Sharing the Year Ahead

31 December 2023 /18 Jumada Al Akhira, 1445

Dear friends and supporters,

As-salamu ’alaykum, I send you seasonal wishes of health and happiness.

I am only in my third month as Chief Executive, but I wanted to thank you sincerely for your wonderful support to the College throughout 2023.

With your support, we were able to reinstate our highly respected flagship Diploma in Contextual Islamic Studies and Leadership, acquire a much-needed new building within our campus, and graduate our second Bachelor of Arts (Hons) cohort.

I also wanted to reach out to explain with the fullest optimism what we are hoping to do in 2024 insha’Allah.

After a period of rapid and substantial growth in recent years — with the College doubling in the number of staff and students and with the expansion of our physical campus ― we see 2024 as a year of long-overdue review, refinement and even restructure in order to create a stronger foundation for further growth.

We will be modifying our organisational structure to strengthen its ability to deliver new programmes and improve aspects of our existing offerings. With this in mind, we will be hiring a Registrar and brigading all administrative staff and functions under her or him as a Registry to help us with multi-year planning, inter-departmental coordination, quality assurance, and continuous improvement. The Registrar will lead the coordination and supervision of the full student lifecycle from enquiries, applications and enrolment, through to academic record management and awarding of degrees and diplomas, and ― because our students matter so much to us ― leading on services that continue to improve student experience and success.

Freeing the academic department from its current administrative responsibilities will allow that department to focus on enriching the academic content and growing what I see as two areas of enormous but hitherto-undeveloped potential: Continuing Education, and Research.

Having witnessed and personally experienced the transformation power of through-life education, I have asked our Academic Director to create new courses of interest and relevance to the wider Islamic community, and to make them available to the public in the most accessible way (including in-person, hybrid and online offerings), and to greatly expand our research output. I want us to become a deservedly known centre of excellence in research, with a far stronger output of cutting-edge and influential scholarship.

While we have made pleasing progress, alhamdulillah, including the publication of the first book under the imprint of the CMC Press, I want the College to be at the centre of a dramatic reinvigoration of Islamic thought throughout Britain and beyond, with research that not only supports the career aspirations of the College’s excellent researchers but is also relevant and nationally impactful. The creation and sharing of knowledge can have the profoundly positive function of making societies better. I therefore want the College to produce and publish significantly more research, and for it to be aimed at both presenting knowledge and wisdom from the Islamic tradition and exploring, analyzing and addressing the current and potential challenges (and their historical origins) that Muslims face in today’s complex world.

In closing, it’s been a fantastic year. We thank you from our hearts for all for your support and we look forward to sharing with you more details of what we have in store for 2024 and beyond!

Professor Joel Hayward
Chief Executive