News

The University of Auckland
Media release
1 November 2011

Islamic studies now on offer at The University of Auckland

A growing interest in Islamic religion and its role in the contemporary world has resulted in The University of Auckland adding a course in Islam to the Bachelor of Theology degree.

The School of Theology will offer the new course in Islam from 2012, broadening its offerings to students interested in faith and religion. Theology at the University has traditionally focused on exploring the beliefs and practices that have developed within Christianity.

“The study of Islamic cultures and societies is an important component of any internationally recognised university given their contribution to world civilization, historical prominence, and involvement in contemporary global politics,” says Dr Zain Ali, Head of the Islamic Studies Research Unit at The University of Auckland, who will teach the course.
“It will be of great interest to students, given the recent levels of interest in Islam within both academic and public domains and the diversity of competing perspectives that often surround this religious tradition.”

Islam and the Contemporary World will provide an introduction to Islam as a living tradition within a global context, while paying particular attention to Muslim presence and experience in New Zealand and Australia.

The course will provide a historical survey of Islam, including developments in Muslim theology, philosophy, and the interpretation of its sacred text, the Qur'an. There will also be a focus on contemporary themes relating to Islam, with core questions asked such as: is Islam compatible with democracy? What is the position of women in Islam? Is Islamic law practicable? How should the Qur'an be interpreted?

Dr Ali completed his PhD in Philosophy at The University of Auckland and helped establish the Islamic Studies Research Unit to promote scholarship in the field of Islamic Studies.

He will teach Islam and the Contemporary World along with Clare Wilde from the Department of Sociology, who has also been involved in the course’s design and content. Dr Wilde came to Auckland from Washington DC, where she taught courses on Islam for Georgetown University and the US Department of State.

The course is part of a Bachelor of Theology degree and will also be available to students more widely throughout the University as a General Education course.

Contact:
Danelle Clayton, Communications Adviser
Phone 09 373 7599 ext. 87383
or 021 416 396
Email: d.clayton@auckland.ac.nz

Is Islam the Problem?

A wise visitor from outer space who dropped in on Earth a millennium ago might have assumed that the Americas would eventually be colonized not by primitive Europeans but by the more advanced Arab civilization — and that as a result we Americans would all be speaking Arabic today. Yet after about 1200, the Middle East took a long break: it stagnated... Read More on the New York Times Website.

How Democracy Became Halal

President George W. Bush’s decision to build democracy in Iraq seemed so lame to many people because it appeared, at best, to be another example of American idealism run amok — the forceful implantation of a complex Western idea into infertile authoritarian soil. But Mr. Bush, whose faith in self-government mirrors that of a frontiersman in Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” saw truths that more worldly men missed: the idea of democracy had become a potent force among Muslims, and authoritarianism had become the midwife to Islamic extremism. Read More on the New York Times Website.

Why Mideast Tumult Caught Scholars by Surprise

Popular revolutions are difficult to predict or, more accurately, easy to overpredict. How often does an opinion piece begin or end by declaring, "The current [repressive, unjust, unstable, dangerous] situation cannot last." Yet in the Middle East it has. Sclerotic, illegitimate, and brutal governments persist and seemingly grow stronger, despite their countries' many problems. Democratic waves swept Europe, Latin America, and Asia, even touching parts of Africa, but the Middle East remained a desert of autocracy.Read More on the The Chroncile Review Website.

The theme for this post is the current Israeli and Palestinian peace talks, and there are four items of interest:

1. A Peace Plan Within Our Grasp, by Hosni Mubarak

IT’S been 10 long years since the Palestinians and Israelis last came close to establishing a permanent peace, in January 2001 at Taba in Egypt. During my career in the Egyptian Air Force, I saw the tragic toll of war between the Arabs and Israel. As president of Egypt, I have endured many ups and downs in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Read More on the New York Times Website.

2. An End to Israel's Invisibility, by MichaelB. Oren

NEARLY 63 years after the United Nations recognized the right of the Jewish people to independence in their homeland — and more than 62 years since Israel’s creation — the Palestinians are still denying the Jewish nature of the state. “Israel can name itself whatever it wants,” said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, while, according to the newspaper Haaretz, his chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said that the Palestinian Authority will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Read More on the New York Times Website.

3.  Finish Rabin’s Work, by Bill Clinton

In many ways Rabin was ahead of his time. The end of his life overlapped with the emergence of the most interdependent age in human history, the explosion of the Internet and the era of globalization. The ties that bind the Israelis and the Palestinians — in his words, two peoples “destined to live together on the same soil” — are a powerful example of the connections that tie us all together across the globe. We are linked in so many ways that we cannot get away from each other. Read More on the New York Times Website

4. Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks,Again, by George Friedman

Peace talks are the American solution. Peace talks give the United States the appearance of seeking to settle the Israeli-Palestinian problem. The comings and goings of American diplomats, treating Palestinians as equals in negotiations and as being equally important to the United States, and the occasional photo op if some agreement is actually reached, all give the United States and pro-American Muslim governments a tool — even if it is not a very effective one — for managing Muslim public opinion. Peace talks also give the United States the ability, on occasion, to criticize Israel publicly, without changing the basic framework of the U.S.-Israeli relationship. Most important, they cost the United States nothing. The United States has many diplomats available for multiple-track discussions and working groups for drawing up position papers. Talks do not solve the political problem in the region, but they do reshape perceptions a bit at very little cost. And they give the added benefit that, at some point in the talks, the United States will be able to ask the Europeans to support any solution — or tentative agreement — financially. Read More on the STRATFOR Website.
 

Symposium: Reflections on the Holocaust

The symposium, Reflections on the Holocaust, will consider the Holocaust or Shoah from Christian, Jewish and Muslim perspectives. It will discuss such questions as: How does the Holocaust have meaning for us today? Does the Holocaust challenge belief in a loving God? How do we acknowledge the suffering of Holocaust victims? What is the ongoing impact of the Holocaust today?

Date: Monday 6 September
Time: 6.30pm - 9.00pm
Venue: University of Auckland, class no.38284.
For registration details please call 0800 864 266 or visit The University of Auckland Website.

Article: Mosque Near Ground Zero

Two protests on Sunday morning, in the normally quiet blocks north of Ground Zero, claimed to be on the side of tolerance. One camp stood in favor of the mosque and Islamic center that has been proposed for the area; the other argued against.

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Article: To Veil or Not to Veil

In Spain earlier this month, the Catalonian assembly narrowly rejected a proposed ban on the Muslim burqa in all public places — reversing a vote the week before in the country’s upper house of parliament supporting a ban. Similar proposals may soon become national law in France and Belgium. Even the headscarf often causes trouble. In France, girls may not wear it in school. In Germany (as in parts of Belgium and the Netherlands) some regions forbid public school teachers to wear it on the job, although nuns and priests are permitted to teach in full habit. What does political philosophy have to say about these developments?
Read more on the NYTIMES website

Interview: Thus spoke Nasr Abu-Zayd

The death of Nasr Abu-Zayd in a Cairo hospital has deprived Arab-Islamic culture of a leading voice of rationalism. His pioneering studies in Quranic exegesis caused him great trouble 15 years ago, when religious zealots accused him of being an apostate and succeeded in obtaining a court ruling to that effect, something that endangered his personal safety. For the past 15 years Abu-Zayd had been living in exile.
Read more on the Al-Ahram website

News: Barack Obama demands justice 15 years after Srebrenica

The remains of more than 700 victims are buried in a mass funeral. Barack Obama described the Srebrenica massacre as "a stain on our collective conscience" as hundreds of victims of the 1995 atrocity were buried. In a statement read for him in the Bosnian town, the US president admitted the failure of the international community to protect the enclave, and said those responsible must be pursued. More than 7,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb troops. The massacre was the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War. Hundreds of victims of the massacre were buried at a ceremony outside the town on Sunday.
Read more on the BBC website

Saudi delegation visit The University of Auckland

A large delegation from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, led by its Minister for Higher Education, his Excellency Dr Khalid Bin Mohammed Al Ankary, visited the University on 28 May. A highlight of the Minister’s visit to New Zealand was the signing of an agreement with Education Minister Ann Tolley to strengthen and increase New Zealand’s educational and scientific engagement with Saudi Arabia.
Read more on the University website  

Turkey and the United States

For decades, Turkey was one of the United States’ most pliable allies, a strategic border state on the edge of the Middle East that reliably followed American policy. But recently, it has asserted a new approach in the region, its words and methods as likely to provoke Washington as to advance its own interests.
Read more on the New York Times website

New book: The Future of Islam by John L. Esposito

This pathbreaking work offers the mature reflections of a leading Western scholar on the state of Islam in the world today, highlighting the challenges it faces--and presents--in the twenty-first century.
Read more on the Oxford University Press website

New book: Crossing Qalandiya

Crossing Qalandiya is a series of letters between two women, Daniela and Shireen. They live less than 100km apart, but could never visit one another at home - so instead they write letters. In these letters they discuss family, childcare, recipes, the local beaches … war and ethnic hatred. Daniela is Israeli and Shireen Palestinian. Their exchange is fraught with challenge, but also a sincere desire on each side to understand the thinking and grievances of the other.
Read more on the ‘reportage press website'

Article: Near Ground Zero, the Sacred and the Profane

Since long before the Islamist terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001, a storefront mosque has been sitting on West Broadway in TriBeCa, a dozen blocks from the World Trade Center. No one seems to have ever minded its being there.
Read more on the New York Times Website

Article: Indonesia puts moratorium on new forest clearing

Indonesia will place a two-year moratorium on new concessions to clear natural forests and peatlands under a deal signed with Norway aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, the government said in a statement.
Read more on the Scientific American website
 

News: The Quran in te reo

"The Holy Koran is the most precious thing to Muslims, and its translation into te reo not only shows our respect and regard for the Maori community, but is also a way to share with New Zealand something special and meaningful to us" 
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Journal: A Special Issue on Islam and Buddhism

This is the first time in its ninety-nine year history of publication that The Muslim World journal is dedicating a special issue to the theme of Islam-Buddhism. This initiative highlights the expansion of the journal's coverage and is a new point of departure in the venture of Islamic Studies, which up until recently, has largely been restricted to relations between adherents of the three Abrahamic faiths. Hopefully, in the near future, this journal will also consider Islam's relations with the other Asian and African religions.
Read more on the Interscience website

New book: The Crucifixion and the Qur'an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought  by Todd Lawson

According to many, the Qur'an denies the crucifixion of Jesus, and with it, one of the most sacred beliefs of Christianity. However, it is only mentioned in one verse and its interpretation has been the subject of fierce debate among Muslims for centuries. This innovative work is the first book devoted to the issue, delving into largely ignored Arabic sources, which suggest that this interpretation of the verse may originate from the Christian Church.
Find out more at amazon.com

News: In Germany, Xenophobia Diverted by Open Doors

A Muslim congregation applied in November to build a minaret and three golden cupolas on the roof of the old movie theater it had converted into a mosque. The far-right party here in the state of Saarland, emboldened by last year’s ban on minarets in Switzerland, seized on the issue, calling the proposed 28-foot minaret "the bayonet of Islam."
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