The World Muslim Communities Council organizes virtual conference, "Challenges of Higher Islamic Education after Corona," on July 11, 2020

  • 2020-Jul-08

The World World Muslim Communities Council, in partnership with the Association of Islamic Universities, and number of universities, Islamic colleges, institutions, and educational quality agencies concerned with higher education, are organizing an international scientific virtual conference entitled "Challenges of Higher Islamic Education after Corona", on Saturday, 11 July 2020, via ZOOM app and Social Media.

The conference examines the challenges of the Corona crisis, which represented a new and unprecedented turning point in the history of educational institutions, as these institutions were forced to resort to distance education during the closure period imposed by governments to preserve life. This situation created a new reality that will lead the education personnel to reconsider the higher education system in terms of its philosophy, goals, systems, curricula, methods, activities.

His Excellency Dr. Ali Rashid Al-Nuaimi, Chairman of the World Muslim Communities Council, said that the conference looks at the importance of Islamic higher education as an integral part of this reality, and will be subject to changes that will affect education systems in the world, by raising a number of important questions related to the extent to how officials are responding to this new challenge, and whether higher Islamic education has sufficient traditions for the distance education stage.

He added that the conference will face the problems of higher Islamic education, and provide convincing, practical and actionable answers, by examining the capabilities of higher education institutions located in societies with limited resources, the infrastructure needed for distance education, the availability of flexible and implementable education curricula and technological means, and how the methodologies are compatible to evaluation and remote exams and their technological mechanisms with the nature of Islamic education curricula, especially that many of them depend on memorization, recall, and oral exams.

Among the most prominent agenda that the conference participants will address are updating the educational curricula in terms of topics, updating the university book in a way that makes it focus on the idea, approach, skill and critical thinking more than focusing on information and subject matter, qualifying university professors and training them on modern educational systems that are applicable in social, human and applied disciplines, whether in teaching or evaluation, as well as developing new evaluation systems that depend on measuring mental skills not cognitive achievement, thus developing global curricula in terms of standards, and local in terms of content and subject.

The participants also will discuss the issue of developing unified courses in the agreed fixed subjects such as the curricula of the Holy Qur’an, the Prophetic Sunnah, doctrine, principles of jurisprudence, jurisprudence rules, comparative jurisprudence, linguistics. They will lead discussion abou how to benefit from pioneering experiences and modern methodologies in social and human sciences in presenting Islamic curricula in a modern way, which combines authenticity and modernity, in addition to providing an international mechanism to train members of the Training Authority in implementing distance education through technological means, and activating the role of international institutions concerned with coordination between universities such as the Association of Islamic Universities and the Federation of Islamic Universities.

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