( Completed Project )
In Cooperation with The School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS- University of London
In order to contribute to the provision of serious studies that correct concepts and reveal the contradictions, and in order to spot the obstacles to human development in its overall and broad sense, it is interesting to consider “the phenomenon of socio-political and cultural conflict in Muslim communities in the West”, and the dominance of some contradictory concepts over a lot of the Islamic community individual, making them in noticeable hesitation between isolation and integration, in addition to falling in the quagmire of fear of melting in the culture of the other. Hence, they resort to seek to seclusion and solidarity and the attempt to create social frameworks through which they exercise their homeland cultures, to subsequently become isolated enclaves, marginal to the society and isolated from its real fabric. In this context, the issue of the integration and interaction of the Muslim community in Britain emerges and remains a strong challenge to British society.
Idea of the Project:
Financing a number of scholarships that represent a special program to obtain doctorate degree from the School of African Oriental Studies, University of London, where students are selected from the Muslim community in Britain in social sciences, to study and discuss the “Challenge of integrating Muslims in the British Society: Obstacles and Solutions.”
The project aims to prepare some of the Muslim community individuals, academically and systematically, to study the phenomenon of the weak integration of the Muslim community in British society and finding appropriate solutions to this challenge, with a view to render the Muslim community an active element that participates in building the society in which they, in addition to not being a source that threatens the reputation of Islam.
Project Outcomes:
Stemming from the growing Muslim population in Western societies and the United States of America, where Islam has become the second religion in the majority of these communities, it is necessary to provide a range of serious systematic scientific studies in the field of humanities and social sciences that cover the British Muslims issues and develop the diagnosis and reading for the reasons of this phenomenon, trying to contribute to providing the appropriate solutions for that. These studies can be a source of systematic approach applicable in Western countries that include Muslim communities.Creating British Muslim leaders represented in preparing and qualifying the British Muslim children academically and fully to be a core – with continuous efforts – to achieve continuous integration of Muslims through realizing a balance between the identities and traditions of the minorities, on the one hand, and the traditions and values of the immigrants’ homeland on the other hand.
Topics proposed to study:
Nohoudh Endowment for Development Studies hopes that study topics shall include the following:
- The reality of the Muslim community in Britain: A methodological sociological study.
- Muslims in Britain: A Historical study of the presence of Muslims in Britain.
- Obstacles to the integration of immigrants in social life and its cultural and legal dimensions.
- The concept of the nation and religion and their role in the integration process.
- The problems facing the Muslim community in Britain.
- The role of government institutions in the integration process: the legal dimensions.
- The role of civil society organizations in alignment between self-identity requirements and the requirements of active engagement in community: social dimensions.
- The problem of education among the children of the Muslim community.
- Women, Muslim family issues and personal status of immigrant Muslims: social and legal dimensions.
- Media and its role in deepening the Islamophobia crisis.