Muslim Education and Interfaith Understanding: The Case of the Muslim College in the United Kingdom

DOI

10.2991/icems-17.2018.57How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Interfaith relations, higher education, British Muslims, Islamic Studies, Islamic seminaries.

Abstract

In a multicultural society, Islamic education that is conscious of the need for creating social harmony across faiths and denominations has more to offer than confessional education in Islamic seminaries and secular universities’ critically approached by Islamic studies. Muslim higher educations in the United Kingdom have clearly reflected their awareness of the importance of interfaith and intrafaith understanding in many aspects, and thereby increase their capability to enhance the career prospects of their students while giving them a sense of piety and criticality at the same time. This research challenges some assumptions that Muslim education in a secular country is more driven by Muslims’ responses to the secular, modern world; and that Muslim education in a non-Muslim majority country is shaped more by majority-minority dynamics; and that Muslim education in the West is oriented more toward missionary objectives. On the other hand, this research strengthens the notion that Muslim education in the modern world is guided more by the need to establish relevance in education. This study, which combines both library and field research methods, finds that higher education institutions run by Muslims in the United Kingdom have consciously offered their students with curriculum, resources, and educational environment that are friendly to diversity of faiths and diversity within Islam in an attempt to make their skills and knowledge relevant to multicultural British society.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Suwito Suwito
AU  - Yusuf Rahman
AU  - Izza Rohman
PY  - 2017/10
DA  - 2017/10
TI  - Muslim Education and Interfaith Understanding: The Case of the Muslim College in the United Kingdom
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Education in Muslim Society (ICEMS 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 304
EP  - 309
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icems-17.2018.57
DO  - 10.2991/icems-17.2018.57
ID  - Suwito2017/10
ER  -