Recep Kaymakcan and Oddbjørn Leirvik (eds.): TEACHING FOR TOLERANCE IN MUSLIM MAJORITY SOCIETIES Centre for Values Education (in cooperation with the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief) Istanbul 2007 ISBN 975-978-6324-98-1 284 pp. The book can be obtained from the Oslo Coalition

List of Contents:

• Preface by Oddbjørn Leirvik and Recep Kaymakcan Teaching for Tolerance in Muslim Majority Societies

• Recep Kaymakcan (Turkey) Curriculum and Textbook Revisions Regarding the Image of the “Religious Other” in Turkish Religious Education

• Yücel Kabapınar (Turkey) The Image of “Others” and Tolerance in Turkish History and Social Studies Textbooks: “Not us”, “The Other is to Blame”

• Beyza Bilgin (Turkey) Some Thoughts on the Contribution of Religious Education to the Formation of a Culture of Tolerance and Respect towards “the Other”

• Ibrahim Özdemir (Turkey) Promoting a Culture of Tolerance through Education, with Special Reference to Turkey

• Nedžad Grabus (Bosnia and Herzegovina) The Image of “the Other” in Textbooks about Islamic Religious Elementary Education in Bosnia and Herzegovina

• Nermina Baljević (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Teaching Culture of Religions in Sarajevo

• Fawzia Al Ashmawi (Switzerland/Egypt): Revision of Textbooks with Respect to the Image of “the Other” (Christians and Jews) in Some Arab and Muslim Countries (Egypt, Jordan and Syria)

• Wolfram Reiss (Germany) Obstacles and Chances of an International Dialogue on Curriculum Revision in the Middle East: Experiences of a German Research Project on School Textbooks in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey and Iran

• Kawsar H. Kouchok (Egypt) How to Teach and Not to Teach Tolerance to Young Children: Some Reflections from the Egyptian Context

· Sami Adwan (Palestine) Reflections on Teaching Religious Education in the Palestinian Education System: The Situation, Challenges and the Way Forward

• Munir Bashshur (Lebanon) History Teaching and History Textbooks in Lebanon

• Joe Kreidi (Lebanon) A Planned Teaching Manual for Teenagers about the Cultural Aspects of Christianity and Islam

• B. Aisha Lemu (Nigeria) Teaching for Tolerance in Nigeria

• Golnar Mehran (Iran) The Portrayal of the “Insider” and “Outsider” in the School Textbooks of the Islamic Republic of Iran

• Nurman Said (Indonesia) Some Notes on the Problems of Religious Tolerance in Indonesia

• Oddbjørn Leirvik (Norway) Conscience-based Tolerance Education: Global and Egyptian Perspectives

• The contributors

Preface:

Oddbjørn Leirvik and Recep Kaymakcan

Teaching for Tolerance in Muslim Majority Societies

The present book is based on a workshop held in Istanbul in November 2005 under the title “Learning about the other and teaching for tolerance in Muslim majority societies”. It conveys critical analyses and innovative visions for tolerance education in school, focusing particularly on the role that religious and ethical education, social studies and history teaching can play in fostering tolerance and promoting inclusive notions of citizenship. Inspired by Istanbul, a city which symbolizes the encounter of civilizations, the various contributors to this volume share their thinking on establishing more inclusive ways of teaching religion and culture within their diverse communities.

The workshop in Istanbul was held as part of a global project entitled, “Teaching for Tolerance and Freedom of Religion or Belief” which was launched in 2001 as a follow-up to the “Consultative Conference on School Education in Relation to Freedom of Religion or Belief”, held in Madrid earlier the same year by the United Nations. The project was initiated by the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, an academic and interfaith coalition formed in 1998 after an international conference in Oslo, commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In a global meeting of experts held by the Teaching for Tolerance project in 2004, it was decided that further conferences should adopt regional approaches in the exploration of obstacles to and resources for tolerance education within specific contexts.

While initiated by the Oslo Coalition, the workshop in Istanbul was hosted by the Centre for Values Education of the Ensar Foundation, a Turkish civil society organization working for the renewal of religious and ethical education with emphasis on character formation. The Centre for Values Education shares with the Oslo Coalition a commitment to dialogue and cooperation between different faiths and a conviction that freedom of religion or belief is a universal standard. The nexus between religious freedom and inter-religious dialogue means that “freedom of religion” is not intended as a rhetorical weapon against others, but is rather seen as a universal principle that challenges every society and every nation state to promote respect for religious difference and interfaith cooperation to the benefit of all.

During recent years, many European countries have seen the need to revise their curricula for religious education and civic education within public schools, in order to bring them in tune with the new religious pluralism in Europe where Islam and Muslim communities of different backgrounds have become an important part. As Christian majority societies, European countries are faced with the challenging task of redefining their sense of cultural community so as to accommodate the ever increasing reality of religious pluralism. As a result, in recent years, both Turkey and Bosnia and Herzegovina (as European countries with a Muslim majority population) have embarked upon processes of reform, aimed at new ways of teaching religion and cultural history within the school system.

This challenge is global in nature, and as pressing in Muslim as in Christian majority societies. In the present book, we have gathered examples of how scholars and educators from Muslim majority countries (joined by two Western European scholars) see the special challenges that such societies face when trying to rethink the way in which religion, history and civics are taught in school. As in countries with a Christian majority culture, a pressing issue within Muslim majority societies is how the histories and perspectives of the minorities are dealt in school. In addition to presenting and analyzing new ways of teaching religion and cultural history in school, the book also contains more general reflections on how to teach tolerance in culturally and religiously diverse classrooms.

The notion of “tolerance” is one of those notions that have become thoroughly globalized in late modernity, functioning as a global point of reference for discussions about cultural and religious coexistence. From the history of ideas, it is well known that tolerance may either signify a minimal type of political toleration of religious difference, or expand into a more comprehensive ideal that also challenges cultural stereotypes and personal attitudes towards “the Other”. The partners behind the Istanbul workshop subscribe to a comprehensive understanding of tolerance which seeks for respect and recognition. This understanding is well in tune with UNESCOs “Declaration of Principles of Tolerance” (1995) in which tolerance is defined as the “respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures”. UNESCOs comprehensive understanding of tolerance corresponds with the Turkish word for tolerance hoşgörü which literally means “seeing (the other) in a good way”. Additionally, in Arabic, the word tasamuh transcends the realm of political toleration and connotes personal virtues such as patience and generosity.

In the search for inter-religious generosity, one has to realize that there are in fact many traditions and trends in today’s world that work against tolerance. In many contexts, tolerance education is hampered or even blocked by a widespread tendency of mobilizing people on the basis of cultural or religious affiliation – a phenomenon often referred to as “identity politics.” During the same period, and in parallel to the development of confrontational forms of identity politics (in particular, since the beginning of the 1990s), the world has also witnessed an “interfaith boom” which could be seen as a powerful antidote to the otherwise divisive trends extant within religion and politics.

The paramount challenge of the present day is to translate the lofty ideals of tolerance, respect and recognition into transformative practice – politically, pedagogically and in terms of personal formation. At all these levels, striving for tolerance requires openness towards a self-critical scrutiny.

Exploring obstacles and resources for tolerance education within Muslim majority societies, the contributors to this book identify the joint needs for curriculum reform and textbook revision and present various innovative reforms that have already been undertaken in different countries aimed at establishing more inclusive forms of teaching religion and ethics, history and civics in school.

Resisting ideas of a world divided along religious fault-lines, the title of this book avoids the expression “the Muslim world” and refers instead to the contextual challenges faced by “Muslim majority societies”, i.e., in countries with a dominant cultural heritage and a majority population that is Muslim (in other parts of the world, similar challenges face countries with a Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu majority).

In every majority culture, there are both hindrances to be overcome and specific resources that can be drawn upon when trying to strengthen the culture of tolerance. As with other heavenly-inspired religions, the religion of Islam opposes the idea that one human being is superior to another through birth or cultural affiliation and aims rather at the well-being of all human beings. A vision of such a diverse yet common humanity, created in different nations, tribes, and colors is expressed in the following verse of the Qur’an:

“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honored of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).” (The Chambers 49:13, in Yusuf ‘Ali’s translation).

It is not difficult to identify tragedies in human history that were caused by insensitivity towards cultural difference, and by the use of compulsion in the field of religion. In tune with the above cited verse from the Qur’an, differences between people and nations need not be considered as a source of conflict but should rather be seen as a source of richness. The religion of Islam appropriates the principle “there is no compulsion in religion” as a golden rule, thus enjoining religious freedom and tolerance as a divine principle.

Within the history of Islam one may witness many examples of tolerance and religious freedom that transcend the standards of their time – as in the life of the Prophet.

However, when looking at countries with a Muslim majority today one can easily observe the existence of many problems in establishing respect for human rights, democracy, and a culture of tolerance. Indeed, being a Muslim is understood by many in terms of conflict. Hence, in some segments of Muslim societies, the social environment can be characterized by undemocratic ambiance, denial of basic human rights and lack of critical thinking, entailing a narrow-minded version of religion which does not conform to the universalistic principles of Islam.

When trying to build a culture of tolerance, one must try to seek reconciliation with the past and develop a contemporary approach to religion imbued with empathy as well as critical reason. Negative events that took place in the past, when multicultural societies were homogenized by force, should not be allowed to influence the future. The changing of circumstances in today’s world obliges us to accept that religious plurality and multicultural societies are inescapable realities.

Integration between different civilizations and within Europe can only be reached through respect of difference. Turkey, being a unique country among the member states of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in its entry into negotiations with the European Union to be a full member, has a special role to play among other Islamic countries. This situation calls upon Turkey to take a leading position in trying to improve the relations between the Islamic and the Western world.

Four contributions in this book deal with recent developments in religious education and history teaching in Turkey, sharing also their visions for tolerance education from a Turkish vantage point. Recep Kaymakcan presents recent revisions in the curricula and textbooks for religious and ethical education within the Turkish school system, with particular emphasis placed on revisions that have been made regarding the portrayal of Christianity. Yücel Kabapınar provides a critical analysis of the image of the culturally and religiously other that has prevailed in history and social studies textbooks (“not us, the other is to blame”), and presents new approaches and recent revisions in this respect. In her comprehensive essay, Beyza Bilgin discusses the issue of tolerance education in a broader pedagogical, Islamic and humanistic perspective. Adding the dimension of globalization, Ibrahim Özdemir emphasizes the importance of the minority perspective when discussing how to promote a culture of tolerance through school education.

Moving westwards to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nedžad Grabus analyses images of the religiously other as portrayed in the country’s textbooks for Islamic religious education at the elementary level, whilst also providing an overview of the current system of religious education (Muslim and Christian) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In her contribution, Nermina Baljevic shares from her personal experience in teaching the new subject “Culture of Religions” in the First Bosniak High School in Sarajevo, a subject that takes an interfaith approach to teaching religion in school.

Bridging Europe and the Middle East, Fawzia al-Ashmawi presents the results of a UNESCO-initiated project carried out in the 1990s which critically examined the prevailing images of the Muslim and Christian religion within school history textbooks from three European and four Middle Eastern countries. In his contribution, the German researcher Wolfram Reiss summarizes some essential findings from a project that examined the portrait of Christianity extant within current textbooks in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey and Iran. His presentation highlights both the obstacles and prospects for curriculum revision from political, theological and pedagogical perspectives.

Four further contributions analyze recent developments and discussions regarding the teaching of religion, ethics and history in the Middle East. Kawsar Kouchok relates her reflections on how to teach tolerance to young children to a new school subject in Egypt entitled “Values and ethics”, a subject of which Kouchok has been one of the architects. Sami Adwan presents a study of the current state of affairs regarding religious education (Islamic and Christian) in Palestine, as well as innovative attempts at learning religion from an interfaith perspective in teacher-training and with young children respectively.

The two contributions from Lebanon are different in nature. In his contributed essay, Munir Bashshur discusses current (post-civil war) difficulties in creating curricula and textbooks for history teaching that can be acceptable to all inhabitants of the most religiously diverse country of the Middle East. In his short presentation, Joe Kreidi gives an outline of an innovative attempt (initiated by UNESCO) at teaching the cultural aspects of Christianity and Islam to Lebanese teenagers (cf. the cited Bosnian experiment in teaching “the culture of religion” in an interfaith perspective).

Aisha Lemu’s African contribution springs from the Nigerian context which is similar to that of Lebanon with respect to the co-existence of large Muslim and Christian communities living within the same country. After a discussion of how syllabi for religious education in public schools can better contribute to a culture of tolerance in Nigeria, Lemu presents a concrete example of how private Islamic schools of the Islamic Education Trust teach about relationships with non-Muslims.

Moving eastwards, Golnar Mehran’s contribution analyses the insider- and outsider-problematic as reflected in Iranian textbooks for religious education, social studies and the Persian language, explaining how the Islamic Republic of Iran has utilized school textbooks as key instruments of identity formation among the young. Nurman Said’s essay deals with context-specific problems and resources for tolerance education in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority country. Said relates his discussion to current forms of religious education and civic education within Indonesian schools.

The final essay in this collection is written by the Norwegian scholar Oddbjørn Leirvik, who discusses the relevance of the concepts of “conscience” and “solidarity” for tolerance education. The overall scope of this essay, whose contextual testing ground is Egypt, is that of globalized concepts and their relevance for school education.

It is the hope of the editors that this present volume will contribute to a realistic assessment of the current state of affairs regarding tolerance education in Muslim majority societies, and inspire innovative efforts at teaching religion and ethics, history and civics in school education from an interfaith perspective.