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The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC) International Graduate Institute (IGI) is to offer Spain’s first virtual master’s degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies as of the next academic year, 2009-2010. It aims to provide students with basic knowledge on the Islamic world so that they have the elements and criteria needed to understand, interpret and assess these realities on a political, social and economic level. The launch of this new training offer, one of a handful in Europe, has been publicised as part of the roundtable entitled The Muslim world, between the past and the future, which involved the University’s President, Imma Tubella, and Mustapha Chérif, Academic Director of the master’s degree, among others. The event took place in Madrid and focused on fundamental aspects of the Muslim world and its relations with Europe, as well as its cultural influence, the future of Euro-Arab relations and the political, economic and cultural challenges.
The aim of this new teaching offer, which is to be taught in French, is to train experts and
specialists in Islamic civilisation and culture, and the cultural, social and political
interactions in the Arab world and Europe. It is to use tools and knowledge to analyse and
understand Islamic civilisation from a scientific and academic perspective, not an ideological one.
It also involves cultural instruments that let professionals interrelate with all areas of Islamic
communities and solid scientific skills for the analysis of a reality undergoing continuous
evolution.
The master’s degree, worth 60 credits, is developed over two years and ends with a
final research project. Learning is focused on interpreting and finding out about the main sources
of the Islamic religion and its values; understanding the transformations and diversity of the
Islamic world; analysing the evolution of Muslim thought; assessing the political events linked to
the presence of Islam in the Mediterranean and its interactions with Europe; learning the
fundamental aspects for intercultural and interreligious dialogue; finding out about the regulatory
bases for Islamic law and economy; learning the basics of the Arabic language, etc.
Mustapha Chérif, Academic Director of the master’s degree, is
Docteur d’état des lettres from the University of Toulouse and Doctor in Sociology
from the Sorbonne, Paris. He is an internationally renowned expert in intercultural dialogue. He
was President and founder of the Continuing Education University of Algeria, Minister of Higher
Education in Algeria and Ambassador in Cairo. The faculty is made up of the following experts:
Anwar Moghith, Helwan University, Cairo; Mona Tolba, Ain Shams University, Cairo; Charles
Saint-Prot, Director of Paris’s Observatoire d’études géopolitiques and Professor at
Paris Descartes University; Tahar Mahdi, Catholic University of Louvain; Benammar Yezli, University
of Oran; Ahmed Djebbar, Lille’s Universty of Science and Technology; Eric Geoffroy, Marc
Bloch University, Strasbourg; Frank Fregosi, Director of the master’s degree in Religion and
Society at Aix-Marseille 3 University; Ali Benmakhlouf, Nice Sophia Antipolis University; Youssef
Courbage, Director of Research at Paris’s INED (Institut National Études Démographiques);
Mohamed Nabil Ali, Al-Azhar University, Cairo; Hadj Dahman, University of Haute Alsace; Mohamed
Amin Al-Midani, Chair of the Centre Arabe pour l’Education au Droit International Humanitaire
et aux Droits Humains, Lyon and Assistant Director, Groupe d’Etudes et des Recherches en
Islamologie, Marc Bloch University, Strasbourg, and Mohamed Haddad, University of Manouba, Tunis.
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