Luqman Institute of Education and Development

The past few years has seen a growth of the relevance of the Luqman Institute within London, Leicester, Dewsbury, Lancashire and other major cities the UK and now also on a multinational forum.

Working in the community

Local Level

The Institute engages in youth programmes, which afford young Muslims the room for expressing their ideas and concerns in an open and constructive environment.

Capacity Building workshops for marginalised and isolated communities have been successfully deployed in London borough of Islington and are currently being developed for locations accross the city of London. These worshops aim to provide advice to students on social, religious and educational matters in addition to offering supplementary recreational activities.

Youth workshops and discussion forums are conducted to encourage an ongoing exchange of ideas on a wide range of issues, from citizenship and identity to the concept of Jihad in Islam. By addressing the key contemporary issues, the Institute aims to establish a new epoch of open and frank discourse on issues that matter to young people and upon which much needed neutral space is necessary for exploration, reflection and debate before arriving at inferences and cementing of views.

Our programmes involve networked study sessions which link young Muslims not only in different parts of the UK, but have now extended into other European countries. The Luqman Institute aims to bring the experiences of these youths into a collective drive to explore mechanisms of participation in wider society in their respective countries and at the European level.

University Level

The Institute offers the opportunity for University students to engage with a wider network of peers which often transcend geographical boundaries. These forums are focused in much the same way as the local youth initiatives and include challenging questions to which participants are expected to deliberate and discuss widely, among others these include:

What is Islam's role in a pluralistic society?
What is Islam's position toward people of other faiths and no faith in particular to the People of the Book (Jews and Christians)?
What is the position of humanity, justice, compassion, as religious concepts and relating these to thought and practice?
How to identify and address prejudices which are based on animosity?
How loyalty to one's country can be seen through religious examination of values and within a British context?

In addition the institute holds public debates on issues which come to the public-eye and hence offer opportunity for deeper dialogue, the recent cartoon controversy sparked from the publications from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Postenis is a case in point. Luqman Institute held an event in Feb 2006 entitled "Where are we heading, Islam or Jahiliya (ignorance)?". The event focus was to initiate an inclusive discourse, which would include both Muslims and Non-Muslims and foster an attitude of reflection rather than reaction.

The Luqman Institute also provides guidence to prospective postgraduate researchers in the fields of socio-religious and political studies of Muslim communities in the West.