Abu Dhabi: A batch of young Emirati men and women graduated from the Emirati Scholars Development Programme on Monday at a ceremony held in Abu Dhabi.
The programme, which was supervised by eminent Islamic scholar Abdullah Bin Bayyah, president of the Muslim Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, aims to produce young Emirati Islamic scholars who will teach and reflect the moderate and peaceful values of Islam.
“Preparing scholars requires a lot of tools and techniques that we must follow, in particular it should rely on effectiveness as well as positivity to be able to motivate,” said Bin Bayyah.
“The quality of teaching is also very important and is the key role in helping deal with many of the problems the Islamic world is facing today,” he added.
According to Bin Bayyah, the students were given a holistic educational approach combining both Islamic sciences and studies involving a number of other fields.
“We cannot put aside the Sharia sciences but we also have to take into consideration that when we talk about Sharia and Islamic sciences, that there are also human sciences as well and all of these fields complete each other.
“So when I talk about a scholar they must have the knowledge about the Sharia sciences and the human sciences so that they will be able to pass fatwas [Islamic edicts],” he added.
Bakr Sulaiman, one of the graduating students from the programme, said he hoped to use the knowledge he gained in a positive way.
“This was a three-year programme which taught us a lot of beneficial things and, hopefully, now we will be able to live up to the expectations of our leaders with all the trust and responsibility they have bestowed on us,” he said.
“I really hope that all of us who attended this programme are able to go on and achieve great things and to bring something good from what we have learnt for the benefit of society,” he added.
With inputs by Aseel Lulu, trainee at Gulf News
