Teaching Islam in an International School: A Bourdieusian Analysis

Mohammed Adly Gamal

doi:10.3390/rel11070338

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed the burgeoning growth of international schools in Qatar, where Islamic Studies is a statutory subject for all schools. This paper aims to investigate how Islamic Studies teachers navigate an internationalized setting where there is dissonance between local and global educational priorities. International schools aim to forge global citizens who perceive their identity in terms of global rather than religious belonging. To examine how Islamic Studies teachers view their work in such a setting, a qualitative study was conducted in an international school based in Qatar. The study employs Bourdieu’s concepts of religious capital and field to explore how the Islamic teachers’ pedagogical skills and knowledge are valued in a non-Islamic teaching setting. The study concludes that the international schooling field allowed Islamic Studies teachers to transform their religiosity into social capital, but they failed to convert their Islamic knowledge into cultural capital. However, Islamic Studies teachers positively view their work in internationalized milieu. They think that the international schooling field can help them to accumulate different forms of capital that are prized in Qatar.

Highlights

Over the historical span of Islamic education, teachers of Islam have been held in great reverence throughout Muslim communities
The interviewed teachers expressed the belief that their religious knowledge, which is an invaluable asset in the field of Islamic education, is devalued by the students and the parents in international schooling
This study has investigated how a group of Islamic Studies teachers engage with their profession in an international International Baccalaureate (IB) school based in Qatar

Summary

Introduction

Over the historical span of Islamic education, teachers of Islam have been held in great reverence throughout Muslim communities. Teachers of Islam have a sense of inferiority when they compared with the teachers of other secular subjects (Arjmand 2018; Özdalga 2018) These assumptions have not been examined by empirical research which should aim at exploring the views of the teachers of Islam about the hegemony of Western-style education in contemporary Muslim communities and its impact on their role. The literature of Islamic education needs studies that can give an emic perspective on how teachers of Islam navigate an educational landscape where their influence has receded To address this paucity of research, this study investigates how the religiosity and Islamic knowledge of a group of Islamic Studies teachers are valued in an international school. The study deploys Bourdieu’s heuristic concepts: capital and field to theorize the teachers’ experience

Objectives

Results

Conclusion