KNOWLEDGES AND PRACTICES FOR RELIGIOUS AND INTERCULTURAL MEDIATION”
2019/2020
WHY THIS MASTER?
In recent decades, the Islamic presence in Europe has been growing and stabilizing to the point of constituting a significant feature of the social and cultural landscape of our continent. On the one hand, it is a fully integrated component, even if often problematic, in the reality of European countries, and as such is experienced by Muslims themselves. On the other hand, Islamic communities in Europe maintain an important relationship with their countries of origin, also as an effect of the system of relations created by the processes of globalization.
More and more, therefore, we can speak of a reality of Islam that goes beyond the limits of a discourse on immigration. This raises a wide range of themes that offer themselves to cultural study and political and social intervention regarding the ways in which European Islam participates in a very relevant way in the overall transformation of our societies in an era in which these societies are experiencing a phase of accelerated transformation.
The Islam of “our home” exalts the need to re-discuss and redefine the need for a new definition of Islam.
The Islam of “our house” exalts the necessity of re-discussing and redefining a good part of the conceptual categories that have contributed to structure the experience of the State and modern societies and at the same time points out in the most diverse articulations of society the space in which it is indispensable to strongly invent new modalities that know how to mediate the need for social cohesion with that of pluralism. The juridical and political traditions of the various European state contexts have, in recent years, sketched out and, in part, consolidated different responses to that part of the issues connected to the Islamic presence that the political and economic agendas have deemed it necessary to prioritize. The same scenario of the knowledge of society and culture is very diverse in the various countries, both in orientation and in consistency.
In the Italian case, in spite of the fact that many mortgages on the subject have been imposed by a political communication that is perhaps more interested in media exploitation than in deepening the actual configuration of our social reality, there is no lack of research experiences and social practices worthy of interest. The historical phase that contemporary societies are going through, moreover, seems to demand that we move on to a new phase with more effective intellectual investments that know how to involve the participation of scholars and social actors beyond disciplinary separations and ideological alignments.
OBJECTIVES
The master’s degree is addressed to those who, in their studies, work and social practice, have recognized in the complex reality of European Islam a set of issues of which they felt the need to assume the importance.
The main purpose is to ensure to the students the necessary competences for an action compatible with the national law and with the rules of a correct administrative action, also from the point of view of the relationships between the Muslim community and the territory, with particular attention to those with the civil society and with the public administrations, both local and national.
The Master includes also moments of reflection on the relationship between the Muslim community and the territory.
The Master also foresees moments of exchange with other religious communities different from the Muslim ones, also for the circulation of best practices and comparison on case studies.
The Master is addressed to managers and, in general, to staff of Muslim communities and civil society associations whose members come from OCI countries. It will be carried out in cooperation with the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy and the Italian Islamic Confederation.
APPROACH
The Master will use innovative didactic methodologies, centered on:
evaluation of professionalism and expertise developed in the field by the participants, according to the theoretical model of “communities of practice”;
analysis of the daily work experiences of the participants;
Active participation of the participants in the training activities in presence and online, through cooperative learning techniques.
DIRECTION
Prof. Stefano Allievi
Prof. Mohammed Khalid Rhazzali
DIDACTIC COORDINATION
Dr Mounya Allali
Dr. Youssef Sbai
Dr Valentina Schiavinato
DIDACTICS
In-person teaching will be carried out using different learning methods with a participatory approach. Distance learning activities (e-learning, social network) are also foreseen.
The lectures will be held on Saturdays at the University of Padua, in the classrooms of the Department FISPPA, seat of Sociology.
The Master provides a total commitment of 1500 hours:
300 hours of didactics (frontal, seminar, laboratory and distance learning);
200 hours of practical learning (internship or project work);
950 hours of individual study (self-training supported by the provision of study materials, writing of the report of the internship or project work and the thesis).
At the conclusion of the Master’s program, a thesis will be discussed.
Attendance is compulsory and absences cannot exceed 30% of the teaching hours.
REGISTRATION FEES
Registration fee: euro 2.924,50
The students enrolled in this edition will be completely exempted from paying all the enrolment fees, including the pre-enrolment fee (31 euros), the insurance fee and the 16 euros revenue stamp, since they will be completely financed by the PriMED-MIUR Project.
SUPPORT AND SERVICES AVAILABLE
Study materials and documentation provided by the Master’s Secretariat;
Tutoring throughout the course and for the internship/project work;
Online didactic assistance
MACRO THEMATIC AREAS
- Socio-anthropology of Islam
- Cultural Diversity, Religious Pluralism and Intercultural Mediation
- Islamic Sciences: Foundations and Trends
- Society, Law and Islam in Europe
- Islam and Public Space
- Interculture, Identity and Citizenship
- Community Management and Social Empowerment
- Islam and Globalisation Processes. Politics and Economics
- Radicalisation and Policies of Social Inclusion
5 ECTS- 30 hours
Western social sciences have produced an impressive contribution to the representation of Islam as a socio-anthropological phenomenon. The course intends to bring together the most relevant features of these disciplines and discuss their contributions in an interdisciplinary and intercultural perspective in order to derive useful elements for an interpretation of the current Islamic reality, both of the societies of origin and of the presences in Europe, in which the scientific perspective is emancipated from the Eurocentric bias.
5 ECTS – 30 hours
European societies, as well as continuing to undergo processes of secularisation, are also particularly affected by a more or less visible cultural and religious super-diversity. The course outlines, with an interdisciplinary approach, the developments of these trends, both in urban areas and in the life of state institutions. Secondly, it offers competences with regard to the application of the tool of intercultural mediation in institutional and community settings.
11 ECTS – 66 hours
The variety and richness of thought that has been produced throughout the history of Islamic cultures constitutes a heritage and a resource that has been drawn upon to a very limited extent by many of those political movements of alleged Islamic inspiration to which current events have accorded great attention, often obscuring the actual cultural and religious articulation of the Muslim world. On the other hand, European historical and philological sciences, although they have experienced important scientific episodes in the research on that cultural heritage, have not been able to relate to the present dynamics of the European public debate on Islam, nor to that which has developed in Muslim countries on the West. The teaching will aim to restore the complexity of this scenario by trying to highlight, with reference to the most recent experiences of thought matured in the Muslim context, especially in Europe, the aspects that present themselves as a resource for an original and active relationship of Islam with the “here and now”. The teaching will also enhance the presence of exponents from the Muslim world and international research, also through the seminar or meeting-debate formula.
5 ECTS – 30 hours
One of the aspects of the Islamic presence in Europe that is identified as problematic is the relationship between the institutional framework and legal systems of the European tradition and the way in which the legal and political dimension is articulated in the Islamic tradition. The teaching will aim to describe the background represented by the legal systems and culture of Muslim majority countries (Sahir’a, positive law) and its impact on the context of European legal and political systems. At the same time, the vast production of relative law prompted by the need to frame the Islamic presence in Europe, also in relation to general principles (human rights, religious freedom) and the relationship between policies and forms of negotiation, will be analysed.
4 ECTS – 24 hours
Islam has now become the object of powerful media manipulation and an often surreal protagonist of political communication. A very complex and risky relationship has arisen between the way the presence of Islam and the representations of it have been experienced and the experience of Muslims. The teaching intends to recall fundamental epistemological and methodological elements of the social sciences. The modalities and tools with which empirical research on the Islamic reality is produced will be presented and discussed, emphasising the problems determined by issues such as those concerning the territorial dimension and the evolution of the concept of citizenship. The course will analyse the main cases around which the public use of reference to Islam has been defined, trying to analyse their reasons and effects. In particular, the Italian situation and the peculiarities linked to the intersection between political debate and reactions to the Islamic presence and the overall political-constitutional situation will be considered.
4 ECTS – 24 hours
The overcoming of emergency and imagined logics towards the Islamic presence is probably linked to the positive development of intercultural perspectives in the consideration of the new composition of European society. The intercultural horizon, which envisages a focus on the relationship between different cultural phenomena and above all their configuration within concrete relations between individuals and groups beyond any essentialism, will be present throughout the articulation of the Master’s course. However, this teaching will aim to make known the main lines of development of the intercultural perspective both from a philosophical and methodological point of view in general, and through its translation into concrete modalities in relation to themes that take on a precise characterisation precisely when framed with the slant of interculture, such as identity and belonging. In addition, some themes strongly linked to the perspective of interculture will be proposed in a more highlighted form, such as those concerning the relationship between religions and spiritual experience and the rethinking of important Western philosophical and theological interpretations of the Islamic tradition of thought.
5 CFU – 30 hours
The first aim of this course is to provide theoretical, methodological, deontological and operational knowledge useful in the concrete work of managing a religious community or a association of a secular nature and in interfacing with territorial institutions and in mediation in the school, family and religious field. The second is to promote a better understanding of the concept of empowerment, the mobilisation of which should prove fruitful in the work contexts of leaders of religious communities and lay associations. In this perspective, social empowerment is to be considered a participatory process that tends to reinterpret the traditional objectives of social intervention, offering strategies and tools in the relationship between the individual and his social contexts: family, school, groups and organisations.
4 ECTS – 24 hours
The great processes of globalisation are causing the relationship between cultures, their material bases, their geographical locations, and their manifestation in politics, law and economics to change with great rapidity. Islam finds itself a relevantly positioned term in the most diverse orders of discourse that address these issues. The teaching will cover topics ranging from the relationship with the political dimension that opens up after the crisis of the state form, to the globalised economy, to so-called Islamic finance, to what emerges from the overall framework of current geopolitical issues.
7 ECTS – 42 hours
This course aims to provide an interdisciplinary approach to understanding religion in relation to identity and violence. It also focuses on policies to prevent and counter radicalisation measures, as well as on deradicalisation programmes adopted by the judicial system. Finally, the methods of countering it in relation to emergency profiles and state security needs are also illustrated. In this perspective, through a comparative analysis of various European systems, the importance of active public policies on the social inclusion front is emphasised, in which, according to the multi-actor and multi-agency approach, Muslim communities can play a decisive role.
INFORMATION
Didactic coordination
Headquarters of the Teaching Secretariat Master
Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), Sociology Campus Via Melchiorre Cesarotti, 10-12
35123 Padua
