This new college intended to restore the original purpose of a liberal arts education: to prepare young men to be the leaders for the future. In an age of world domination where credit- based capitalism, operating behind the veil of liberal democracy, has brought everyone, those from Developed Countries to Third World countries, to the brink of total melt-down, a new nomos is urgently required and, moreover, men and woman able to take the leadership required to rescue the people and the very eco-system we all live within. The entire wealth creation mechanism that functions within the inner sanctum of world bankism, has been and continues to be the crime of the centuries. Quite frankly, the 2008-2009 financial crisis cannot be patched up by injecting yet more money created as credit (or more accurately) out of nothing. Most of the political class, regardless of what country, have failed to understand how this 'mystery' of making money out of nothing occurs, yet apparently do not seem to care as long as they get elected and can stay in office. Therefore, deregulation and 'hands off business' was the credo of the political class throughout the 1970s - till the end of the 1990s. From the late 1970s and the Milton Friedman Chicago School of Economics on through the 1980s and 90s and the Greenspan era, an unsustainable system, and one that has crushed countless of human beings to such penury, that a complete re-valuation of values is urgently needed.

This new nomos is the full and complete Din of Islam. The disgraceful abandonment of Islam by the majority of Arabs, and the desperate nihilism of disenfranchised Muslim youths living in the UK and France, does not negate the bright young Muslim men and women living in those countries and others throughout Europe, some of which are 2ed and 3ed generation citizens, while others, such as those of the Balkan states of Eastern Europe, have been Muslim for centuries.

The syllabus at Dallas College was based upon contemporary as well as classical geo-political studies (such as 'The Great Game' of the 19th century played out in Afghanistan between Tsarist Russia and Great Britain) to world history - from Roman History through to the end of the 20th century, bio-politics - the study of key people whose lives had an impact on their time and place in the world, then languages and lastly fencing to cultivate noble character. It was a paideia for the 21st century designed to produce new men. The founder of the college was Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi, whose Scottish family name of Dallas became the name of this place of learning, unique in this time, but originating from the model of the great Mogul and Ottoman centres of higher education.

At the inception of Dallas College I was invited to teach Shakespeare & Rhetoric. This may seem an unusual inclusion where Politics and Islamic Knowledge form the core of the curriculum. I was informed that the focus was to be Shakespeare's History and Roman Plays. These plays, more so than all the others, but not exclusively so, are his political plays. I was introduced to a handful of books. There was the Essential Shakespeare Handbook, which became our basic text-book. Others were Frank Kermode's The Age of Shakespeare and his Language of Shakespeare. There was an excellent biography by Rene Weis and W.H. Audens Lectures on Shakespeare that was derived from a lecture series he gave in Greenwich Village in 1946-47, that I found exceedingly interesting, as I was already an admirer of Auden the poet, but was unaware of his extensive knowledge of Shakespeare. Then there was Jonathan Bate's The Genius of Shakespeare and more recently his newest book, Soul of the Age, frankly the best book I have ever read on Shakespeare. It is a masterpiece and I am convinced that Bate is today the preeminent Shakespearian scholar in the world. As I continued with my lectures (from 2004 to 2010) many new books were added.

There are two unequivocal characteristics of any study of Shakespeare's plays. The first is that you are exposed to the highest expression of the English language. It delights and excites the mind in a way that once you have tasted it your hunger only grows as you discover more of this living, pulsating language that transmits the meanings that are communicated and shared by human beings. With extraordinary wit and a generosity of humour and humanity, Shakespeare has written characters that are as much alive today as they were four hundred years ago when he wrote them. It is also worth mentioning that some of his plays have been translated into other languages, Kurosawa's Macbeth into Japanese comes to mind.

The second characteristic, more specific to the actual plays that are covered within the Dallas College course, are that they transmit an understanding of the dynamics of human politics: the endless play for power, position and influence that has been an unfolding drama as far back as history has been recorded.

What occurs in my lectures is an attempt to awaken a curiosity and concern not only about the age of Shakespeare, but also the age we live in now. There are, therefore, numerous excursions as we move from 14th or 15th century England to the exigency of early 20th century negotiations that preceded the outbreak of the First World War; the war the Kaiser never wanted. (See Patrick Buchanan's Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War). We move quite freely from Prince Hal in Henry IV Part I and II (portrayed as a profligate prince who neglected his duties at Court, but emerged through a series of life experiences that were the means by which his character was forged into the heroic Henry V), and then over to King Hasan II of Morocco who in his youth was dubbed by the French press as 'The Playboy Prince'. King Hasan was under a constant barrage of attack, operating both within his own inner circle as much as from outside forces, to sell off his country's vast mineral wealth to multi-nationals. Not unlike Hal, the king, in time, matured and was 'steeled' into a sober and astute ruler who held fast the reins of leadership and preserved his country from the rapacious greed of foreign invaders.

There are digressions and forays into a multitude of current political affairs that find scope within Shakespeare's vast landscape which serves as a setting for the machinations of human motives that drive the actions of world events. Very often our students recognise significant corollaries between a key 20th or 21st century figure and a semi-fictional character in one of Shakespeare's plays. I use the term 'semi-fictional' as Shakespeare did not always follow his source material to the very letter of the law (or the historical record), but was, nevertheless, always true to human nature.

From English history to ancient Rome, we have the backdrop that allowed Shakespeare to portray the whole world within that Wooden 'O', the Globe Theatre. The stage was his microcosm of the world.

Therefore, from the study of fiqh (the science of applying the law), the actual application of legal judgments in Islam regarding, for example, financial practices in the modern world, to the study of contemporary geo- politics with a primary focus on Central Asia, Urdu as a key language in the Muslim Sub-Continent of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, we add the classical art of fencing and lastly and Shakespeare's Political Plays, making Dallas College a unique place of learning in this time.

Today we have students from South Africa, Botswana, Singapore, Russia, the UK and Spain. We hope to bring new students from the Balkans, Turkey and Central Asia as well as from the lands of Indonesia and Malaysia.

This short introduction was prepared for Herr Abu Bakr Reiger, a respected German lawyer, head of the EMU (European Muslim Union) and the European Muslim Lawyers' Association. Mr. Rieger is also the editor-in-chief of the German language newspaper Islamische Zeitung that has been running for nearly 20 years, and the new English language magazine Globalia, inaugurated in January 2008.

Abdullah Luongo
www.robertluongo.blogspot.com