Islamization of Disciplines: Towards an indigenous educational system

The past two decades has witnessed the mushrooming of Islamic schools in Europe, the United States and South Africa. Initially these schools were concerned essentially with providing an Islamic ethos for learners. More recently, however, they have begun to focus on the process of Islamization. The Islamization project was initiated in the United States by Muslim academics including Isma’il al‐Faruqi, Syed Husain Nasr and Fazlur Rahman as a response to the secularisation of Muslim society, including its educational insitutions. In essence Islamization means including Islamic disciplines in the curriculum, providing an Islamic perspective on issues in the syllabi and locating, where possible, secularized disciplines within the Islamic weltanschauung. Six international conferences have been held to date at different locations in the Muslim World. The first five generated conceptual papers on the Islamic approach to knowledge and education and inspired academics to write research papers on their disciplines from an Islamic perspective. Most of these have been published in the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. The three universities which were established to drive the process have had varying degrees of success. The sixth conference which was held in South Africa took the form of workshops where South African teachers and international academics were brought together to generate Islamised syllabi for the major school disciplines. This article attempts to explain the rationale for Islamic schools and their attempts at Islamization of disciplines. In my view, this is an important development in the context of demands for the revival of indigenous knowledge systems.     

‘Teacher talk’: the problems,perspectives and possibilities of developing a comprehensive sexual health education curriculum for Australian Muslim students

This paper reports on a study that examines how a group of teachers at a Victorian Islamic College deliberated on how to develop an appropriate sexual health education curriculum for their Muslim students. Teachers found themselves challenged by the current restrictive curriculum structures, policies and practices at their school. They also found themselves struggling with embedded student cultural understandings and traditions of sexual health that contradict Islamic teachings as stated in the Qur'an and Hadith. In contemplating the possibilities of a sexual health curriculum from an Islamic perspective, teachers desired to confront longstanding political issues and hegemonic structures at their school to enable the search for a solution to a curriculum problem and construct the conditions necessary for its sustainability.     

回族的经名与官名

回族姓名的构成特点与汉族基本上是一致的，但是，回族取名时毕竟以本民族文化为基础。以伊斯兰文化为内核，取经名就是回回民族伊斯兰情结的突出表现，具有鲜明的伊斯兰文化内涵和回回民族的宗教意识。回族官名的使用，则是回汉文化交融的结果，回族官名虽然是在汉文化的影响下形成的，但仍然保留着一些自身民族的特色。     

Islamic Schools in the Netherlands: Expansion or Marginalization?

In the Netherlands, the constitutional freedom of education offers the opportunity for the growing number of Muslims to establish state-funded Islamic schools. At the moment there are 46 Islamic primary schools; a number of schools are in the process of being established and there is still a need for an additional 120 such schools. Right from the start Islamic education has been a highly controversial issue. Events such as 9/11 and the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh have fueled the discussion, which turned from open-minded and accommodating to critical and even demonstrably negative. This article focuses on Islamic schools in the Netherlands: how they have evolved, their objectives, their achievements, and the problems they have encountered – and continue to encounter. Specific attention is paid to a number of empirical studies that focus on the functioning of Islamic schools.     

伊斯兰教的经济观

伊斯兰教并不限制人们追求现世财富和物质享受,但对一个虔诚的穆斯林来说,这种追求和享受不能妨碍他履行宗教责任与宗教义务;另一方面,对真主的绝对服从是获得今世财富和来世幸福的条件和保证,辜负真主的人不但会失去今世的财富,也得不到来世的幸福。伊斯兰教的这种经济观在全球经济现代化的浪潮中面临着挑战,伊斯兰现代主义者试图对伊斯兰教的传统进行新的解释,从而使伊斯兰教适应并推动现代经济的发展。     

How teachers’ values affect their evaluation of children of immigrants: Findings from Islamic and public schools

This study examines the implications of how teachers’ views of immigrant parents predict their ratings of first-grade students’ academic competence and behavioral problems. Teachers rated 191 first-grade immigrant students attending Islamic and public schools in the Northeast United States. The results showed that when teachers perceived parents as having discrepant value differences, they rated students more negatively both in terms of academic competence and behavioral problems, even after controlling for student gender and ethnicity, parental education and parental school involvement. Surprisingly, teachers in Islamic and public schools did not differ in their perceived value differences with parents. The type of school students attend, however, moderated the effects of teachers’ perceived value differences on their academic ratings, but not on their behavioral ratings. While both Islamic and public school teachers rated students’ academic competence equally high when they perceived little or no value differences with parents, public school teachers held lower academic expectations than Islamic school teachers with increased value differences. These findings suggest a mechanism by which children from immigrant families enter a path of diminished expectations, albeit through slightly different levels in Islamic and public school settings.     

What Islamic school teachers want: towards developing an Islamic teacher education programme

In the 70 year history of Islamic schools in North America, there is yet to be an accredited teacher education programme to train and professionally equip Islamic school teachers with an understanding of an Islamic pedagogy. Arguably, there has been an imbalance of energy placed on curriculum development projects over the considerations of teacher training. From my experience working as a teacher trainer/education consultant for Islamic schools for the past 10 years, it is evident that the underlying assumption for many school administrators is that a State/Ministry certified teacher who is Muslim will know how to teach ‘Islamically’. The aims of this paper are to first establish some semblance of what it means to teach Islamically or, more accurately, to teach through an Islamic pedagogy. From this framework, the crux of the paper is to present findings from a series of focus groups with Islamic school educators about their teacher training needs. The findings of this study establish the need for a formal teacher education programme in Islamic pedagogy within an established faculty of education. Such a programme would achieve three major ends in cultivating the stewardship of Islamic schools in North America: 1. Define and establish Islamic education as a valid and relevant pedagogical model that can contribute to the broader discourse of alternative, faith-based education;

2. Standardise the pedagogy and curriculum of Islamic schools based on the principles of education in Islam and to make both contextually relevant;

3. Contribute to raising the standards of Islamic schools through a teacher education programme at credible faculties of education where ongoing research and development will also be supported.

     

The Experiences and Personal Religious Beliefs of Egyptian Science Teachers as a Framework for Understanding the Shaping and Reshaping of their Beliefs and Practices about Science‐Technology‐Society (STS)

This research investigates the role of experience in relation to teachers’ beliefs and practices. The study adopted a social‐cultural constructivist perspective using an interpretive approach. The research was guided by teachers’ interpretations of their experiences related to teaching science through Science‐Technology‐Society (STS) issues. These interpretations are re‐interpreted to find meaningful conceptual categories (grounded in the data) from which to build a model to understand the influence of experiences within socio‐Islamic culture on teachers’ beliefs and practices. Data was collected from ten teachers using interviews and observations. The findings of this study suggest that it was mainly teachers’ personal religious beliefs and experiences that shaped their beliefs and practices. The research also led to a model, constructed on the basis of the data analysis, which suggests an explanation of how teachers’ personal religious beliefs and experiences influence their beliefs and practices.     

传统与现代:伊斯兰复兴运动与政治合法性

政治合法性是当代政治学的核心概念之一。从伊斯兰国家的传统视域来看,伊斯兰教传统是最主要的政治合法性来源,其政权的更迭、政治制度的建构无不以伊斯兰教为基本架构。当前,随着现代化浪潮的推进,传统的政治合法性面临着严峻的挑战,广大穆斯林民众开始从伊斯兰教传统来反观现代化的成败得失,当代伊斯兰复兴运动则是以"宗教政治化,政治宗教化"来重建政治合法性的勇敢尝试,其目的是要重新确立伊斯兰的政治属性,摒弃形形色色有悖于伊斯兰的政治弊端,重建伊斯兰政治权威。     

Educational leadership: an Islamic perspective

Ethnocentric concepts, theories and practices in education, predominantly embedded in western philosophy and values, tend to ignore the growing multicultural nature of educational institutions. This article draws attention to the knowledge gap in mainstream literature regarding diverse perspectives of educational leadership—an issue which is foreseen as gaining higher significance with the fast‐changing societal structures in Britain. Having worked as a Muslim woman educational leader/manager in higher education in an Islamic state for more than two decades, and now working at a British university, positioned as a non‐White woman Muslim, the author endorses the need to move beyond ethnocentrisms and to work towards developing complex theoretical constructs to reconceptualise educational leadership, drawing from perspectives held by diverse ethnic groups—students and communities. How learners from diverse philosophical and ethnic backgrounds conceive and perceive educational leadership, and how they receive it, is bound to interact with their learning experience and performance. This article briefly introduces leadership as a concept formulated in context. It presents philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of these conceptualisations from an Islamic perspective, and highlights the interplay between knowledge and leadership. The article deliberates how these discourses interact to formulate ‘educational leadership’ in Muslim societies, and explores the implications of these constructions with a focus on the British context, where Muslims are in a minority, pointing to the significance of understanding philosophical diversity for embracing population diversity.     

THE PEDAGOGY OF THE TRANSFORMATION: ECONOMICS EDUCATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

This article presents a critical analysis of economics education in central’ and eastern Europe since the 1989 revolutions. The infusión of Western economics teachers and literature, while introducing a new perspective to central and eastern Europe, has also created problems. These problems stem from the narrow perspective and belief in the universal validity of orthodox economic theory held by these teachers and their failure to teach any other perspective. The author advocates a different type of economics education for central and eastern Europe. It includes a broader focus on societal problems and the integration of economic history, comparative economics, economic development, and history of economic thought into economics curricula. Finally, the author recommends that economics education be focussed on giving students a perspective with which to develop their own alternative policies for their respective nations, teaching them that there is more than one economics paradigm and that there are multiple alternative transformation paths.     

Female Islamic Studies teachers in Saudi Arabia: A phenomenological study

This study highlights on describing the experiences of Saudi Arabian female Islamic Studies teachers by exploring what is means to be an Islamic Studies teacher teaching in the current unprecedented vibrant and complex tapestry of social, religious and political debates occurring in the larger context of the country. The study draws on phenomenology as a guiding theoretical framework. The seven teachers involved in the study used their identities, beliefs and values to make sense of their everyday lived experiences. Discussions about their lived experiences provided a counter-discourse that challenges the traditional image of Islamic Studies teachers as transmitters of sacred knowledge. The study points to the growing complexity of the Islamic Studies teachers' roles due to an array of challenges that surfaced both in society at large and within the classroom walls.     

Advocacy and Involvement: The Role of Parents in Western Islamic Schools

Muslim parents share many of the same ideals that other religious parents do when considering comprehensive religious schools. For those who see Islamic schooling as a viable option, supporters claim that these schools help to (1) preserve the culture and customs passed down from generation to generation, and (2) provide Muslim children with a proper identity consonant with one's home environment, thereby ensuring a positive sense of self. In this article the author will explore the role that Muslim parents play in Islamic schooling; in particular the author will examine the reasons why those parents who favor Islamic schools do, and what they hope to gain either for themselves or their children by enrolling them.     

Exploring halaqah as research method: a tentative approach to developing Islamic research principles within a critical ‘indigenous’ framework

This paper explores a traditional Islamic pedagogy known as halaqah as a potentially useful authentic research method and contributes to discourses about critical and indigenous research methodologies through an analysis of Islamization of Knowledge and other ‘critical indigenous’ movements amongst Muslims. Islamic research principles are tentatively proposed and then used to assess the effectiveness of halaqah as an authentic Islamic research method through analysis of a small qualitative study. The study involved Muslim mother-teachers participating in halaqah to collaboratively reflect on their work as holistic Islamic educators who are developing a ‘critical indigenous’ education to meet the needs of Muslim children in contemporary Britain. This paper argues that halaqah is a more authentic research method in this study than a group interview or focus group as it enabled participants to articulate themselves within their own epistemological and ontological context and engage in critical reflection within an Islamic paradigm.     

Between “Islamic” and “un-Islamic”: Navigating Religion at an American Islamic High School

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate how one American Islamic school community grapples with external and internal demands on religion, and how this process impacts notions of what is religious. At ‘Ilm High School, an Islamic high school on America’s West Coast, school administrators and teachers must accommodate students’ and parents’ diverse and often competing ideas about Islam and the “Islamic.” In doing so, they sometimes downplay the “Islamic” in their Islamic Studies classes, policies, and school representation. They do this without venturing into the “un-Islamic”, casting a wide “religious net” and keeping Islam capacious and relevant enough for Muslim students.     

Sudanese migrants in the Khartoum area: fighting for educational space

This article examines the situation of the internally displaced persons from Southern Sudan living in and around the capital and their experience with the dominant Islamic discourse, and particularly the educational discourse of the ruling National Congress (NC). Based on qualitative field data, the article explores the opposing discourses between the Southerners and the governing elite in the North. While the governing NC advocates an Islamic educational discourse, the Southerners in the camps in and around Khartoum are either opposed to modern education because it destroys traditional practices, or they favour an educational system which is more Western in nature. Parents, educators and community groups from the South organise resistance against what they consider an imposition of an alien value discourse, and as the article will show, small concessions have been granted. The frequent contestations of these concessions or victories show, however, that the non-secular, Islamic basis of the education system is so ingrained in the wider Islamic discourse that a more satisfactory solution can only occur within a comprehensive peace settlement.     

Debates in the Literature on Islamic Schools

Contemporary global events, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the unresolved conflict in the Middle East, and the pessimistic relationships with Muslim countries, pose challenges for Muslims living in the United States in all walks of life. In addition, Muslims encounter daily struggles to live within a society that follows considerably dissimilar beliefs, norms, and way of life. Therefore, Islamic schools and other organizations emerged in response to those challenges. There are several debates in the literature about Islamic schools; among those debates is whether Islamic schools segregate Muslim students, inspire religious intolerance, and rejection of social pluralism's ideals. In addition, there are debates of whether Islamic schools are capable of developing a strong Muslim identity skilled to tackle future challenges. Discussing these debates is considered the first step to critically tackling the challenges meeting Islamic schools, their relevance, and their continuity in a way that benefits Muslim generations and the American society. Furthermore, such debates draw attention to the impediments facing the success of these schools and the possible strategies to resolve problematic issues. This article explores each of these debates in detail.     

Empirical research: Challenges and impulses for Islamic religious education

ABSTRACT

The following article describes how empirical research can give new impulses to Islamic religious education. These impulses could lead to a reconciliation of the Islamic religious heritage with the fast-changing reality of Muslims in non-Muslim countries and societies. Due to the presence of Muslim children in public schools and the urgent question of their religious education, as an academic discipline, Islamic religious pedagogy (Islamische Religionspädagogik) has acquired a pioneering role among the various Islamic theological disciplines. On a scientific level, it has already taken its first steps in the scientific landscape in Germany and Austria and has established diverse references to modern science. Islamic religious pedagogy, as a young scientific discipline, necessarily requires empirical research to provide sound foundations for the quality of Islamic religious education and for a better understanding of religious educational processes. This calls for a dialogue between empirical educational research and theology and cannot be achieved based on purely theoretical assumptions.     

English and Islam: A Clash of Civilizations?

There is a substantial amount of literature documenting the attitudinal resistance of Muslims towards English and the supposed conflict between English and Islam. This article provides a critical review of the writings and research on the issue and discusses some of the reasons behind this resistance, focusing on Muslims in Malaysia. It argues that although English is rooted in the Judeo-Christian culture, and often viewed as a primary vehicle for the transmission of "Western" values, the learning of English is not in conflict with Islamic values. This article also presents an Islamic perspective on the role of language and the attitude that Muslims should adopt towards learning languages. It concludes by emphasizing the need for English teachers to take into account the socio-cultural aspects of learning English when teaching Muslim students, and for Muslims to value the importance of learning English for the purpose of acquiring contemporary knowledge.     

Islamic religious education and the plan against violent radicalization in Spain

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the importance of Islamic religious education in public schools in Spain as an instrument in the prevention and fight against violent radicalisation. In this article, we examine the legal status of Islamic religious education and the latest regulations on Islamic religious education that emphasise the fight against Islamist terrorism. We also study the regulation of teachers of Islamic religious education and their role in the counter-narrative required to deter the message of Islamist terrorists and prevent violent radicalisation.