Tamale to host International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) 2019

The third edition of International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), Winter school 2019 Ghana will be held in the capital of Northern region, Tamale at the Tamale Technical University (TaTU) campus from Saturday 22nd to Tuesday 31st December 2019.

This year’s school is under the theme “A Course on Islamic Research Methodology and Epistemological Integration”. The school will concurrently be held in Kano and Lagos in Nigeria.

The main objective of the school is “Acquiring knowledge of major Islamic concepts and their manifestations in history, arts, politics, ethics, aesthetics, and other areas of life, defining, constructing, and analyzing the Qur’anic worldview, critiquing and evaluating both Muslim history and contemporary Western thought, designing and applying research methodology in Islamic thought and knowledge and among others”.

According to the Co-ordinator of IIIT Ghana, Sheikh Imam Saeed Mukhtar, the choice of Tamale for this year was due to the policy of IIIT and ensuring regional balance. "It's a policy direction for IIIT to ensure regional balance in all its outreach programs; like the Winter School".

“In the first place, Tamale is also part of Ghana. IIIT is always concern about ensuring regional balance when it comes some of its programs. The programs concentrated in Accra or other cities so the first and second editions about 50 to 65% of the regions coming from Accra and we had quite a number from the Northern region. After the 2nd edition, there was a suggestion that we change the region, not necessarily to Tamale but we realized that because of the number up there, doing it up there is also a good thing. We had people from the Northern about 10 coming into the 1st edition. So we want to see how Accra is going to respond going to the northern for the school,” he added.

The 10-day intensive program will witness students from other neighbouring African countries like Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Gambia. In all, 40 students will be taken through courses such as The Islamic Research Methodology, Methodologies in Integration of Knowledge, Approaching the Qur’an, Approaching the Sunnah and Foundations of Belief, Knowledge, and Ethics (Usul al-Din). The rest are Islamic Jurisprudence and Maqaasid (Fiqh and Maqasid al-Shari‘ah), Muslim History and Civilization, Contemporary Islamic Thought and The Intellectual History of the Sokoto Caliphate with lecturers coming from Nigeria, Uganda and Ghana.

The selected students are first degree holders with ages ranging from 20 to 35 years, expected to have possessed appreciable knowledge in Islamic beliefs, values and ethics.