GCSE Religious Studies: Islam

Introduction

The GCSE syllabus requires students to submit for examination in two religions. For the vast majority, their second religion will be Islam and to this end I have prepared the resources contained on this page. The video material has been drawn from a distance learning course that I prepared a few years ago together with four leading Muslim scholars, from both Sunni and Shi’a schools, who approved the materials and appear periodically giving in-depth insights into some aspects of the beliefs and practices of Islam.

GCSE Religious Studies: Islam, Photo The Dome of the Rock

The material is all loaded onto a YouTube channel and available for use in the normal way. It is suitable for classroom use at the discretion of the teacher. Each extract is accompanied by a full transcript, which contains not only references from the Qur’an and Hadith but also those references as footnotes in full in a translation especially made for accuracy and comprehensibility by the four scholars involved. These transcripts can be downloaded as pdf files.


For those new to teaching Islam, or for whom the Shi’a perspectives are a new part of the syllabus, I recommend the material contained in the ‘Setting the Scene’ section and using elements from ‘Sources of wisdom and authority’ (including video material), especially those on the Qur’an, Prophet Muhammad, Sunni and Shi’a perspectives, and the Shari’a as background preparation for teaching the core elements on Beliefs and Practices.


During my years of teaching, I was always aware of the need to know sufficient about a subject to provide a context for students and to respond to their questions, which often went much further than the requirements of the syllabus. To respond to this need, I have prepared background papers on each element in the syllabi: these follow here under five section headings.


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