The Higher Education Funding Council for England is considering creating a virtual centre of excellence that would network academics, faith and community Islam groups to boost Islamic studies in the UK.
The moves were discussed at a closed conference on improving Islamic studies in universities held last week, after the government earmarked £1m to improve the subject following last June's Siddiqui report.
The website would act as a national resource, listing who is teaching Islamic studies and where, give details of conferences and act as a link between academic and non-academic organisations.
Delegates also discussed the possibility of creating template "add-on" modules in Islamic studies that anyone could take. These could be taken and adapted to local circumstances.
Robert Gleave, professor of Arabic Studies at Exeter University and executive director of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, said: "It's impossible to achieve without an enormous amount of work. I'm not convinced it's a very good idea. It will not necessarily move forward the education."
He said there was a tendency to mix up widening participation issues with academic issues concerning the quality and nature of provision of Islamic studies.
"It's quite clear government had a fanciful notion that Islamic studies could be used as part of de-radicalisation or counter terrorism and it's gradually being dissuaded of that idea. It's not part of the raison d'etre of Islamic studies and compromises the academic integrity of the subject.
"There may be a good reason to bring together all the various resources online available but to make that the end product of the exercise is rather limiting and will not necessarily improve the subject area nationally," he said.
Academic delegates said the conference's agenda was clearly not just the study of Islam but the study of Islamic communities in Britain, moves that were criticised by traditional academics but embraced by newer universities.
"That's probably a reflection of the fact that we're not that badly funded and don't really need £1m - that's not going to go very far - but other areas such as diaspora studies or anthropology would welcome this kind of initiative," said Dr Elisabeth Kendall, director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World at Edinburgh University.
"This government initiative is about seeking to bind together the Arab- and Muslim-funded organisations, which are non-academic and we expect to follow a religious agenda, together with academically neutral objective Islamic studies organisations funded by the UK government...to group together academics and community and faith based centres.
"It's not going to be an academic initiative, it's going to be a networking one."
She said the additional modules in Islamic studies could be in the national interest and would not impact other neutral and scholarly work undertaken by academics.
John Selby, director of education and participation at Hefce, said: "We're still floating a range of ideas about what we are going to do and we've only just received the report about what's going on in other countries.
"We're going to be doing more talking to people before we come to any decisions and will not decide anything before September."
Officials will report to the Hefce board in July on work done so far before making more concrete proposals in September.
Selby said the £1m would allow Hefce to do some pilot work on Islamic studies but more money would be needed to set up the virtual centre.
"To develop something like a centre of excellence, particularly if it's to be collaborative and across Europe it would cost more money and we'll have to talk to government about that."