Otago and Victoria University of Wellington, are establishing New Zealand's first National Centre for Islamic Studies and hope to have the degree and diploma programmes in place next year offering papers in subjects such as Islamic politics, religion and culture, Arabic and anthropology.
The conference, being attended by about 30 people, had been organised so staff could learn from others who had started such centres elsewhere, Prof Paul Morris, professor of religious studies at Victoria, said on the first day of the three-day conference yesterday.
"We want to learn about what others have done, find out about their issues and concerns and relate that to our context . . .
"We have to develop a curriculum suitable for New Zealand."
Among the keynote speakers at the conference are Prof Mohammad Hashim Kamali, of Malaysia, and Prof Andrew Rippin, of Canada.
Prof Kamali, himself a Muslim, has had a long career as a Muslim scholar with a particular interest in Sharia - the Islamic religious law which regulates the private and public lives of Muslims.
Prof Rippin is the author of several textbooks about Muslim religious beliefs and practices, and about the Koran, the book central to Islam.
He would not say whether he was a Muslim, saying his faith was irrelevant to his work.
Both said yesterday it was not necessary to be a Muslim to teach Islamic studies.
However, Prof Kamali said anyone teaching or studying Islam could not just approach it in a scientific "five senses" way.
They first had to accept that many "hundreds of millions" of Muslims around the world believed in Islam as a religion involving a supreme being, and believed the Koran to be a book inspired by God.
"If people can accept Islam as a religion, that is a good starting point.
"If they think Islam [as a belief system] is false, it is not going to work."
Prof Rippin said like the study of the Bible, the study of the Koran was controversial, with not everyone believing it was a revelation from a divine source.
He said he saw the Koran as a "product of history".
The question for academics and scholars of Islam was "how to walk a path" between those two opposing sets of beliefs, he said.
Prof Kamali said it was important for universities, particularly those in non-Muslim countries, to offer Islamic studies.
Since the 9/11 terrorism attacks in 2001 when 19 Muslim Al-Qaeda extremists co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United States, there had been much mistrust and misunderstanding about Muslims, he said.
Islam was not about terrorism but about spirituality, moral values, justice, respect within the family and the community . . . and respect for others, he said.
