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