The IIS aims to ensure that all students can access a high-quality, stimulating learning environment. This includes state-of-the-art educational facilities and high-quality curricula taught by leading academics. We ensure that our academic standards and quality of education are consistent with regulation and comparable with other providers of equivalent level qualifications.
The Qur’anic Studies Unit is dedicated to exploring the ways in which the Qur’an has served, and continues to serve, as an inspiration for Muslim societies.
The unit is working on a number of research projects related to Muslims in South Asia, including: Developing an annotated bibliography of vernacular sources relevant to South Asian studies; Reconstructing the lives of figures of the Satpanth tradition; Documenting the migration and process of acculturation of various Ismaili groups (e.g. Persians accompanying Imam Hasan Ali Shah to India; the South Asian Ismaili migration to East Africa, Europe and North America; migration due to the 1947 India/Pakistan partition and subsequent separation of Bangladesh); Researching the reception of the Qur’an among the Satpanth communities of South Asia.
Professor Mohammed Arkoun was honoured with the Seventeenth Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award in Islamic Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles on May 10-11, 2002. The award, honouring his career of more than 30 years, celebrated his humanistic vision of Islam and his lifelong critique of the theoretical tensions embedded in the field of Islamic Studies.