BA Programme Validated
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Unity Newsletter of the Cambridge Muslim College A partner institution of The Open University iSSUE Six – mUharram 1439 / octobEr 2017 excellence, and has twice appeared in first place in student satisfaction surveys of UK universities. CMC is proud to be offering its graduates a degree which carries considerable national and international prestige, and which will significantly enhance their employability. A key prerequisite for admission to the BA programme is a good command of Classical Arabic. For most of our students we have arranged a course with the Qasid Institute in Amman, Jordan. Students who pass a stringent language examination set by Qasid may be exempted from the requirement to study in Jordan and may be offered a direct entry place on the programme. The course covers classical texts of tafsīr, ĥadīth, fiqh, logic, history, Arabic, and doctrine. Key modules from CMC’s Diploma programme are also integrated within the BA curriculum, meaning that students receive a good training in the history of Western thought, theology, religious dialogue, the encounter of faith and science, and the history and special features of British Islam. A minimum of one juz’ a year is our ĥifż requirement. The degree is unlike traditional Islamic Studies courses taught at UK universities given its focus on core religious subjects. However a full exposure to contemporary critical scholarly methods is ensured, making our approach up-to-date as well as authentic. Learning resources include our own in-house BA Programme Arabic library and an intranet library of the primary sources relevant to each course module. CMC’s ambition is that this will become one of Validated the most comprehensive and academically rigorous wE arE proUd to announce that our Four-Year Islamic Studies programmes available, equipping Programme, now to be known as our BA (Hons) in students with real erudition in the disciplines Islamic Studies, has been fully validated by The Open cultivated in traditional seminaries, while allowing University. Our programme graduates will thus receive them to understand and apply contemporary a BA Honours degree validated by a major UK higher methodologies and to see the Islamic sciences in their education provider. historical perspective. The Open University is an ideal partner institution Following a demanding selection and interview for CMC. Not only is it passionately committed to process we are delighted to have been able to recruit broadening access to higher education, it maintains a thirteen undergraduates of both genders to form a consistently high standard of research and teaching strong first cohort of students. cambridgE mUSlim collEgE, 14 St. paUl’S road, cambridg1 E cb1 2Ez www.cambridgEmUSlimcollEgE.org New Lecturers Appointed thE yEar 2017 (1438/9) represents a watershed in CMC’s history, as teaching for the BA degree gets fully underway. The number of students on our campus has doubled, with a wider range of backgrounds and life experiences enriching student life and our conversations at the dinner table. The number of our teaching officers has also experienced a quantum leap. We have announced several key appointments. Dr Abdal Hakim Murad is our Aziz Foundation Professor of Islamic Studies, with teaching responsibilities shared between CMC and London’s Ebrahim College. Murad’s most recent research has appeared in Louvain Studies (2017) and The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (2017). Sohail Hanif, Lecturer in Islamic Studies Sohail works on Islamic legal theory, with a focus on the Central Asian Ĥanafī tradition. He received a Master’s degree in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford. His recently- submitted DPhil thesis studies the interplay of rationality and tradition in a major work of legal commentary. Sohail spent an extensive period in Jordan where he studied traditional Islamic disciplines with local scholars. He worked as the head Arabic instructor at Qasid Arabic institute in Amman, and also as instructor in Islamic studies at Qibla online academy. He has taught undergraduate classes in Modern Islam and Qur’anic exegesis at the University of Oxford. He has also served as Head of Research and Development at the National Zakat Foundation. Najah Nadi, Aziz Foundation Lecturer in Islamic Studies Najah is an Azhari scholar from Egypt currently concluding her DPhil at the University of Oxford’s Oriental Institute. She is working on the legal and theological hermeneutics of Saʿd al-Dīn al-Taftāzānī (d. 792/1390). Najah specialises in classical Islamic law (fiqh), jurisprudence (uśūl al-fiqh), and classical theology (kalām), and has also worked on aspects of the contemporary application of these fields (for instance infatw ās and fatwā councils, and the area of professional ethics). She attended al-Azhar’s formal schools, graduating with a BA in Islamic studies, as well as al-Azhar Mosque’s classical reading circles, receiving traditional ijāza licenses in several Islamic sciences. She also received an MA in Religious and Theological Studies from Boston University as a Fulbright grantee. She has also been a junior fellow of the Holberg Seminar on Islamic history at Princeton. Throughout this academic and traditional training, Najah has had the opportunity to work for and contribute to several research projects and religious institutions. Najah’s lectureship is generously sponsored by the Aziz Foundation. Yasser Qureshy, Lecturer in Islamic Studies Yasser has studied in traditional seminaries in Syria and Turkey, mastering the long-established curriculum of Islamic sciences cultivated in those regions. During his stay he graduated first in the Arabic and Islamic Studies programme of the Abū Nūr Academy in Damascus. He also stud- ied privately with several well-known scholars. On his return to the UK he took an MA in Medieval Arabic Thought, and he is currently read- ing for his PhD in Islamic philosophical theology at the University of Cambridge with Dr Tim Winter. His teaching experience was gained during an inaugural fellowship at ISAR, Istanbul, and a stint as Faculty Lecturer in Islamic Theology at the University of Istanbul. He has supervised undergraduates for the Faculties of Philosophy and Divinity at the University of Cambridge. As well as teaching and supervising CMC students these scholars will be pursuing their research interests, strengthening CMC’s profile as a major international hub for academic excel- lence in Islamic Studies. Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra New Operations Director New Office Staff We have also appointed our first Cambridge Muslim College is delighted to In September 2017 we welcomed part-time Chaplain to head our welcome Graham McCulloch OBE as its new our newest team member, Student Welfare Team. This is Operations Director. Henrietta Egerton, to support Shaykh Ibrahim who graduated Graham comes to us from a 25-year career our office administration and to from Darul Ulum Bury and al- with the British Council, working in six coun- assist with fundraising and public Azhar before working in imam tries in the Middle East and North Africa, first outreach for the College, a role positions in Leicester. He has as Manager of the English language teaching likely to increase in importance served as Assistant Secretary- centres, then as Country Director. His last as CMC’s global profile grows. General of the Muslim Council post was Global Head of Teaching based at the of Britain. In 2016 he received British Council’s headquarters in London. In the Hubert Walter Award for his early career Graham qualified as a teacher Reconciliation and Interfaith of English with a teaching diploma and MA, Cooperation. and taught both in the UK and overseas for International House, Bell Education Trust, and Eurocentres. Graham is also the current Chair- man of the British Moroccan Society. Spain Programme Resumes From July 11-17 our annual Al-Ghazālī Retreat was held with our sister institution Azzagra Foundation at Alqueria de Rosales, Granada. Lectures were given on al-Ghazālī’s Book of Intention by Abdal Hakim Murad, while Dr Samer Dajani gave lectures on Love and Certainty. Students came from around the world, particularly England, South Africa, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Australia and the Netherlands. 3 2017 Donor Retreat thiS yEar’S donor rEtrEat, entitled ‘Contemplating the Divine’, was held from 31 March to 2 April at Selwyn College. Speakers included Najah Nadi, Roger Mosey, Juan Acevedo, Asim Islam, Micah Anderson and Sohail Hanif. Abdal Hakim Murad’s lecture ‘Medical Benefits of the Sunna’ was livestreamed and was watched by over five hundred viewers on Facebook Live. The final day included practical workshops: calligraphy with Soraya Syed, geometry with Adam Williamson and Mukhtar Sanders, and woodwork with Abdelkarim Mats Cederberg. tima on SitE Following thE cloSUrE of its office and showroom opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Islamic Manuscripts Association (TIMA) has moved to offices on the CMC campus. We are delighted to have such scholarly and distinguished tenants! We look forward to closer cooperation with TIMA and to benefiting from their unrivalled knowledge of Islamic manuscripts, their codicology and conservation programmes, and their worldwide Mufti Taqi’s Endorsement network of partner institutions and projects. TIMA’s partner institution the Thesaurus “My positive impressions during my visit to the Islamicus Foundation has very kindly donated to ‘Cambridge Muslim College’ were reinforced when us five complete sets of its critically-edited hadith I had an opportunity of going through a portion of compilations, including its edition of the Musnad its pertinent and very relevant curriculum. of Imām Aĥmad ibn Ĥanbal. Other gifts to our “It is encouraging to learn that the College is library include the Thesaurus’s exquisite edition trying to equip its learners with necessary academic of the Thirtieth Thirty of the Holy Qur’an, with and historical background to be effective and Pickthall’s English translation in the margins printed valuable Muslims of the diverse British society. in a beautiful Celtic font.