Same God, Different Freedoms?
Ryan T. Woods reports on the case of Dr. Larycia Hawkins and the fraught
entanglement of religious freedom and academic freedom at a Wheaton College. Continue Reading →
Tag: religious education
The Anchor Boys
Maurice Chammah investigates the history and present of a Christian home for boys. Continue Reading →
Nigeria's Islamiyya Schools: Global Project, Local Target
By Alex Thurston
This is the fourth post in a series on Islamic education in Northern Nigeria. The first post gave an overview of the series, the second discussed Qur’anic schools, and the third talked about “traditional” advanced Islamic education, noting that traditions change over time.
This post examines “Islamiyya” schools, a format that combines elements of the traditional curriculum with educational models inspired by Western and Arab models. That there has been outside influence on the Islamiyya movement does not mean that Islamiyya or “Nizamiyya” (a term that comes from the Arabic nizam, “system”) schools are “imports” from outside Northern Nigeria; rather, they represent interactions between local and global, new and old. Islamiyya schools are found by different names elsewhere in West Africa; in former French colonies such as Senegal and Mali, one finds many “Franco-Arabe” (French-Arabic) schools, highlighting the important role that languages play in questions of education. Islamiyya schools have not necessarily replaced “traditional” schools; many students attend both kinds, just as many teachers teach in both. Islamiyya schools do compete directly with secular primary and secondary schools, and feed into the same system of universities, but between these two models there is overlap as well. Continue Reading →
Nigeria’s Islamiyya Schools: Global Project, Local Target
By Alex Thurston
This is the fourth post in a series on Islamic education in Northern Nigeria. The first post gave an overview of the series, the second discussed Qur’anic schools, and the third talked about “traditional” advanced Islamic education, noting that traditions change over time.
This post examines “Islamiyya” schools, a format that combines elements of the traditional curriculum with educational models inspired by Western and Arab models. That there has been outside influence on the Islamiyya movement does not mean that Islamiyya or “Nizamiyya” (a term that comes from the Arabic nizam, “system”) schools are “imports” from outside Northern Nigeria; rather, they represent interactions between local and global, new and old. Islamiyya schools are found by different names elsewhere in West Africa; in former French colonies such as Senegal and Mali, one finds many “Franco-Arabe” (French-Arabic) schools, highlighting the important role that languages play in questions of education. Islamiyya schools have not necessarily replaced “traditional” schools; many students attend both kinds, just as many teachers teach in both. Islamiyya schools do compete directly with secular primary and secondary schools, and feed into the same system of universities, but between these two models there is overlap as well. Continue Reading →
Education as Battleground: Schooling Muslims in Northern Nigeria
by Alex Thurston
This post is the first of a series on Muslim schooling in Northern Nigeria.
Steady acts of violence carried out by Northern Nigeria’s rebel movement Boko Haram, whose name is often translated in the press as “Western education is forbidden,” has put issues of Muslim education in the region into the international news. Coverage of these issues has intensified with Boko Haram’s recent campaign of torching government schools in Maiduguri, the movement’s home base.
Boko Haram’s targets range well beyond schools – indeed, it has focused more on assassinating state security personnel, politicians, and rival religious leaders than on burning down schools. But the anti-schools campaign raises a set of questions about Muslim schooling in Northern Nigeria: What kinds of schools exist? How has schooling in the region changed over time? And what attitudes do Northern Muslims hold toward these different schools? These questions are critical for understanding Boko Haram but also, if one moves beyond headline-grabbing violence, for grasping more broadly what it means to be Muslim in Northern Nigeria, one of the largest Muslim communities in the world.
Schools are some of the main institutions where religious knowledge is shaped and transmitted and where attitudes toward society are formed. Schooling often stands as a powerful – and fiercely contested – symbol for community values. For Boko Haram, Western-style education seems to stand in for a whole complex of issues, including the perceived political dominance, corruption, and failure of Nigeria’s Western-educated elites. Other Northern Nigerian Muslims see Western-style schools as a pathway to future success for their children and transformation for Nigeria. Still others see Qur’anic schooling as an absolute necessity for forming moral Muslim children. Yet others send their children to hybrid “Islamiyya” schools, where students spend part of their time on religious studies, and part on subjects like English, science, and mathematics. Then again, some Northern Nigerian Muslims place their children in multiple different kinds of schools. All of these choices reflect different viewpoints about the spiritual and material value of schooling. Continue Reading →
SCOTUS Approves Tax Credit for Religious Tuition
Two decisions come out of the Supreme Court today, one mentioned almost as a footnote to the other in a New York Times article. Donate money for an award at a religious education institution, get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, says the ruling on an Arizona case. From the article:
The program itself is novel and complicated, and allowing it to go forward may be of no particular moment. But by closing the courthouse door to some kinds of suits that claim violations of the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, the court’s ruling in the case may be quite consequential.
The footnote? Once again the court has upheld the death penalty, albeit with regard to a specific California inmate who claimed that part of his testimony had been suppressed.
We can assume that Justice Thomas once again asked no questions. Continue Reading →
Another Schism, Another Story
“Compared to the upcoming [Supreme Court] case on the Pledge of Allegiance and the use of the words ‘under God,’” David G. Savage writes in The Los Angeles Times, Locke v. Davey— a church/state Continue Reading →
Another Schism, Another Story
“Compared to the upcoming [Supreme Court] case on the Pledge of Allegiance and the use of the words ‘under God,’” David G. Savage writes in The Los Angeles Times, Locke v. Davey— a church/state Continue Reading →