Secular Goals Research Articles

INTEGRATING ISLAMIC SPIRITUALITY IN TEACHER TRAINING: ANALYSIS OF FACULTY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON TEACHING PRACTICES

he significance of integrating Islamic spirituality-based pedagogy into teacher training programs for the enhancement of both academic and moral teaching is now widely recognized.This paperattempts to analyzethe role of Islamic spirituality as a component in teacher training programs by looking at several faculty developmentsmodels. Additionally, this paper explores the types of teacher training programs in integrate spirituality at the respective faculty. Rather than providing instruction in institutional policy and regulations, as is the case in professional programs, these programs focus on spiritual leadership, ethical teaching, and reflective practice to educate educators who are academically proficient as well as capable of moral and spiritual development of their students. This paper explains that integrating Islamic spirituality within educator training improves teaching methodology, fostering student engagement, and enables holistic education. Although the benefits are clear, there are significant challenges, particularly in secular educational settings where balancing religious teachings with secular rules requires careful negotiation. This paper examines these challenges, including the shortage of trained Islamic educators and the difficulties of integrating religious values within secular systems.Nevertheless, positive ways of providing an opportunity are via inter-religious dialogue and can build a mutual understanding among the different nationalities in multiculturalclassrooms.Moreover,it is imperative to fill these gaps and complete training programs that involve tackling both religious and secular goals with a view to makingIslamic spirituality successfully embedded in education.Keywords:Islamic Spirituality, Faculty Development, Teacher Training

INTEGRATING ISLAMIC SPIRITUALITY IN TEACHER TRAINING: ANALYSIS OF FACULTY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON TEACHING PRACTICES

The significance of integrating Islamic spirituality-based pedagogy into teacher training programs for the enhancement of both academic and moral teaching is now widely recognized.This paperattempts to analyzethe role of Islamic spirituality as a component in teacher training programs by looking at several faculty developmentsmodels. Additionally, this paper explores the types of teacher training programs in integrate spirituality at the respective faculty. Rather than providing instruction in institutional policy and regulations, as is the case in professional programs, these programs focus on spiritual leadership, ethical teaching, and reflective practice to educate educators who are academically proficient as well as capable of moral and spiritual development of their students. This paper explains that integrating Islamic spirituality within educator training improves teaching methodology, fostering student engagement, and enables holistic education. Although the benefits are clear, there are significant challenges, particularly in secular educational settings where balancing religious teachings with secular rules requires careful negotiation. This paper examines these challenges, including the shortage of trained Islamic educators and the difficulties of integrating religious values within secular systems.Nevertheless, positive ways of providing an opportunity are via inter-religious dialogue and can build a mutual understanding among the different nationalities in multiculturalclassrooms.Moreover,it is imperative to fill these gaps and complete training programs that involve tackling both religious and secular goals with a view to makingIslamic spirituality successfully embedded in education.Keywords:Islamic Spirituality, Faculty Development, Teacher Training

INTEGRATING ISLAMIC SPIRITUALITY IN TEACHER TRAINING: ANALYSIS OF FACULTY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON TEACHING PRACTICES

he significance of integrating Islamic spirituality-based pedagogy into teacher training programs for the enhancement of both academic and moral teaching is now widely recognized.This paperattempts to analyzethe role of Islamic spirituality as a component in teacher training programs by looking at several faculty developmentsmodels. Additionally, this paper explores the types of teacher training programs in integrate spirituality at the respective faculty. Rather than providing instruction in institutional policy and regulations, as is the case in professional programs, these programs focus on spiritual leadership, ethical teaching, and reflective practice to educate educators who are academically proficient as well as capable of moral and spiritual development of their students. This paper explains that integrating Islamic spirituality within educator training improves teaching methodology, fostering student engagement, and enables holistic education. Although the benefits are clear, there are significant challenges, particularly in secular educational settings where balancing religious teachings with secular rules requires careful negotiation. This paper examines these challenges, including the shortage of trained Islamic educators and the difficulties of integrating religious values within secular systems.Nevertheless, positive ways of providing an opportunity are via inter-religious dialogue and can build a mutual understanding among the different nationalities in multiculturalclassrooms.Moreover,it is imperative to fill these gaps and complete training programs that involve tackling both religious and secular goals with a view to makingIslamic spirituality successfully embedded in education.Keywords:Islamic Spirituality, Faculty Development, Teacher Training

Реконструкция и реинтерпретация как феномены постсекулярного бриколажа

The article is devoted to the analysis of the mechanisms of formation of modern religious post-secular consciousness. The principal feature of this consciousness is the combination of religious and secular elements, which creates, according to the apt expression of the religious scholar Dm. Uzlaner, post-secular hybrids. It seems that the main mechanism for creating such hybrids is bricolage. Post-secular bricolage manifests itself in the phenomena of reconstruction and reinterpretation. The process of reconstruction is necessarily involved in the fixation and rationalization of religious tradition and has two components. Firstly, it is an appeal to the remnants of tradition preserved in folk beliefs and practices, and secondly, it is the use of materials of scientific ethnographic research, both conducted in the previous period and modern ones. The result of this process is the emergence of "neotradition", when the reconstruction of lost and forgotten practices based on scientific approaches leads to the emergence of post-secular hybrids, where the religious form of the recreated phenomena is combined with the secular goals of this activity and the secular understanding of their content. There is also reflection, comprehension of traditional beliefs, a certain theology of tradition is created, but in the process of this, concepts of secular scientific (or paranientific) language are often used, applied according to the principle of "everything will do", i.e., according to the principle of bricolage. Reinterpretation affects tradition more deeply. During reinterpretation, such a transformation of the religious system occurs, in which the primary system remains in the final product of the process as an element, and the original system is radically rethought, the product of reinterpretation is not completed, it is open for further changes. The reinterpretation product can also be characterized as a post-secular hybrid. Our proposed analysis of the features of the functioning of the mechanism of intellectual bricolage in the post-secular era, consideration of the phenomena of reconstruction and reinterpretation in this perspective gives, in our opinion, new tools for studying the processes of formation of modern religious consciousness.The conclusions of the article, in addition to the analysis of published studies of the modern religiosity of the peoples of the Russian Federation, are also based on field studies conducted by us since 2013 in the Nenets, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District and some other regions of the Russian Federation.

Christianity and the character education movement 1897–1914

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the extent to which middle-class Christians, many of whom were progressive liberals, involved themselves in the Moral Instruction League (MIL) to intervene in ‘improving’ the moral character of the English working class. It considers how they reconciled their motivations and underlying theology with secular goals that sought to free morality from its theological basis in late nineteenth-century England. It argues that Christian members and supporters of the MIL, in a series of steps, began to distance themselves from the theological basis of their faith. This was in an age when people were overwhelmingly persuaded that religion and morality were inseparable and that moral education must be religious education in schools. It was the Christian faith, not doubt, that was widely assumed in Victorian England at all social levels. What was the philosophy that the organisation promoted in its approach to character-building?.

Religious voluntarism, political individualism, and the secular: nineteenth-century evangelical encounters in the Middle East

ABSTRACTIn 1819, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) began a mission in the Middle East. Though initially the missionaries sought to convert Muslims and Jews to the Christian faith, they soon turned to revitalizing their co-religionists. This puzzling situation of Christians proselytizing other Christians occurred because the two groups of Christians, American and Middle Eastern, held very different cultural and political notions of what that identity meant. In the end, the American mission remained minimally effective at conversion but influential in its secular goals of educating, furthering religious freedom, and modernization. Counter-intuitively, the missionaries’ religious proselytizing became implicated in a kind of secularization.

Kings and Buddhism in Medieval Korea

Abstract In traditional Korea, the king controlled customs, including Buddhist practices, and the fortune of Buddhism also depended on his will. In that context, this paper examines how Korean kings in medieval Korea, which is equivalent to the Koryŏ (高麗, 918–1392) dynasty, understood Buddhism in terms of the Three Jewels of Buddhism—the Buddha, His teaching, and the saṅgha (clergy or the monastic community)—focusing on King Hyŏnjong (顯宗, r. 1009–1031) and King Kojong (高宗, r. 1213–1259). They understood Buddhism in terms of Chinese systems of thought such as Confucianism and used it for their secular goals, putting the monastic community under their control. Koryŏ kings’ primary duty was to secure the eternity of the royal house. To that end, they took Confucianism as the political ideology and Buddhism as a dominant religious force to support important Confucian concepts of loyalty and filial piety. Buddhist services performed by them had the same goal and Buddhist texts served as objects of worship to invoke blessings. However, the Buddhism that Koryŏ kings understood belonged to the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition and it was different from early Buddhism. This difference elicits a large body of questions, including the actual nature of Koryŏ Buddhism. These issues remain for in-depth research in the future.

Kings and Buddhism in Medieval Korea

In traditional Korea, the king controlled customs, including Buddhist practices, and the fortune of Buddhism also depended on his will. In that context, this paper examines how Korean kings in medieval Korea, which is equivalent to the Koryŏ (高麗, 918–1392) dynasty, understood Buddhism in terms of the Three Jewels of Buddhism—the Buddha, His teaching, and the saṅgha (clergy or the monastic community)—focusing on King Hyŏnjong (顯宗, r. 1009–1031) and King Kojong (高宗, r. 1213–1259). They understood Buddhism in terms of Chinese systems of thought such as Confucianism and used it for their secular goals, putting the monastic community under their control. Koryŏ kings’ primary duty was to secure the eternity of the royal house. To that end, they took Confucianism as the political ideology and Buddhism as a dominant religious force to support important Confucian concepts of loyalty and filial piety. Buddhist services performed by them had the same goal and Buddhist texts served as objects of worship to invoke blessings. However, the Buddhism that Koryŏ kings understood belonged to the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition and it was different from early Buddhism. This difference elicits a large body of questions, including the actual nature of Koryŏ Buddhism. These issues remain for in-depth research in the future.

Towards a definition of performance for religious organizations and beyond

Purpose– This paper aims to analyze how performance may be defined in the context of a religious organization. The authors do so by studying the case of a Benedictine abbey.Design/methodology/approach– Using an etymologically derived understanding of performance, and predominantly based on theRegula Benedicti(the central guideline for Benedictine monks), the authors first conceptually develop an understanding of performance in Benedictine abbeys. The authors then apply this understanding in a single case study.Findings– The authors found that in order to comply with the Benedictine mission laid out in theRegula Benedicti, Benedictine abbeys need to balance sacred and secular goals. The authors also derived six key actions in order to accomplish these goals. The case study shows that an imbalance in these key actions may cause severe (financial) distress.Research limitations/implications– The study provides an alternative framing of the term “performance” and further evidence that only a combined pursuit of sacred and secular goals seems useful for religious organizations. Researchers interested in religious organizations might find the conceptual approach and findings useful to analyze performance in such organizations.Practical implications– Benedictine abbeys and other religious organizations may find the analysis valuable to critically analyze their current strategies and focal activities. Moreover, this paper's results might also be worthwhile for other faith-based or third-sector organizations when seeking an alternative framing of performance.Originality/value– This paper provides a new framing of “performance” and is the first to analyze what performance might mean in the context of a Benedictine abbey.

Islamic finance: from sacred intentions to secular goals?

PurposeThe paper seeks to examine the political and socio‐economic circumstances in three different periods of the evolution of Islamic finance and how the fundamental aim of its existence altered over time.Design/methodology/approachBased on the existing literature on the evolution of Islamic finance, this paper explores the tensions and conflicts with reference to the dynamic changes in the political and socio‐economic landscape to understand how “intentions” changed over time.FindingsThe sacred intentions to help Muslims fulfill their religious economic obligations especially with regards toriba(usury) have been distorted with secular goals as a result of the intervention of political‐economic and social events as well as the dynamic interactions with the conventional sector.Maqasid al‐shari'ah(purposes of the law) has been unduly used to justify the innovation of financial products to compete and converge with conventional banking.Originality/valueThis editorial paper enhances the understanding of the status quo of Islamic finance in general and paves the way for country‐specific research on this indispensable issue.

Education, health and social welfare in the late colonial context: the International Missionary Council and educational transition in the interwar years with specific reference to colonial Africa

Mission schools in Africa in the first half of the twentieth century were in many ways microcosms of the great educational debates of the times. The objectives of policies regarding access, governance and curriculum were part of a historical evolution of mission education but they were also increasingly a reflection of significant new trends that were to reshape the theory and practice of colonial education. New forms of educational research and professional expertise were to play an ever‐increasing role in shaping the forms and content of the education provided. The brief of the mission churches was to meet with the increasing demand for schooling. Church and state gradually expanded their cooperation in the field as the costs of education outstripped the resources of the missions and the demand for mass education came to be linked to nationalist demands for political and economic rights. This paper is concerned to map the background to those international influences that shaped the policy and practices of mission education and the increasing engagement of colonial governments with the field of education. It addresses the question of the worldwide Protestant mission church’s response to the changing political, social and economic environment of the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it seeks to explore how mission initiatives shaped thinking about education in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America by the 1930s. It also attempts to situate those issues within a wider educational framework by linking them to the emergent debate concerning pragmatism and utilitarianism in regard to progressive education in the USA and the quest for social democratic education in the United Kingdom and Europe as part of a response to socialism, nationalism and totalitarianism. In short, the paper explores the influence of the Christian mission churches with regard to social policy, in general, and the provision of education, in particular, during the interwar years, with special reference to areas influenced by the work of the International Missionary Council. At a time when there was a crisis of support for ‘foreign missions’ how did the debates between fundamentalist‐evangelicals and supporters of a ‘social gospel’ transform themselves into debates regarding the role of missions in non‐Western societies? And how did these essentially ecclesiastical/theological issues come to influence public policy, specifically educational policy, in the long term? The conclusions are that mission churches had a very significant influence on the shaping of educational thinking in the colonial and imperial context at a time when state influence in the sector was still often quite weak. The origins of the conference and research culture that has informed educational policy since the establishment of the United Nations Organization had its roots in the broad context of the Charter of the League of Nations, with a meeting of religious and secular goals, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Between 1910 and 1939 there was a significant history of educational reform and community development that has only been partially documented in relation to its global significance. This is an attempt to build a framework for understanding the nature of those changes and what was achieved. The investigation is conducted through an exploration of the three great World Mission Conferences of the International Missionary Council (IMC) held at Edinburgh (1910), Jerusalem (1928) and Tambaram, India (1938). The attempts of Christian churches to engage with dramatic social changes associated with industrialisation, urbanisation, poverty, cultural change and the rise of anti‐colonialism, with specific regard to the field of educational policy, are documented and analysed.

The Lokamanya and the Sardar: Two Generations of Congress 'Communalism'

Antagonism among various religious communities and particularly between Hindus and Muslims has become a recurring feature of the public sphere in South Asia. This antagonism fed a steady growth of Muslim separatism in British India which led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the evidence of such communal attitudes within the major movement dedicated to achieving Indian nationhood, the Indian National Congress. From its founding in 1885, the organization espoused secular ideals and a broad vision of Indian nationalism which would be inclusive of all religious communities. Nevertheless, a strong undercurrent of Hindu chauvinism was evident early in its history and contributed to the weakening of political and communal harmony from the early 1890s to the late 1940s. Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) and Sardar Vallabhbhai J. Patel (1875-1950) were two powerful leaders who helped to nurture this Hindu chauvinism over a period of two generations of political activism. This thesis investigates how Tilak and Patel's demonization of Muslims in the print media and the relegation of Muslims to limited roles within Congress helped to enfeeble the secular goals of Congress, despite the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)

Sexing the Citizen: Morality and Masculinity in France, 1870-1920

How does the modern French nation state pursuing liberal, egalitarian and secular goals encourage but also control ‘good’ citizenship? It is this question with its tacit assumption that such citizens are sexed and gendered male that Judith Surkis sets out to address with particular focus on Third Republic France. Rather than reading this period as one of political crises (1870, fin de siècle decadence, Dreyfus, the First World War), or of fixed norms for the sexes (grounded in legal frameworks), Surkis argues strongly that it demonstrates the continuities, ambiguities and paradoxes that inform idealized models of French Republican masculinity from the Revolution to current citizen debates (spearheaded by the foulard affair for example). The Third Republic's negotiation of how to school ‘good male’ socialization is then explored in four sections: its primary, and secondary education policies (the bachelier); its fostering and regulation of the individual's responsibilities to, and relationships within, society following Durkheim; and finally its hygienist policies for the ‘good’ sexual conduct of male civilians and military conscripts alike. In all four arenas Surkis uncovers the same fragile and fractured nature of Republican constructions of masculinity based on conjugal heterosexuality (the complementary difference between the sexes). Paradigmatic Third Republican citizenship is then not a universal but a tautology in Surkis's widely researched and convincing analysis, the elision of male and masculine with citizenship, and as everywhere distinct from female and feminine members of the social body. In this, and by not adhering to crisis models for understanding the Third Republic, Surkis moves historical and gender studies analyses of the period into new and useful terrains whereby the very norms of (male) citizenship which informed its educational and medical policies can themselves be opened to question. By not engaging with or returning to the legal codes and frameworks (such as the Code Civil) which fixed such norms, however, Surkis could be criticized for leaving female and non-heterosexual citizens even more elided than feminist and gay studies critics of the period have argued. In the end, the unquestioned strengths of this widely documented and rich study are its challenges to ‘normative’ masculinity as fostered by its obviously male reformers, educators and policy-makers. Schooling, rather than ‘sexing’ the citizen in France, 1870–1920 might then be the even more apt first word for the title of this book since its multi-facetted work only returns enquiry to legal definitions and requirements of the period, especially the realm of its free, lay and obligatory education.

Myth against myth: the nation as ethnic overlay

Abstract Nationalism is a secular modern ideology that has been accompanied by revolutions and it has legitimised the rise to power of new social classes. For this reason many theorists have regarded nationalists as inventors of tradition and their claims to continuities with the past as either self‐delusion or a form of deceit. Yet in many cases premodern ethnic identities have powerfully shaped the programmes and policies of many nation‐states.How can nationalism be the expressions of ethnic continuity and also of revolutionary change? I will argue that nationalism is a novel form of ethnicity, shaped by the polycentric vision of romanticism and by the unprecedented and unpredictable challenges of the modern world that require innovation Nationalists are able to justify innovation because of the ‘layered’ nature of the ethnic past, and they are able to overcome established ethnic identities by generating at times of crises novel myths based on romantic acts of sacrifice by heroic elites that legitimise new national projects. But these new elite‐driven national mythologies overlie rather than obliterate older ethnic traditions. These latter can come to life in the process of nation‐building, redirecting it from its original secular goals.

The rhetorical legacy of the black church

The legacy of the Black Church to Black oratory has been a rhetoric on non‐action, a Salvationist metaphor that has often eclipsed immediate secular goals.

The Wisconsin Idea and Business Progressivism

‘The curriculum’, write Richard Hofstadter and C. de Witt Hardy, ‘is a barometer by which we may measure the cultural pressures that operate upon the school.’ These pressures are of many kinds, economic and intellectual, and they make schools and universities social, and even political institutions sensitive to external needs and demands. In the United States, where education has become one of the main secular goals of society, the history of schools and universities deserves to be an integral part of the social history of the country. Lawrence A. Cremin has shown how such an integration can be achieved. And now that ‘B schools’ in the vanguard of Le Défi American are spreading outwards from Manila to Manchester the time is ripe to study a phenomenon which most historians and sociologists, if they have not despised, have preferred to ignore.

The Principle of Religious Liberty

This is the understanding of the principle of religious liberty, in its present American application, that this paper will spell out: Our American state is impartial toward, but respectful of, ultimate loyalty; it is impartial because it is respectful. Our state is and should be impartial as among the different ultimate beliefs in our society; none is preferred, none discouraged. The state itself is not committed; it is not a confessing state. The state as such is not officially Christian, nor religious, nor affirming belief in God. So far as state action officially is concerned, the United States is not what Will Herberg says it is, pro-religious (the people in general are to be sure, but not the official position of the state). In the broad statement of constitutional principle it is right to say, as the Everson-McCollum doctrine did (to the consternation of many) that the establishment clause of the First Amendment means there shall be no state aid to all religions; there shall be no nonpreferential aid to religion as such, or to religion in general. As an official line of general policy that is ruled out. Insofar as is possible in a real society, the state treats with even-handed equality religious and nonreligious positions— but with the qualification and interpretation, however, that I now want to add. The state is impartial with respect to ultimate beliefs not be cause it is entirely ignorant about and unimpressed with these, pursuing its secular goals without any reference to the religious or irreligious opinion of the people—but rather because it defers to the conscience of the people that it rules. Our state is respect ful of the dimension religion represents, deferring, as far as it can, to it, leaving it insofar as it can, free. Our state leaves re ligious matters aside, not because they are beneath or against its concern, but because they are above its concern. Our free state is a state that knows itself to be limited—indeed, our society is a society that knows itself to be limited—with respect to the ulti mate loyalties of the citizens. These arise from the free action of men and not from the direction of government or the official proc lamation of society. These arise from the hearts of the persons and not from official policy. Our state knows itself to be in