Critical Muslim 59

The decades-long, worldwide project to reform higher education has failed to live up to either present challenges or projected future change. The university is now facing existential threats. Since the pandemic, the question of whether we need the university, as a physical entity, has been raised with increasing frequency. Advances in technology, including growing digitalisation and the spread of AI, have also increased the risk of the whole enterprise going down with the bricks-and-mortar buildings. Moreover, the race for financial survival and profit may have consigned the university as an institution of academic excellence to the dustbin of late-stage capitalism. Can it survive in its current form? What might replace the ossified teaching machine, unable to adapt to change? How might we find new democratised ways—freed from concerns about rankings and fiscal gains—to continue knowledge building and prepare new generations for the future? This issue of Critical Muslim examines these and other related issues.

About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centres on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.

Ziauddin Sardar is an award-winning, internationally renowned writer, futurist and cultural critic. His many books include Three Begums; Reading the Qur'an and A Person of Pakistani Origins (all published by Hurst); Mecca: The Sacred City; and Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim. A former New Statesman columnist and UK equality and human rights commissioner, he is Editor of the influential quarterly Critical Muslim.