For the John Templeton Foundation, I wrote about a new initiative enhancing theological education among upcoming Muslim leaders.
Many Muslim higher educational institutions currently teach a curriculum focused on more at-hand legal and social issues, sometimes at the expense of the study of the finer issues of theology and creed. This summer, Shaykh Jihad Brown (Jason Totten), an American Muslim scholar and public figure, is launching a new two-year program, based at the Bayan Islamic Graduate School (a division of the Claremont School of Theology in Southern California), that aims to correct some of that imbalance. With a $234,500 grant from the John Templeton Foundation, he is developing a certificate program in Advanced Islamic Theology to equip budding Muslim thought leaders with resources for constructive theologizing for the present day.
The program will be overseen by Brown along with Munir Shaikh, Bayan’s Director of Academic Affairs, and will draw on both Muslim and non-Muslim sources in the creation of specific courses in classical, post-classical and contemporary Islamic theology. The program will also fund a summer institute which will draw two dozen emerging Muslim theologians, helping to build a cohort of well-networked Muslim scholars equipped for high-quality, interdisciplinary research.