Dundee’s Al-Maktoum Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies is sponsoring and hosting a three-day international forum starting today (Thursday, May 31.)
A total of 34 delegates from the Institute’s sixteen partner universities in Arab countries, South-East Asia, Europe and Scotland will be in the city for the first academic student network forum of its kind.
Forum delegates, both male and female, will discuss disseminating the New Agenda for the Study of Islam and Muslims, as set out in the Dundee Declaration and developed by the Institute and the Abu Dhabi Declaration for Cultural Engagement that agreed on the need to establish this new agenda in cultural engagement in the Muslim world.
Professor Abd al-Fattah El-Awaisi, Principal and Vice Chancellor of Al-Maktoum Institute, a centre of excellence to promote multiculturalism and cultural engagement to help combat world extremism, said that this was an important Forum as it brought together the “next generation of scholars and leaders” from a number of western and Muslim countries. “I have been saying for a long time that education is the way to defeat extremism and fundamentalism,” said the Professor, a leading advocate of multiculturalism as the only way to beat extremism. “One of my central aims has been to promote a greater understanding of different religions and cultures in a multicultural context, for the benefit of the wider community and to build bridges between the Muslim and Western worlds of learning at this crucial time.”
He repeated his call for the new UK Government to set up an immediate inquiry into the future of Islamic Studies at the UK higher educational institutions. “There is an urgent need for a complete re-examination of what is being taught about Islam and Muslims throughout the UK and a review of the relevance of the courses offered by these institutions,” said the Professor. “We called for a Commission to be established and when you hear Gordon Brown echoing our call for the need to win hearts and minds through education then clearly the time is right for Government action on this matter. I hope our Forum will help to persuade the politicians, in both the Muslim and Western countries, that it is time to act.”
Delegates from Jordan, Egypt, Malaysia, Liechtenstein and Scotland will attend and the main points for discussion and implementation for the Forum will be:
• The New Agenda for the Study of Islam and Muslims (as developed from the Dundee Declaration)
• The New Field of Inquiry of Islamicjerusalem Studies
• Abu Dhabi Declaration for Cultural Engagement
• A Major Research Report on “Time for Change: Report on the Future of the Study of Islam and Muslims in Universities and Colleges in Multicultural Britain”.
The Institute, an internationally-recognised centre of excellence for cultural engagement currently celebrating its 5th anniversary, is paying for flights and accommodation for the students, who will be accompanied by an academic member of staff from their university.
