Jeffrey Ayala Milligan

Democratization or neocolonialism? The education of Muslims under US military occupation, 1903–20

Recent events in Afghanistan and Iraq appear to mark the beginning of a new and challenging relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. As the US embarks upon its self-appointed task of helping to bring about the development of peaceful, democratic civil societies in Islamic nations wracked by decades of war, ethnic strife and political oppression, it may prove instructive to reflect on earlier US efforts to foster democratic social development through education of Muslim communities under US military and civilian occupation. I propose, therefore, in this essay to examine the use and consequences of educational policy to foster development and democratic self-governance of Muslims under US rule in the southern Philippines between 1903 and 1920. This case, which occurred precisely one century ago, offers important insights into the ways in which culturally and historically constructed discursive lenses shape both the construction and interpretation of development policies and thus profoundly complicate efforts to introduce Western conceptions of modern democratic society in Muslim communities. It shows how such discursive lenses distorted publicly avowed aims of democratization into a neocolonial relationship between the US and an independent Philippines and an internal colonial relationship between the Philippine government and its Muslim minority characterized, in both cases, by continuing ‘economic and social relations of dependency and control’ by the former colonial power. The experience, I contend, offers a cautionary tale for contemporary US social agendas in the Muslim world.

Reclaiming an Ideal: The Islamization of Education in the Southern Philippines.

Decentralization has been a common element of policy reform in education worldwide for decades. Such reforms are thought to promote the democratic empowerment of local families and teachers and thus to improve educational efficiency and accountability to local needs. While decentralization has been widely touted as an essential response to educational problems by international development organizations, it has long been recognized that local conditions give rise to quite different approaches to decentralization, often with paradoxical consequences. For instance, this ongoing trend toward decentralization coincides, at the moment, with an increasing international concern over education in the Muslim world. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, in 2001 focused the attention of Western governments and development agencies on the alleged radicalizing influence of unregulated Islamic schools in countries such as Pakistan as well as of government-approved schools in countries such as Saudi Arabia. Suddenly, the word madrasa appeared increasingly on the radar of international educational development discourse in ways that it had not heretofore. One common feature of this renewed interest in Islamic education seems to be an assumption that the religious focus of many of these schools may be a significant factor in the growth of religious extremism; therefore, educational reforms that more carefully separate the sacred and secular and effectively promote the secular knowledge necessary for modern economic development are thought to be the appropriate antidote to radical Islamic education. However, exerting greater national/international secular authorities’ control over the content and character of education in such contexts would seem to run counter to the ethos of decentralization. But is the

Complexities of belonging in democratic/democratizing societies: Islamic identity, ethnicity and citizenship in the Netherlands and Aceh

In this paper we will explore the purported tension that lies between ones so-called Islamic identity and the demands of civic identity—seen as proof of “integration”—in liberal democratic societies, and show that the relationship is philosophically and existentially more complex than advocates of the “clash of civilizations” thesis or “democratic Islam” admit. To this end, we will explore the historical experience of two Muslim communities, one very ethnically heterogeneous Muslim minority in the democratic Netherlands, and the other, a more homogeneous ethnic Muslim minority in the province of Aceh in a democratizing Indonesia. We believe such a comparative examination of empirical cases where religious and ethnic differences simultaneously and differentially impact relations between minority Muslim communities and the democratic or democratizing societies they inhabit will offer a more nuanced, and therefore more useful, understanding of the complexities of belonging for Muslims in democratic/democratizing multicultural societies and offer insight into social and educational policies more likely to mitigate rather than exacerbate whatever tensions that may exist.

Philosophers Without Borders? Toward a Comparative Philosophy of Education

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 problem poses a question that requires philosophical reflection. However, much of comparative and international development education ignores philosophical modes of inquiry. Moreover, as Libbrecht (2007) argues, philosophy all too often sees itself as synonymous with the Euro-American intellectual tradition, thus ignoring indigenous educational thought that might more appropriately guide local educational development. Drawing on John Deweys (1938) call for deeper and more inclusive plans of operations in response to social conflicts and Jurgen Habermas (2008) call for “reciprocal learning processes” and “cooperative acts of translation,” we will attempt to reach beyond our individual philosophical borders to explore the necessity and possibilities of comparative philosophy of education by sharing three examples of our current efforts to apply philosophical analysis to international educational development. These examples will articulate and embody the necessity and the challenges of applying philosophical analysis to educational development work.

The Prophet and the Engineer Meet Under the Mango Tree: Leadership, Education, and Conflict in the Southern Philippines

This essay represents an attempt to contribute to the growing body of literature on education in conflict and emergency situations by analyzing shifts in sources of authority and their influence on conceptions of leadership in the context of a decades-long armed conflict in the predominately Muslim regions of the southern Philippines. Interviews with school principals conducted in the conflict areas of Muslim Mindanao in two separate periods of field research, reveal a fluid pattern of strategic blending of authority sources in response to the conflict’s impact on social conditions. This data shows, I will argue, an evolution from patterns of leadership grounded in traditional and/or formal authority structures to a mode of leadership rooted in religious authority and aspirations of technological competence conceived as pragmatic prophetic leadership.

Prophetic Pragmatism? Post-Conflict Educational Development in Aceh and Mindanao

This essay critically examines the relevance of Cornel Wests (1989) conception of prophetic pragmatism as a theoretical framework for educational development in post-conflict settings torn by religious, socioeconomic, and cultural tensions. It examines the concept through the conflict and post-conflict experiences of the Indonesian province of Aceh and the Muslim provinces of the southern Philippines. These 2 regions struggle with educational development after emerging from decades of secessionist conflict with democratic or democratizing central governments. It suggests that prophetic pragmatism usefully accounts for the relevant dimensions of these 2 historical cases and concludes with a brief sketch of how the concept could inform relevant strategies for educational redevelopment in these 2 post-conflict settings.

Islam and education policy reform in the southern Philippines

The devolution of control over education policy in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao of the southern Philippines has led, in recent years, to efforts to Islamise education in the region, a trend reflective of similar efforts in other Southeast Asian Muslim countries but often seen as worrisome by secular observers concerned about the alleged radicalising influences of Islamic education. This essay critically examines two approaches to the Islamisation of education proposed by Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas and Fazlur Rahman, arguing that Islamisation of education in Muslim Mindanao is more likely to take a pragmatic than fundamentalist course.

Faith in School

By the time Filipinos finally regained self-government with the inauguration of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935, faith in education as an indispensable tool in the achievement of social cohesion and economic modernization had been firmly established among politicians, educational policy makers, and ordinary citizens. This faith, moreover, generally included a belief in the effectiveness of education in helping to resolve the ethnic and religious tensions that continued to plague the Philippine south. However, the ongoing nature of these tensions revealed this assumption of education’s efficacy in resolving such a conflict as in fact a form of faith, a belief, held in the absence of or in spite of evidence regarding its warrantability. Guided by this faith, policy makers would tend to continue the general policies established by the American colonial regime, leaving unexamined the fundamental assumptions about civilization, progress, and the nature of Muslim Filipino relations with the emerging state that had shaped American policies since 1898. Thus, trusting to the efficacy of schooling to resolve the so-called Moro Problem in the fullness of time, Filipino leaders could turn to what was perceived to be the more pressing problems of the reborn Philippine republic. In doing so they not only failed to attend to a continuing chronic problem in the Philippine body politic, they also missed an opportunity to rethink the sorts of educational policies that might have been more likely to further the goal of mitigating ethno-religious tensions in Mindanao and Sulu.

GENDER AND THE LIMITS OF INCLUSION: SHOULD MULTTCULTURALISM “INCLUDE” FUNDAMENTALISMS?

Abstract A conceptual analysis of multiculturalism and religious fundamentalism suggests that fundamentalism is a cultural expression which should be “included” within the fabric of the cultural diversity the multicultural movement celebrates. Doing so, however, reveals a contradiction between multiculturalisms inclusion and empowerment agendas, since fundamentalists’ values regarding gender often directly contradict those of the multicultural movement. This dilemma suggests the need for an alternative conceptual basis for multiculturalism which can respect differences without turning a blind eye to oppression.

We Sing Here Like Birds in the Wilderness

One century on from the establishment of the U.S. military government of the Moro Province, Muslim Mindanao remains a region apart from the rest of the Philippine Republic. Despite a century of political, social, and educational efforts to assimilate Filipino Muslims into the mainstream of Philippine society, they remain a collection of more or less distinct ethno-linguistic communities bound together by a widespread sense of alienation from the Philippine government and the Christian majority and a determination to preserve their distinctive identity as a Muslim community, part of dar-ul Islam. As an effort to integrate Muslim and Christian Filipinos into a unified Philippine society, the Moro Province failed. The Jones Law failed. The Commission on National Integration failed. Education for integration has failed. While the jury is still out on the newest policy experiment of political and educational autonomy embodied in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the results as of mid-2004 have not been encouraging.