Almost two centuries of British colonial rule in the Asian subcontinent came to an end in 1947 with the creation of a new state named Pakistan and an independent state of India. On 14 August 1947, the state of Pakistan was born primarily as a homeland for Muslims. The Pakistani constitution states that primary education should be free and…

Iqbal views the schooling as well as the Madrassah systems devoid of developing a dynamic Muslim required for the renaissance of Ummah. With this realization, many Islamic educationists in Pakistan have established. Islamic schools in Pakistan. The question is whether their models are dynamic enough to create such Muslims? This research probes…

This is a narrative about my first year's principalship experience at a pre-service teachers' training college in Pakistan, a Muslim country with a patriarchal background. Here, I discuss challenges I faced upon assuming the principalship. Specifically, I focused on how I responded to these challenges. In my response to those challenges, I…

Pakistan is home to religious and cultural ideologies that greatly support the values of human rights. Nevertheless, the multilayered philosophies of human rights in Pakistan have at times heightened clashes and bred a culture of tension among higher education learners. Ideological filters in national education policies have removed human rights…

This paper discusses the fundamental ideal and philosophy of education advocated by Ismail Raji al-Faruqi (1921-1986) in realizing the Islamization of knowledge (IOK) project. The concept and perspective of education projected by al-Faruqi was constructed on the worldview of tawhid that reflected the essence and intrinsic philosophy and paradigm…

The purpose of this paper is to study Naqvi's novel, "Home Boy" (2010) as a Neo Orientalist discourse of US officials about Pakistani Muslims. This paper will discuss how US officials including that of G. W. Bush perceive the Oriental world -- by using the same strategy -- as one distinguished by strangeness, creepiness, and unusual…

On May 1, 2011, a group of U.S. soldiers boarded helicopters at a base in Afghanistan, hoping to find a man named Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network, was responsible for a number of terrorist attacks around the world, including those of September 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.…

One important element of globalization is the dissemination of western educational ideals and organizational frameworks through educational development projects. While postcolonial theory has long offered a useful critique of this expansion, it is less clear about how educational development that eschews neo-imperialist tendencies might proceed.…

This paper presents the stories of three female Muslim educators actively engaged in empowering Muslim girls in their school/community liaison roles. The stories are drawn from a broader qualitative and predominantly interview-based research project that investigated issues of teaching and social justice in three English schools. Through lenses…

In this paper we will explore the nature of English as it is used in one Muslim country and argue that, far from being a colonizing language, English used in Pakistan reflects Islamic values and embodies South Asian Islamic sensitivities. Through analysis of the current discourses on the politics of the English language and a study of Pakistani…

The author wrote a piece called "What Our Children Should Learn about 9/11." In that piece, the author made just four simple points. These include: (1) children should know the facts; (2) once they had a grounding in the facts, the children should not abjure moral judgment; (3) children should learn to make both analytical and moral…

This article reports on the imprisonment of a Muslim former student on charges related to terrorism that has struck a chord among academics and public intellectuals. Syed Fahad Hashmi, a 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, is being held in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, on multiple…

The contemporary social studies curriculum remains surprisingly far from gender balanced. Women in the social studies are placed marginally--except for the large number of teachers and teacher educators who happen to be women. Teachers motivated to include women in global education or world history courses confront numerous problems, including…

This paper examines the societal role of Afghan refugee women, and focuses on options for them. The war, and the ensuing migration to Pakistan of nearly 3.5 million refugees, the majority of whom were women and children, have led to the deterioration of religious tolerance and the rise of more conservative Islamic beliefs, which have placed…

Presents the findings of an ethnolinguistic study conducted in northeastern England on children's language behavior during their first term in school. The article combines two theoretical perspectives in an analytical description of this behavior presented in three levels of data analysis. (23 references) (Author/CK)