Religious Extremism, Religious Education, and the Interpretive Approach

Abstract

This article offers a discussion of issues relating to religiously inspired terrorism in religious education through the 3 key concepts of the interpretive approach. It examines representation in relation to Islam and terrorism and argues that processes of homogenization, sanitization, and reification create distortion. Issues of interpretation are discussed, including the importance of text, symbol, and ritual, and it is suggested that dialogic and hermeneutic pedagogies provide ways of deepening pupils’ understanding and engagement. Finally, matters relating to reflexivity are discussed along with issues for further consideration by religious educators.

KEYWORDS:

• interpretation
• interpretive approach
• reflexivity
• religious extremism
• representation
• terrorism

Notes

See www.re-silience.org.uk.

A parallel paper on religious extremism and religious education examines the issues through the lens of human rights, the Toledo Guiding Principles and the concept of honor. See Joyce Miller, “Resilience, Violent Extremism and Religious Education: Some Questions and Answers” (in press).

Robert Jackson's interpretive approach to religious education is set out in a number of publications including Robert Jackson, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997); Robert Jackson, “The Warwick Religious Education Project: The Interpretive Approach to Religious Education,” in Pedagogies of Religious Education: Case Studies in the Research and Development of Good Pedagogic Practice in RE, ed. Michael Grimmitt (Great Wakering, UK: McCrimmons, 2000); Robert Jackson, “Hermeneutics and Religious Education: The Interpretive Approach in Relation to the Work of Jürgen Lott,” in Religion Education. On the Boundaries between Study of Religions, Education and Theologies: Jürgen Lott and the Bremen Approach in International Perspective, eds. C. Dommel and G. Mitchell (Bremen, Germany: Kleio Humanities, 2008); Robert Jackson, Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy, (London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2004); and Robert Jackson, “The Interpretive Approach as a Research Tool: Inside the REDCo Project,” British Journal of Religious Education 33, no. 2 (2011), 189–208.

My doctoral research was conducted under the auspices of the REDCo project and formed part of the Warwick community of practice. See Joyce Miller, “Raising Humanities Teachers’ Understanding of their Pupils’ Religious and Cultural Backgrounds,” in Religious Education Research through a Community of Practice, eds. Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O'Grady (Münster, Germany: Waxmann, 2009).

See, for example, Kerry Moore, Paul Mason, and Justin Lewis, Images of Islam in the UK: The Representation of British Muslims in the National Print News Media, 2000–2008 (Cardiff, Wales: Cardiff School of Journalism, Media, and Cultural Studies, 2008).

Jason Burke, On the Road to Kandahar (London: Penguin, 2007), 265.

“David Cameron's Speech to the Munich Security Conference, 5 February 2011,” March 11, 2011, http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/speeches-and-transcripts/2011/02/pms-speech-at-munich-security-conference-60293.

Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 6.

Ibid., 10.

Ibid., 221.

Reza Aslan, How to Win a Cosmic War: Confronting Radical Religion (London: Arrow Books, 2010), 107–108.

G. S. Hendry, “Reveal, Revelation,” in A Theological Word Book of the Bible, ed. Alan Richardson (London: SCM, 1957), 195.

See, e.g., Peter Baelz, Ethics and Belief (London: Sheldon Press, 1977).

Edward Said, Covering Islam (London: Vintage, 1997), 44.

Ibid., 43.

Audrey Osler and Hugh Starkey, Teachers and Human Rights Education (Stoke on Trent, UK: Trentham, 2010), 92.

Jamie Bartlett, Jonathan Birdwell, and Michael King, The Edge of Violence (London: Demos, 2010), 11, accessed May 30, 2011, http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theedgeofviolence.

Terry Eagleton, On Evil (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 126.

Michael Grimmitt, “Introduction,” in Religious Education and Social and Community Cohesion: An Exploration of Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Michael Grimmitt (Great Wakering, UK: McCrimmons, 2010), 20.

There is a wide literature on Bradford and its complexity. See, e.g., M. Y. Alam and Charles Husband, British-Pakistani Men from Bradford: Linking Narratives to Policy (York, UK: Joseph Rowntree Trust, 2006), 6; and Janet Bujra and Jenny Pearce, Saturday Night & Sunday Morning: The 2001 Bradford Riot and Beyond (Skipton, UK: Vertical Editions, 2011), 111.

Jackson, Religious Education, 111.

Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000), 43.

Ibid., 44, 48, 143.

Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 81.

Ibid.

Yasir Suleiman, Contextualizing Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2009), 14, accessed May 30, 2011, http://www.cis.cam.ac.uk/CIBPReport.pdf.

Abdullah Sahin, “The Contribution of Religious Education to Social and Community Cohesion: An Islamic Perspective,” in Religious Education and Social and Community Cohesion: An Exploration of Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Michael Grimmitt (Great Wakering, UK: McCrimmons, 2010), 179, 172, 166, 168.

Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 123, 125, 126, 133.

Yunas Samad, “Introduction,” in Islam in the European Union: Transnationalism, Youth and the War on Terror, eds. Yunas Samad and Kasturi Sen (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Bartlett et al., The Edge of Violence, 14. (This is confirmed by an MI5 report in 2008.).

Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 163.

Jackson, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach, 131; Jackson, “The Warwick Religious Education Project,” 135.

Jackson, “The Warwick Religious Education Project,” 134.

Eugenia Relaño, quoting Habermas, “Educational Pluralism and Freedom of Religion: Recent Decisions of the European Court of Human Rights,” British Journal of Religious Education 32, no.1 (2010): 28.

The UK government's Prevent Strategy (2011) quotes a survey conducted by the Youth Parliament UK (10.47).

Pille Valk, “How do European Students see the Impact of Religion in Society?” in Teenagers’ Perspectives on the Role of Religion in their Lives, Schools and Societies: A European Quantitative Study, eds. Pille Valk, Gerdien Bertram-Troost, Markus Friederici, and Céline Béraud (Münster, Germany: Waxmann, 2009), 425.

Ursula McKenna, Sean Neill, and Robert Jackson, “Personal Worldviews, Dialogue and Tolerance: Students’ Views on Religious Education in England,” in Teenagers’ Perspectives on the Role of Religion in their Lives, Schools and Societies: A European Quantitative Study, eds. Pille Valk, Gerdien Bertram-Troost, Markus Friederici, and Céline Béraud (Münster, Germany: Waxmann), 64.

Dan-Paul Jozsa, “Muslim Students Views on Religion and Education: Perspectives from Western European Countries,” in Islam in Education in European Countries, eds. Aurora Alvarez Veinguer, Gunther Dietz, Dan-Paul Jozsa, and Thorsten Knauth (Münster, Germany: Waxmann, 2009).

Ibid., 143. However, not all research evidence is good news. The recent study, “Does RE Work?” conducted by the University of Glasgow showed that the emphasis in schools is on respect rather than on understanding (James Conroy, Does RE Work? (Glasgow, Scotland: University of Glasgow, 2011), Appendix M). This is an issue that we need to address further.

Marie von der Lippe, “Young People's Talk about Religion and Diversity: A Qualitative Study of Norwegian Students Aged 13–15,” British Journal of Religious Education 33, no. 2 (2011).

David Aldridge, “What is Religious Education all about? A Hermeneutic Reappraisal,” Journal of Beliefs and Values 32 (2011): 41.

Vivienne Baumfield, “Pedagogies of Religious Education for Inter-Communication and Inter-Cultural Understanding: Do They Work?” in Religious Education and Social and Community Cohesion: An Exploration of Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Michael Grimmitt (Great Wakering, UK: McCrimmons, 2010), 196.

See, e.g., Julia Ipgrave, Pupil-to-Pupil Dialogue in the Classroom as a Tool for Religious Education: Occasional Papers II (Warwick, UK: Warwick Religious and Education Research Unit, 2001).

Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O'Grady, eds., Religious Education Research through a Community of Practice (Münster: Waxmann, 2009).

Ipgrave, Pupil-to-Pupil Dialogue in the Classroom as a Tool for Religious Education, 20.

Alexander may be right in his view but it may also be the case that this wasn't the intention of those who first promoted discussion in schools. In religious education (RI), for example, Loukes clearly linked discussion to achievement: Harold Loukes, Teenage Religion (London: SCM Press, 1961).

Robin Alexander, Towards Dialogic Teaching: Rethinking Classroom Talk (York, UK: Dialogos, 2006).

Ian Jamison, “The Face to Faith Project: Grasping the ‘Nettle’ of Religion,” REsource 32 (2010): 15.

Aldridge, “What is Religious Education all about?” 40.

This is the term used in Living in Diversity: Lesson Plans for Secondary Schools (Strasbourg, France: Council of Europe Publishing, 2010).

Quoted by: Alexander, Towards Dialogic Teaching, 51.

Andrew Wright, “Community, Diversity and Truth: What Might Local Faith Communities Reasonably Expect of Religious Education in the State Schools of a Secular Democracy?” in Religious Education and Social and Community Cohesion: An Exploration of Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Michael Grimmitt (Great Wakering, UK: McCrimmons, 2010), 138.

Richard Pring, “Seeking Social Cohesion through the ‘Common School,‘” in Religious Education and Social and Community Cohesion: An Exploration of Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Michael Grimmitt (Great Wakering, UK: McCrimmons, 2010), 32.

Michael Grimmitt, “Contributing to Social and Community Cohesion: Just another Stage in the Metamorphosis of RE? An Extended End Piece,” in Religious Education and Social and Community Cohesion: An Exploration of Challenges and Opportunities, ed. Michael Grimmitt (Great Wakering, UK: McCrimmons, 2010), 305.

Ibid., 285.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (London: Penguin Books, 2006), 144.

Wright, “Community, Diversity and Truth,” 136.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joyce Miller

Joyce Miller is an Associate Fellow at the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit at the University of Warwick. She is the former Head of Diversity and Cohesion at Education Bradford with responsibility for religious education, community cohesion, and race equality. Her doctoral research was on community cohesion and RE and formed part of the European-wide REDCo project. Her current research is on religious extremism and religious education, following her work on the REsilience project which aimed to increase teachers’ confidence and competence in dealing with contentious issues in the classroom. E-mail: [email protected]