Studying Islamic Education at the School of Education of the University of Birmingham

There are approximately 2 million Muslims living in the UK. and, according to the latest statistics, there are around 450,000 Muslim children in the schools of England and Wales. During the formal schooling years, alongside children from different religious backgrounds, Muslim children receive Religious Education which is taught on the basis of a locally agreed syllabus. There are about 150 of these agreed syllabuses, and they all include the study of Islam.

These syllabuses are required study by all children, whether Muslim or not. Birmingham, England's second biggest city, is a multi-cultural and multi-religious city and home for a very large Muslim community. There are thousands of Muslim children at all levels of schooling. This fact makes the study of Islamic Education in Birmingham both an exciting and a challenging experience.

As a way of responding to the educational needs of these Muslim children, the School of Education, through its well-known Religious Education research group, provides opportunities for conducting quality research in different areas of Islamic Education. This research covers the theoretical aspects of Islamic Education, such as the philosophy and the historical development of Islamic Education; and the conception of human development in the essential Islamic sources in addition to more empirical research topics. These include examining the present situation of Islamic Education in the Muslim world, and in the Western countries where Muslims are a minority; issues concerning curriculum development, teaching methods, and materials in Islamic Education, presentation of Islam in the multi-faith R.E syllabuses and studying the needs of Muslim children by exploring their life context.

My own research investigates the question of what it means to be young Muslim in a Multicultural society -a situation which is, through globalisation, becoming the reality for Muslims around the globe-, by exploring the attitudes and identity development of young Muslims who are in the final two years of their schooling in Birmingham. The research also investigates the possibility of inter generational differences in terms of religious orientation and the degree of personal construction of faith among Muslim youngsters. The study aims to incorporate empirical findings concerning the Muslim students' life-world into the theory and practice of traditional Islamic Education.

The University of Birmingham is well known for the study of Islam and this is carried on in the nearby Department of Theology, which now includes the academic specialists working in the former Centre for the Study of Islam, and also the former Westhill College, now also incorporated within the University. Undergraduates may study Islam in Westhill as they prepare for school teaching, and many aspects of Islamic history, culture and law, as well as studies of the Qur'an and the Hadith are pursued by staff in the enlarged Theology Department. These facilities, together with the world famous collection of early Muslim manuscripts in the Orchard Learning Centre are available to students in the School of Education who are studying and researching into Islamic Education. Many of the educational researches are supervised by a panel consisting of one Muslim specialist and one specialist in the social sciences.

In addition, in the city of Leicester, about an hour's journey away, there is the Islamic Foundation a well-known Muslim organisation specialising in research on Islamic Economics and on other aspects of Muslim culture and the headquarters of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe, which together provide further resources for Islamic education and information concerning the new developments taking place among Muslim communities settled in Britain and Western Europe.

The University has an active Islamic Society, with a membership of several hundreds, who meet for prayer every Friday on the campus. The Society at the beginning of every academic year organises special sessions for new students attending various courses at the University in order to help them to become familiar with the Campus and with the local Muslim community in the city. It also arranges talks by inviting leading Muslim thinkers around the world to the University, conducts special classes for Muslim students who want to learn Arabic and increase their knowledge and understanding of Islam. The Islamic Society has a Women's section which deals specially with the needs of female Muslim students on the campus. The Society brings together the many Muslims who are studying everything from English to Engineering, from surgery to sociology in the University of Birmingham.

The whole orientation of research into Islamic Education at the School of Education is to nurture the educational understanding of Islam. This makes it clear that use of the range of social science research methodology employed in modern Educational research is encouraged. However, such a creative dialogue between Islamic sciences and modern social science entails specific theoretical problems which require special attention. Hence the wider issues, such as the interplay between Islam, modernity, and post-modernity, is given space to be problematised in separate research projects. In this context some perspectives which have been developed by contemporary Muslim theologians and philosophers to reconstruct Islamic thought, in projects like "Islamisation of Knowledge", "Islamic modernity" for example, are also being thoroughly discussed in the course of exploring the dynamics of Islamic Educational thought.

In conclusion, we firmly believe that the use of a multi-disciplinary research methodology constitutes a fundamental aspect of research-based Islamic Education which, in turn, will help to guarantee an academically respected Islamic education. It is this combination of a professional commitment and a scholarly atmosphere that makes the study of Islamic Education in the School of Education, at the University of Birmingham, a stimulating experience.

Abdullah Sahin
Islamic Centre of England http://www.ic-el.org/
email: a.sahin@bham.ac.uk