Malaysia is a multi-ethnic and multi-racial country, with a multi-religious and multi-cultural people as a result. Despite its diversified nature, Malaysia is a country that constitutionally acknowledges Islam as the official religion, and all affairs pertaining to Islam are at the highest priority. The key concerns that may be raised are: What…

This paper aims to understand the influence of Islamic religious philosophy on the application of gifted education in schools. To date, little attention has been paid to the influence of religion, particularly Islam, on how giftedness or areas of talent are viewed and accommodated in the education system. The article considers that Islamic culture…

Pakistan has been engaged in the project of madrassa reform since the early days of its nationhood. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, successive Pakistani governments have introduced a series of reforms aimed at regulating and reforming the madrassa sector, but the repeated failure of these efforts suggests the presence of some…

The aim of this article is to interact critically with Matthew Clayton and David Stevens's recent critique of non-confessional religious education, constituted as a separate, compulsory subject in the school curriculum. Three different critical arguments are considered: the contention that religious education is an unsuitable vehicle for fostering…

In today's Turkey under the Justice and Development administration, it seems that religion becomes or is imposed as an important element of the Turkish national identity. The education system works as the channel for promoting this change. Thus, the case of Turkey is that of a nation-state that has been under construction since it emerged from a…

Global education is a broad field associated with educational traditions rooted in the objective of preparing learners to engage with a complex and interdependent world, and to respond to the needs of the planet. This article explores existing pedagogical approaches to argue for the need, in non-Western contexts, to make greater connections with…

Whether all educationists were philosophers or not, one thing is clear--that all philosophers were educationists--directly or indirectly. May it be Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau or Dewey, they all came up with the notion that to bring about any change at a greater level in a society, change in its educational system is fundamental. Dr. Mohammad…

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…

Despite more than 25 years of existence of Kazakhstan in a new political reality after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government and society are still afraid of religious institutions and alternatives in many areas of social life, including education. This article reviews the reasons for such an attitude and the issues that arise with…

In this country report on Turkey, Abdurrahman Hendek provides a clear, comprehensive and up-to-date account of religious eduction (RE) in Turkey. A state which seeks to be both 'religious' and 'secular' is a useful corrective to those thinking of the two as opposites and illustrates the Commission on RE's stress on the importance of interrogating…

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is making it a requirement of all schools within the Emirates (both public and private) to follow a programme of moral education (MEP), at all ages from grades 1 to 13, which is designed centrally. Explicitly secular and humanist in its approach, this is a remarkable development in a country where Islam is the…

In this essay, the authors challenge the myth of political neutrality in teaching and emphasize the urgent need for teachers to imagine and enact liberatory pedagogical praxis that sensitively responds to the nation's divisive political climate. They point to U.S. political shifts and changing federal policies in education as catalysts for the…

The oil-rich northern districts of Iraq were long considered a reflection of the country with a diversity of ethnic and religious groups: Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, Assyrians, and Yezidi, living together and portraying Iraq's demographic make-up. Yet the territory has suffered from heightening ethno-political influence and sectarianism throughout its…

In the final eleven months of its five-year term, the Coalition Government placed much emphasis in the education system on what it called fundamental British values (FBV). The phrase had its origins in counter-terrorism strategies that were of dubious validity both conceptually and operationally, and the trigger for its introduction into the…

This paper examines the Nigerian Muslims' apprehension on the implementation of the child's Rights Act. This is due to the fact that Islam being the religion of the significant segment of Nigerian population has exposed them to the rights of children other than the child Rights Act. Such rights as provided by Islam include right to proper…