With the impending introduction of the Scottish 5-14 Curriculum, after considerable internal debate the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland agreed to formulate a Religious Studies Curriculum closely modeled on the one to be introduced in other Scottish schools, including the subject of World Religions. Special teacher training events were set up to handle this change, and as part of this programme I was asked to talk to a conference of all (well, I suppose some were missing) the Roman Catholic Head Teachers in Motherwell Diocese. As ever, it was all a bit fast and furious, but they didn't seem to mind.
ISLAM IN THE SCOTTISH CURRICULUM
How to approach Islam in the Catholic RE Programme/
An insight into life as a practising muslim
Good Morning, Salaamualeikum
Thank you for coming
Let me begin in the traditional muslim way
In the Name of the One God - The all-Merciful, the all-Compassionate
In Arabic - Bismillahirrahmanirrahim
(OHP) Arabic Bismillah calligraphy
English translation in Uncial - Scots Calligraphy
(OHP) Squared calligraphy
World of Islam Floor Plan?
Maze? Actually same thing
(OHP) Pineapple - It can take many shapes
(OHP) Variety - Here's nine more
And the moral is?
Things often look different
But sometimes it's just different languages
And sometimes it's not even that
Which may possibly apply to the way I follow my given subject titles
"An insight into life as a practising muslim"
"How to approach Islam in the Catholic RE Programme"
So please bear with me if I seem to be straying off course
I'm trying to fit an impossible amount into 2 hours
Teaching non-muslims to be able to teach Islam
Could you teach muslims to teach Catholicism in 2 hours?
Could you teach Catholics to teach Catholicism in 2 hours?
Don't worry about it - I'm more confident than you are, but we'll have to move fast
I'll start with Why, move on to How, then a bit of What
And at the end we may even have time for questions
I suggest that you note questions down as they occur to you then if they don't get answered as we go, at question time we'll see if we can cover them in themes
But - let's first deal with the age old fears
Will this not threaten our children's faith?
Will it not confuse them?
Is it dangerous?
Indeed, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing
No knowledge is even more so
Why teach Islam at all?
Apart from the fact that it's in the Curriculum
Because it's there - all around you
In your local and global community
Would you ask the same question of another subject?
Why teach French or German?
Our kids speak English
Learning another language broadens your horizons
Let's you communicate outwith your own cultural group
Teaches you to reach out to other people's way of understanding
Gives you a deeper understanding of your own language
An essential understanding for Interfaith dialogue
Dialogue doesn't mean proselytisation
The aim is communication not conversion
Why am I here?
Talking to a group of strangers
All with different frameworks of understanding.
Some poetic artistic dreamers
Some scientific mechanical engineers
Presumably all committed Catholics
Trying to convert you?
We are living in a society that is drowning our children in an ocean of materialism after strapping them into a straightjacket of intellectual secularity
I can think of more useful things to do with my time than try to convert committed catholics to Islam
Trying to Communicate!
If we are to be able to share anything as a community, we have to have a common language.
I'll come to that in a little while
Before language we have a human link of shared experience
To build a bridge we need to recognize our mutual humanity
and how little we know about each others traditions
We need openness to unfamiliar ways of expressing things
And sincerity in our efforts, or at least our good intentions towards each other
Recognise Prior Prejudices
We all have them
I have trouble saying a good word about Tories
But deep down I know that they're people - almost like us.
Here's a little bit of local prejudice that might strike a chord with you.
A true story from a Rutherglen primary school
Kids going to be taken on a visit to the mosque
Billy said he'd asked his parents and they'd said OK
But only if it's a Protestant mosque, Miss
If it's a Catholic mosque I can't go
Are you prejudiced?
How do you feel about the muslims?
Are you here to learn about them?
So you know how better to deal with them when you meet them in the future?
Or learn from them?
Do you expect to learn anything that might be a useful insight or point of view for yourself?
Even though you might move into a cottage in the country and never see another muslim in your life again?
What is most useful to you?
Glasgow University class of trainee ministers
Good News Bibles on their desks
Why would they want to learn about Islam?
Know their enemy?
Globalise their understanding of community.
(Corruptible Faith & Ministerial Gratitude)
Some were afraid that their faith would be corrupted if they listened to me
Mainly evangelicals, many preparing to go abroad and convert the muslim heathen
Faith so weak it could face no question?
Argument and challenge rarely alter belief
Just look at politicians
One said that half of what I said could go straight into her Sunday sermon, and no-one would object to anything in it.
What would you have expected?
Do you have questions you want to ask?
It's not questions you want but answers
How do you know they are the right questions?
Can you understand the answers?
Can you make any judgement as to whether a person telling you something knows what he or she is talking about?
I stand here a case in point!
All these things I'll try to touch on later
So, are you going to turn your children into muslims?
If you find it that easy, please come and tell us how you do it.
Most muslims feel they are fighting a losing battle
Conversion to Christianity in Pakistan
Statistics presented to me on coming home
How does that make you feel?
Elated / Sad / Angry
The Qari convert and my reaction
Can you imagine a situation, in history or the present day, where being a good muslim would be better than a bad Catholic?
Is God always on one side?
Muslim pupils in Catholic and Jewish schools
Can you understand why?
Faith preferable to secularism
Can you imagine the situation reversed?
Bamber Gascoigne's "Christians"
Learning My Language
Is it possible?
How long does it take to learn a language?
How many of us ever found time?
But we're not talking about learning Arabic, just a framework of understanding
Something on which to hang the bits of information that we pick up
It is possible!
We do that kind of communicating all the time
Trying to understand what someone means
A fellow human being, so having a huge overlap of experience
Yet sometimes seemingly understanding things so differently
A familiar topic in my repertoire
Finding a language non-muslims understand
Which is why I'm here
It's a good starting point to doubt whether you can teach Islam
Do I have enough knowledge and understanding
Recognising your ignorance
Sincerity in fear of educational fraud
Self doubt - every good teacher's nightmare
But you are all intelligent men and women
You have eyes, ears, books and videos
The best way to learn is to teach
So why not?
I'll get you up and running
SRC Staff Development
(OHP) Islam Iman Ihsan Umbrella
One way of understanding the muslim world
A structure or skeleton on which to hang information
Not necessarily a way muslims would think of expressing it for themselves
But they would recognise it in all its parts
How much detail?
Takes 20 hours with muslims
4 hours with university students
Ten minutes for primary school classes
How much do we have time for? Primary One!
Understanding the world of Islam
Variety and Unity
Goodness, Faith & Submission
Knowledge, Worship, and Way of Life
Putting Flesh on the Bones
Books and other media
Ali Ashraf & other material
My Packs
Newspapers, Magazines, TV
To be considered later
Human Resources
Muslims in the community
Organisations or Individuals
Personal Belief & Orthodoxy
Who can you trust?
I follow the muslim tradition of the master who says to his pupil - Never trust anyone!
Especially me!
All muslims are individuals
What an individual considers religious must be treated as such
Birmingham pig-mouth-washers
I don't consider their understanding to be Islamic - but they do, and their situation needs to be dealt with locally
It is not a national crisis, however, any more than a Jehovah's witness refusing a blood transfusion is a crisis for Bible scholars
Muslims are not homogenous
The role of the Mosque
Not a church
Not owned by an institution
Belongs to the people who run it and use it
Often a political football
No ministers with authority over the people
The people employ ulama - people with knowledge
Usually a very traditional knowledge
Often closely linked with a distant culture
Often at serious odds with the mosque next door
The majority of the muslim community knows that in the Mosque they can trace their roots
And try to reconcile that as best they can with the lifestyle imposed by their surrounding culture
Some succeed better than others
Muslim flaws and foibles
We have deranged psychos in our community
Our raging madmen, our depraved sickos
As well as just plain greasy sneak thieves
What community doesn't
They're out there!
Perhaps even in here - You never know
But most muslims are mostly concerned with what most people are concerned with most of the time
Everyday life
If the muslims can't be trusted with regard to Islam, how can I make sense of any of it?
Common Sense
To be dealt with after the break
Part 2
Understanding Culture
Seeing without Prejudice
Common Values
Expressed through Cultural Norms
Modesty - we all understand
We all veil bits of ourselves
Which bits vary with time and place
But always consider ourselves normal and variations to be shockingly naked or comically overdressed
In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Europeans colonised the South Pacific with bra's
Now we have Page 3 and Playboy
Is that what women want?
Misperceptions
Cultural Groupings misperceive each other
Us and Them
Similar views of each other
I know an old lady from Wembley
After Wembley became Asian and her local butchers turned Halal
Took a bus across town to buy meat wrapped in plastic from a man she trusted to be clean
It might well have been racism, but she thought of the halal butchers as dirty
But the reason they are there is because people think her butcher's meat to be dirty (not clean)
There would be pig meat all over the place
What if he also butchered your unclean animals
What if he was skinning and slicing dead dogs and rats on his slab - How would you feel?
Reinforcing Preconceptions
Day to day life moves very fast
We get used to making quick judgements
We then tend to use those early judgements as a window any time we look in the same direction
It only sees one view
Our window on the world - Media and Prejudice
Can you trust broadcasters?
(Edie Stark)
Interview on Radio Scotland (The Slice)
After a brief lead in asking how muslims might suffer from prejudice
In one sentence mentioned Fundamentalism, Terrorism, Lockerbie, Militant School Separatism, Salman Rushdie, and Female Circumcision, and gave me five frequently interrupted minutes to explain it all away for the listeners.
Those were her discussion pigeonholes for Muslims and Islam, being broadcast nationwide
1/5th of the world's population for 1400 yrs and that was all she could think of to say - Sad really
Women in Islam
She brought up women's oppression in muslim countries like Pakistan
Segregated, veiled from head to foot, locked away, powerless
All I had time to say was Benazir Bhutto
Of course women have power in Pakistan
I often have to say to ladies who voice this concern - You underestimate your muslim sisters.
Many will tell you a woman leader is completely unacceptable to God and Man
Just as they will here
But the muslim population voted for a woman
Just as they did in Bangladesh
Pigeonholes
Preconceptions are really just mental pigeonholes we use to make sense of the world
The problem comes when we discard the world that doesn't fit the shape of our pigeonhole
Reinforcing preconceptions about muslims?
Have you ever considered the validity of what you see on the screen?
Considered the language of newsbroadcasts
Islamic terrorists, Muslim fundamentalists, Hizbollah bases
Who says?
Retain a healthy scepticism
Zaki & Kalim Siddiqui
Yusuf & 10,000 Brent muslim kids
How many muslim film & TV villains
Corrupt oil sheikhs, rabid terrorists
How few positive newsviews & documentaries
Try to think of a muslim hero
How many role models for muslim children
Are they included in our culture?
The Observer
Other newspapers and the muslim "threat"
The crusades continue
Books and resource material
Do they have muslim authors or advisors?
The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Islam
How many muslims on the editorial and advisory boards
How many muslims on RDG5 advising on the introduction of Islam into the Scottish RE Curriculum?
So you have the 5 Pillars under moral values, making them impossible to understand, let alone teach.
Can you imagine putting together a curriculum involving maths and ignoring all mathematicians?
Is this really a multicultural society?
How many muslims can you think of?
When you think of muslim women do you think of Veils or Zeinab Badawi?
How many muslims do you know?
Your newsagent?
Your local restaurant?
Your accountant?
Your doctor?
1/3rd of health service
Well, at least you now know me
How to approach Islam in the Catholic RE Programme
For details, use Westhill, or my packs
But to remind you of how much you actually know, I'll rush through a short programme I put together specifically for use in Primary schools
You don't need to know much to know more than your kids
It's easy
Muslims are all around you - you just have to look
I'll leave it with Father Brannigan to make copies if you like
The World of Islam
Questions
Astaghfirallah