Rector Ilshat Gafurov and Director Ramil Khayrutdinov attended the meeting on June 30th.
Head of Presidential Administration Asgat Safarov read out a greeting from State Counselor of Tatarstan Mintimer Shaimiev: “One of the main tasks today is to provide a correct Islamic education. The Islamic Academy project did not arise at once. We came to it after many years and many mistakes and finally decided to establish the Academy here, on this sacred land. That decision was supported by the President of Russia”.
Mufti of Tatarstan Kamil Samigullin opined, “This scientific center will spread knowledge. The Prophet’s voice will sound from the White Mosque*”.
Bolgar Academy will provide both religious and secular degrees. Master of Islamic sciences and master of Islamic economics are two examples that are planned to be introduced.
One of the Academy's key partners is Kazan Federal University. KFU’s Islamica Center provides secular training courses for Muslim clerics and various methodological support for other relevant programs. KFU conducts its religious studies and a vast array of restorative and archaeological activities, including those in Bolgar, in cooperation with the Revival Foundation (headed by Counselor Shaimiev). BIA and KFU thus share objectives in preserving and spreading knowledge about local cultural and religious heritage. The institutions will continue their collaborations in all of the mentioned fields.
In his speech Kamil Iskhakov, Acting Rector of the Academy, touched on the issues of electronic and online education. BIA’s partners – over 40 in total - are located in different countries, so online cooperation is a very pertinent question for the institution. The first summer school will kick off this coming July.
The school will not only serve its academic purposes but also show how ready the infrastructure of the Academy is for its full-scale launch. The construction period was notably short – only one year (the first stone was laid in June 2016). The investment amounted to 1.2 billion rubles.
Ministry of Education and Science of Russia was also swift in issuing academic permits – first 63 enrollees will start their curriculum in September 2017.
*one of the historical buildings in Bolgar