ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF ROTTERDAM: REALIZING THE FOUNDING VISION OF WESTERN EUROPE’S FIRST INDEPENDENT ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This article examines the historical development of the Islamic University of Rotterdam (IUR), today known as the Islamic University of Applied Sciences Rotterdam (IUASR), between 1997 and 2026, with particular attention to the relationship between its founding vision and subsequent institutional evolution. Using a qualitative historical case study and process-tracing approach, the analysis draws on founding statutes, conference discourse, curriculum documents, vision and mission statements, accreditation records, policy materials, and institutional archives. The findings show that the university was conceived as a broad educational project integrating religious scholarship, scientific inquiry, citizenship formation, cultural engagement, professional education, and societal contribution. Its development followed differentiated institutional trajectories rather than a single linear path. Theology and chaplaincy became consolidated fields; several cultural and academic initiatives were interrupted; broader societal and professional ambitions remained at the level of projection; and the educational and professional formation strand of the founding vision acquired renewed institutional expression through the accreditation of teacher education in 2026. The article conceptualizes this orientation as a comprehensive Islamic university and develops the Multiple Pathways of Vision Realization Model, which distinguishes realized, interrupted, re-activated, and projected pathways. The model provides a temporal and process-oriented framework for analysing how founding aspirations may persist, lose organizational expression, re-emerge, or remain aspirational under changing leadership, organizational, regulatory, and societal conditions.