Education Transformation In Muslim Societies

Hope is a complex concept—one academics use to accept the unknown while also expressing optimism. However, it can also be an action-oriented framework with measurable outcomes. In Education Transformation in Muslim Societies, scholars from around the world offer a wealth of perspectives for incorporating hope in the education of students from kindergarten through university to stimulate change, dialogue, and transformation in their communities. For instance, though progress has been made in Muslim societies on early education and girls' enrollment, it is not well documented. By examining effective educational initiatives and analyzing how they work, educators, policymakers, and government officials can create a catalyst for positive educational reform and transformation. Adopting strength-based educational discourse, contributors to Education Transformation in Muslim Societies reveal how critical the whole-person approach is for enriching the brain and the spirit and instilling hope back into the teaching and learning spaces of many Muslim societies and communities. Education Transformation in Muslim Societies is a copub with the International Institute of Islamic Thought.

This collection of articles is an eclectic selection of studies of a range of educational situations relating to Muslim populations in different parts of the world. It is intended as a selection and in no way contains any overarching theme, other than illustrating the wide diversity of situations and issues relating to education in Muslim societies. The contributors provide a wide and fascinating range of insights and problems, many of which apply to other communities as well; there is much to be shared and celebrated between ‘east’ and ‘west’, but only with greater understanding. It is hoped this book will contribute something towards that understanding.

Muslim Education in the 21st Century reinvestigates the current state of affairs in Muslim education in Asia whilst at the same time paying special attention to Muslim schools’ perception of educational changes and the reasons for such changes. It highlights and explores the important question of whether the Muslim school has been reinventing itself in the field of pedagogy and curriculum to meet the challenges of the 21st century education. It interrogates the schools whose curriculum content carry mostly the subject of religion and Islam as its school culture. Typologically, these include state-owned or privately-run madrasah or dayah in Aceh, Indonesia; pondok, traditional Muslim schools largely prevalent in the East Malaysian states and Indonesia; pesantren, Muslim boarding schools commonly found in Indonesia; imam-khatip schools in Turkey, and other variations in Asia. Contributed by a host of international experts, Muslim Education in the 21st Century focuses on how Muslim educators strive to deal with the educational contingencies of their times and on Muslim schools’ perception of educational changes and reasons for such changes. It will be of great interest to anyone interested in Asian and Muslim education.

Since the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, the public has grappled with the relationship between Islamic education and radical Islam. Media reports tend to paint madrasas--religious schools dedicated to Islamic learning--as medieval institutions opposed to all that is Western and as breeding grounds for terrorists. Others have claimed that without reforms, Islam and the West are doomed to a clash of civilizations. Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman bring together eleven internationally renowned scholars to examine the varieties of modern Muslim education and their implications for national and global politics. The contributors provide new insights into Muslim culture and politics in countries as different as Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. They demonstrate that Islamic education is neither timelessly traditional nor medieval, but rather complex, evolving, and diverse in its institutions and practices. They reveal that a struggle for hearts and minds in Muslim lands started long before the Western media discovered madrasas, and that Islamic schools remain on its front line. Schooling Islam is the most comprehensive work available in any language on madrasas and Islamic education.

The Reform in Higher Education in Muslim Societies is in sum a paradigm shift in perspective driven by important considerations including the aims of education itself. It may require reforming existing disciplines, inventing new ones, as well as working in conjunction with current knowledge(s) and discourses by taking effective account of the ethical, spiritual norms of Muslim society, the guiding principles that it operates under, which in turn mark the underlying basis of its makeup and spiritual identity. Rather than creating divisions, reform of Higher Education in Muslim Societies recognizes the plurality and diversity of the modern networked world, and seeks to replace sterile and uniform approaches to knowledge with a broader and more creative understanding of reality as lived on different soils and different cultures. Moderation, balance and effective communication are paramount features of the underlying philosophy.

"Helps teachers with the challenging task of teaching about Islam and Muslims. This resource contains: Information on beliefs and practices of Muslims, including glossary of terms, charts and graphics." Includes: Basic Beliefs, Religious Obligations, The Muslim Society, Contemporary Issues.

"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The book is significant for those scholars who are attempting to understand Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, and also for those who want deep insights into Islamic education and its influence in any area of the Islamic world." - Raymond Scupin, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University, USA "Few books address the sensitive issue of Islamic education with empathy as well as critical distance as Joseph C. Liow’s Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand. He examines global networks of religious learning within a local Thai as well as regional Asian context by brilliantly revealing the intersections between religion, politics and modernity in an accessible and illuminating manner. Traditional educational institutions rarely receive such sensitive and balanced treatment. Liow's book is a tour de force and mandatory reading for policy-makers, academics and all of those interested in current affairs." - Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Religion, Associate Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), Duke University, USA "Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand is Joseph Chinyong Liow's critical attempt to map out the reflexive questioning, locations of authority, dynamics and contestations within the Muslim community over what constitutes Islamic knowledge and education. Through the optics of Islamic education in Southern Thailand, Liow manages to brilliantly portray the ways in which Muslim minority negotiate their lives in the local context of violence and the global context of crisis of modernity." - Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Senior Research Scholar, Thailand Research Fund, Author of The Life of this World: Negotiated Muslim Lives in Thai Society