As for this content, please refer to my Japanese blog's‘comment’dated 18 April 2008（http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily/20080418）.（Lily）
The Guardian(http://www.guardian.co.uk)
(1) Concerns over funding of Islamic studies, 17 April 2008
A closed meeting called by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) about Islamic studies will take place today amid fears that Saudi and Muslim organisations exert too much influence over UK universities as a result of donations that dwarf government funding.
Private donations, mostly to Islamic study centres, are much greater than government funding for Islamic studies and academics are said to be nervous of the threat to their academic freedom.
The conference will discuss how to improve Islamic studies in UK universities after the government earmarked £1m in funding following the publication of Dr Ataullah Siddiqui's report last June.
Ministers labelled Islamic studies a "strategic subject" and said the "effective and accurate teaching" of it in universities could help community cohesion and counter extremism.
It is expected that the conference will hear calls for more Islamic study centres to be opened at or allied to British universities.
In 2006, Hefce and the Scottish funding council and the research councils for the arts and humanities and economic and social research earmarked £4.5m annually to support area studies and related languages.
This included setting up the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arabic World - a collaboration between the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Durham.
Dr Denis MacEoin, Islam expert at Newcastle University, said academics were nervous about handling topics that might upset their sponsors.
"It's part of an overall belief that only Muslims can teach Islam, which in an academic context is entirely wrong. It would soon remove the possibility for genuine academic debate."
He said increasing numbers of students with Salafist - a more traditional form of Islam - backgrounds were taking Islamic studies and could be upset by "proper academic critical debate".
"It does threaten academic freedom and critical thinking," he warned.
But Dr Colin Turner, lecturer in Islamic studies and Persian at Durham University said there was no evidence that the subject was a "puppet in the hands of the extremists".
"There are certain departments in which, owing to the dynamics of their funding, one can find lecturers who avoid criticism of their (Arab) benefactors, but this is an exception rather than a rule; furthermore, if criticism is avoided, it is criticism of political rather than religious stances which is avoided," he said.
"It is usually anti-Wahhabi voices that dominate; the notion that Saudi money is turning Islamic Studies centres in the UK into hotbeds of Wahhabi extremism is completely unfounded," he said.
Prof Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, claims that eight universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have accepted more than £233.5m from Saudi and Muslim sources since 1995, with much of the money going to Islamic study centres.
Glees' report, which is to be published by the Centre for Social Cohesion, part of rightwing thinktank Civitas, says this is 200 times the amount the government is putting into Islamic studies and will allow one-sided views of Islam and the Middle East, and anti-democratic propaganda to prosper.
Glees wants all university donations to be made public. He said any money coming into higher education from Islamic organisations should not be used for Islamic studies because of the "clear conflict of interest".
He alleges the government's plan to counter extremism would in fact create a Muslim apartheid in the UK, with Muslims being taught to think of themselves as Muslim first, British second.
There are around 90,000 Muslim students in the UK, of which 700 take Islamic studies. Siddiqui, director of Leicester's Markfield Institute of Higher Education, would like to see "add on" modules in Islamic studies available to all students.
"It would create a completely different culture for British Muslim students who should be encouraged to see themselves as British and blind to ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Universities should be the place in which nationhood is taught," Glees said.
"This is not in the interests of our national security. The government really does need to think again," he said.
Siddiqui said: "I have no relations with any ideological or political organisations. We're running here QAA courses accredited by the local university, Loughborough. The programmes that we run, like chaplaincy, are run with the church jointly. We have teaching and administrative staff who are not Muslim."
He said add-on modules in Islamic studies should be open to any one who wanted to take them.
"Any Islamic studies programme in Britain must be contextualised," he said, "and must include other world views including those of other faiths and no faiths. You can't exclude Islamic studies out of the human experience so it's unthinkable to have a parallel universe of Muslim study and non-Muslim study."
A spokesman for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills said: "Institutions have the primary responsibility for determining and maintaining the standards of the awards they deliver and the quality of the education they provide."
(2) Website proposed to improve Islamic studies、21 April 2008
The Higher Education Funding Council for England is considering creating a virtual centre of excellence that would network academics, faith and community Islam groups to boost Islamic studies in the UK.
The moves were discussed at a closed conference on improving Islamic studies in universities held last week, after the government earmarked £1m to improve the subject following last June's Siddiqui report.
The website would act as a national resource, listing who is teaching Islamic studies and where, give details of conferences and act as a link between academic and non-academic organisations.
Delegates also discussed the possibility of creating template "add-on" modules in Islamic studies that anyone could take. These could be taken and adapted to local circumstances.
Robert Gleave, professor of Arabic Studies at Exeter University and executive director of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, said: "It's impossible to achieve without an enormous amount of work. I'm not convinced it's a very good idea. It will not necessarily move forward the education."
He said there was a tendency to mix up widening participation issues with academic issues concerning the quality and nature of provision of Islamic studies.
"It's quite clear government had a fanciful notion that Islamic studies could be used as part of de-radicalisation or counter terrorism and it's gradually being dissuaded of that idea. It's not part of the raison d'etre of Islamic studies and compromises the academic integrity of the subject.
"There may be a good reason to bring together all the various resources online available but to make that the end product of the exercise is rather limiting and will not necessarily improve the subject area nationally," he said.
Academic delegates said the conference's agenda was clearly not just the study of Islam but the study of Islamic communities in Britain, moves that were criticised by traditional academics but embraced by newer universities.
"That's probably a reflection of the fact that we're not that badly funded and don't really need £1m - that's not going to go very far - but other areas such as diaspora studies or anthropology would welcome this kind of initiative," said Dr Elisabeth Kendall, director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World at Edinburgh University.
"This government initiative is about seeking to bind together the Arab- and Muslim-funded organisations, which are non-academic and we expect to follow a religious agenda, together with academically neutral objective Islamic studies organisations funded by the UK government...to group together academics and community and faith based centres.
"It's not going to be an academic initiative, it's going to be a networking one."
She said the additional modules in Islamic studies could be in the national interest and would not impact other neutral and scholarly work undertaken by academics.
John Selby, director of education and participation at Hefce, said: "We're still floating a range of ideas about what we are going to do and we've only just received the report about what's going on in other countries.
"We're going to be doing more talking to people before we come to any decisions and will not decide anything before September."
Officials will report to the Hefce board in July on work done so far before making more concrete proposals in September.
Selby said the £1m would allow Hefce to do some pilot work on Islamic studies but more money would be needed to set up the virtual centre.
"To develop something like a centre of excellence, particularly if it's to be collaborative and across Europe it would cost more money and we'll have to talk to government about that."
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