Islamic Studies in European Higher Education: Navigating Academic and Confessional Approaches

Across Europe there are numerous examples of recent linkages between universities and Islamic seminaries. In Germany the federal ’top-down’ experiment, now over ten years old, of establishing departments of Islamic theology in five universities has now recruited over 2000 students, many of whom will end up teaching confessional Islam RE in schools. In the UK, local partnerships have been developed at under- and postgraduate level between e.g. Warwick, Birmingham and Middlesex universities and Islamic seminaries representing a range of Islamic traditions. Similar experiences are being developed on a smaller scale in other countries. These developments, which have taken place against a backdrop of state pressure to ’integrate’ Islam and address ’radicalisation’, challenge university traditions of ’scientific’ approaches to the study of Islam as well as the confessional expectations of faith-based Islamic theological training. By looking more closely at the developing experience in Germany and Britain and selected other countries this volume explores how the two approaches are finding ways of creative cooperation.