Abdal Hakim Murad – Diploma Welcome Address
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Cambridge Muslim college training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers
Smilla Rahmanir Rahim salam ala ala Sayyidina Muhammad wa ala
alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam.
On behalf of the college and its trustees and staff, honored to be
able to welcome you all to this our ninth graduation, ceremony and
celebration. This morning, we're going to be reflecting on a years
of hard work and achievement on the discipline of our students.
And on the many, many events both academic and social and non
academic, which make life in our little institutions, so remarkably
rich and rewarding
than the first two news of our diploma. Today, we reach the
finishing point of the ninth cycle of the Diploma in textual Islamic
Studies and leadership. students this year number nine, in total,
seven males and five females, they hail from different parts of the
country and from a range of different data alarms, both from
the Deobandi and the Braille V traditions.
They now go out to join the proud ranks of CMC alumni who are now
catalyzing new growth in our communities as Imams, community
leaders, chaplains and as educators. It's wonderful, in
fact, to see how gifted our students can be, and how quickly
they establish themselves in key strategic positions in the
community, both as prayer leaders, but also as educators, able to
bridge the gap between the Muslim community and society at large.
Thanks to CMC, I think we can say Islam in Britain is not going to
be the same again.
Our students with a range of stellar outcomes deserve
appreciation for the impressive academic and personal progression.
They've shown with their dedication, that if last, their
hard work, how strong don't alone graduates can be.
Although our main intention really with the diploma is to upgrade the
skills of Imams chaplains and religious instructors, we also
find that CMC has served as a kind of academic bridge taking gifted
young Muslim scholars of religion, who have achieved their hips and
their ijazah in the traditional way, and then inserting them into
the very highest levels of the Western academic system, as well
as in Muslim community positions. Their achievement should, I think
help us to regard the direct Lauren sector and its culture with
renewed respect.
To give just two very recent examples of their high schools, we
learned recently that I alumna Sumaya, Boston has received full
funding for her PhD at the University of California at
Berkeley, while Nelson Rashid has passed his philosophy ma at
Heathrow with distinction. Both merit are warm congratulations,
but there have been many other success stories.
But the deployment is not all that our college is about. CMC
continues to focus on growing its profile as a center of excellence
in research. This is facilitated by our library holdings in English
and oriental languages. We've now opened our dedicated Arabic
library, where we are particularly proud of our holdings in Hadith.
We also continue our subscription to online academic resources such
as JSTOR, which make 1000s of academic journals available to our
students. We're learning how modern technologies can work
decisively in favor of smaller institutions which lack large
research budgets, and we hope to extend our students access to
online libraries in the coming years.
We've also enjoyed the company and intellectual stimulus provided by
our two full time research fellows. The purpose of these full
time fellowships wholly funded by the generosity of the Templeton
Foundation, is to allow leading Muslim scientists to spend time
acquainting themselves deeply with the Islamic theological issues and
traditions relevant to their areas of scientific inquiry. The program
includes time spent at our partner institution Sr. In Istanbul.
The first of this year's fellows Dr. ASAM Islam has been working on
the role of the human observer in quantum outcomes. Last September,
he convened a very remarkable conference. This the first CMC
conference dedicated to science and religion topic, brought
together some of the world's leading mathematicians and
cosmologists, both Muslim and non Muslim in a paradigm shifting
event.
Speakers included Tim Palmer, professor of physics and Oxford,
Adam Barrett research fellow in complexity science at the
University of Sussex, Coby criminate, sir Professor of
Mathematics at Oxford, alsof, federal senior neuroscientist at
the MIT
Local Research Council. I'm Zack neurosurgeon at University College
London and others.
Many of their papers may now be viewed in video recordings
accessible via the CMC website.
This year second fellow has been Dr. Jakob Choudry. Yeah, whoa,
hold up PhD in physics from Imperial College, where he worked
on the physics of plastic electronic materials and their
potential for use in lasers. at CMC has been exploring the
relationship between the latest developments in artificial
intelligence with Islamic concepts of mind, soul and cognition.
One of our non stipendiary fellows, Dr. Mohammad aside,
happily with us today, who also served CMC so well as our founding
principal, has published his book redrawing the Middle East, so mark
Sykes, imperialism and the Sykes picot agreement. We congratulate
him on this monumental achievement so timely in the light of current
questions about the political boundaries of Iraq and Syria.
We're very proud to welcome him to this ceremony and we can tell you
that we can offer information and flyers about his book on the table
outside the book being on sale at a discounted price.
CMC research associate Dr. Nam era and Appaloosa has completed her
remarkable book on theology, power and Sunni Islam, published by IV
tourists.
We congratulate our former Research Fellow Dr. Harris been
rumbly on his appointment to a lectureship at Edgehill University
in Birmingham.
Dr. Abraham Harvey, who contributes lectures for to our BA
program and is also former research fellow has published his
book the Quran and the Justice Society with Edinburgh University
Press.
Our chair of trustees Professor Leila Demitri, has completed her
volume entitled The Future of interfaith dialogue to be
published next month by Cambridge University Press.
We've been honored to host this year to visiting scholars
Professor Ingrid Mattson who is professor of Islamic Studies at
Huron University in Canada, and Schaffer Yahya Rhodus, director of
the L mocassin. Institute in Allentown, Pennsylvania. We're
grateful to them for their great Juric generosity in giving many
lectures and programs for our students, for our online programs
and for the wider community during that stay with us here in
Cambridge.
A range of other visitors passed by the CMC during the year
including a delegation from the Mufti of Singapore, the Mufti of
the Russian Federation, and cultural delegates from the
Republic of Turkey, the Republic of Uzbekistan and the United Arab
Emirates. We were also honored to host Mufti antipasto we have never
to follow Matt Schiff Utterback trickle of Dr. Mohamed Gomez Habib
Alia, Jeffery chick Salema entourage and several other senior
Allah that
were able to congratulate two of our lectures now Jeff nerdy and
Sohail Hanif for successfully defending their D field
dissertations at the University of Oxford.
On December the 19th, to the 20th, we co convened along with the
tabah Foundation of Abu Dhabi, an international conference on
universal science aligned Melco Li and the order of knowledge with
papers delivered in English, Turkish and Arabic. This was a
major and ambitious event. Speakers included Professor yaki
and Michelle, Dr. Talal al Azzam, Dr. Ouma cercare Dr. Soumya
paladar Dr. Omar Qureshi and Dr. Karim la ham with a closing
address given by Dr. Rowan Williams.
From the seventh to the ninth of March, we also convened convened a
hugely successful international conference entitled theological
anthropology in inter religious perspective. This was held at the
Protestant Faculty of Theology at the University of Tuebingen, which
co convened the conference along with our friends at the St.
Andrews theological Institute in Moscow, which we were able to
visit two years ago. Papers were given by leading scholars
including Professor Egyptian Turk Professor Dan Madigan, and
Professor Sadie O'Shea. The organizers are grateful to the
Fritz Thyssen Stiftung for funding. Following the conferences
success, we've decided to hold another in March next year here in
Cambridge under the theme of nature.
Dr. Rashid Skinner has led another of his very popular one week
residential courses on Islam and Psychology here at the college for
a group of fee paying professionals in the field. The
feedback received from the course participants, whilst as always
encouraging the positive. We're currently working towards a
partnership with him and Abdullah Rothman in developing a course on
Islam and psychology to be offered in a variety of key locations
around the world. We hope to be able to announce an agreement
shortly.
From the 12th to the 17th of July, around 90 students gathered at our
partner institution that Alexandria foundation in Granada
province in Spain for our joint annual al Ghazali. Retreat. The
top
Nick this year was prayer. Students came from as far afield
as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and even a group from Australia
in order to develop further short programs, and also to coordinate
our ambitious plans for a set of online learning modules to bring
the CMCS expertise to the wider Ummah, Dr. Zainab kabbah has been
hard at work editing and releasing our first pay per view classes,
together with a range of free lectures filmed on various
occasions. Over our academic year, we congratulate her on her Oxford
de fille in her chosen specialization of Islamic online
learning platforms.
And other significant development in the past year has been the
formal launch of our innovative BA program in Islamic studies. This
represents perhaps our most ambitious project yet, we've
received validation from the Open University which is a major high
education provider of considerable prestige, with a particular
commitment to widening participation in higher education.
The association brings great distinction to the college and we
do not regret the long months of work and the mountains of
documentation which needed to be brought into being during the
application and accreditation process. The first students have
now completed the first year of study, having been nourished on a
very intensive enriched diet of filth, Kalam Tafseer Hadith and
Quranic studies, as well as the contemporary intellectual
disciplines necessary to make Islam a credible and triumphant
reality in today's intellectual battlefield.
It has been pleasing to note that so many of our students performed
exceptionally well. And examiner's from major universities have
hinted that our students are producing some of the best work
they have ever seen
these early days, but the BA is clearly already a resounding
success, making CMC, a leading center of Islamic studies in the
United Kingdom.
The BA program has also benefited from our academic partnership with
Ibrahim College in London. We are grateful to our donors, and in
particular the disease foundation in London, and the nationals are
kept Foundation for their generosity and supporting our PA
students and lecturers. All in all, it's clear that this has been
the finest year yet in the story of our institution. The diploma,
the BA and our ongoing research output represent academic work at
the very highest international level. Thanks to divine
providence, we've taken yet another important step in the path
defined by the college's motto, faith in scholarship.
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers