Bound by Islam:This week's conference for Muslim universities may have implications

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/worldwide/story/0,9959,1419428,00.html
Bound by Islam
This week's conference for Muslim universities may have implications
for the west too, reports Donald MacLeod
Donald MacLeod
Tuesday February 22, 2005
Guardian
A gathering of influential Muslims from around the world in London
this week might be expected to attract media attention during an
increasingly xenophobic election campaign. But as they are academics
coming to debate the role of universities in developing countries,
they are probably safe from tabloid intrusion.
The conference organisers hope it will be an important step to
mobilising moderate Muslim opinion. It will aim to promote prosperity
in poor countries and be a place where the successes and failures of
countries as diverse as Iran, Afghanistan and Malaysia can be
rationally debated.
The Aga Khan University in the UK, which has organised the conference,
can point to the success of its Karachi campus not only in helping to
train a new generation of doctors in Pakistan, but in changing
attitudes.
When the university opened its medical college and school of nursing
in 1983, families were wary of allowing their daughters to train as
nurses. After 20 years, the competition for places, even from
conservative communities, is intense, says Abdou Filali-Ansary,
director of the university's London-based Institute for the Study of
Muslim Civilisations.
In the medical school, half the students and 44% of the teaching staff
are women. The only downside, says Filali-Ansary, is that so many
trained nurses quit Pakistan for the US where their skills command
high salaries.
The university is one of the development initiatives of the Aga Khan,
the billionaire spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims, who are
scattered through some 25 countries, mainly in west and central Asia,
Africa and the Middle East.
In 2000, he established the University of Central Asia, with campuses
in Kazakhstan,Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, which specialises in
development in mountain regions, but with a degree programme "rooted
in the liberal arts and sciences".
This week's conference includes sessions on university governance and
reforms in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco, and one on Iran,
chaired by the former Iranian minister of culture, Seyyed Ataollah
Mohajerani.
There will also be several sessions on women in higher education, as
well as on teaching and research, and international partnerships. One
paper from Professor Elizabeth Hermann, of the Rhode Island School of
Design in the US, will discuss the new Asian University for Women
being established in Chittagong, Bangladesh. If a single-sex
institution is needed in that context to boost female enrolment in
higher education (only 24% in Bangladesh), how does it fulfil its
mission to have women assuming leadership roles in society?
Other papers to be presented range from discussion of civic engagement
among young people in Turkey to whether the United Arab Emirates
should continue to rely on British and American models for their
burgeoning higher education system; from the teaching of English in
Afghanistan as a means to stimulate development to the more nitty
gritty academic issues of quality assurance in Arab countries.
Some of the language threatens to be abstruse, some very much to the
point. Bennacer el-Bouazzati, of Mohamed V University, Rabat, says
that university reforms in Morocco always come late and are imposed by
administrative decisions. "It can be said without exaggeration that
our university continues to operate in an unhealthy atmosphere," says
the abstract of his paper.
Filali-Ansary stresses Muslim civilisations, rather than Islam as a
religion. "We want to look at Muslims in their diversity, different
languages and cultures and historical processes. It's an alternative
to some existing programmes in the Muslim world, which look at norms,
but not at facts."
The institute's approach is to look at the historical facts about how
dogmas - Muslim, Christian or Jewish - have developed over time, not
something fundamentalists are ever comfortable with. In this spirit,
the institute is launching a two-year masters degree in Muslim
civilisations, bringing students from around the world to London to
explore the diversity of their cultures.
It's an approach that involves as many questions as answers, but
Filali-Ansary argues that universities have failed to contribute as
much as they should to the developing world because they have not
inculcated liberal attitudes.
"In the developing world, education has been looked at as a means to
train technicians, medics, engineers, etc, not as a means to educate
in the liberal meaning of the word, to open minds, turn people into
critical thinkers, enable people to become learners throughout their
lives and take control of their own destiny," Filali-Ansary says.
He gives the example of his own country, Morocco, which founded an
engineering school to rival the best in France. It produced, he says,
graduates who were superb at maths or physics, but "like robots" when
it came to handling people. The Aga Khan University in Karachi is
currently debating whether to add a seventh year to its medical
degrees so that future doctors learn more about history, philosophy
and ethics.
These are not the kind of liberal sentiments you would catch one of
Tony Blair's education ministers expressing in public - in the UK the
government tends to talk about universities as part of the knowledge
economy. Filali-Ansary is tactful and generous in reply. "In this
country, you are building on a very solid base. In the developing
world, the problems are different - there's a need for the solid base
first." But one cannot help feeling his "solid base" is made of the
kind of hard-won liberal attitudes that are under attack in Britain.
He wants to see a continuous exchange of ideas between the west and
the Muslim world, and links between universities in the developing
world, between sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent, for
instance. The conference, which has no immediate political agenda and
does not involve governments, will foster these links, he hopes.
For Moncef Ben Abdel Jelil, head of faculty at the institute, bringing
together academics and making them aware of reforms going on in other
Muslim countries will encourage them and make them feel less isolated.
Reforms and efforts to counter fundamentalist influence predate 9/11
and were not the result of American pressure, he says.
The conference sets out to look at reform and innovation in terms of
emancipation and social justice, including new and critical approaches
to teaching and research. "Particular attention will be paid to the
cultural forces fostering or hindering the reform activities.
Successful, as well as failed, reforms will both have something to
contribute in the discussion," participants are told.
And since the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq, it has become
increasingly clear that the west has an interest in the future success
of education reform in the Muslim world, just as much as do students
in Tehran or Karachi.
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