The Muslim population of the SE Europe, excluding European part of Turkey, numbers ca. 9 millions, almost all of them being indigenous save for small immigrant Muslim minorities of Muslims in Greece and Romania (See Table I). The Balkan Muslim communities originated with the Ottoman presence in the region and for centuries their destiny was tied to the fortunes of the Ottoman state. Even nowadays Ottoman past and legacy determine to a large extent the way the Balkan Muslims are perceived by their neighbors. They remained part of the Pax Ottomana and lived and prospered under its umbrella until 1832 (Greece), 1878 (Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Romania), and 1913 (Sandzak, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia).
While inside the Ottoman state Balkan Muslims were integral part of the Ottoman economic, political, social and cultural world. Therefore the departure of Ottomans represented a major cultural shock. From then onwards Balkan Muslims were on their own having to deal with hostile anti-Ottoman Orthodox nationalisms of the SE Europe and soon after that with equally unfriendly godless Communism. In the turbulent decades that followed almost all things Muslim and Islamic became legitimate targets of popular hatred and destructive state actions. Very soon the ties between Istanbul and the Balkans were severed and the huge network of formal Islamic educational institutions fragmented and often completely destroyed. Practically all Balkan Muslim communities experienced breakdown in the system of Islamic education after the World War II. Ex-Yugoslavia had biggest Muslim population and softest of all communist dictatorships. Still, only one madrasa was allowed to continue its operation immediately after WWII while only Bosnia and Herzegovina had 23 madrasa on the eve of communism. The only institution of higher Islamic education, Higher Islamic Theological School in Sarajevo was closed in 1946. After the rapprochement with the Muslim world Yugoslav communist ...

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Quality is a priority issue within strategic planning in industrial, commercial and administrative sectors, in its being a prerequisite for business and market competitiveness. Besides, with the growing interest in the quality of educational output, quality and accreditation have become a stepping-stone towards enhancing educational systems, developing their contents and modernizing their means to better serve the recipient categories. In this context, it is no wonder then that quality should figure prominently in educational theories about the means to rise to the various challenges facing university education.
This surge of interest in quality and accreditation resides in a number of factors: namely, low levels of curricula and educational programmes, lack of adequately skilled human resources, poor educational administration as well as rarity of research works and teaching materials. It is also motivated by the need to review those concepts and norms underlying the standards for quality, through applying a new conceptual framework within which the standards for quality at universities are established, in the midst of sweeping globalization that undermines specificities and influences quality and accreditation standards.Hence the special importance that has been accorded to quality and accreditation standards within educational reforms aiming to raise performance to international standards and achieve the best levels of excellence and competitiveness, in total deference to local specificities and international standards.
This has proved the need to provide basic frameworks for regulating quality and accreditation standards from an Islamic perspective, the ultimate aim being to upgrade educational capacities and human resources within universities, fostering indigenous cultures, sustaining output, and ensuring maximum degree of flexibility in educational orientations...

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• In accordance with the objectives of the FUIW's charter seeking to upgrade and develop higher education and evaluate its performance to improve its quality and accreditation; and
• In response to the recommendation of the experts of ISESCO, ALECSO and the FUIW, calling for the establishment of an advisory body for quality and accreditation (Amman- Jordan: 17-19 September 2006);

The FUIW's General Secretariat has submitted the project of “the Islamic Advisory body for quality and accreditation” to the fourth General Conference of the FUIW held in Kuwait ( State of Kuwait: 4-5 April 2007), which approved the body as “an accrediting body”.

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As the third millennium opens, the world is witnessing many social and economic changes as well as scientific and technological developments. The result is that modern societies have become faced with considerable challenges and growing needs in terms of education. This leads us to an important question: how can we keep faith to our constants and maintain our civilizational and cultural identity, while keeping pace with the scientific and technological progress and restoring our civilizational leadership?
The "Strategy for the Promotion of University Education in the Islamic World", published in this book, poses the question in a different manner: how can we protect our originality and modernity by means of our educational plans and curricula and without sliding into close-mindedness or fusion?
The strategic planning of university education is therefore a vital requirement and a necessity for achieving development, and thereby establishing a philosophy of reform and renewal that meets the civilizational choice of the Muslim Ummah, and realizes unity of its orientations within the respect of its specificities. And this is exactly what entails the renewal of the functions of university education in terms of teaching, research and training, and confirms the importance of working out a draft strategy for the development of the mission of university education, to ensure the quality of its outputs, modernise its administration, qualify its human resources, improve the level of researches, achieve integrity of systems and institutions, improve its curricula and programmes, evaluate its performance, diversity its models, modernize its funding resources, as a contribution by the Federation of the Universities of the Islamic World to the promotion of the Islamic civilizational project which qualifies the Muslim Ummah to renew the civilizational edifice. Hence comes the pressing need to lay down a strategy to develop university education, in order to define ...

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