Abdal Hakim Murad – Diploma Welcome Address

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