Dr Abdullah Sahin | University of Warwick (original) (raw)

Papers by Dr Abdullah Sahin

Indonesian International Islamic University: home of imaginative Islam, 2023

‘A Festschrift in Honor of Prof Komaruddin Hidayat, Rector Universitas Islam Internasional Indone... more ‘A Festschrift in Honor of Prof Komaruddin Hidayat, Rector Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia’, Kompas (September 2023).

Educational Empowerment & Cultural, Religious Diversity of 21st Century Learners: Unpacking Learn... more Educational Empowerment & Cultural, Religious Diversity of 21st Century Learners: Unpacking Learning Experiences of Muslim Children and Young People in European Education Systems

Convened by Dr. Abdullah Sahin

25-28 September 2022

Radcliffe House

Department of Education Studies
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Warwick

Higher Education and Love, 2022

Islamic Religious Education in Europe, 2021

This paper examines the pedagogy-politics intersection framing the perceptions, expectations and ... more This paper examines the pedagogy-politics intersection framing the perceptions, expectations and organisation of Islamic Education (IE) within the Muslim-minority context of Europe. It is structured around, a) a conceptual analysis of education, and b) the exploration of socio-political dynamics informing IE in Europe. IE is often defined with contradictory depictions. In the broadest sense, IE means Islam’s transformative vision of education (tarbiya) facilitating human flourishing. As a curriculum subject, IE refers to how Islam is taught within diverse European educational systems. This includes publicly funded RE models in Europe that range from confessional (Germany), non-confessional (UK) and a combination of both (Nordic countries). There are new initiatives to make RE relevant in mainstream European educational systems. In the UK there are proposals to replace RE with a new subject ‘Religion and Worldviews’. However, closely examined the link between ‘worldviews’ and ‘pedagogy’ remains underdeveloped and the stress on ‘hermeneutics’ appears to facilitate ‘suspicion’ towards the living faith traditions rather than helping children of faith and with no-faith backgrounds achieve religious literacy or interreligious understanding. State-sponsored IE in continental Europe has emerged as a convenient tool to enact the official security policies in educational spaces and manufacture politically correct Muslim identities. The community-based traditional IE is utilised to reproduce identity narratives borrowed from parental heritage of European Muslim children.The ‘educational good’ in both approaches largely excludes the lived reality and interest of the learners. The paper concludes by stressing the significance of an inclusive IE provision, in Muslim and mainstream education, that facilitates contextual, reflective teaching and learning of Islam and empowers learners to understand, respect and navigate the plurality informing their lives. Key Words: Islamic Education, Tarbiya, Transformative Islamic pedagogies, Inclusive RE, Foreclosed identities, Educational good, Islamic nurture, Education and politics.

Religions, 2018

This paper examines two sets of interrelated issues informing contemporary discussions on Islam a... more This paper examines two sets of interrelated issues informing contemporary discussions on Islam and education that take place within both Muslim majority and minority contexts. The first set of issues concerns the academic conceptualisation of the study of education within diverse historical and contemporary Islamic cultural, intellectual, political, theological and spiritual traditions. After a critical examination of the current literature, the paper suggests that ‘Islamic Education Studies’ offers a distinctive academic framing that incorporates an interdisciplinary empirical and scholarly inquiry strategy capable of generating a body of knowledge and understanding guiding the professional practice and policy development in the field. Lack of conceptual clarity in various current depictions of the field, including ‘Muslim Education’, ‘Islamic Pedagogy’, ‘Islamic Nurture’ and ‘Islamic Religious Pedagogy’, is outlined and the frequent confusion of Islamic Education with Islamic Stu...

Religion and Human Rights

This study explores the association between attitudes toward socio-economic human rights and thre... more This study explores the association between attitudes toward socio-economic human rights and three dimensions of religion (religious practice, religiosity, and self-assigned religious affiliation), after taking into account personal factors (age and sex) and psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) among a sample of 987 students between the ages of 14 and 18 years in England and Wales. Religious practice was assessed by two factors, personal prayer and worship attendance. Religiosity was assessed by three factors, thinking about religious issues, reconsidering religious issues, and belief in God. Self-assigned religious affiliation distinguished among four groups, Protestant Christians, Catholic Christians, Muslims, and religiously unaffiliated. The data demonstrated the importance of personal factors, with females and older students holding more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights, and the importance of psychological factors, with higher neuroticism scores and lower psychoticism scores being associated with more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights. Among the dimension of religion, religiosity provided stronger prediction of individual differences in attitudes toward socio-economic human rights than either religious practice or self-assigned religious affiliation. In particular, adolescents who often gave thought to religious issues held more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights.

The Pedagogy of Compassion at the Heart of Higher Education, 2017

Modern higher education institutions are fast becoming corporate like organizations largely respo... more Modern higher education institutions are fast becoming corporate like organizations largely responding to the training needs of a globalized market economy. The chapter argues that to revive the humane and inclusive civic nature of education, compassion needs to become a central feature of a higher education system that is capable of facilitating human flourishing and serving public good. The compassionate character of education in Islam and its impact on the emergence of classical Muslim higher education institutions (madrassas) and wider Muslim civilization are discussed. The chapter demonstrates how within Muslim heritage of education, compassion is further qualified with the deeper ethical/spiritual values of care/responsibility and the exercise of critical/ reflective thinking which enable the educational process to become a compassionate transformation of human condition. The last section of the chapter considers the implications of the discussion for inspiring a new dialogue and cooperation between Islamic and Western higher education institutions in reasserting compassion as a central educational value to guide modern university education.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-57783-8_9

We are living in a world characterized by cultural and religious diversity and most significantly... more We are living in a world characterized by cultural and religious diversity and most significantly we are witnessing re-emergence of religion as a social dynamic increasingly shaping public sphere within what appears to be the dawn of postsecular democratic societies in the West. Different value systems based on deeper narratives of meaning, formed within distinctive historical and cultural contexts, are now living side by side.

There is a complex set of challenges that arise from the presence of diverse Muslim communities i... more There is a complex set of challenges that arise from the presence of diverse Muslim communities in Europe today. Quite rightly Muslims often feel that their communities experience disproportionate inequality, social and educational exclusion and a lack of social mobility, while facing the continuing threats of racism and Islamophobia. European Muslims argue that, after the tragic events of 9/11 in the US and the bombings in Madrid and London, they have been increasingly seen as the ‘enemy within’, and stereotyped as extremists and terrorists. On the other hand, European public opinion, as polling suggests, increasingly finds the presence of Muslims in Europe problematic and, for some, even a serious threat to secular democracy and the peace and security of its diverse societies. Moreover, according to some Europeans, Islam remains a medieval relic and is essentially a rigid faith tradition that is not compatible with the values of secular democracy. They argue that Islam needs to un...

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/12/islam-education-extremism-schools-muslim-prevent, 2016

The policy response to the threat of radicalisation has focused on law, security and intelligence... more The policy response to the threat of radicalisation has focused on law, security and intelligence. As the problem spirals out of control, this one-dimensional response, which includes the government’s Prevent policy in schools, seems merely to be repeated more aggressively. Applying security and surveillance policy across society not only risks limiting civil liberties, but also isolating mainstream Muslims. This does not counter the manipulative interpretation of Islam being used by extremists to play upon grievances held by some Muslims.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/12/islam-education-extremism-schools-muslim-prevent

Public Theology, Religious Diversity, and Interreligious Learning

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

Contribution: Situated within the reader-perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the SIFT ... more Contribution: Situated within the reader-perspective approach to biblical hermeneutics, the SIFT method is concerned with identifying the influence of the psychological type of the reader in shaping the interpretation of text. The present study demonstrates that this theory holds true for the way in which Muslim educators read Psalm 73.

Religions

A group of 22 Muslim educators participating in a residential Islamic Education summer school wer... more A group of 22 Muslim educators participating in a residential Islamic Education summer school were invited to explore their individual preferences for thinking and feeling (the two functions of the Jungian judging process). They were then invited to work in three groups (seven clear thinking types, eight clear feeling types, and seven individuals less clear of their preference) to discuss Psalm 1. Clear differences emerged between the ways in which thinking types and feeling types handled the judgement metred out to the wicked in the Psalm. The feeling types were disturbed by the portrayal of God in Psalm 1 and sought ways to mitigate the stark message. The thinking types confronted the dangers to which this image of God could lead and sought pedagogic strategies for dealing with these dangers.

Higher Education and Love: Institutional, Pedagogical and Personal Trajectories (Ed by V. de Rijke et al) Palgrave Macmillan., 2022

This inquiry examines how the love of learning, embodying the transformative educational vision o... more This inquiry examines how the love of learning, embodying the transformative educational vision of Islam (tarbiyah), emerged as the humanizing pedagogic vocation within classical Islamic higher education. There is a large body of literature exploring philosophical, literary, theological, mystical and aesthetic perceptions of love in the Muslim tradition. Classical Islamic scholarship has attracted the attention of Western historians of Islam. These studies, however, are limited to providing descriptive accounts of medieval Islamic knowledge systems and institutions. They do not offer an educational reading (hermeneutics) of the Muslim intellectual heritage. The love of learning as a central pedagogical value in classical Muslim higher education has not been subject to systematic inquiry. The study aims to fill this gap within the emerging field of critical Islamic Education Studies and contribute to the interdisciplinary comparative research on values in higher education. The ‘crisis of legitimacy’ facing the modern university is traced to the commodification of its educational good within the economic priorities of neoliberalism and privileging the pedagogy of scientism. The inquiry argues that the love of learning in the Muslim tradition springs from the distinctive image of God in the Qur’an as the loving, compassionate educator (al-Rabb/al-Waduud) and its transformative pedagogies of self-cultivation. The study considers critically whether the love of learning in Islam can accommodate ambiguity, questioning, and critical faithfulness.

Keywords
Values and Higher Education Love of Learning Islamic Education Studies Qur’an and Human Development Critical Faithfulness Decolonizing University Madrasah Tarbiyah

ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN EUROPE (Edited Volume by Routledge), 2021

Key Words: Islamic Education, Tarbiya, Transformative Islamic pedagogies, Inclusive RE, Foreclosed identities, Educational good, Islamic nurture, Education and politics.

Book Chapter, 2022

This chapter explores the interface between Islam, social work and the common good within the M... more This chapter explores the interface between Islam, social work and the common good within the Muslim minority context of Europe. The ethics-law nexus in Muslim tradition is examined to argue for a transformative Islamic engagement with the secular public space. Literature on Islam and social work is limited to providing basic information about Islam to frontline practitioners. The current inquiry intends to develop an Islamic perspective on social work and wellbeing. Increasing association of Muslims with extremism form negative public perceptions of Islam in Europe. Within this discourse of suspicion, Islam is coded as a cause of public harm and ‘Shariʿa law’ is often associated with human rights violations. This study argues that a critical dialogue among the faith-embedded and secular traditions of social ethics in Europe remains vital to fostering a shared sense of common good. Contemporary discussions on social ethics in Islam are dominated by maqāṣid ash-sharī ʿa (objectives of Islamic law) and fiqh al-ʿaqalliyyāt (Muslim minority law). Whilst the former is purported to be a metaethical discourse and the latter implying a contextualising intent, both operate within strict juristic hermeneutics. Alternatively, this inquiry rethinks Shariʿa as relational ethics and practical wisdom (ḥikma), closer to the concept of phronesis in ancient Greek philosophy, guiding human relations as imagined in Qurʾanic anthropology and its vision of a just society. Shariʿa is framed within Islam’s transformative view of human flourishing, tarbiyya. The notion of relational ethics is further grounded in dialogue with phenomenology-informed discussions on ethics, particularly in the work of Levinas, and Habermas’s ‘theory of communicative action’.

Key Words:
Critical studies in European Islam, relational ethics, social work, common good, tarbiyya, transformative education, phenomenology, Levinas.

A. Sahin
Department of Education Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
e-mail: a.sahin@warwick.ac.uk
Book Chapter in ‘Exploring Islamic Social Work Between Community and the Common Good’ Edited by Hansjörg Schmid/Amir Sheikhzadegan
(Springer Series “Muslims in Global Societies”)
© Springer International Publishing AG 2022

Indonesian International Islamic University: home of imaginative Islam, 2023

Convened by Dr. Abdullah Sahin

25-28 September 2022

Radcliffe House

Department of Education Studies
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Warwick

Higher Education and Love, 2022

Islamic Religious Education in Europe, 2021

Religions, 2018

Religion and Human Rights

The Pedagogy of Compassion at the Heart of Higher Education, 2017

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-57783-8_9

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/jan/12/islam-education-extremism-schools-muslim-prevent, 2016

Public Theology, Religious Diversity, and Interreligious Learning

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies

Religions

Higher Education and Love: Institutional, Pedagogical and Personal Trajectories (Ed by V. de Rijke et al) Palgrave Macmillan., 2022

Keywords
Values and Higher Education Love of Learning Islamic Education Studies Qur’an and Human Development Critical Faithfulness Decolonizing University Madrasah Tarbiyah

ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN EUROPE (Edited Volume by Routledge), 2021

Key Words: Islamic Education, Tarbiya, Transformative Islamic pedagogies, Inclusive RE, Foreclosed identities, Educational good, Islamic nurture, Education and politics.

Book Chapter, 2022

Key Words:
Critical studies in European Islam, relational ethics, social work, common good, tarbiyya, transformative education, phenomenology, Levinas.

The Muslim World Book Review , 2012

The apex of medieval Islamic civilisation in the Eastern Muslim hinterland is usually associated ... more The apex of medieval Islamic civilisation in the Eastern Muslim hinterland is usually associated with the establishment of the 'House of Wisdom' during the early Abbasid rule (750-1258 CE). This major Islamic educational centre, originally conceived as a library and translation centre, founded by Caliph Harun alRashid (786-809 CE) in 9th century Baghdad and later flourished under the reign of his son, alMa´mun (813-833 CE). One of the main aims of this intellectual centre was to translate into Arabic the major works produced by previous civilisations, such as ancient Greek, Persian, Indian and Chinese that constituted the cultural heritage of diverse groups of people who become part of the expanding Islamic empire. The early rapid Islamic conquest created a historic encounter between Muslims and the societies originated in diverse linguistic, ethnic, religious and philosophical communities in the Near East during the late antiquity. It is true that Muslim military conquest was made easier due to the centuries old warfare between the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, the two dominant political powers in the region. However, one of the significant dynamics behind this early Muslim success was to gain the support of many indigenous people, who were already discontented with their ruling elites and sectarian violence. This was achieved through the presence of a tolerant open Islamic attitude towards ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. Such a faith-based openness to the 'other' was in many ways a unique development within the historical conditions of late antiquity, where religion was commonly associated with exclusion and othering.

A number of glowing reviews elevate this work to a level of almost miraculous originality. Appare... more A number of glowing reviews elevate this work to a level of almost miraculous originality. Apparently, already the hagiographical accounts of author’s life are widely circulating. A fair critical assessment of the work has yet, as far as I know, to appear. No doubt the S. Ahmed was an erudite scholar as is evident in his doctoral dissertation which examined the formation of orthodoxy in Islam through an initial interest in analyzing the historical authenticity of the Satanic Verses narratives widely discussed within the Muslim scholarly traditions. It seems this search has gained a new significance when he discovers Ibn Taymiyyah’s rather challenging ‘unorthodox’ but nuanced and evidence-based views on the matter.

By the turn of the last century, secular political order had become so deeply rooted in the weste... more By the turn of the last century, secular political order had become so deeply rooted in the western societies that few would have predicted the return of religion as a socio-political force in today's globalised world. However, it must be stressed that this religious revival came with a high price. Religion is increasingly seen as an irrational reactionary force nurturing fanaticism, conflict and violence and therefore a threat to world peace. Historically, in the West, this fear of religion has led the modern secular consciousness to largely confine faith to the category of individualistic moral piety. The prophetic call for observing justice in all aspects of life that defines the heart of monotheistic faith traditions has been largely ignored. Unfortunately, even within contemporary sister faith traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the significance of this prophetic voice of social ethics and just living tend to be less vocal. The book under review offers an unparalleled insight into this critical prophetic message of upholding justice and respect for human dignity embedded within the Abrahamic faiths. The author discerns this creative monotheistic impulse of critical faithfulness by offering an impressive intertextual reading that enables the sacred discourses of the Hebrew Bible, New Testament and the Qur'an to engage in a meaningful conversation, thus illustrating the intertwined nature of their core message to humanity.

When John and I first met, neither could he 'see' me nor could I speak fluent English but his gen... more When John and I first met, neither could he 'see' me nor could I speak fluent English but his generosity of spirit kindled a friendship that will remain with me forever. We had many shared dreams and disappointments but his prophetic insight never ceased to generate hope. We lost our beloved prophet of hope. Our eyes are welled up with tears and our hearts are aching with pain. But we are comforted with his living memory that will keep whispering hope to all of us. I was privileged to be John's first Muslim student. I met him, for the first time, as part of my application process to the University of Birmingham. I was an overseas student and my only information about John was based on the short description I came across in the university prospectus. I was anxious whether as a Muslim teacher my research project would be welcomed and, in order to try to impress my prospective supervisor, I bought a new shiny suit. I knocked on the door of his office and a hand reached out to me gently directing me to a nearby seat. Suddenly, it dawned on me that I had spent a fortune buying the suit in vain! I was lucky to come to know John initially as a teacher, mentor and later as a colleague and friend. As a teacher he had exceptional gifts. He was able to transcend all the barriers and reach into your inner most humanity. It was impossible not to be moved and transformed by his generosity of spirit, love and care with which he would embrace you. John's gift was the ability to create an environment where teaching and learning led to into a rich and joyful experience of human flourishing that rewarded and inspired both the student and the teacher.

Religious Imaginations of Political Belonging: Counterculturalism in Islam and Christianity 23 J... more Religious Imaginations of Political Belonging: Counterculturalism in Islam and Christianity

23 June 2023
University of Cambridge

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/ces/news/islamiceducationsummerschool2018/

The first Warwick Islamic Education Summer School, held in September 2016 marked the formation of... more The first Warwick Islamic Education Summer School, held in September 2016 marked the formation of a learning community consisting of practitioners and researchers, from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, interested in exploring issues related to education, Islam and Muslims within the context of contemporary and historical Muslim societies. In reviving the Muslim educational tradition of taaruf, openness to learning from one another, the Summer School offers a collegial academic space within which critical inquiry and reflective practice in Islamic Education are encouraged. Each annual meeting explores in-depth a specific theme related to the teaching and learning of Islam within diverse formal and informal educational settings. The aim is to enable the formation of a new transformative Muslim culture of learning and reflective inquiry through rethinking Islamic Education within the context of a secular and culturally/religiously diverse Western Europe and the wider Muslim world. A further central objective is to improve the quality of educational thinking and pedagogic practice within the diaspora and global Muslim communities essential for facilitating effective civic engagement, social welfare and economic prosperity. The Summer School has led to the establishment of the Warwick Islamic Education Research Network which facilitates critical dialogue between the educational narratives of Islam and the West and fosters collaborative research and knowledge-transfer among diverse groups

Springer Handbook of Islamic Philosophy , 2024

This inquiry argues that the Qur'an exhibits a critical educational self-awareness unparalleled w... more This inquiry argues that the Qur'an exhibits a critical educational self-awareness unparalleled within the scriptural heritage of monotheistic faith traditions. At the same time, it addresses the dilemma that this transformative Qur'anic educational ethos is mostly invisible in modern Islamic schooling. Hence, is it possible to translate the critical/transformative educational legacy of Islam into a modern applied Islamic educational philosophy? Also, to what extent will this require a new dialogue between Western secular and Islamic educational theories? These intersecting questions are explored by taking seriously the historical intellectual exchange, colonial legacy (including the persisting conditions of coloniality) and contemporary encounter between Islam and the West. The study is guided by the phenomenologically oriented educational hermeneutics suggested by Sahin (2014, 2018) and positioned within the wider interdisciplinary research discourse of Comparative Education Studies and Educational Philosophy. In this inquiry Comparative Education Studies is conceived as a 'phronetic social science' in which scholarship primarily aims to unlock the transformative 'utopian' possibilities within the educational narratives of Islam and the Secular West to foster values of peaceful coexistence and form a new shared culture of living well with one another.

Love in Higher Education , 2021

This inquiry examines how love of learning, embodying the transformative educational vision of Is... more This inquiry examines how love of learning, embodying the transformative educational vision of Islam (tarbiyah), emerged as a humanizing value that shaped the pedagogical vocation within diverse traditions of classical Islamic higher education. There is a large body of literature exploring philosophical, literary, theological, mystical, and aesthetic perceptions of love in Muslim tradition. Classical Islamic scholarship has also attracted the attention of Western historians of Islam. These studies, however, are limited to providing descriptive accounts of medieval Islamic knowledge systems and institutions. They do not offer an educational/pedagogical analysis (hermeneutics) of the Muslim intellectual heritage. Love of learning as a central value of classical Muslim higher education has not been subject to systematic inquiry. This study aims to fill this gap within Islamic Education Studies and contribute to the growing interdisciplinary comparative research on values in higher education. The study traces the 'crisis of legitimacy' facing the modern university to the commodification of its educational good within the economic priorities of neoliberalism and privileging the pedagogy of scientism. The inquiry argues that the love of learning in Islam springs from the distinctive image of God as the loving, compassionate educator (al-Rabb/al-Waduud) in Muslim tradition and its transformative pedagogies of self-cultivation. The study concludes by critically considering whether love of learning in Islam can accommodate ambiguity, questioning and critical faithfulness.

The Contemporary Scholar in Higher Education: Forms, Ethos and World View, 2024

This chapter rethinks the vocation of being a scholar at the intersection of Islamic and Western ... more This chapter rethinks the vocation of being a scholar at the intersection of Islamic and Western secular higher education by critically examining the following questions: What is human knowing? How does Muslim tradition define scholarly formation and the purpose of intellectual/scholarly practice? What was the impact of scholarly communities in facilitating 'Islamic civility' within ethnically and culturally plural historic Muslim polities? How did the perception of being a scholar and an intellectual change as Muslim societies experienced modernisation/Westernisation? To what extent do secular and Islamic values of being a scholar converge and diverge? What are the e ective ways of decolonising scholarship and scholarly formation within an increasingly globalising, Eurocentric secular university? Can Islamic and Western secular traditions of higher education nurture a shared ethics of transformative scholarship? These intersecting questions are explored by taking seriously the historical exchange, colonial legacy (including the persisting conditions of coloniality) and contemporary encounters between Islam and the West. A critical educational hermeneutics guides the methodology of the study, positioning it within the interdisciplinary research discourse of Comparative Education(al) Studies. The chapter concludes by putting forward an ethically embedded, socially engaged prophetic model of being a scholar and scholarship grounded in the entwined traditions of Islamic and Western secular higher education.