Tag Archives: Islam

DMU Muslim-Friendly Universities Audit: how British Muslim, first-year students experience their Muslimness in HE spaces


Posted by hallymk1

Overview

I am really pleased that with Lucy Ansley, Sumeya Loonat and Lamia Nemouchi, we are being funded by The Aziz Foundation to undertake an audit focuses upon the wider, student experience of British Muslim, first-year undergraduate students at De Montfort University (DMU). It situates this experience against their faith, and also in relation to ethnicity, gender and disability, in order to understand how these students experience their Muslimness in higher education (HE) spaces. The intention is that this will materially impact the ways in which universities can recognise intersectional and faith-based complexities in the undergraduate student experience.

A primary gain will be for universities to consider how to enhance their engagement with the richness of British Muslim student identities, in order to support the retention of the students. A secondary gain will be for universities to put in place structures, cultures and practices that anchor their relationships with these groups of students, such that they are able to rebuild the bridge between undergraduate and postgraduate taught provision (Samatar, Sardar and The Aziz Foundation, 2023).

The audit connects to the Aziz Foundation’s proposed audit areas of faith provision, workplace culture/ inclusion, and academic experience. It specifically focuses upon all British Muslim, first-year students at DMU, who will begin their undergraduate study during academic session 2024/25. It has the following aim.

  • To analyse how British Muslim, first-year students experience their Muslimness in HE spaces.

Higher Education spaces refers to the physical, and virtual environments and the institutional system in place within which the academic, social and personal development of the students occurs when pursuing higher education. HERE The audit has the following, linked objectives.

  • To identify how British Muslim, first-year students perceive their religious identity (Muslimness) when planning to pursue HE.
  • To identify intersectional factors, including ethnicity, gender and disability, that impact the experience of British Muslim, first-year students.
  • To explore institutional strategies to ensure the retention of British Muslim, first-year students.

Background

Whilst much work has been undertaken in the United Kingdom (UK) on the awarding gap (see, for instance, Universities UK, 2022), this has often been conflated with work on decolonising (see, for instance, Hall, Ansley and Connolly, 2023; Shain et al., 2021). Within university access and participation plans, there has been a focus on student-centred approaches, belonging, and inclusive learning environments, although the pivot for this has tended to be the awarding gap, rather than social justice. Moreover, there has been a lack of focus upon students of faith in general and British Muslim students in particular (Stevenson 2014), and the socio-cultural practices and environmental factors that impact their belonging within UK HE (Islam, Lowe and Jones 2019).

This has tended to limit the opportunity for institutions to engage productively and generatively with the complexity of the student experience, and to enrich that experience. This is in spite of a history of reporting of the negative impacts on the British Muslim student experience (see, for instance, Office for Students, 2021), and the recommendation by Universities UK (2022) of the need for ‘A greater push to implement university-wide change is needed so that the work that universities are doing to create inclusive communities is fully reflected in students’ experiences.’ Whilst this is a complex terrain that focuses attention upon structural constraints and barrier, communal cultures, and individual and collective identities, deep work is required to enable HE institutions to engage with such complexity.

Yet, a range of issues impact the British Muslim student identities, including: support for the representation and expression of faith on campus; access to appropriate funding for study; Islamophobia (amplified recently in relation to Palestine); surveillance and the Prevent strategy; the relationship between universities, students unions, and Islamic societies; and, the availability of and access to appropriate, faith-based spaces and environments. Stevenson (2018) has highlighted the intersecting impacts of these issues with a clear focus upon the need for religious literacy. This is more important for institutions, precisely because the Muslim experience of HE ‘is not homogeneous, and their experiences are therefore shaped differently, which impacts on their life choices and outcomes’ (Malik and Wykes, 2018: 17). Hence, there is a need to understand these experiences in order to make HE as inclusive for British Muslim students as their non-Muslim/religious peers.

Our audit works from the basis that the concept of identity remains complex, multifaceted and intricately linked to cultural, social and historical contexts (Hall 1990). It recognises that the British Muslim student experience in UK universities is conditioned by a range of representations of Muslim people and Muslimness, which have tended to exacerbate the marginalisation and stigmatisation of Muslim individuals, or Muslimness as an identity facet (Ali and Whitham, 2018). This has also led to self-censorship (Guest et al., 2020). Of course, the impacts of traumatic events like the pandemic and the war on Gaza shape societal, institutional and individual representations. However, the audit team wish to use this complexity, in order to understand how these students internalise and express their Muslimness in relation to their specific learning environments.

The audit team wish to understand how the active or passive engagement of institutions with negative stereotypes about Islam can: first, contribute to the internalisation of feelings of othering, potentially affecting access of Muslim students to HE (Islam, Lowe and Jones 2019); second, shape their experience within HE to reinforce these self-perceptions through lived experience of microaggressions, subtle biases, exclusionary practices (Ahmed, 2012) or practices that neglect religious identities; and, third, understand how these students celebrate their identity in relation to Islam as a holistic system, or ‘a way of life, a code of laws, a complete system encompassing and integrating the political, social, and economic, as well as personal, moral, and spiritual aspects of life’ (Dabashi 1993: 439).

Research Overview

The audit team’s approach will utilise an interpretivist approach inside a mixed methods study. This will enable the collection and interpretation of data that are contextually-detailed, and will also reflect upon the positionality of the research team. In all of our work, researcher positionality is central, and needs to be clearly articulated in the context of this specific research.

As British Muslims, two of the Co-Investigators meet the study’s participant criteria (Loonat and Maryam), whilst a third member of the team has extensive fieldwork engagement with decolonial and faith-based experiences of education as an international, Muslim researcher (Nemouchi). Both the Principal Investigator (Hall) and fourth Co-Investigator (Ansley) have extensive experience in pedagogic and educational research, in relation to decolonising and anti-racist practice.

A final benefit for the project is its contribution to a culture of co-creation, which is well established within the Education Studies Division at DMU. Work with second-year British Muslim students, who have lived experience or awareness of the issues faced by their first-year peers, is central to this proposal. We intend that four current 1st year British Muslim students (cohort 2023/24) will be recruited to join the project team, in order to shape the evaluation and help discuss its findings.

This audit seeks to explore the lived experience of British Muslim first-year undergraduates through a qualitative approach that centres student voice. Using survey and focus group methods, students will be asked to reflect upon their early experiences on campus, in relation to their Muslimness. Reflexive thematic analysis will then be used to identify findings from the data, recognising the interaction between data and researchers (Braun and Clarke 2023).

An anonymous survey was drafted using themes from the literature surrounding Muslim student experience in HE. Themes such as university choice, accommodation, societies, campus facilities and relationships are discussed. These were considered through the lens of the initial stages of the undergraduate journey (Humphrey and Lowe 2017) before being further refined into three sections: application, welcome and first weeks. In this way, the survey will capture student reflections on this pivotal transition into higher education.

The existing literature highlights the many and varied ways in which British Muslim students are negatively impacted by their university experience, and so we did not want to take an overly deficit-based approach to our questioning, but rather to offer neutrally framed prompts that enable both positive and negative reflections. The survey will undergo consultation with our Student Advisors early in the autumn term before being launched in November. In addition to questions regarding their experience, demographic data will be gathered to provide an overview of the perspectives represented within the survey data, and allow for intersectional analysis. To ensure student anonymity, only faculty of study will be collected, meaning that students are not identifiable from their demographic information.

Focus groups will then be used to add greater depth to the themes emerging from the survey data, and to explore those question areas in more detail. A draft schedule was developed, influenced by the research literature, and this will also be presented to our Student Advisors for feedback. Alongside each focus group, the research team will make personal research memos about the sessions, noting atmosphere, distribution of participants and any non-verbal cues that may be of analytical significance, to provide additional context for the analysis process.

Researcher memos, or reflective diaries, will play a central role throughout the study and will be completed by both academic staff members and the Student Advisors. The diaries will focus upon the research team’s experience of the analytical and methodological process, as well as their positionality throughout. The research team believe that reflexivity is an iterative process, not a check box exercise, and that authentic exploration of researcher positionality is a continual exercise throughout a study (Gani and Khan 2024, Braun and Clarke 2023). The diary writing process is therefore a useful tool in supporting the research team in maintaining their reflexivity throughout.

NB within the study as a whole, religion or belief is a key inclusion/exclusion criterion, and as a result a full Data Protection Impact Assessment is required and has been signed off. All data will be managed in transit and at rest on encrypted, DMU technologies, and as soon as transcription has been undertaken, transcripts and original data files (voice recordings, field notes) will be destroyed by the PI from those technologies or by shredding as part of DMU’s management of confidential waste. Under the agreed DPIA there will be no way for the PI to contact participants individually. In order to maintain anonymity no linking data or emails will be stored. So, for instance, where students have moved on from DMU and are no longer members of the Prayer Room or Islamic Society we will not be able to contact them directly. Anonymity and confidentiality are key. Note that an Interim Report has been submitted to The Aziz Foundation. Once this is agreed it will be published on DMU’s Research Repository.

Hall, R. Ansley, L., Loonat, S., and Nemouchi, L. (2024). Scoping a Muslim friendly Universities audit: DMU Interim Report. De Montfort University/The Aziz Foundation. https://hdl.handle.net/2086/24270

References

The Aziz Foundation: https://www.azizfoundation.org.uk/.

Ahmed, S. (2012). On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Allen, C. (2023) Everyday experiences of Islamophobia in university spaces: A qualitative study in the United Kingdom. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice. https://doi.org/10.1177/17461979231210996

Ali, N., and Whitham, B. (2018). The unbearable anxiety of being: Ideological fantasies of British Muslims beyond the politics of security. Security Dialogue, 49(5): 400-418. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010618794050 

Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2023) Toward good practice in thematic analysis: Avoiding common problems and be(com)ing a knowing researcher. International Journal of Transgender Health, 24(1), pp. 1-6.

Dabashi, H. (1993). Theology of discontent: the ideological foundations of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. New York: New York University Press.

Gani, J.K. and Khan, R.M. (2024) Positionality Statements as a function of coloniality: interrogating reflexive methodologies. International Studies Quarterly, 68(2). https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqae038

Guest, M., Scott-Baumann, A., Cheruvallil-Contractor, S., Naguib, S., Phoenix, A., Lee, Y. and Al Baghal, T. (2020) Islam and Muslims on UK University Campuses: Perceptions and Challenges. Durham: Durham University, London: SOAS, Coventry: Coventry University and Lancaster: Lancaster University. https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/33345/1/file148310.pdf 

Habermann, M. (2014) ‘Islamic Finance and the Student Loan Market for Muslim-Americans’, Undergraduate Journal of Humanistic Studies, 1, pp.1-13. Available at: http://carleton-wp-prod…07/Mike_Habermann_2.pdf 

Hall, R., Ansley, L., and Connolly, P. (2023). Decolonising or anti-racism? Exploring the limits of possibility in higher education, Teaching in Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2023.2201676

Humphrey, O. and Lowe, T. (2017) Exploring how a ‘Sense of Belonging’ is facilitated at different stages of the student journey in Higher Education. Journal of Educational Innovation, Partnership and Change, 3(1). https://winchester.elsevierpure.com/files/340639/788788_Lowe_ExploringHowSenseofBelonging_original_deposit_with_set_statement.pdf  

Islam, M. Lowe, I., & Jones, J. (2019). A ‘satisfied settling’? Investigating a sense of belonging for Muslim students in a UK small-medium Higher Education Institution. Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, 2(2): 79-104.

Malik, A. and Wykes, E. (2018). British Muslims in UK Higher Education: Socio-political, religious and policy considerations. London: Bridge Institute. https://www.azizfoundat…er-Education-report.pdf

Samatar, A., Sardar, Z., and The Aziz Foundation (2023). Transitions: British Muslims between undergraduate and PGT studies. London: The Aziz Foundation.

Shain, F., Yıldız, U.K., Poku, V. and Gokay, B. (2021) From silence to ‘strategic advancement’: institutional responses to decolonising in higher education in England. Teaching in Higher Education. 26 (7-8): 920-36.

Stevenson, J. (2014). Internationalisation and religious inclusion in United Kingdom higher education. Higher education quarterly, 68 (1), 46-64

Stevenson, J. (2018). Muslim Students in UK Higher Education: Issues of Inequality and Inequity. London: Bridge Institute. https://www.azizfoundat…-Education-report-2.pdf

Universities UK (2022). Closing ethnicity degree awarding gaps: three years on #ClosingTheGap. London: Universities UK. https://www.universitie…-gap-three-years-on.pdf


The Impact of The Current Student Loans Regime on Muslim Student Engagement and Retention in English Higher Education


Posted by hallymk1

Back in 2022 I had the great good fortune to be asked to supervise the undergraduate Education Studies dissertation for Yusraa Maryam. Yusraa’s work focused upon the impact of the UK student loans system on the HE experience of Muslim students who see Interest-bearing loans are a barrier. In 2023 I pitched to extend this work within De Montfort University, through an Academic Innovation Project. Working with Yusraa, and Sumeya Loonat, we extended the focus to look at issues in relation to retention for the students, working in this context. Whilst Yusraa had finished her studies and was in-work, she was also employed as a research assistant on this project, with Sumeya acting as a mentor.

Below, I identify some of the emergent outcomes from this work, in relation to the following.

  1. Student-as-producer: this includes the ways in which student needs and desires for what a more enriched and inclusive higher education might look like, might be shaped actively were those with privilege inside our institutions use that privilege to create space for those made marginal to be heard. Inside institutions like universities, predicated upon prestige, status and the commodification of both knowledge and the student experience, finding strategies, spaces and times that challenge hegemony matters. This is particularly true where social and cultural narratives, in deep relations with political desires, frame particular groups as other. Work that is predicated upon values (courage, faith, justice, respect, dignity) points towards more useful modes of student agency (beyond validating institutional EDI strategies).
  2. Voice: connected to the previous point, the ability of this work to offer opportunities for students to speak their truth, and to push back against silencing, feels foundational. The students with whom we had the privilege of speaking offered a range of narratives that challenge how we view the student experience, and the ways in which we fetishise or reduce it to a particular set of characteristics.
  3. Faith: in all our talk of identity and intersectionality, it feels increasingly like Faith, and the idea of a Faith as a way of life for a way of living or a way of knowing self and the world (or self in the world), has been forgotten or ignored. This forgetting or ignoring happens in plain sight, given the ways in which those of Faith conduct and bear themselves in public. This work has taught me to challenge my own preconceptions about faith and spirituality, and carries a deep and significant connection through to indigenous ways of thinking about braiding and weaving multiple characteristics, conditions, environments, times and places into our understanding of our lives as educated and educative and educating.

Overview

Interest-bearing loans are a barrier to education for some Muslim students (Abdulrahman, 2020; Malik and Wykes, 2018). Successive UK Governments have failed to implement a funding solution supporting access and participation. Moreover, there is limited research available on the impact of this system on Muslims adhering to Islamic teachings (Avdukic, 2023). This project evaluated the impacts of interest-bearing loans on Muslim student retention in one English University. It focused on career aspirations/the perceived value of Higher Education, and to amplify their voice in the development of appropriate student services.

So, our project sits inside the following conditions.

  1. Student loans containing interest* are a barrier to education for some Muslim students, as Islam prohibits interest.
  2. There is no funding solution equivalent to the SLC that supports access and participation for impacted individuals and communities.
  3. There is limited research on the impact of this, in terms of Muslim students balancing their education and adhering to their faith.

[* riba, or loans issued for a predetermined time with the premise that they will be repaid with excess, sometimes classified as usury’]

We are mindful that there are competing fatwa and positions, in relation to this issue. Whilst Riba is prohibited in Islam, there are discussions on whether the UK student loan system falls under its definition. Most student loan systems with interest would be seen Riba-bearing, but some have a different view for the UK system (e.g. because the outstanding debt can be written off, and is only taken after earning a set amount). Then there is the necessity argument, which is separate. Since 2017, there is an argument that this has been taken advantage of to dismiss the issue, rather than look at those who do see it as an issue

Individuals feel they have a good understanding of Islamic finance, and that accruing, paying, charging or receiving interest is not permissible or at least problematic. However some Islamic scholars believe that education is important, especially where there is no alternative, so can be supported with loans. The lack of a consistent ruling causes some confusion for those making HE decisions (DfE, 2019).

Some relevant resources for this are as follows.

However, we wished to understand the experiences of a subset of those students impacted by the current student loans regime. As a result, we investigated the following questions.

  • What is the impact of interest-based student loans on Muslim students’ academic and career aspirations?
  • How does the student loans system impact how Muslim students conceptualise the value of higher education?

Maybe more Muslim girls and Muslim students would enter the uni. Like many I know try to look for alternative routes. If it was inclusive [student loan system], you’d see a lot more Muslims in the University. [Interviewee 2]

Student-as-Producer*

*We deliberately take the idea of student-as producer as a key organising concept for this project. This builds upon the work of Mike Neary, who very sadly passed away in 2022. I am currently working on a book about Mike’s practice, writing and activism. Neary (2020) asks how do revolutionary teachers teach? He asks us to consider students as activists in thinking not just about the curriculum, but the conditions inside which the classroom is reproduced. He asks us to consider students not as consumers, but in relationship with those clusters teachers, the classroom, the curriculum, the University, pedagogy, and more. He asks us to consider the relationality of the University, and how our democratic activism might reproduce a more sane set of spaces for learning and teaching than those we currently inhabit, and which reproduce our current, crisis-written, insane world.

A side point is to identify that throughout this work, Yusraa, Sumeya and I have illustrated our thinking through the work of acrylic artist Heba Zagout, who was martyred in Gaza in October 2023. Her work points us towards the hope that we might know the world otherwise.

The student-as-producer perspective builds from: first, from the Education Studies’ undergraduate dissertation of Yusraa Maryam, who has lived experience in relation to this issue; and second, the mentoring relationship between Yusraa and Sumeya Loonat, a PhD student researching institutional student support mechanisms. The project also builds connections through these students to the University Islamic Society and Prayer Room, which were pivotal in ensuring that recruitment can be managed in a trusting manner.

Crucially, this was a cross-institutional project, connecting Muslim student experiences to issues of retention. A series of semi-structured interviews with 12 current and former Muslim students, led by Yusraa with Richard, centred lived experiences. With dignity at its heart, and guided by positionality and reflexivity, the project began from the premise that institutional structures, cultures, and practices need to respond to the needs of these students, to support their retention and aspirations (Stevenson et al., 2017).

Revaluing relationality: centring voice and including Faith

The project catalysed richer understandings of how faith and academic aspirations interrelate and impact on student, family and community choices. It will lead to two briefing papers for senior leaders and programme teams, alongside a collaborative audit with the Aziz Foundation on the British Muslim First-Year Student experience, in partnership with 4 undergraduate student advisors. Here, processes, relationships and outcomes, will be produced with students as authors and activists; activists in the pedagogy that might help reimagine the University. Or at least activists in the pedagogy that might help University to engage with more voices in its reimagining.

I feel like if you’re not practicing, or if you’re not, like if you’re a non-Muslim then you won’t ever understand fully why it’s a problem. And that for us, interest is like one of the big major sins. So for you to get involved in that, it’s pretty much saying that you’re not gonna have a good afterlife. [Interviewee 1]

Back then I would go to every single guest speaker there was… because I wanted to sort of soak up that experience. And when you go through University [you] should be experiencing that more, but I’m actually experiencing that less, because I just simply can’t afford to do that anymore and so it’s sad. [Interviewee 8]

The project desired and considered the following.

  • Making clear the complexities of the student experience and of retention, in particular in relation to faith-based decisions.
  • Making clear the need to understand the impact of the extant student loans system on the retention of some Muslim students.
  • Shaping targeted interventions, like bursaries or pastoral support.

I was thinking of dropping out. So I went to my course leader.. told him that I wanted to drop out and he was like why? ‘Cause I do… enjoy my studies and when I revealed the financial situation, he got me in contact with the DMU Imam and then we spoke about possibly financing it myself. So right now I’m not on a student loan, I’m financing it myself, which is difficult, but I’m doing it. [Interviewee 8]

  • Building capacity for empathy and equity in the student experience.
  • A richer understanding of the experience of Muslim students, and to frame inclusive activities inside-and-outside the classroom.
  • By moving away from homogenising Muslim students, to understand how appropriate pastoral care might support students who wish to adhere to Islamic principles.

in second year when I started questioning, I was like but nobody really needs Muslim architects and Muslim designers, so what’s the point of me doing it? [Interviewee 2]

  • Giving Muslim students made marginal in discourse a safe space and voice to share their lived experiences, and to have their faith-based decisions recognised as valid.
  • By giving attention to issues hidden in plain sight, and that have an impact on the wider University experience and wellbeing, we can begin to shape a sense of belonging rather than further isolation.
  • The potential to develop interventions that support the full range of students, and that recognises the complexities of marginalisation.

I really didn’t want to go uni in the case of taking a student loan out, and then my parents came to conclusion that they’ll just pay it off by working, and now it’s got like my parents working like several more hours. [Interviewee 7]

  • The potential to rethink perspectives and perceptions about Muslim student engagement and experiences.
  • Helping staff in a personal tutoring context, in relation to signposting, and developing empathy and connections with their students.
  • Awareness can support with planning and timetabling of extra-curricular activities that may have an impact on student engagement.

[Taking the loan] is quite difficult and, you know, it has weighed on the conscious a lot, but, you know, it’s just… I’m kind of just in a rock and a hard place. There’s no kind of right thing to do because whatever I do, I’m compromising something else. [Interviewee 12]

I have included below a recent presentation we made up the DMU annual learning and teaching conference, on this issue. A follow-up post will detail ways in which we have begun to extend this work in partnership The Aziz Foundation, as part of their Muslim-friendly universities programme of work, through an institutional audit. In this, we are encouraging a renewed relationality within our universities, in order that we might hold space for a new way of knowing ourselves, each other and the world.

Presentation: The Impact of The Current Student Loans Regime on Muslim Student Engagement and Retention in English Higher Education

REFERENCES

Abdulrahman, M.M., (2020) ‘Higher Education Loans Board in Kenya from the Islamic Sharia Perspective’, International Journal of Islamic Thought, 18, pp. 34-42. Available at: http://journalarticle.u…18-Dec-2020_4_34-42.pdf

Avdukic, A., Khaleel, F., Abdullah, A., & Brawe, A. H. (2023). Religion as a barrier to the use of student loans for higher education: A community-based participatory study with Somalis living in England. British Educational Research Journal, 49, 370–404. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3847

The Aziz Foundation: https://www.azizfoundation.org.uk/.

Heba Zagout’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zagoutheba/?hl=en.

Malik, A. and Wykes, E. (2018) British Muslims in UK higher education. London: Bridge Institute.

Neary, M. (2020). Student as Producer: How Do Revolutionary Teachers Teach? London: Zed Books.

Stevenson, J., Demack, S., Stiell, B., Abdi, M., Ghaffar, F. and Hassan, S. (2017) The social mobility challenges faced by young Muslims. UK: Social Mobility Commission.