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Course to teach imams about cohesion

A course to help classically trained imams use their skills more effectively in the UK has been launched in Cambridge, with its first students enrolling in September.

The one-year diploma in contextual Islamic studies and leadership is aimed at helping imams to be more responsive to the values and needs of British-born Muslims and better placed to deal with issues of cohesion, doctrinal radicalism and exclusion.

Its 19 compulsory modules include understanding UK law and government, religious pluralism, Islam and gender, and managing mosques and charitable institutions.

The Cambridge Muslim College, which has no formal affiliation with the historic university, was set up specifically for the diploma. Its founder, Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad, is the Shaykh Zayed lecturer of Islamic Studies in the faculty of divinity at Cambridge University and director of studies in theology at Wolfson College.

He said there were many "sophisticated" people who were sympathetic to the project and said the ******** of the college had a "certain cachet" that would appeal to graduates.

"We're not replicating the curriculum of Islamic universities. We're giving these kids a bridging course so they will understand how to apply what they know to a western reality. We're not telling them what sort of Muslim they should be."

Murad said the college founders might in the future seek to establish formal ties with the university. "Islamic leadership [in the UK] needs to be upgraded. The college is not a madrasa. It does not serve the interests of any existing sect or movement," he said.

Ministers have previously said that Islamic studies is a "strategic subject" that, when accurately and effectively taught, can aid community cohesion and counter extremism.

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