Congrès Mondial des Études sur le Moyen-Orient et l'Afrique du Nord

Barcelone, du 19 au 24 julliet 2010

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Faculty at the English Center, Al-Azhar University (Egypt)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Sanaa Makhlouf

· NOT_DEFINED sponsor: The World Association for Al-Azhar Graduates

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: This panel looks closely at issues that relate to the teaching of Islam in a time of conflict and rising confrontations between extremist radicalization of religious education and erosion of religious dimensions in schools and universities.

Chair: Sanaa Makhlouf (Al-Azhar University and the American University in Cairo)

Paper discussant: Prof. Steffen Stelzer (The American University in Cairo)

Paper presenter: Dr. Nagwa Hedayet (Hedayet Institute), “Study Abroad Programs of Islam/AFL Targeting Muslim Heritage & Non-Muslim Students”
Students There are several issues and challenges that face study abroad programs teaching Islam, Islamic culture and Arabic as a Foreign Language that target non Muslims in order to understand Islam and its culture or other heritage Muslim students who have difficulty to understand their religion as well as its culture because of living as minorities in areas far from Islamic culture geographically, educationally or psychologically. This paper will examine the major issues and challenges in instruction, curriculum, and assessment facing such programs drawing on the presenter’s practical experience in the field of Islamic studies and AFL as an instructor, researcher, curriculum developer and program director at several institutes and universities that deliver AFL, Islam and Islamic studies to the above target students. This paper will also discuss the best practices of such programs and will suggest the criteria of assessing future programs, building on the study abroad international reports and field latest research.

Paper presenter: Dr. Nevine Ahmed (College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY, USA), “A Framework for Contemporary Islamic Education Abstract”
This paper attempts to outline a framework for the restoration and renewal of contemporary Islamic education in the context of modern society and culture. Islamic educators need to answer two central questions of education, namely, what to teach and how to teach. This paper proposes a framework for an approach to Islamic education based on the principles of ‘Tarbiyyah’. The author draws upon her experience in setting curricula for Islamic schools in Western countries.

Paper presenter: Dr. Maha Shuayb (Senior Fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford), “Can Faith schools promote social cohesion?”
Over the past decade, faith schools fell under heavy criticism for arguably promoting extremist ideas and hindering social cohesion in multi-faith communities. This paper aims to investigate the conventional wisdom that faith schools are a hindrance to social cohesion by studying the taking Lebanon as a case study. Lebanon has a large private faith educational sector which attracts the majority of Lebanese students. Many historians and educationalists argued that faith schools played a major role in deepening sectarianism amongst Lebanese which later erupted into a long and fierce civil war (1975, 1990). Hence, following the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, education was seen as having a major role in achieving so-called national ‘integration’ and national unity of Lebanon. Unsurprisingly, debate on the impact of faith schools on promoting or hindering post-war reconciliation came to the fore. In order to study the impact of faith and secular schools on social cohesion in Lebanon, an empirical study of 27 faith and secular schools in Lebanon was carried out in 2009. The study explored school’s ethos, environment, pedagogies, and relationship with the local community and their impact on social cohesion and reconciliation in Lebanon. It identified several approaches to social cohesion. These varied from an attempt to de-politicise education to a structured programme for promoting social cohesion. The impact of these models on social cohesion was then examined by surveying the attitudes and perceptions of students studying at these schools. The results challenge the predominant assumption that faith schools (rather than school) present a threat to the cohesion of multi-faith communities.

Paper presenter: Dr. Noha El-Bassiouny (The German University in Cairo and Al-Azhar University), “Islamic Moral Education and Holistic/Balanced Leadership”
Character education is considered in the educational psychology literature as one of the fastest growing education reform movements worldwide. The character building philosophy lies upon the notion that personality change would induce attitude change which would in turn ultimately induce behavioral change. Especially with the advent of the World Health Organization (WHO) report in 2004 about the negative impacts of excessive marketing to children, advocates against consumerism and materialism polluting innocent childhood called for values implantation through character education in the school to breed more educated and healthy citizens. In Egypt, character education is a new trend that is eliciting much public interest. Islamic character building programs adapt international curricula yet further incorporate several modules to educate balanced leaders who are able to balance their rights and obligations, hearts and minds, priorities and duties (www.balancedleader.net). These include career awareness through portraying moral prominent and successful guest speakers who serve as role models; cooperative learning through encouraging team work and interaction; conflict resolution through introducing positive ways of resolving conflict which puts pressure on peer influence in the positive direction; community involvement both to serve as the support culture for all values formally taught in the classroom and also to teach students the value and importance of community service; critical reception of the media through techniques and activities for filtration of messages; and finally formal lecturing in the classroom both as separate ethics classes and school themes, and as an integrated curriculum that blends morals into all taught disciplines including English, Social Studies, and even Art.