Joyce Miller

REsilience, Violent Extremism and Religious Education.

This article is an attempt to provide an educational justification for the British Government-funded project, REsilience, on addressing contentious issues through religious education (RE) which was carried out by the RE Council of England and Wales. A number of issues relating to the inclusion of religiously inspired violent extremism in the curriculum are raised – definitional, political and educational. A justification is proposed which focuses on human rights in two ways: the right to freedom of religion and belief and the promotion of pupils’ moral development through human rights issues. It is suggested that the work of the moral philosopher Kwame Antony Appiah with his focus on morality in cosmopolitan societies is relevant to this, and in particular, his concept of ‘honor’ which can be used by educationists as the basis for engagement with violent extremism and related topics in the classroom.

Religion and religious education: comparing and contrasting pupils’ and teachers’ views in an English school

This paper builds on and develops the English findings of the qualitative study of European teenagers’ perspectives on religion and religious education (RE), part of ‘Religion in Education: a Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in Transforming Societies of European Countries?’ (REDCo) project. It uses data gathered from 27 pupils, aged 15–16, from a school in a multicultural northern town in England and compares those findings with data gathered from 10 teachers in the humanities faculty of the same school, collected during research for the Warwick REDCo Community of Practice. Comparisons are drawn between the teachers’ and their pupils’ attitudes and values using the same structure as the European study: personal views and experiences of religion, the social dimension of religion, and RE in school. The discussion offers an analysis of the similarities and differences in worldviews and beliefs which emerged. These include religious commitment/observance differences between the mainly Muslim‐heritage pupils and their mainly non‐practising Christian‐heritage teachers. The research should inform the ways in which the statutory duties to promote community cohesion and equalities can be implemented in schools. It should also facilitate intercultural and interreligious understanding between teachers and the pupils from different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

Islam in Education in European Countries: Pedagogical Concepts and Empirical Findings

John Richardson, and others for a systematic documentation of the quantitative dimensions of British Islamophobia, whether captured in sample surveys, media content analysis or records of crimes and incidents. Allen’s claim (189, 194) that ‘‘exclusionary practices’’ against Muslims have yet to be empirically validated seems puzzling. Likewise, despite various mentions of anti-Semitism, the treatment is not particularly comparative, in terms of practically locating Islamophobia within the hierarchy of other forms of prejudice. Chapter 7 deals with Europe, drawing upon Allen’s involvement in the report by the European Union Monitoring Centre on European Islamophobia post-9/11. There is no discussion of Islamophobia beyond Britain and Europe. In sum, Allen’s book will appeal to theoreticians of the sociology of religion and those needing to understand the mutations of the concept of Islamophobia. But it is less likely to satisfy empiricists seeking data about the incidence of Islamophobic attitudes and behaviour, their underlying rationales and motivations, and the frameworks within which they might be analysed and understood.

The Religious Dimension of Intercultural Education: Contributions to a Contextual Understanding

Science and RE are not as incompatible with each other as is often thought. The up-to-date research and practice as well as the insightful and fluent discussions and arguments of which this book is composed make it a valuable addition to the literature on issues and research in contemporary religious education. While it is written largely for a British audience, it contains much that is relevant for religious educators in other Western countries. It is, therefore, unfortunate that, while many of the chapters identify the pluralist nature of contemporary British society, there is little evidence of the views of ‘the Other’. Paying attention to this aspect would have been more reflective of the diversity that characterises British society today and would have taken the contributions to new levels of discourse and debate and, potentially, increased the significance of this book for the twenty-first century.