Updates

For the first time in India , distance-education learners can now do a regular course in Islamic Studies. This three year-programme is being offered by the Hyderabad-based Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MAANU). Launched in 2007, the course is one of the eight optional subjects that students enrolled in the three-year Bachelor’s degree programme in the Urdu medium through distance-learning can opt for. Students must select three out of these eight optionals, in addition to compulsory English.

Maulana Fahim Akhtar Nadvi, a well-known Islamic scholar, heads the Islamic Studies programme at MANUU’s Distance Education Department. Author of several books, mainly on contemporary developments in Islamic jurisprudence, he holds a doctorate from the Islamic Studies Department at the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi , and has worked for over a decade in as a Mufti and in-charge of the Academic Section of the New Delhi-based Islamic Fiqh Academy.

‘MANUU’s Bachelor’s level distance learning programme has some 1,50,000 students, of which some 5000 have opted for Islamic Studies as one of their three optional papers’, Nadvi explains. ‘Almost half of our students are females, many of whom are unable, for various reasons, to attend regular colleges, and so can study through our programme while being at home’, he says. Admission is open to anyone who knows how to read and write Urdu, no matter what his or her educational qualifications, provided the candidate passes an entrance examination. To make the programme even more widely accessible and convenient, students are allowed to take up to six years to finish the Bachelor’s degree course.

Faced with the lack of suitable textbooks for the course, Nadvi and a team of colleagues have prepared special texts in Urdu, five of which have been published so far. Work on the third year BA texts in Islamic Studies is now under way. ‘Unlike many texts used in most madrasas, these seek to provide a historical perspective and also reflect on contemporary issues. They also avoid the sharp sectarianism and heated polemics that is characteristic of many books taught in traditional madrasas, so that they appeal to Muslims of different sects’, Nadvi says. ‘The books provide a general overview of the different sects, not in a polemical mode, but, rather, in such a way as to present them as their own adherents themselves under-stand them.’

The texts have been prepared by a professional and well-qualified team, with separate sections being commissioned from renowned Islamic scholars across the country. These include Professor Akhtar ul-Wasey, head of the Department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, Maulana Waris Mazhari, editor of the monthly Tarjuman Dar ul-Ulum, the official organ of the Deoband Madrasa Graduates’ Assoc-iation, the noted Islamic scholar Maulana Khalid Saifullah Rehmani from Hyderabad, Professor Naim ur-Rehman Faruqi, head of the History Dep-artment, Allahabad University, Professor Zafar Ahmad Nizami, former head of the Department of Political Science at the Jamia Millia Islamia and Professor Shahid Ali Abbasi, head of the Department of Islamic Studies at Hyderabad’s Osmania Unive-rsity.

Nadvi explains how the programme functions. Text books are sent out to the students by post, and they are made to write two assignments a year for which are then graded. In addition, they appear in an annual examination, which is held in some 140 centres of the MANUU located across India . A new centre has come up in Jeddah and plans are afoot to establish another one in London as well.

With the help of the MANUU’s Instructional Media Centre, Nadvi’s department is in the process of preparing audio-visual material for Islamic Studies students. So far, it has produced ten DVDs, each of a half hour duration, for the Islamic Studies programme. These have been relayed on Doordarshan’s Urdu channel, and students will soon be able to view them in MANUU’s study centres, which will be equipped with computers and televisions. Plans are also afoot to launch a video conferencing educational programme for students of Islamic Studies, in addition to the other subjects that MANUU’s Distance Education Department offers.

Nadvi says that he hopes to be able to devise an MA programme in Islamic Studies through the distance education mode that will start probably two years hence. ‘This will be of immense value to those who want to study Islam but are unable to do so in the few universities in the country that have Islamic Studies Departments’, he adds.

For more details, contact Dr. Fahim Akhtar Nadvi on fanadvi@gmail.com