RELIGIONS AS ‘WORK IN PROGRESS’
Farid Panjwani
UCL Institute Of Education
ALURE Annual Conference
September 1-3, 2015
SCOPE OF THE TALK
• Why are so many educated Muslims attracted to extremism and what can be
done about it from an educational point of view?
• Seduction of extremism
• Push and Pull factors
• Search for belonging, identity and justice
STRUCTURE OF PRESENTATION
•
General remarks about the appeal of extremists ideology among educated Muslims
•
Thesis 1: education leads to political awareness and search for alternative social order;
political Islam provides it
•
Thesis 2: Muslim youth lack critical thinking due to poor state of the humanities and social
sciences
•
Thesis 3: predominant content and pedagogy of teaching about Islam do not prepare
young people to deal with extremist ways of interpreting Islam
•
Necessary and sufficient conditions
EBRAHIM MUSA’S OP ED
•
“I am very happy here. Here I found
what I missed all my life.”
•
“The Islam that the Indian [scholars]
taught us is totally, totally, away from
Islam. I have painfully realized that
Indian Islam teaches you to become
passive and submissive to infidel,
secular laws, which is a kind of
unbelief.”
• (message from Rashid Mosajie,
migrated to Syria)
FACEBOOK COMMENT
•
“I too used to think along these lines,
believing in the egalitarian and
progressive nature of Islam. This is
what we were taught in schools and in
our families. However, now after
speaking to various ulema who have
shown me lots of Quranic verses and
prophetic tradition that seem to
support Taliban/al-Qaida ideology I am
not sure what Islam really says about
women. We need more information to
challenge these ideas.”
MAHDI HASAN’S ARTICLE
•
Can you guess which books the wannabe
jihadists Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed
Ahmed ordered online from Amazon before
they set out from Birmingham to fight in
Syria last May? A copy of Milestones by the
Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb? No. How
about Messages to the World: the
Statements of Osama Bin Laden? Guess
again. Wait, The Anarchist Cookbook, right?
Wrong.
•
Sarwar and Ahmed, both of whom pleaded
guilty to terrorism offences last month,
purchased Islam for Dummies and The
Koran for Dummies. You could not ask for
better evidence to bolster the argument that
the 1,400-year-old Islamic faith has little to
do with the modern jihadist movement.
EXTREMISM AND THE EDUCATED YOUTH
• Ayubi, Nazih (1980) ‘The Revival of political Islam: the
case of Egypt’ International Journal of Middle East
Studies Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 481-499
• Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• Yacoubian Building by Alaa al-Aswany
THESIS 1:
EDUCATION, ASPIRATION AND POLITICAL AWARENESS
• Modern education nurtures material, political and social
aspirations and desires for prosperous life.
• It can also create awareness of the structures of political
economy and workings of power at national and international
levels which mediate the fulfilment of aspirations.
• Young people need concepts to express their critique, and an
imagination to conceive a better world.
• Today, for many Muslims these needs are being fulfilled by
extremist ideology
THESIS 1:
EDUCATION, ASPIRATION AND POLITICAL AWARENESS
• Over the last several decades Islamism has managed to
position itself as an alternative to secular grand narratives
• Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb
• The idea of Islam as a system capable of solving modern problems
• Encounter with Qutb’s work (particularly Milestones) is a very common step
in the radicalization of many people.
THESIS 1:
EDUCATION, ASPIRATION AND POLITICAL AWARENESS
• Islam al-Hall (Islam is the solution) or al-Hall al-Islami (the
Islamic solution) is a common slogan.
THESIS 1:
EDUCATION, ASPIRATION AND POLITICAL AWARENESS
• The Islamism’s vision has come precisely at a time when there
is a lack of secular grand narratives and alternatives for young
minds to grapple with in formulating their worldview.
• It seems that the ability of Islamism to provide a language of
critique and an alternative political imagination in the form of
Islam and Islamic state as the solution to modern ills and
problems is one way to think about the relationship between
education and extremism.
THESIS 2: THE STATUS OF THE HUMANITIES
•
The 2003 Arab Human Development Report on the state of knowledge society observed:
• During the last decade several Arab countries have embarked on educational reform
programmes that concentrate particularly on revising and making modifications to the
content of curricula and syllabi.
• When it comes to the sciences, content is not usually a controversial matter, save for
some themes …
• But the humanities and social sciences that have a direct relevance to people’s ideas
and convictions are supervised or protected by the authorities in charge of designing
curricula and issuing schoolbooks. Consequently, such subjects usually laud past
achievements and generally indulge in both self-praise and blame of others, with the aim
of instilling loyalty, obedience and support for the regime in power. (pg. 53)
EXPLANATION 2: THE STATUS OF THE HUMANITIES
•
Post-colonial Muslim states and development as modernization
• Human capital theory underpinning educational expansion
•
‘Engineers of Jihad’ (2007) by Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog
•
Scholars have observed that modern codification of Islamic law with its hierarchical
structure of the application of jurisprudence, its simplistic understanding of divine will
and unambiguous solutions to ethical questions makes it attractive to people with
technical mindset. (technical not scientific)
THESIS 3: TEACHING ISLAM
•
Snippets about different routes to learning about Islam and attraction to extremism
•
It is not what is being taught about Islam in various settings that is the issue but what is not
being taught. It is what is not being taught that the ISIS gives them.
• “The Islam that the Indian [scholars] taught us is totally, totally, away from Islam. I have
painfully realized that Indian Islam teaches you to become passive and submissive to
infidel, secular laws, which is a kind of unbelief.” (Rashid Mosajie from his new home in
Syria under ISIS)
SALIENT FEATURES OF TEACHING ABOUT ISLAM
First: identity building a the central aim
Second: denominational
Third: Golden Age syndrome
Fourth: quest for the ‘real’ Islam, transparent Divine Will
and complete way of life; reason subservient to revelation
Fifth: a sanitized version of history and texts
REAL ISLAM WITH ANSWERS
•
Is Islam compatible With Democracy?
•
•
Is Islam compatible with modernity?
•
•
http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/is-islam-compatible-with-capitalism-4701
Is Islam compatible with the West?
•
•
http://www.religiousconsultation.org/hassan2.htm
Is Islam compatible with capitalism?
•
•
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3119464.stm
Are Human Rights compatible with Islam?
•
•
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/04is-islam-compatible-with-democracy.html
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/7/9/7/5/p279750_index.html
Can Islam and democracy co-exist?
•
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/10/1021_031021_islamicdemocracy.html
EXTREMISM’S ISLAM
•
Also stresses identity, it is sectarian, presents Islam as a complete way of life, has a
Golden Age syndrome, and claims to be the real Islam
• Where it differs is that instead of a sanitized version of Islam where men and
women are equal, where Islam is compatible with HR and democracy, where it
respects religious plurality – it presents an Islam which accepts slavery, sees
men and women as having different status, Islam is superior to other religions
and incompatible with democracy and HR. and where slavery is acceptable.
•
It finds and brings out those parts of Islam which young Muslims have not be
exposed in their schools, homes and madrasas.
PROPOSAL: FROM TEACHING ABOUT ISLAM TO
TEACHING ABOUT MUSLIMS
•
We must help students recognize that there is no such thing as real Islam to which they
can give allegiance. Rather, religions, including Islam, are always an interpretive activity,
a work in progress, in which what is Islamic and what is not, is a product of human
interaction and interpretation of sacred texts.
•
I propose that we are trying to teach something that cannot be taught, and that is Islam.
And not teaching what can be and should be taught: Muslim people and cultures of
Muslims.
AN EXAMPLE: ISLAM AND OTHER RELIGIONS
•
What is Islam’s view of Christians and Jews?
• The question cannot be answered as it is
•
The Qur’an
• The Qur’anic verses reflect intense engagement, debate and discussions between
Prophet Muhammad and Jews, Christians and polytheists ( mushrikun ) (Qur’an
3:113; 5:73; 21:22; 38:4–11 and others).
• ‘Those who believe, and those who are the Jews, and the Christians and the Sabians
– any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their
reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve’ (Qur’an 2:62).
• ‘O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are allies
of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed he [ is one]
of them. Allah guides not the wrongdoing people.’ (Qur’an 5:51).
“Muslim intellectuals still talk about Islam as if it were a simple, unified entity; a
singular object. But in reality the history of Islam, like the history of other
religions such as Christianity, is fundamentally a history of different
interpretations.
Throughout the development of Islam there have been different schools of
thoughts and ideas, different approaches and interpretations of what Islam is
and what it means. There is no such thing as a “pure” Islam that is outside the
process of historical development.
The actual lived experience of Islam has always been culturally and historically
specific and bound by the immediate circumstances of its location in time and
space” (Abdol Karim Soroush quoted in Noor, 2002, p. 25).
• ‘Although it is common to hear people say, for example, ‘Christianity says
that…’ or ‘according to Islam’ the only thing that can be observed is that
individual people who call themselves Christians or Muslims have particular
positions and practices that they observe and defend. No one, however, has
ever seen Christianity or Islam do anything. They are abstraction, not actors
comparable to human beings.’ (Ernst, C., 2003)
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS: DIFFERENT
QUESTIONS
•
Not: What does Islam say about other religions?
• But: How have Muslims understood Islam’s relations with other religions?
•
Not: Is Islam compatible with democracy?
• But: How have Muslims understood democracy and its relations with Islam?
•
Not: What is the Islamic concept of knowledge?
• But: How have Muslims understood the idea of knowledge in light of their religious
texts?
These questions lead to simultaneous investigations of religious
thought/ideas and social/historical contexts of these ideas
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS: DIFFERENT
QUESTIONS
•
John Bowen in his recent book adopts this approach and gives a good explanation of
it
• This way of looking at Islam starts from people, drawing on textual traditions to
inform social practices. And allows us to engage in two, complementary,
analytical strategies. The first is focusing inwards by deepening our
understanding of intentions and understandings and emotions surrounding
specific practices. What does it mean for a woman or man to follow Islam? But
at the same time, we follow a second strategy, one of opening out worlds to the
social significance of, and conditions for, these religious practices. This places
an increased emphasis on the religious text and ideas, but only as they are
understood and transmitted in particular times and places. (New Anthropology of
Islam, 2012, pp.3-4)
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS:
• Exposure to many different ways of being a Muslim
• Role of human agency in making and remaking of religious traditions; Islam
as a ‘work in progress’ rather than a finished product
• The possibility of autonomy increases as the opportunity for observing
and imagining alternatives increases, since to be autonomous in
decision-making, a person must be able to imagine alternative courses
of action and choose between them. (Bailey 1984, p. 181).
• Post-communitarian understanding of autonomy: relational and dialogical
conceptions
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
• Critical capacity to deal with extremist ideology
• As the state control over knowledge diminishes, sanitized version of Islam
cannot retain its monopoly
• Pre-empting extremist pedagogy: presenting a range of interpretations and
developing critical abilities to deal with them
• “Groups like the Islamic State propound antiquated teachings still held to be true by
many orthodox authorities. These include enslaving prisoners of war and taking
female prisoners as concubines. Because mainstream Islam has not truly defused
these theological hand grenades by explaining how they apply to the modern world,
groups like the Islamic State and disaffected followers like Rashid can view these
dangerous teachings as Islam’s true ideals.” (Ebrahim Musa )
CONCLUSION
•
“The point is to engage with the complexity of the phenomenon and not censor our
subject matter in order to simplify it, protect it or dismiss it. [Ericker, Clive. 2013, p. 24]
•
Classrooms as safe spaces
• No more a luxury but a necessity
• UK as the most favourable place where a new pedagogy about teaching “Islam”
(History and Cultures of Muslims, more accurately) can emerge
•
Implications for content and teacher education