BA: First year report
By Dr Sohail Hanif, BA Programme Manager

The BA has got off to an impressive start. The cohort is diverse, comprising mature students with backgrounds in medicine, linguistics, social services and history, and those studying for their first degree. They have successfully completed a very intense first year, in which Islamic Studies modules in Arabic, Qur’anic and hadith studies, Islamic theology, fiqh, logic and dialectics, and Islamic history were complemented by a schooling in world history, world religions, social sciences, and western philosophy. Students have gained a strong foundation in each of these subject areas and have seen how these fields offer them tools to think through the many challenges which face those who intelligently live their faith in the modern world. We are pleased to announce that all our BA students passed their first year with firsts and upper seconds. External examiners remarked that the quality of their work is comparable –and in some cases superior – to that produced by their own undergraduates at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Kings College, London. Even more fulfilling has been the sight of students starting to synthesise this broad curriculum as they think through the questions raised by each subject, a feature noted by The Open University’s External Examiner in his review of their essays and exam scripts.

So: a very encouraging start! We have realised our scholars’ intentions and dreams to design a programme that does not mimic the already existing Islamic Studies programmes, but rather fills a gap in the educational landscape. Not only is the incorporation of contextual subjects with traditional Islamic subjects in the manner undertaken on our programme unusual and innovative, but so is the way in which traditional Islamic subjects are presented. Students do not just study classical texts that have been taught for centuries in Muslim centres of learning, but also examine the intellectual and social environments that underlie these texts, and how these texts can be situated in the larger history of the development of ideas, scholarship and institutions in the Muslim world.

Our ambitious approach to the study of these time-honoured traditions is guided by our Dean and Aziz Foundation Professor, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, and facilitated by our lecturers, who combine extensive traditional tutelage under leading scholars in Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Jordan with advanced research training from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. External lecturers who contribute to the programme are picked from leading English universities and introduce students to the latest currents and discussions in their respective fields. We look forward to a further two years with these students. Our welfare team will be working with them this year to explore possible next steps after the programme, allowing students to explore opportunities in academia, community leadership and the other vital fields in which we hope these young men and women will excel.