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Medieval Muslim Philosophers and Intercultural Communication: Towards a Dialogical Paradigm in Education PDF

189 Pages·2022·1.832 MB·English
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MEDIEVAL MUSLIM PHILOSOPHERS AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION This book examines the works of Medieval Muslim philosophers interested in intercultural encounters and how receptive Islam is to foreign thought, to serve as a dialogical model, grounded in intercultural communications, for Islamic and Arabic education. The philosophers studied in this project were instructors, tutors, or teachers, such as Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Al-Ghazali, and Averroes, whose philosophical contributions directly or indirectly advanced intercultural learning. This book describes and provides examples of how each of these philosophers engaged with intercultural encounters, and asks how their philosophies can contribute to infusing intercultural ethics and practices into curriculum theorizing. First, it explores selected works of medieval Muslim philosophers from an intercultural perspective to formulate a dialogical paradigm that informs and enriches Muslim education. Second, it frames intercultural education as a catalyst to guide Muslim communities’ interactions and identity construction, encouraging fexibility, tolerance, deliberation, and plurality. Third, it bridges the gap between medieval tradition and modern thought by promoting interdisciplinary connections and redrawing intercultural boundaries outside disciplinary limits. This study demonstrates that the dialogical domain that guides intercultural contact becomes a curriculum-oriented structure with Al-Kindi, a tripartite pedagogical model with Al-Fārābī, a sojourner experience with Al-Ghazali, and a deliberative pedagogy of alternatives with Averroes. Therefore, the book speaks to readers interested in the potential of dialogue in education, intercultural communication, and Islamic thought research. Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar holds a Ph.D. (funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) from the University of Alberta, where he was awarded the Bacchus Graduate Research Prize for scholarly excellence in International and Multicultural Education. He also received the University of Alberta President’s Doctoral Prize of Distinction, among other awards such as the JDH McFetridge Graduate Scholarship and the Andrew Stewart Memorial Graduate Prize, for outstanding accomplishment and potential in pursuit of new knowledge. Dr. Abdul-Jabbar held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary. He is currently a visiting professor teaching graduate courses in the Intercultural Communication program at HBKU in Qatar. He is also a faculty member in the Adult Education Master’s Degree program at Yorkville University, and an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the author of Negotiating Diasporic Identity in Arab- Canadian Students – Double Consciousness, Belonging, and Radicalization (Palgrave, 2019). Routledge International Studies in the Philosophy of Education The Body, Embodiment, and Education An Interdisciplinary Approach Edited by Steven A. Stolz The Contemporary Relevance of John Dewey’s Theories on Teaching and Learning Deweyan Perspectives on Standardization, Accountability, and Assessment in Education Edited by JuliAnna Ávila, AG Rud, Leonard Waks, and Emer Ring Teaching Democracy in an Age of Uncertainty Place-Responsive Learning Gilbert Burgh and Simone Thornton Rethinking the Politics of Education Nick Peim A Praxis of Nothingness in Education On Heidegger and Wittgenstein Håvard Åsvoll Medieval Muslim Philosophers and Intercultural Communication Toward a Dialogical Paradigm in Education Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge- International-Studies-in-the-Philosophy-of-Education/book-series/SE0237 MEDIEVAL MUSLIM PHILOSOPHERS AND INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION Toward a Dialogical Paradigm in Education Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar The right of Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-42483-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-42380-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-85413-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780367854133 Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC CONTENTS Preface viii Acknowledgments xiv 1 The Intercultural, Educational, and Interdisciplinary Borderlines 1 The Book Project: A Proposal of Three Premises 1 Intercultural Communication and the Meaning of Culture: Dialogue at the Borderline 3 Intercultural Communication, Interdisciplinarity, and the Crisis of Disciplinarity 7 Toward Conceptualizing the Intercultural Educational Context 13 2 Intercultural Encounters, Discord, and Discovery: Medieval Times Amid Evil Times? 21 What’s in a Name? 21 The Middle East, Medieval Times, and Middle-Roads 23 The Bright Ages: Pushing the Cross-Cultural Boundaries of Islamic Epistemology 27 The Translation Movement, the House of Wisdom, and Kalam 31 Revisiting Ninth-Century Baghdad’s Intercultural House of Wisdom 31 Medieval Intercultural Encounters and Muslim Identity Today 35 vi Contents 3 The Dialogical Paradigm: A Paradigm for the Intercultural Context 40 A Paradigm Driven by the Dialogic 41 Acting Dialogically: The Dialoguer as an Intercultural Mediator 46 The Dialectical Shift From Debate to Dialogue 48 A Dialogical Shift in Historical Memory 53 4 Al-Kindi on Education: Curriculum Theorizing and the Intercultural Minhaj 61 Al-Kindi: The First Arab Philosopher 63 The Historical and Intellectual Milieu of Ninth-Century Baghdad 63 Why Knock at Al-Kindi’s Door? A Future in the Past and Familiarity in the Strange 65 Al-Kindi’s Minhaj of Gratitude and Intercultural Encounter 68 A Shift From Majlis to Minhaj 71 Al-Kindi and the Interdisciplinary Approach 74 Conclusion 78 5 Intercultural Fārābism: Toward a Tripartite Model of Dialogical Education 82 Why Knock at al-Fārābī’s Door? 83 Farabism: A Tripartite Model of the Dialogical Curriculum 84 The Farabian Dialogical Ittisal: Toward the Felicity of Synthesis 86 Ittisal With Logic Through Language 88 Ittisal With the Active Intellect 89 Ittisal With Foreign Thought 90 Musammaha: Framing Moderation and Tolerance in Intercultural Education 91 The Fārābīan Fadhl: The Bountiful Curriculum 96 Conclusion 98 6 Rihla as the Sojourner’s Deliverer From Error: Al-Ghazali’s Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Journey of Epistemic Crisis 103 The Conceptualization of Rihla as a Sojourner’s Intercultural Communicative Practice 104 The Question of Authority and the Induced Rihla 108 Contents vii Al-Ghazali’s Rihla: Toward an Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Sojourn 110 The A Priori Stage: An Epistemic Crisis 110 The Sojourner Stage: The Road of Interdisciplinary Trials and Self-Refection 114 The Nostos Stage: The Cathartic Resolution 118 Conclusion 121 7 The Averroesian Deliberative Pedagogy of Intercultural Education 126 Averroes’s Intellectual and Political Milieux 127 The Averroesian Curriculum: Aristotelian Thought as the Locus Classicus of Culture 132 The Pedagogy of Deliberation 137 The Intermediacy Model: Toward an Intercultural Deliberative Pedagogy 142 Concluding Thoughts 146 Concluding Thoughts and Implications 154 Defne a Book by Its Philosophers 154 The Philosophers’ Stones 155 A Dialogical Paradigm in Education 158 The Intercultural Context 161 A Civilization at Intercultural Cross-Roads 164 Muslim and Arab Readers: A Shared or Shattered Cultural Memory 166 Index 170 PREFACE Because my philosophical orientation began in the Middle East and continued as I moved frst to North Africa and then to North America, I have begun as a native, then became a foreigner, an international student, and an immigrant, and have become a citizen. My rihla, or educational sojourn of inquiry, has provided me with opportunities to learn, teach, meet people, appreciate mul- tiethnic knowledge from diferent perspectives, and identify moments of inter- cultural convergence among diferent traditions. Exploring more than one intellectual tradition is a fascinating yet uncanny experience that does not simply arise from sheer abstraction but entails interdisciplinary training, a bilingual capacity, and numerous challenging, if not discomforting, encounters with those diferent cultures. Therefore, the book is born out of my personal experience traveling between cultures and between academic disciplines. I have spent a good number of years wrestling with the question of what academic discipline provides me with a vision that suits my interests. In Iraq, where my journey started, I majored in English but then did a master’s degree at the College of Education, which ofered a faint glimpse into a binary educational system. Then, I did a master’s degree in Humanities at California State University, which provided my frst interdisciplinary training as I took courses in philosophy, his- tory, arts, American literature, and world literature. In hindsight, my former academic years seem to be very experimental, leaving no academic stone unturned. My interdisciplinary experience continued when I moved to Canada and started teaching philosophy and social sciences courses in a high school in Ontario. Although I fnished a third master’s degree in English literature at Lakehead University, I found myself inquisitively taking nine courses in multi- cultural education, English language arts, and curriculum theory at the University of Alberta, where I stumbled on that sense of double consciousness that seemed Preface ix symptomatic of intercultural encounters among newcomers. It attracted the immigrant in me into the dialectical world of the Black Atlantic and the strad- dling of the uncomfortable line between religion and culture on the one hand, and my newly acquired national identity on the other. Over the following years, as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Calgary (funded by the Social Sci- ences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) and then an adjunct professor at the University of Alberta, I continued to study diasporic voices and inter- cultural competence. This “pedagogy of discomfort” urged me to seek answers that transcend cultural diferences and promote intercultural synthesis, a vision that this book ardently chases, but one that I leave for the readers to decide if it has ever successfully captured. I view culture as a representation of a nation’s response to historical events, its processes of intelligence, semantic legacy, and level of abstraction. It ceases to be culture and becomes a cult or slips into tribalism when it limits itself to individuals and becomes nonparticipating and cloistered. It develops into a civilization when it successfully transcends its epistemological boundaries and readily reconstructs itself into universal values. This civilization fades when it loses the knowledge system that has sustained its existence. It loses substance when its people internalize the notion that their tradition is still essential merely and mainly as a repository of human wisdom that had remained a priori and therefore detached from present-day realities. The book, therefore, asks how we see Medieval Muslim philosophy as a guide to modern life. It considers the benefts that a study of Medieval Muslim thought might ofer; if one could ask a Medieval Muslim philosopher about a contemporary issue, they might still have practical and compelling insights. Since much of their scholarship looks quaint today, the purpose of this project is to look for ideas and arguments from Medieval Muslim philosophers that would be useful to people’s lives nowadays. The book demonstrates that Medieval Islamic thought still ofers commendable suggestions for, and ways of, social integration in a world that is becoming increasingly globalized and a system of education largely informed by secular realities. This book proposes that what gives contemporary presence to the Medieval Muslim thinkers discussed herein is not so much their contributions to metaphysical thought as a shared disposition to develop dialogical ethics with foreign thought. This book, therefore, argues that dialogical ethics underlies the philosophical routes that Medieval Muslim thinkers took when two roads diverged. It proposes a dialogical foundation that gives intercultural substance to Islamic education and thereby undermines dogmatic thinking. The study examines what constitutes a dialogical paradigm that bridges the great divide between the Islamic tradition and modernity. Little has been written about Medieval Islamic thinkers’ contributions to the study of intercultural communication. This exploratory study refects on the historical background and theoretical framework upon which I draw to address this issue. I am not interested in their philosophical contents as much as in their

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