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Teaching Islam to children in multicultural Singapore
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Type
Book chapter
Citation
Mukhlis Abu Bakar. (2016). Teaching Islam to children in multicultural Singapore. In M. A. Peters (Ed.), Encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory (pp. 1-4). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_542-1
Abstract
Educating a child spiritually has been the domain of the family, while provision of religious education, an extension of the child’s religious upbringing. However, religious education, as with any type of education, is never the independent or neutral imparting of information in relation to the teaching and learning of texts and languages but rather it projects power relations. This paper reports on Muslim parents’ beliefs on what is appropriate religious education for their children as they express their opinion on the pedagogy and curriculum of the state-approved Islamic religious education programme that their children attend. It is part of a larger study of two weekend Islamic religious education programmes for young Muslim children. In the semi-structured interviews with parents of 20 children, two lines of argument can be discerned: one is the desire to nurture what Boyle would consider an embodied spirituality, the other an attempt at cultivating good citizenry. The paper concludes with a discussion on the aims and practice of religious education and how it is impacted by the increasingly interconnected and shrinking global world.
Date Issued
2016
Publisher
Springer