Farid Panjwani

UCL Institute Of Education

ALURE Annual Conference

September 1-3, 2015

RELIGIONS AS ‘WORK IN PROGRESS’

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

• “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)

EBRAHIM MUSA’S OP ED

• “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.”

FACEBOOK COMMENT

• 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.

MAHDI HASAN’S ARTICLE

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?

• http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2007/04is-islam-compatible-with-democracy.html

• Is Islam compatible with modernity?

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/3119464.stm

• Are Human Rights compatible with Islam?

• http://www.religiousconsultation.org/hassan2.htm

• Is Islam compatible with capitalism?

• http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/is-islam-compatible-with-capitalism-4701

• Is Islam compatible with the West?

• 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