The architecture of Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ), set up under Her Highness Sheikha Moza Al-Misnedd and the Qatar Foundation, spatially embodies new possibilities because AIA Gold Medal award-winning architect Ricardo Legorreta designed buildings that both challenge and encompass Gulf Arabian tradition. The buildings exemplify, enact,…

This article is a conceptual examination of tolerance and pedagogy with regard to the prevention of violence in the Arab world from a critical theory perspective. Tolerance is a socially and culturally bound system, indicating that any pedagogy of tolerance must be authentic to its context. Therefore, the value of adopting a nuanced Western…

This study looks into the cultural and social influences on the provision of early intervention (EI) programmes in Jordan, namely the perspective on disability from an Islamic Arabic culture. The aim is to examine the perspectives of Jordanian parents and occupational therapists on the influence of their cultural understanding of disability on the…

While there are innumerable studies about global international organizations (IOs) in education, the role of regional organizations seems overshadowed by more powerful actors in the field, the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), the World Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).…

The globalization and transnationalization of media use have facilitated access to voices from the Arab world. Students and teachers in Western higher education can make use of these voices within and outside the classroom to enhance students' knowledge of the region and challenge Eurocentric imaginations of the 'Other'. Yet to ensure students…

This article presents Al-Kindi as the first Arab intercultural curriculum theorizer, rather than the first Arab philosopher as is often argued. He envisioned an intercultural and interdisciplinary curriculum within the Arabic intellectual tradition. This article proposes Al-Kindism as a conceptual framework for education that revisits…

In a society transitioning from a social order largely defined by strict adherence to religious doctrine to one opening up to the forces of a global economy, knowledge of the sources of norms of "proper conduct" (religious rules, cultural traditions or both) is particularly important in determining conformity to or dismissal of such…

Purpose: This paper aims to confront some of the many facets of academic freedom as a whole, including the shared concerns with Western academia, its relationship to the politics of Arab society and the relevance of these issues within local political domains. It attempts to profile the problems hindering societal progress beyond the seemingly…

The Katateeb al-Bidoon initiative was an after-school teach-in combined with a series of government protests against the sudden expulsion of stateless "Bidoon" children from any official Kuwait school. Considered illegal residents, the "Bidoon" status in Kuwait has deteriorated over the past generation, and their exclusion from…

Based on fieldwork and qualitative interviews of 43 mothers with disabled children in Bedouin communities of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this article probes the research question of whether and to what extent the UAE social welfare system addresses the demands of these mothers. The limited literature on the intersection of gender, family and…

Classical Arabic was originated in the family of Semitic languages as a result of mixing among the languages of the people who lived in the Arabian Peninsula. Nobody knows the exact time of its emergence. We had some knowledge by some stone monuments and oral histories indicated that some distinct languages were in the south and north of the…

This paper examines the possibility of teaching the holocaust in Jordanian universities. In this regard, it highlights the socio-religious challenges that may impede such a project and suggests some methods to overcome them. It discusses the material to be taught and the background that should be furnished for students before presenting the topic.…

Theorizations on Western Muslim identity that are multi-layered and grounded in actual Western Muslim experiences are hard to find. Two exceptions to this are "The Road to Mecca" by Muhammad Asad (1954/2005), and "Islam is a Foreign Country" by Zareena Grewal (2014), rich texts that span across six decades. Asad's classic…

This paper is the first attempt to explore digital literacy in the specific context of the Palestinian refugee community in the Middle East by looking at the cultural specificity of digital literacy theorising and practice, by analysing current digital education policy in the countries hosting the Palestinian refugee community and by documenting…

This paper considers the impact of global and national political polarisation on perspectives of instructors and learners in Arabic classrooms at Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC) in the United States with particular interest in understanding cultural conflicts that occur between instructors and learners. Instructors and…