Month: January 2017

IFUT’s upcoming Educational Initiatives

Within months of being established, IFUT has successfully sponsored the publication of a groundbreaking study on Faith based violence. It has also hosted its first event. In the upcoming months, IFUT is planning more initiatives and events that educate its audience on matters relating to Faith.

1. Books: IFUT will purchase and distribute bulk quantities of its first publication to educational institutes, think tanks, strategic decision makers and academics.  As part of its forward mission, IFUT will sponsor and support similar studies and publications that highlight how exclusionist ideologies target across different faiths.

2. Events and Seminars: As part of its educational initiatives, IFUT will continue to host academics and activists  who counter exclusion and intolerance with via multidisciplinary academic disciplines.

3. Educational Development with Higher Education Institutes: IFUT will seek to establish chairs, departments and centres within higher educational institutions as well as strengthening existing centres.  In order to counter exclusionary and totalitarian ideologies, IFUT will develop competing platforms that emphasise on spiritual traditions and reclaiming the divine heritage within different faith traditions. IFUT has identified this reclamation as a potent counter against literalist and intolerant ideologies that have emerged on the backs of carbon lobbies and politicised faith.

4. Documentaries: IFUT has identified and will strive to commemorate and celebrate those icons who have sacrificed their lives to stand up to bigotry and the misrepresentation of faith to achieve totalitarian political agendas.

IFUT’s Sponsorship Of Study On Faith-Based Violence Published

 

IFUT is pleased to announce the publishing of “Faith based violence and Deobandi militancy in Pakistan” by Palgrave Macmillan.  This is a seminal development in the area of faith-based violence and IFUT was one of the two sponsors of this book.

This book documents and highlights the Deobandi dimension of extremism and its implications for faith-based violence and terrorism. This dimension of radical Islam remains largely ignored or misunderstood in mainstream media and academic scholarship. The book addresses this gap. It also covers the Deobandi diaspora in the West and other countries and the role of its radical elements in transnational incidents of violence and terrorism. The specific identification of the radical Deobandi and Salafi identity of militants is useful to isolate them from the majority of peaceful Sunni and Shia Muslims. Such identification provides direction to governmental resources so they focus on those outfits, mosques, madrassas, charities, media and social medial channels that are associated with these ideologies. This book comes along at a time when there is a dire need for alternative and contextual discourses on terrorism. Source

IFUT will continue to promote and sponsor this book and will further sponsor the authorship of other similar books, studies and papers.