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Anyway the odd choice of headline doesn't take anything away from the news being reported. However, I found my brow ruffling itself even more as the following was stated within the article:
Dr Kessler told The Times: “As far as I know, there is no centre that is examining the encounter between Muslims and Jews."
Perhaps this a horrible misquote, but I know for a fact that my university had a course specifically studying religious violence (and that includes the Middle East conflict between Muslims and Jews) and a quick google search throws up plenty of examples of courses concerning this encounter. Nevertheless, what might actually be unique about this centre is that it isn't seen as necessary to throw Christianity into the mix.
In searching for more information on the centre I accidentally found myself on the page for their sister institution, the "Centre for Jewish-Christian relations". The masters courses are listed as follows:
Having become quite confused that none of the courses seemed to have Islam mentioned in their titles, I then realised that I was on the wrong page. However, I presumed that the courses at the Muslim-Jewish centre would have a pretty similar gist to them. Here's what I discovered:
Core module 1:
Islam and Muslim Perceptions of the ‘Other’
Core module 2: Judaism and Jewish Perceptions of the ‘Other’
Core module 3:
Muslim-Jewish Encounters: Challenges for Inter-Faith Dialogue
Perhaps it's not surprising that there is no course on the 'foundations and relevance of the Muslim-Jewish encounter to contemporary society' when we so often hear of Muslims who feel disenfranchised by western society, while Jews who want to be separate from the community at large have had no trouble setting up their own communities to allow for this. The large Muslim population in Britain is a fairly new arrival and talking about its relevance to contemporary society would inevitably involve a discussion of Muslim relations to Christianity, not Judaism.
However it is somewhat puzzling to see that Jewish and Muslim scriptural interpretation have to be studied in separate courses. Muslims do, after all, consider the Old Testament to be part of their scripture. Certainly Muslim texts go beyond Jewish scripture, but than again so do Christian texts, and it is also true that many Jewish texts are not recognised by Christians. It seems odd that this separation seems necessary in a Muslim-Jewish course when it was not seen as necessary in a Jewish-Christian course. Do they not trust their students not to bicker? Are limits being placed on these academic studies out of fear of unrest in the lecture hall?
No course about the holocaust for this new centre, but is it not a central point for any discussion concerning anti-semitism? During the Danish cartoon scandal weren't anti-semitic Muslims claiming that there was bias towards Jews because no one had printed a cartoon satirising the holocaust. (As if making fun of an event where thousands of Jews were made into an under-class and then massacred was equivalent to drawing a religious figure in an uncompromising situation.) Perhaps this obsession with the holocaust by anti-semitic Muslims is seen as unworthy of consideration (especially since it was an event Muslims were not actively involved with). Or perhaps the issue is that the answers here are all too obvious. Israel is seen as trading off on the holocaust for free reign to excuse any of their current actions, and the contemporary actions they are excusing tend to be to the detriment of Muslim Palestinians. But does this not mean that the central focus of conflict between Muslims and Jews is precisely this issue of the state of Israel?
Perhaps just as the first two courses were a split-up version of 'scriptural interpretation' course, this third course is a combination of 'responses to the holocaust' and 'challenges to inter-faith understanding' courses. The central point for Muslim-Jewish relations is not the holocaust, but rather the state of Israel. The third course manages to soften the blow of dealing with the controversial issue of the state of Israel by comparing it to a period where Muslim-Jewish relations were a great deal more stable: medieval Andalusia (Muslim-Spain). But modern Israel and medieval Andalusia are not regarded equally. Apparently the course will be "including areas of divergence such as the impact of the Israel-Palestine conflict".
According to Varsity, the Cambridge Student Newspaper:
The Centre's curriculum will include an examination of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, phenomena both currently hitting the national and international news.
But if they seriously want to study such things maybe they should not be so afraid of dealing with the central controversial subject matter. It has clearly been a very good thing to force Christians to recognise the full meaning of the 'holocaust' and the history of Christian anti-semitism exemplified in central Christian figures like Martin Luther. This new course on Muslim-Jewish relations seems to be unwilling to force its students to truly embrace the full controversy of the issues and students wishing to seriously engage with the controversies will have to work in spite of the courses' focus, rather than being guided through the controversial issues by those courses as they ought to be.
