Updated 10 November 2010
The Islamic Religious Education Team of The World Federation held its second one-day CPD training session for madrasah teachers. The session was expertly conducted by Shaykh Mohammed Saeed Bahmanpour on the issue of the Islamic Legal system and focused on the concept of Crime and Punishment in Islam. The session was attended by teachers from across UK Madaris. Invites were also sent to non Muslim Religious Education teachers who have used our material in their teaching.
Shaykh Bahmanpour touched on a number of thought-provoking areas which stimulated discussions and questions from the teachers. Teachers’ feedback included:
“I enjoyed the avid nature of the discussions.”
“I realised the flexibility of the Shariah and the ‘progressiveness’ of Major Ulama.”
“I was interested in Khomeini’s solution for creative Ijtihad.”
The session was attended by a non-Muslim teacher from Buckinghamshire who was invited to the session as a result of the Islamic Religious Education team’s engagement process in GCSE Islamic Studies. She commented: “… there is much to learn about Islam’s view of social justice. More of this kind of training for non-Muslims would be really useful.”
Sayyid Aliraza Naqvi, Assistant Secretary General for Islamic Education, commented, “The GCSE has given us a number of opportunities to engage with difficult topics and challenging ideas. We are fortunate to have the likes of Shaykh Bahmanpour in our midst who can effectively guide our teachers to sound opinions from our faith perspective and enlighten them. We aim to continue to train our teachers and to engage with non-Muslims as we educate ourselves and others as to true Islamic teachings.”
In engaging with the Examination board and Religious Studies teachers from across the South East of England we hope to widen the audience for the teachings of our madhab to students of Islam outside our community Madaris. The take up for the wisdom of the Ahlul Bayt (as) has been encouraging and we have sought to show how we can add value to current issues in debate.
The focus of the Islamic Education’s work in this area remains the facilitation of learning both traditional and contemporary Islamic issues by senior students of our Madaris and in so doing making them exemplary youth whose moral values and sound principles of judgement making them an asset to their local communities and true ambassadors of our faith.
For more information, please email islamiceducation@world-federation.org