.

www.heacademy.ac.uk/business

Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and

Area Studies (LLAS)

LLAS led on a data collection project carried out

from May to August 2009 that identied over 1,000

modules in Islamic Studies and related disciplines

taught at UK higher education institutions. The

data gathered was analysed for a report published

by HEFCE in February 2010. As follow-up to this

project, LLAS is coordinating making the data

collected available to the public. This database,

which will be of use to students, prospective

students and lecturers, will be made accessible to

the public in the coming months.

www.llas.ac.uk

Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious

Studies (PRS)

PRS will be organising discipline-specic sessions

at the Islamic Studies Networks postgraduate

student event in February 2011. Colleagues at PRS

are also developing two publications on Islam in

Religious Studies a student guide and an edited

volume on teaching Islam in Religious Studies.

These publications will be valuable resources for

students and lecturers working on issues related to

Islam in a Religious Studies context.

www.prs.heacademy.ac.uk

Subject Network for Sociology, Anthropology,

Politics (C-SAP)

C-SAP carried out a call for case studies on teaching

relating to Islam within the social sciences in the Spring

and Summer of 2010. A set of ten case studies and

a report that draws out the implications for teaching,learning and curriculum development on Islam within

the social sciences are available at: http://stores.lulu.

com/csappublications. A second call for case studies

looking at the ways in which issues relating to Islam

might appear in Sociology, Anthropology, Criminology

or Politics courses at undergraduate or postgraduate

level is now open. The case studies will be showcased

at a C-SAP symposium to be held in June/July 2011. If

you are interested in submitting a case study, please

contact Dr Malcolm Todd at: [email protected].

www.c-sap.bham.ac.uk

UK Centre for Legal Education (UKCLE)

UKCLE has produced a set of resources related to

teaching Islamic law (see Islamic law curriculum

project takes the sharia challenge on page 30),

which can be found on their website at: www.ukcle.

ac.uk/resources/teaching-and-learning-strategies/

islamiclaw. These resources will be further

developed and disseminated in 201011 through

workshops for new lecturers and non-lawyers.

UKCLE is also developing a Special Interest Group

for Islamic law, building on the AHRC/ESRC-funded

Network of British Researchers and Practitioners

of Islamic Law. The rst meeting of this SpecialInterest Group was held on 10 November 2010.

www.ukcle.ac.uk

News from the subject centres


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6 Perspectives

Professor Ron Geaves

Director of the Centre for the

Applied Study of Muslims and

Islam in Britain and Professor of

the Comparative Study of Religion,

Liverpool Hope University1

As a scholar of religion I am essentially interested

in religious questions and I came to the Muslim

presence in Britain through the questions: What

happens to a religion when it moves from one

location to another through migration? and How

far can a religion be transformed by major social

upheaval before it loses something so integral

to itself that it ceases to be itself?2 Phrased

another way, what is core to a religion and what

is peripheral, what can be changed and what

cannot? It was this question that brought me to

the University of Leeds in 1988 to do an MA in

Religious Studies under the auspices of the newly

established Community Religions Project. The

project, under the direction of Kim Knott, was

beginning to explore the presence of religions thathad arrived in Britain through migration and, as we

know, radically transformed the landscape of British

religious life. The Community Religions Project

was groundbreaking because it was an attempt to

engage Religious Studies in the academic study

of migration. The literature on British Muslims was

small and outside of Anthropology and Sociology

very few scholars in the study of religion were

researching lived religions. There was Francis

Robinsons small pamphlet on the diversity of

South Asian Islam, which introduced Deobandis,

Barelwis, Tablighi Jamaat, Jamaati Islami, and Ahl i

Hadith (Robinson 1988); Barbara Metcalfs work on

South Asian Islam and its religious diversity (Metcalf

1 The ideas expressed in this article were rst

presented in The Role of Higher Education in

the Integration of British Muslims, my inaugural

lecture at Liverpool Hope University delivered

on 12 March 2008.

2 I had originally been inspired to ask these

questions after reading the novel by David Lodge

How Far Can You Go (1978), which explored the

transformations in British Catholicism after WorldWar II and particularly after Vatican II.

1982); and Roger and Catherine Ballards study

of Sikhs in Leeds, which posited the well-known,

four-stage development of South Asian migration

into Britain (Ballard and Ballard 1977). Alison

Shaw had produced work on Pakistanis in Oxford

(Shaw 1988). Philip Lewis had raised the issue of

what people actually did in the world of popular

religion as opposed to the textual focus on historic

orthodoxies in his small booklet on Pakistani

shrine traditions, and paved the way for the study

of Muslims as opposed to Islamic Studies (Lewis

1985). The Muslims in Britain Research Network

created by Jorgen Nielson existed in its infancy.

However, two events changed everything

for my career. The rst was the publication of

Salman Rushdies The Satanic Verses. It not only

transformed the Muslim communities in Britain,

but it also placed an obscure area of academic

study into the centre of political controversies and

introduced a number of complexities in the study

of Islam and Muslims in Britain. The second was

more personal but still signicant for the discipline.

I had done my rst eldwork in 1989; workingon the Ballards thesis I decided to explore the

early Muslim arrivals in Leeds, testing the rst

stage of the development of South Asian migrant

communities, that is, the early pioneers. I wanted

to establish how these pioneering gures impacted

upon the way that the Muslim community in Leeds

organised itself religiously. It was to become my rst

published paper and led to a passion for eldwork.

I still grapple with the challenge of what eldwork

means for the scholar of religion as opposed to

the anthropologist or the sociologist; however, in

this instance I discovered painfully that working

with living people is full of ethical pitfalls for the

unwary. I had unwittingly got myself caught in

historic divisions in the Leeds Muslim community

between settlers of Pakistani and Bengali origin. My

Pakistani informants had neglected to mention that

a signicant gure in the development of the early

Leeds Muslim presence had originated from Bengal.

Consequently his pioneering efforts and remarkable

story did not appear in the published paper. He

was upset and complained to the department. As

a solution we organised an event at the City Hall in

which the Mayor honoured his achievements and

I spoke of his contribution to the development of

Muslim religious institutions in the city. It was an

important lesson that taught me that research ethicsare more than fullling legal obligations but must be

Teaching and researching Islam in the UK:

some contemporary challenges1


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rooted in the sensitivities of living people.

We are all too familiar with the political crises

that followed in the next two decades: the Gulf

Wars, 9/11, 7/7, Glasgow, the War on Terror, the

emphasis on radicalisation, the Governments

Prevent programme, and the identication of

Islamic Studies as a strategically important subject.

Looking at the current situation, it would seem

to me that I now gaze on a subject area that has

become increasingly complex to study. In the rest

of this paper I discuss two concerns that both

arise out of the securitisation of the subject. They

are signicant for the study of religion at a wider

level, and not disconnected. The rst is an issueof methodology and approaches to the study of

religion and concerns what has been labelled

the engaged approach to the study of religion;

the second is an issue of value and raises a

Nietzschean dilemma.

Since the events of 7/7 and subsequent religious

acts of violence in Glasgow and London, the

previous British Government turned its attention

to the role of higher education in either preventing

extremism or promoting integration. Academics

have been asked to monitor students for signs

of extremism and the Siddiqui Report assessed

the role of departments that teach IslamicStudies in promoting integration and challenging

extremism (Siddiqui 2007). Attention turned to the

education of British imams, the role of theology

to counter the jihadist version of Islam and the

public role of Muslim women. Those of us who

study Muslims in Britain were drawn into the

maelstrom of this political gaze upon our area of

study. As intensely as we want to nd out about

the reality of Muslim experience in Britain as

scholars, so too do intelligence services, police

ofcers and Government departments. A panel

organised at the 2007 European Association for the

Study of Religions conference in Bremen clearly

demonstrated this transformation as scholars of

Islam in Europe from several European nations toldhow they were now in demand from intelligence

agencies, Government bodies, policy makers and

the media.

The involvement of academics in political

concerns has always been open to controversy

and I am not positing answers here but posing

some of the issues that I see unfolding for us as

scholars when we are asked to engage with both

communities and policy makers. The dangers here

are several. They include the use of academic

experts in a new form of McCarthyism; the use of

polemical or even distorted information for policy-

making bodies and courts; and, perhaps moreworryingly, the labelling process involved with


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8 Perspectives

highly charged emotive terms such as terrorist,

radical, fundamentalist, or jihad. The previous

Governments Prevent programme raised issues

in that it generated considerable suspicion among

British Muslims who regarded it as an intelligence-

gathering operation. It also created disquiet around

who represented the Muslim communities in Britain

when certain players were in receipt of large sums

of Government money. For the scholar asked to act

an adviser it raised a number of concerns around

academic independence and the maintenance of

condence in the communities that we research.

In parallel with these issues, I began to search

for an alternative to the world religion tokenism

that so often marks the terrain of the teaching

of other religions in departments of Theology

and Religious Studies, but an alternative that is

also freed from the orientalist history of Islamic

Studies so often critiqued by British Muslims. That

prompted me to say in 2007 that the Religious

Studies scholar should be considering whether

the issues that we deal with and study do not

allow us to sit on the fence of neutral objectivity,and that we need to squarely address the issue

of advocacy (Geaves 2007). Religion has not

disappeared as some secularisation theorists

would have had us believe at one time but is now

highly visible in the realm of crisis management,

conict resolution and violence. For me then,

it is the idea of engaged religious studies that

beckons but I am only too aware of the pitfalls that

were highlighted by the highly publicised events

that were to overtake the climate scientists of the

University of East Anglia. It was around this time

that I discovered the work of the anthropologist

Rowena Robinson and began to consider her

statement that:

We may surmise that everyday life can become

the terrain for the acting out of an activist

politics by individuals who believe in something

beyond the mundane and in the possibility

of transformation and who opt to initiate the

work of change in their own environments,

neighbourhoods or communities.

Robinson 2005, 202

Robinsons emphasis on those who believe

in something beyond the mundane and in thepossibility of transformation is highly relevant to the

study of religion. It is here that the phenomenological

approach that has so inuenced the academic

study of religion can lead the way for those

struggling to engage with new realities in the study

of Islam. James Cox (2006), rightly identifying

phenomenology as a method of studying religion

that utilises empathy (seeing the world from the

believers viewpoint) and epoch (no judgement

is expressed through a process of bracketing out

the truth claims of a religion), refers to the fact

that scholars of religion are increasingly being

asked to advise government and state ofcials or

to engage in applied research activities that may

involve partnerships with religious professionals and

organisations. Cox argues that scholars of religion

who acknowledge the signicance of something

beyond the mundane may nd themselves natural

partners with activists and links this idea of engaged

religious studies to the empathetic position of the

early phenomenologists. Cox is uneasy with the

idea of being drawn into such alliances as it may

compromise the critical scholarship involved in

pure research. I would disagree. First, the issuesinvolved in religious violence, for example, are too

important for scholars of religion to remain remote.

Anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists

already have a track record of engagement

with policy makers, religious organisations and

governments that has not always been beyond

reproach; for example, the history of academic

involvement in the Vietnam War, Iraq and the War

on Terror. It would seem to me that this complicity

with the more questionable areas of state activity

would alone warrant the involvement of those to

whom empathy is a natural part of their personal

world view and scholarly approach. Engagement

does not necessarily involve the suspension or

jeopardisation of critical thinking. In stating so

categorically that it does, Cox returns us to an earlier

paradigm where the etic and the emic are clearly

demarcated, a position I believe to be negated

by our human condition of subjectivity. The shift

from phenomenology to engagement will require

considerable reexive skills, but the relationship of

allies can also be that of critical friend.

As scholars engaged in eldwork we often talk

about empowering communities that we study.

We are indebted to them for much of our livelihood.

If they were unwilling to co-operate with the

academics who study them, our knowledge wouldbe signicantly poorer and so would our career


11/44


proles. As researchers, we gain prestige and indeed

our livelihood from our study of them. Many of the

communities we study undertake to speak to our

students, enable them to undertake eldwork, and

act as unpaid providers of information for student

assignments. However, all the time we need to be

aware of community sensitivities and the dangers of

essentialising and objectifying. It is also appropriate

that scholars and students of religion should put

something back into these communities and offer

some reciprocal benet. One minimal expectation

is that we should not remain in a universitys ivory

towers, but disseminate our knowledge to improve

peoples understanding and to inform public debate.

As a scholar studying a western Muslim minority

in a post-colonial context, I need to think about

academic freedom, responsibility and what Gayatri

Spivak describes as the impersonal economy of

responsibility (Spivak 1992, 7). I agree with her that

when we consider academic freedom we need to

rethink freedom as the freedom to acknowledge

insertion into responsibility (ibid.). Spivak argues

that it is intrinsically impossible to choose not to beresponsible (ibid., 24). However, we need to go further.

Spivak appears to argue for a responsibility that is

more or less based on a shared notion of common

ethnic, national or community origins. Rowena

Robinson does go this step further and suggests

a frame of responsibility that transcends such

commonalities and moves beyond an impersonal

responsibility with its acknowledgment of distance:

In the sphere of equal intimacy, the intimacy

of love and friendship, responsibility may be

a privilege more than an obligation; one is

permitted responsibility, one does not merely

assume it.

Robinson 2005, 15

There are interesting and challenging implications

resulting from these recent developments, as many

second- and third-generation Muslims in Britain in

the present post-9/11 and 7/7 climate feel a degree

of suspicion towards the state and its motives. The

British model of multiculturalism is under threat

and many Muslims are not convinced that the

dominant narrative of integration does not actually

signify assimilation. I am often asked why a British

university would involve itself in programmes thatappear to be aiding the Muslim communities. I am

even asked to identify my own faith position: Am I

a Christian? Am I a Muslim? Why do I not convert?

Recently I was identied as a Muslim choosing

to maintain taqyyah, the dispensation allowing

believers to conceal their faith when under threat,

compulsion or persecution.

This labelling process is signicant as it reveals

much about the prevailing zeitgeist among British

Muslims. If I am helping the Muslim community

and my motives are beyond reproach then I must

be a closet Muslim. If labels are essential I would

prefer a friend of Muslims, with the acceptance

that sometimes I will operate as a critical friend.

Orientalism need not always be perceived with

suspicion. It can be a quest for a deeper personal

knowledge of the other, and it may take a path where

the other disappears to reveal a kindred world.

However, since that time two years ago I have

further reected on the situation that has arisen

and will continue to arise as religion shifts from the

periphery of public life to a more central concern.

All too frequently academic research in the study

of religion has focused purely on the creation of anacademic text, useful only to debates within the

subject, focusing on the analytical. Such research

lauds the analytical but avoids the critical, where

there is an opportunity for creating change (Zahir

2003, 203). Yet the challenge of moving from the

analytical to the critical raises a crucial dilemma

for us posited in the Nietzschean dichotomy of

truth values and life values. Nietzsche raises

the problem of the value of truth, and asks why

do we not preferuntruth? Why insist on the

truth? (Nietzsche 1998, 5, 13). Nietzsche believed

that what he called the will to truth that is, the

unquestioning faith that truth is the highest value,

and the pursuit of truth at all costs drains the value

out of life. This challenge lies before us as scholars.

It is raised by Sophie Gilliat-Ray in her essay on

deconstructing the myth of the rst mosque in

Cardiff (Gilliat-Ray 2010). Here we have a classic

case of the collision between truth values and

life values. Her research teams discovery that the

Cardiff mosque was not the rst in Britain added to

academic truth but undermined the life value of

such a truth to the Cardiff Muslim community.

Muslim partners may attempt to categorise

academics working alongside them in ways that pit

their common ethnic, national or community origins

against those of the academic. The relationship ofotherness is thus perpetuated and suspicion remains.


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10 Perspectives

Or they may seek ways to bridge the divide and

include the academic partner in a shared economy of

responsibility. Christians may be included as fellow

monotheists; Jews as a fellow religious minority.

Others may be included as part of a shared economy

of pain. I am enough anthropologist to recognise that

as a rst-world, white, middle-class male it is not

critical reection or empathy, or even responsibility

that separates me from the communities that I study,

but security. As stated by Beatriz Manz:

the inconsistency between the experience

of a researcher in the eld and life in the

academy, the disconnection as far as security

not just personal safety but material security

is so great for so many anthropologists.

Manz 1995, 269

I would go one step further and include

psychological security. In joining with Muslim

partners, forming collaborative links, helping

to establish training programmes and toprofessionalise their various institutions and bodies,

working as equals in a spirit of friendship I also enter

into a partnership where I share such insecurity.

References

Ballard, R. and Ballard, C. (1977) The Sikhs: the

development of South Asian settlements in Britain.

In: Watson, J. (ed.) Between Two Cultures: Migrants

and Minorities in Britain. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cox, J. (2006)A Guide to the Phenomenology of

Religion. London: Continuum.

Geaves, R.A. (2007) Twenty years of eldwork:

reections on reexivity in the study of British

Muslims. Inaugural Lecture. Chester: Chester

Academic Press.

Gilliat-Ray, S. (2010) The rst registered mosque in

the UK, Cardiff, 1860: the evolution of a myth.

Contemporary Islam. 4 (2), 179193.

Lewis, P. (1985) Pirs, Shrines and Pakistani Islam.

Rawalpindi: Christian Study Centre.

Lodge, D. (1978) How Far Can You Go.

Harmondsworth: Penguin

Manz, B. (1995) Reections on anantropologia

comprometida. In: Nordstrom, C. and Robben,

A. (eds.) Fieldwork under Fire: Contemporary

Studies of Violence and Survival. Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, pp. 261274.

Metcalf, B.D. (1982) Islamic Revival in British India:

Deoband, 18601900. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1998) (orig. 1885) Beyond Good and Evil.

Faber, M. trans. Oxford: Oxford Worlds Classics.

Robinson, F. (1988) Varieties of South Asian Islam.

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Ethnic Relations

Robinson, R. (2005) Tremors of Violence. New

Delhi: Sage Publications.

Shaw, A. (1988)A Pakistani Community in Britain.

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Siddiqui, A. (2007) Islam at Universities in England.

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Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education.

Available from: www.bis.gov.uk/assets/

biscore/corporate/migratedd/publications/d/

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Spivak, G. (1992) Thinking academic freedom in

gendered post-coloniality: T.B Davie academic

freedom lecture. Capetown: University of Capetown.

Zahir, S. (2003) Changing views: theory andpractice in a participatory community arts project.

In: Puwar, N. and Raghuram, P. (eds.) South Asian

Women in the Diaspora. Oxford: Berg.

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Bristol: HEFCE. Available from: www.hefce.ac.uk/

AboutUs/sis/islamic [18 August 2010].

Mason, H. (1982) Foreword to the English edition.

In: Massignon, L. The Passion of Al-Hallaj Vol. 1.nceton, NJ: Princeton University Press.


13/44


Alastair Dunning

Digitisation Programme Manager, Joint

Information Systems Committee (JISC)

www.jisc.ac.uk/islamdigi

Although much excellent work has been done in the

UK to digitise medieval manuscripts like psalters,

books of hours and bestiaries, Middle Eastern

manuscript culture has received less attention.

Such material is often hard to transliterate and

study, yet UK organisations hold rich and valuable

collections and there is increasing demand for

access to them.

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

has supported a number of projects to try and

address this, with several UK institutions utilising

JISC funding to digitise catalogue and manuscript

materials relevant to Islamic Studies.

As part of its Virtual Manuscript Room the

University of Birmingham has made available

online 71 manuscripts from its Mingana Collection,

including Islamic Arabic, Syriac, Persian and

Christian Arabic manuscripts. The website,which will also host materials related to the New

Testament and medieval vernacular texts, is

available at: www.vmr.bham.ac.uk.

Three other projects are ongoing, the fruits of which

should be available in early Spring 2011.

The Wellcome Trust is working with the Bibliotheca

Alexandrina to digitise over 500 of the Wellcomes

Islamic manuscripts, chiey related to medicine.

Kings College London are providing additional

input, developing a digital catalogue tool that will be

usable by similar projects in the future. The material

dates from the 14th to the 20th century and comes

from all over the Islamic world, stretching from Syria

to South-east Asia.

http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/arabicproject.html

Many of the 10,000 or so Islamic texts held by

the libraries of the universities of Cambridge and

Oxford only have cursory descriptions on card

catalogues. JISC funding is allowing the creation of

fuller descriptions of their Islamic manuscripts and

also ensuring they are easily searchable via their

online systems. The project team is also developing

a standard, using the Text Encoding Initiative, forthe fuller description of Islamic manuscripts, and it

is anticipated this will be adopted by other projects

internationally.

www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/bodley/library/

specialcollections/projects/ocimco

Finally, the School of Oriental and African Studies

(SOAS) has built up a partnership with Yale

University Library to digitise over 20,000 pages of

Islamic manuscripts drawn from the collections

of the two libraries. The digitised manuscripts will

also be accompanied by the catalogues, language

dictionaries and research apparatus that scholars

will need to work on this often complex and

demanding material.

www.soas.ac.uk/ysimg

JISC digital resources for

Islamic Studies


14/44

12 Perspectives

Dr Carool Kersten

Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Kings

College London

The present examination of curriculum development

in Islamic Studies is informed by my research

on the study of Islam as a eld of scholarly

investigation and my initial experiences as a lecturer

in Islamic Studies in the Department of Theology

and Religious Studies at Kings College London,

where I am responsible for offering undergraduate

course modules for existing programmes and the

conceptualisation, design and implementation of

new modules and courses at postgraduate level1.

Since the undergraduate modules are intended

for non-specialists, i.e. students with little or no prior

knowledge of Islam as a religious tradition and not

majoring in Islamic Studies, the teaching is designed

to provide a survey of key aspects of Islam as a

religion and the Muslim world as a civilisation, so as

to provide a holistic and multifaceted introduction tothe Islamic tradition. Key considerations regarding

the future development of postgraduate modules are

to enrich existing programmes by offering additional

elective ones, while the main incentive for the new

taught MA is identifying an appropriate niche

market. Consequently, the focus of the curriculum

is very much content-driven. Geared towards

imparting information with data as a product to be

delivered, the onus for its development rests mainly

on the pertaining faculty member.

A complicating factor is that Islamic Studies,

as a scholarly eld, has been the subject of both

outside scrutiny and introspection by practitioners.

This has raised some generic concerns regarding

the status of the eld. In relation to curriculum

development this raises the question whether

Islamic Studies must be considered an academic

discipline in its own right or a specialist eld

open to interdisciplinary treatment. This article is

intended as a reection on the crucial issue of a

well-informed approach to curriculum development.

After establishing what we mean by curriculum

1 Kings College London, Department of Theology

and Religious Studies, Undergraduate Degrees:www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/trs/ug/.

development and briey sketching the current

state of affairs in the teaching of Islamic Studies

as a subject of scholarly specialisation, I will relate

these ndings to some earlier contributions towards

conceptualising curriculum development and the

exploratory accounts of academic practice by fellow

Islamicists. My expansion of the consequences for

curriculum development is guided by Becher and

Trowlers (2001) seminal study on academic cultures.

Curriculum: understanding,

conceptualisations, denitions

When discussing the issues of curriculum design,

development and change in a generic sense, Barnett

et al. (2001, 435436) and Fraser and Bosanquet

(2006, 269270) have noted that academics tend to

be rather cavalier in the use of the term curriculum.

Drawing on their common understanding, curriculum

is actually used quite randomly to refer to three levels

on which teaching and learning can be considered:

1. course/module/teaching unit;2. concrete study programmes or degree courses;

3. the generic fashioning of transmitting

knowledge in a given academic specialisation,

which also accounts for underlying questions

of epistemology and power structures.

Such understanding from the perspective of the

academic providing the teaching is entirely content-

driven. In their phenomenographical examination of

curriculum understandings Fraser and Bosanquet

expand the research so as to also include the other

stakeholder the student. This gives them four

slightly different categories of curriculum (2006, 272):

A. the structure and content of a unit (subject);

B. the structure and content of a programme of

study;

C. the students experience of learning;

D. a dynamic and interactive process of teaching

and learning.

In the context of an examination of the relationship

between a content-driven approach to the teaching

of Islam and the state of affairs in the eld of Islamic

Studies, I suggest that here curriculum is understood

on a generic level (level 3), with an emphasis on safe-

guarding the integrity of structure and content on boththe programme and unit level (categories A and B).

Islamic Studies: discipline or specialist eld?

Implications for curriculum development


15/44


Islamic Studies: a eld in ux

With the current intense media scrutiny of Islam and

Muslims, the concern with Islamic Studies as an

academic specialisation within British universities

has intensied, claiming the attention of specialists

working in the eld and those involved in higher

education administration. Since 2005 no less than

seven conferences and workshops have addressed

Islamic Studies as a subject in tertiary education,

including two consultations initiated by the Higher

Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE),

the main funding body of this eld in England 2.

However, scholars of Islam have reected for

much longer on the state of affairs in their eld. This

occurred especially in the wake of Edward Saids

1978 bombshell publication, Orientalism, a scathing

critique of the political agenda underlying classical

orientalist scholarship and its propensity to

essentialise Islam through its historical-philological

approach. On closer inspection, however, it

becomes evident that self-critical reections by

Islamicists on their eld of specialisation actuallypre-date this ideologically charged critique (Abdel

Malek 1963, Adams 1967, Irwin 2006, Varisco 2005).

As part of my own postgraduate research,

I examined Islamic Studies in relation to other

relevant specialisations such as the (generic)

study of religions and area studies programmes,

characterising these liaisons as awkward a

reference to the troublesomemnage trois

between Islamic Studies, area studies programmes

and the generic eld of religious studies (Kersten

2009, 244). My research concluded that in order

2 Islam in Higher Education conference (Subject

Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies

and Association of Muslim Social Scientists,

2005); The State of Arabic and Islamic Studies

in Western Universities conference (School of

Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), 2006); Islam

on Campus conference (University of Edinburgh,

2006); Roundtable meeting at Oxford Centre for

Islamic Studies (2007); Islamic studies: current

status and future prospects seminar (HEFCE,

2007); Islamic studies: the way forward in the UK

seminar, (HEFCE, 2008); Perspectives on Islamic

Studies in Higher Education conference (IslamicStudies Network, 2010).

to adapt its approaches to both research and

teaching in a rapidly changing environment, Islamic

Studies must become more promiscuous to

extend the conjugal metaphor a bit further as

it can no longer stay faithful to the centuries-old

marriage with its historical-philological partner.

This means opening itself up to interdisciplinary

approaches developed in other elds of religious

studies as well as to a more global approach,

transcending the area studies framework in which

Islamic Studies is often conned to and labelled as

Middle Eastern Studies.

Positioning Islamic Studies in the context of

cultures of academic disciplines

The now classic study ofAcademic Tribes and

Territories by Becher and Trowler (2001) provides

some helpful guidance in translating developments

in Islamic Studies in relation to curriculum

development. The books concern with disciplinary

epistemology and the phenomenology of knowledge

resonates with my own research, and its contentionthat academic engagement and narratives with

specic topics constitute important structural

factors in the formulation of disciplinary cultures,

has direct implications for curriculum development

and change (Becher and Trowler 2001, 23).

The expansion of scholarly knowledge into an

increasing number of disciplines is reected in

three interconnected processes: subject parturition

(new elds evolving from older ones and gradually

gaining independence); subject dispersion (growth

of disciplinary areas to cover more ground); and

subject decline (Becher and Trowler 2001, 1415). In

spite of these forces of specialisation, Becher and

Trowler nevertheless see a meshing of specialisms

leading towards a collective comprehensiveness of

interlocking cultural communities (ibid., 1617).

Consequently disciplines in higher education

acquire a borderless character (ibid., 3). To my

mind, Islamic Studies is also affected by such

trends, refashioning academic elds in ways that

must be taken into account when rethinking the

curriculum. This shifting of borders evinces that

the concept of an academic discipline is not

altogether straightforward (ibid., 42). Although

mutable and at times engaging in friendly relations

with others, disciplines exhibit a degree of

continuity through recognizable identities andparticular cultural attributes (ibid., 44).


16/44

14 Perspectives

Elaborating the complexity of such developments

in a chapter called Overlaps, Boundaries and

Specialisms, Becher and Trowler show that even

if disciplinary classications are not cast in stone,

some borders are so strongly defended as to be

virtually impenetrable; others are weakly guarded

and open to incoming and outgoing trafc (ibid.,

59). Demarcations of one disciplinary perspective

from another can be governed by distinctions in

style or emphasis, for example History versus

Philosophy; a mutually agreed division of spoils

such as between Physics and Chemistry; or the

distinctive conceptual frameworks of sociologists

and anthropologists respectively. Given that

generally a considerable amount of poaching

goes on across all disciplines (ibid., 59), such

sharing of the ground can also lead to a

convergence rather than a separation of interests

(ibid., 60). Here we can think of scholars of

modern languages as an example of academics

who are hospitable to itinerant theories from

psychology, sociology or structural anthropology

or an anthropologist of religion such as the lateClifford Geertz, who identied a shift in culture

and reconguration of social thought bringing

humanities and social sciences closer together in

their intellectual kinship (ibid., 62).

Rather than merely recognising such

developments, other educationists have pointed to

active interventions to resolve counterproductive

differences (Barry 1981) or to close the large gaps

between disciplines (Wax 1969). For example,

in an attempt to do away with disciplinary-

and departmentally based structures rife with

tribalism, centrifugal attitudes and articial

alienation and distance that can mar knowledge

production and transmission in academia,

Donald T. Campbell introduced the notion of

a comprehensive, integrated multiscience or

omniscience, arguing with Wax that the

true basic unit of intellectual organization is the

specialist eld, where the closest contact is

achieved between human understanding and

the realm of epistemological reality it seeks to

explore (Becher and Trowler 2001, 64). Along with

Campbells (2005) introduction of a sh-scale

model of omniscience, other characterisations for

this specialism-oriented approach are Polanyis

networks of overlapping neighbourhoods (1962),

and Cranes honeycomb structure of interlockingelds (1972).

Islamic Studies or study of Islam? Discipline

or specialism?

The realisation of interdisciplinarity as the hallmark

of what, I suggest, is best regarded as a eld of

specialisation rather than a distinct discipline, did

not take hold in Islamic Studies until the 1960s.

Until then, Islamicists were scholars of oriental

languages with a solid grounding in historical

philology. There was little interest or expertise in

what was then variously called history of religions,

comparative religion or phenomenology of

religion, but which has since developed into the

generic eld of religious studies or the study of

religions. This was due to mutual misconceptions

regarding each others eld: Islamicists regarded

the religionists as students of small tribal or

archaic religions whose theoretical models had

nothing to offer to Islamicists, whereas religionists

often felt intimidated by the linguistic aptitude

and preoccupations of Islamicists, which left little

time for theorising (Waardenburg 1995). In spite of

the interventions of Adams (1967), Martin (1985) orWaardenburg (1995), a quick glance at the studies

of Suleiman and Shihadeh (2007), Izzi Dien (2007) or

Bernasek and Canning (2009) evinces the persistence

of the orientalist approach, as Islamic Studies

remains grounded in a rm knowledge of Arabic.

This particular linguistic focus has also resulted

in a geographical concentration on Middle

Eastern and North African countries. Aside from

the question of whether Islamic Studies should

remain an orientalist eld or be better integrated

into the study of religions/religious studies, this

also raises the issue of the relationship between

Islamic Studies and area studies programmes.

Due to this linguistic focus, Islamicists tend to be

predominantly associated with Middle Eastern

Studies and to a much lesser extent with South and

South-east Asian Studies, notwithstanding the fact

that one in ve Muslims resides in Indonesia and

that more than a quarter of a billion live in the Indian

subcontinent. While area studies programmes

as non-disciplinary specialist elds usually place

a high value on interdisciplinarity, concerns

have been raised that Middle East specialists

are in danger of falling through the cracks; not

recognised as full peers by either orientalists or

scholars from established disciplines such as

Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology, orHistory (Binder 1976).


17/44


Aside from all these differences of opinion

among specialists working in the eld, the issue

of nding satisfactory ways of teaching Islam

within the framework of meshing multidisciplinary

approaches is exacerbated by an endemic lack

of faculty. Here the US provides some telling

gures3. In Teaching Islam, Wheeler (2003a) noted

that there are an estimated 1,000 undergraduate

departments and programmes in Religious

Studies, many of which offer courses on Islam.

However there are only roughly 100 scholars

with joint specialisations in Islamic Studies and

Religious Studies. In fact, specialist positions in

Islamic Studies in 2003 did not nearly approximate

the positions in Jewish Studies and in most

Religious Studies departments there is only one

token Islamicist (Wheeler 2003a, vvi).

Implications for curriculum development in

Islamic Studies

Distinguishing between hard natural sciences

and soft humanities and social sciencesspecialisms, Islamic Studies ts with Becher

and Trowlers characterisation of the latter as

reiterative; holistic (organic/river-like); value-laden

and personal; concerned with particularities and

complications; subject to dispute over criteria

for knowledge verication and geared towards

interpretation rather than explanation (Becher and

Trowler 2001, 36).

As for the knowledge it produces, Islamic

Studies can be conceived as producing both pure

and applied knowledge (the latter not only by

social science projects but also by the publication

of critical text editions or translations of primary

material). While the orientalist approach to Islamic

Studies rendered it a convergent discipline with its

own methodological history grounded in philology,

advocates of interdisciplinarity would qualify it as

a divergent specialist eld. Moreover, the study

of Islam also shares with history a catholicity

of coverage and relative absence of theoretical

divisions (Becher and Trowler 2001, 190).

3 A discussion documentIslamic Studies: current

status and future prospectsissued by HEFCE

contains details on student numbers but not onfaculty (HEFCE 2007, 1622).

Shifting to the conceptual approach to curriculum

change inspired by the postmodernist theoretician

Lyotards idea of performativity, Barnett et al. have

suggested that a properly designed curriculum

balances three interlocking domains: knowledge,

action and self. As a specialism located in the

eld of the human sciences the study of Islam

will privilege discipline-specic competence

categorised under the rubric knowledge, while

there will be only limited integration with the action

domain (Barnett et al. 2001, 438). A much more

contentious issue in the case of a specialism dealing

with religious subjects is the impact of learning on

the self. If we take Paul Tillichs denition of religion

as dealing with matters of ultimate concern, it

becomes understandable that the teaching of

religion can potentially impact on perceptions of self

and identity. Not surprisingly then, issues such as

the insider/outsider perspective (McCutcheon 1999)

or the place of faith in the classroom (Barbour 2009)

are recurring themes in reective writings on the

teaching of religion.

On a more concrete level, even when the ideaof elds of academic specialisation is recognised

as a more suitable taxonomy than disciplines,

when it comes to curriculum design there is still

the inherent multi-dimensionality of subject-based,

method-based, and theory-based specialisms

to be reckoned with. Here Mark C. Taylor, a

theorist of religion with a generic interest in higher

education, provides some useful pointers. His

advocacy of deregulating and restructuring goes

even a step further than re-coining academic

disciplines into specialist elds. Based on

the premise that responsible teaching and

scholarship must become cross-disciplinary and

cross-cultural, he declares separate departments

obsolete and proposes instead a curriculum

structured like a web or complex adaptive

network (Taylor 2009).

While appreciative of Fraser and Bosanquets

(2006) stress on the interaction between instructor

and student, Barnett et al.s (2001) use of the

concept of performativity, and Taylors (2009)

signalling of the interfaces between acquiring

knowledge, attaining capabilities, and personal

development, for the type of introductory survey

courses on offer in Theology and Religious Studies

programmes, the focus in the curriculum is almost

unavoidably on the product, putting the onus forits development predominantly on faculty.


18/44

16 Perspectives

The ndings of Teaching Islam also support

such an orientation. While using explanations

developed in the study of religion to contribute to

our understanding of Islam, Wheeler identies

four different institutions that must be included

in introductory courses on Islam: prophethood,

canon and law, ritual, and society and culture

(Wheeler 2003b, 34). His colleague Reinharts

matrix of the Quran, the gure of Muhammad,

and a historical narrative combating phenomenal

and geographical essentialism has a similar point

of departure and direction (2003, 2335)4. This

approach does not go unchallenged; because of

the transience of our technological age, Tazim

Kassam has observed that what is old, ancient,

and in the past has lost its cultural cach [sic]

and hold over the imagination and teachers have

to work harder at restoring a sense and love of

history (Kassam 2003, 197).

However, that does not mean a total disregard

for the student perspective. On the contrary,

curriculum change in the form of ne-tuning

the modules on offer is very much driven bythe structured student end of course feedback

exercises in all Theology and Religious Studies

modules. Tutorials and feedback on completed

coursework can also help improve the generic

objectives of modules regarding transferable skills

and in imparting applied knowledge. Wheeler also

argues for a pedagogical awareness in designing

module content:

To make the content of my course dependent

upon my objective in teaching the course is to

make the content justied not from a historical

or factual but rather from a pedagogical

perspective. This means that I want to know

rst not what I am teaching but why: not

what facts I need to impart but what skills I

am helping students develop as part of their

liberal arts education.

Wheeler 2003b, 14

4 The course must be carried, I think, by some kind

of narrative, and in the effort to de-essentialize

the teaching of Islam, I have found a historicalnarrative to work best (Reinhart 2003, 26).

Conclusion

In view of both the above considerations and the

teaching brief I have received from my institution

(providing undergraduate modules on Islam as

electives in existing degree courses offered by the

Department of Theology and Religious Studies), I

have developed my own adapted understanding

of curriculum, using it as a reference to: a set of

modules on Islam introducing students to Islam

as a religious tradition, surveying aspects of its

history, doctrines and wider cultural heritage from

its inception until the present day. Together with

the conceptualisations derived from the literature

discussed above, it constitutes the foundation in

which my own approach to curriculum design,

development and change is grounded.

References

Abdel-Malek, A. (1963) Lorientalisme en crise.

Diogne. 44, 109142.

Adams, C.J. (1967) The history of religions and thestudy of Islam. In: Kitagawa, J. and Eliade, M.

(eds.) The History of Religions: Essays on the

Problems of Understanding. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, pp. 177193.

Barbour, J.D. (2009) The place of personal faith in the

classroom. Religious Studies News. March 2009, 21.

Barnett, R. et al. (2001) Conceptualising curriculum

change. Teaching in Higher Education. 6 (4),

435449.

Barry, B. (1981) Do neighbours make good fences?:

political theory and the territorial imperative.

Political Theory. 9 (3), 293301.

Becher, T. and Trowler, P.R. (2001)Academic

Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Inquiry and

the Culture of Disciplines. 2nd ed. Buckingham:

SRHE/Open University Press.

Bernasek, L. and Canning, J. (2009) Inuences on

the teaching of Arabic and Islamic Studies in UK

higher education. Arts and Humanities in Higher

Education. 8 (3), 259275.

Binder, L. (1976) The Study of the Middle East:

Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and

Social Sciences. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Campbell, D.T. (2005) Ethnocentrism of disciplines

and the sh-scale model of omniscience.

In: Derry, S.J. et al. (eds.) Interdisciplinary

Collaboration: An Emerging Cognitive Science.Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbraum, pp. 321.


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Crane, D. (1972) Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of

Knowledge in Scientic Communities. Chicago,

IL: University of Chicago Press.

Fraser, S.P. and Bosanquet, A. (2006) The

curriculum? Thats just a unit outline, isnt it?

Studies in Higher Education. 31 (3), 269284.

HEFCE (2007) Islamic Studies: current status and future

prospects. Bristol: HEFCE. Available from: www.

hefce.ac.uk/aboutus/sis/islamic/ [18 August 2010].

Irwin, R. (2006) Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism

and its Discontents. New York: Overlook Press.

Izzi Dien, M. (2007) Islamic Studies or the study

of Islam?: from Parker to Rammell.Journal of

Beliefs & Values. 28 (3), 243255.

Kassam, T. (2003) Teaching religion in the twenty-

rst century. In: Wheeler, B.M. (ed.) Teaching

Islam. New York and London: Oxford University

Press, pp. 191215.

Kersten, K.P.L.G. (2009) Occupants of the Third

Space: New Muslim Intellectuals and the Study

of Islam (Nurcholish Madjid, Hasan Hana,

Mohammed Arkoun). Ph.D. Thesis, School of

Oriental and African Studies.Martin, R.C. (ed.) (1985)Approaches to Islam in

Religious Studies. Tucson, AZ: University of

Arizona Press.

McCutcheon, R.T. (ed.) (1999) The Insider/Outsider

Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader.

London and New York: Cassell.

Polanyi, M. (1962) The republic of science. Minerva.

1 (1), 5473.

Reinhart, A.K. (2003) On The Introduction of Islam.

In: Wheeler, B.M. (ed.) Teaching Islam. New York

and London: Oxford University Press, pp. 2245.

Said, E.W. (1995 [1978]) Orientalism: Western

Conceptions of the Orient. 2nd ed. London: Penguin.

Suleiman, Y. and Shihadeh, A. (2007) Islam on Campus:

teaching Islamic Studies at Higher Education

Institutions in the UK, Report of a conference held

at the University of Edinburgh, 4 December 2006.

Journal of Beliefs & Values. 28 (3), 309329.

Taylor, M.C. (2009) End the university as we

know it. The New York Times. 27 April, p. A23.

Available from: www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/

opinion/27taylor.html [25 August 2010].

Varisco, D.M. (2005) Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric

of Anthropological Representation. New York:

Palgrave Macmillan.

Waardenburg, J. (ed.) (1995) Scholarly Approaches

to Religion, Interreligious Perceptions, and Islam.Bern: Peter Lang.

Wax, M.L. (1969) Myth and interrelationship in

social science. In: Sherif, M. and Sherif, C. (eds.)

Interdisciplinary Relationships in the Social

Sciences. Chicago, IL: Aldine.

Wheeler, B.M. (ed.) (2003a) Teaching Islam. New

York and London: Oxford University Press.

Wheeler, B.M. (2003b) What cant be left out: the

essentials of teaching Islam as a religion. In:

Wheeler, B.M. (ed.) Teaching Islam. New York

and London: Oxford University Press, pp. 321.

Bibliography

Nanji, A. (ed.) (1997) Mapping Islamic Studies:

Genealogy, Continuity and Change. Berlin and

New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

Saeed, A. (1999) Towards religious tolerance through

reform in Islamic education: the case of the

State Institute for Islamic Studies in Indonesia.

Indonesia and the Malay World. 27 (79), 178191.

Siddiqui, A. (2007) Islam at Universities in England.

Report submitted to the Minister of State for

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18 Perspectives

Dr Lisa Bernasek

Academic Co-ordinator, Islamic Studies Network

Dr Gary Bunt

Subject Co-ordinator, Subject Centre for

Philosophical and Religious Studies and Senior

Lecturer in Islamic Studies, University of Wales

Trinity Saint David

With contributions from the Islamic Studies

Network project team

The Islamic Studies Network held its inaugural

event, Perspectives on Islamic Studies in higher

education, on 2526 May 2010. During the event

participants attended two workshop sessions to

discuss their personal perspectives on issues in

teaching Islamic Studies in higher education. The

rst set of workshops were organised around a

disciplinary theme, with participants choosing

to attend groups based on their departmental or

disciplinary interests. Six workshops ran in parallel,

each chaired by an academic who opened thesession with some reections on teaching Islamic

Studies from a particular disciplinary perspective.

Participants then shared their own experiences,

discussing matters ranging from textbooks to

student expectations to the inuence of lecturers

experience on their teaching.

As full reports on all the discussions would run

to several thousand words, this article presents

key themes discussed in each workshop. Areas

of interest identied for further discussion and

development within the Network can be found

in boxes on the following pages. All points are

anonymous, and are not placed in any specic

order of preference. Full subject-specic reports

may be published by individual subject centres in

due course.

Parallel session 1:

Theology and Religious Studies

Chair: Professor Hugh Goddard (University of

Edinburgh)

Many Theology and Religious Studies departments

have solo Islamic Studies lecturers, with the

majority of their students aiming to progress into

teaching in the primary and secondary sectors.

Academics in these departments often lack the

support of language studies and are required to

teach across the discipline rather than specialising

in one topic within Islamic Studies.

The cohort of students has changed over the

years, and it can be problematic balancing the

expectations of increasingly diverse students. The

differences within student constituencies (including

diverse cultural and belief perspectives) mean that

there are issues in the ways in which students are

assessed and benchmarks set. For example, pre-

existing understandings of Islam may vary from very

detailed and within a particular faith perspective,

through to no knowledge.Questions relating to the difculties of teaching

introductions to Islam were also raised. How

can the subject be taught compatibly with the

standards and expectations of UK higher education

and without becoming orientalist? How can

stereotypes be broken while conveying the idea that

Islam is different from Christian theology? Can we

challenge the type of Islam that is being taught?

How can Islam be introduced to students without

using well-known paradigms and familiar narrative

histories? Can academics provide students with

an interrogative framework and encourage them to

be inquisitive in their approach Islam? Can this be

achieved through university lectures and seminars?

Perspectives on Islamic Studies

in higher education

It was all just

degrees of excellence

a thoroughly

stimulating event.

The breadth of

participant interests

was both surprising

and interesting.

The discussions

and workshops and

exchanges of views

were the best aspectsof the event.


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Parallel session 2:

Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies

Chair: Dr Barbara Zollner (Birkbeck College)

There is an overall domination of Middle Eastern

Studies in Area Studies programmes related to

Islam. This means that other areas of the Muslim

world (e.g. South Asia) or issues related to Muslims

in Europe or North America are marginalised.

Although Area Studies departments should

provide a space for interdisciplinary work and

reection, Islamic Studies specialists in these

departments often tend to identify with their

individual disciplines (e.g. Religious Studies,

History, Politics) rather than Area Studies more

generally. This situation is exacerbated by the

distinction between the social sciences and

the humanities, as specialists in Islam are often

separated by this structural division. In some social

science contexts there is an attempt to avoid

questions of religion and to frame discussions

around culture.

The study of Islam in language-oriented degreecourses (e.g. Arabic or Arabic and Islamic Studies)

presents a tendency to focus on Arabic when

studying Islam, resulting in the marginalisation

of other relevant languages. Because the

study of languages is not facilitated in the UK

educational system, students pursuing these

degrees may be faced with difculties as starting

language programmes ab initio implies devoting

a signicant amount of time to language training.

In consequence of this it can be difcult to nd

the balance between teaching content (including

coverage of Islam) and language.

Parallel session 3:

History

Chair: Dr Anna Akasoy (University of Oxford)

As with many disciplines related to Islamic Studies,

historians may be located in a History department

or within an Area Studies context. These contexts

will entail different expectations in relation to

modules delivered and student backgrounds.

Issues in teaching Islamic history to students

without a background in Islam were raised. This

type of module can easily centre on teaching facts

and events rather than using thematic approaches

or exploring current research in the eld.

Participants discussed approaches to teaching

Islam within History as well as the development of

bibliographical resources, including the upcoming

publication of a section of the Oxford Bibliographies

Online (OBO) devoted to Islamic Studies1.

1 Reisz, M. (2010) Research intelligence: Thats your

reading sorted. Times Higher Education,27 May.

Available from: www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/

story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=411727

&c=2 [25 August 2010].

Oxford Bibliographies Online:www.oxfordbibliographiesonline.com/


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20 Perspectives

Parallel session 4:

Sociology, Anthropology and Politics

Chairs: Dr Sophie Gilliat-Ray (Cardiff University), Dr

Sen McLoughlin (University of Leeds)

Those present working in Religious Studies

departments approach their research and teaching

using sociological or anthropological methods,

but have found these departments less likely to be

interested in the sociology/anthropology of religion.

According to the group, sociology of religion is not

generally valued within Sociology departments; it

also has little contact with the sociology of race.

There was some discussion in the workshop of

whether there is a sociology of Islam, and what this

might look like.

Within Politics, there was some discussion of the

limitation of traditional teaching methods in relation

to Islam. In a module on Political Islam, for example,

it is often necessary to provide students with an

introduction to Islam, but a cursory overview may

actually reinforce their stereotypes. Participants

also noted that Politics modules related to Islam arepopular options within degree courses.

One challenge common to all these disciplines

is that students need to develop methodological

skills (qualitative research, research design, etc.)

and need to understand the history, diversity, and

institutions related to Muslim communities in the UK

and elsewhere.

Students are driven by contemporary social

issues, so discussion of Islam in context, related

to other aspects of society, works well. However, it

was also noted that lecturers often have to dispel

students myths about Islam or parts of the Muslim

world when teaching.

There was some discussion of the need for

further interdisciplinary work, and the need to

adjust university structures so that this type of

work can take place. There was also discussion of

the term Islamic Studies what does this entail in

relation to the social sciences?

Parallel session 5:

Business, Management and Finance

Chair: Mr Osama Khan (University of Surrey)

Islamic banking, nance and economics were

found to be the main focus of teaching in these

disciplinary areas, although one case study of

supply chain management in relation to Islamic

Studies was discussed. There was a general

interest in investigating further provision in

this area, and in other areas like management,

marketing, and human resources.

In general Islamic nance, banking and

management are being taught as an alternative to

models discussed in the core Business curriculum.

The aim is to expose students to the wide range

of ideas related to these topics, not to question

particular ideas or rulings. These topics may be

offered as modules in their own right or through

sub-modular provision.

It was pointed out that often lecturers are

the sole person working on Islamic nance

at their universities. This raises the need forfurther collaboration between people at different

universities. In addition, research work is taking

place in Business schools but also in other

departments, so there is a need for dissemination

of research across disciplines, and for the

development of learning and teaching materials

related to this research.


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Parallel session 6:

Law

Chair: Professor Shaheen Sirdar Ali (University of

Warwick)

Teaching Islamic Law is generally done from a

comparative perspective, with the idea of the

Western legal system as the benchmark against

which scholars compare elements of Islamic law.

Islamic legal methodology can cause dilemmas

as the diversity and complexity of the different

schools of legal thought (madhhabs) can be

confusing for students. There is great diversity

not only in the opinions of different schools but

also between Sunni and Shiite approaches, and

between classical and modern scholars. There are

challenges in explaining how the same sources can

be interpreted very differently.

In addition, legal terminology is often

challenging to understand. This is related to

questions of translation; the translation of

documents was generally agreed to be useful;

however, it must be borne in mind that there canbe different interpretations of the same word

that may not be reected in a translation. It was

agreed that certain terms and concepts carry

cultural baggage. Therefore the syllabus needs to

be practical and diverse in order to help students

understand the terminology.

There was also an interest in understanding the

application of Islamic law in contemporary society,

and looking at Islamic law scholarship in the UK

and beyond. There was some discussion of the

development of Islamic law in mainland Europe in

comparison to the UK. It was also suggested that

investigating how Islamic Law courses are being

taught in Muslim institutions both here and outside

the UK would be useful for the cross-fertilisation

of ideas.

Parallel workshops: cross-disciplinary issues

In the second set of workshops, participants attended

three parallel sessions to discuss cross-disciplinary

issues that may arise in teaching Islamic Studies.

Members of the Islamic Studies Network project team

introduced the network and the Higher Education

Academys previous work related to Islamic Studies.

Participants were given an overview of the networks

upcoming activity and how they could get involved2.

Participants were then asked to discuss a

selection of cross-disciplinary issues in small

groups. These topics included:

teaching introductory courses;

resource sharing and curriculum development,

including online resources;

student recruitment and employability;

teaching in relation to political issues and

current events;

collaboration (between disciplines or

institutions) in teaching;

diversity of Islamic Studies programmes andacademic expectations;

dialogue with Muslim communities and

institutions.

In the discussion groups a number of general

issues arose, as well as suggestions for future work

the network could help to facilitate. Some of the

main issues are presented below.

Dening Islamic Studies

The denition of Islamic Studies was discussed in

the workshops and over the course of the event. In

one workshop participants discussed whether the

Islamic Studies Network was engaging in the creation

or construction of Islamic Studies as a discipline,

and if the network was in danger of becoming a self-

selecting shaper of that discipline. There was some

concern at the possibly exclusionary implications

of this, and the potential for creating a core and

periphery of knowledge and practices.

2 See PowerPoint presentation available at:

www.heacademy.ac.uk/events/detail/2010/

academyevents/25-26_May_2010_Islamic_Studies_Network_Event.


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22 Perspectives

This point was raised in the nal summing-up

session of the conference as well, with participants

wondering exactly who was or should be included in

the denition of an Islamic Studies academic. It was

emphasised that the network was meant to be as

inclusive as possible, and that a special effort should

be made to draw in participants who are teaching

only a small amount of content related to Islam. This

could be done through training events and resources

specically for those who do not see themselves as

specialists in Islam, but who are involved in teaching

subjects related to Islam and Muslims.

Student backgrounds and expectations

Issues related to student backgrounds and

expectations, as well as employability issues, arose in

all three parallel sessions. There was discussion of the

varieties of student knowledge, and how introductory

courses might relate to this knowledge as well as to

different disciplinary frameworks. Although many

students come into Islamic Studies with an interest in

academia or teaching, there are other career paths aswell, including in Islamic nance, chaplaincy, and as

family law solicitors or expert witnesses.

Regarding student expectations, there was some

discussion of the dangers of student disappointment

with academic study. Institutions expect that

Islamic Studies be treated in the same way as any

other subject (in relation to quality assurance, etc.),

and students must take an academic approach.

It was suggested that this approach might cause

disappointment by bringing uncertainty to some

Muslim students understanding of Islam. However,

it was also suggested that this process was not

limited to the Islamic faith but might be confronted

by students of many faiths, and that researching and

learning new approaches was part of the experience

of higher education.

Interaction and dialogue with Muslim

communities and institutions

The issue of interaction and dialogue with Muslim

communities and institutions was raised in all three

parallel sessions, emphasising the importance of

future work in this area. Various models of interaction

were discussed. For example, universities may offer

evening and extension courses to local communities.

This can be a positive way to create dialogue,but participants had had differing experiences

related to this. Universities also have a role to play

in accreditation and validation of programmes

at Muslim institutions. It was agreed that an

investigation of practice and educational techniques

in faith-based institutions compared with universities

would be fruitful for both sides.

Participants also discussed what the place

of such institutions is in relation to the network.

Are such institutions properly able to be part

of the network? Are they potential partners or

stakeholders? To what extent is it the networks role

to build dialogue and encourage practice-sharing?

It was acknowledged that this dialogue can be

difcult for funding bodies to sponsor or carry out.

Resources and methods

There was discussion of resource sharing in all the

workshops, with participants mentioning current

projects that can be used and discussing the potential

for future resource sharing through the Islamic Studies

Network. HumBox, an open educational resources

project developed by the humanities subject centres,is one possibility for sharing teaching resources, e.g.

PowerPoint slides, lecture notes, handouts, lm clips,

etc. used in teaching. Users can also create proles

with teaching and research interests3.

Another project that has already developed

extensive teaching resources is the UKCLE Islamic

law curriculum project. Teaching manuals, a

bibliography and a glossary have been developed

and are available online4.

Concluding comment

The workshops generated a great deal of discussion,

some of which continued outside of the conference

rooms, and demonstrated that those working in

the elds associated with the study of Islam have

a dynamic and passionate interest in how their

subject is taught across a variety of institutions. It

is anticipated that the points presented above from

the sessions will inform wider debates on Islamic

Studies, as well as the future activities of the network.

3 HumBox: www.humbox.ac.uk

4 UKCLE, Developing an Islamic law curriculum:

Resources: www.ukcle.ac.ukresources/teaching-and-learning-strategies/islamiclaw.


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The following points highlight the aspirations of

workshop attendees in developing an Islamic

Studies Network that is relevant to diverse sectors

within higher education. They represent both subject

specic interests, and potentially high levels of

transferability between sectors of the network. It is

anticipated that the network and the subject centres

will integrate elements of these points within future

strategies, to develop a responsive and exible

approach to disciplinary and generic concerns.

Develop further dialogue and discussion with

practitioners teaching in non-publicly-funded

institutions, particularly Muslim institutions.

Engage with postgraduate students to discuss

issues specic to their ex

Documents

Perspectives Issue 1