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Teaching Religion in Jordan: Approaches to Reform in Jordanian Textbooks and the Meaning of “Inter-faith” Education
Abstract
School textbooks are inevitable players in the process of constructing and defining the elusive nation. They help to rhetorically circumscribe the community of persons who are imagined to possess a shared history and identity. Religion frequently plays an important role in this process, as religion is so often critical to the construction of a national identity, as is the case in Jordan. How textbook authors represent (or leave out) minority religions in particular often reifies the position of these minorities within society, and further substantiates the status of religious identity or identities more generally. In recent years in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, there has been an increase in rhetoric around offering inter-religious education in schools. In this research project, I analyze efforts to effect change in Jordanian religion curriculum by examining both the processes of change and mechanisms of control in Jordanian textbook reform. This paper specifically examines the processes through which the religion content in textbooks has undergone reform in the Jordanian context since 2005. I look at recent discussions between UNESCO and the Jordanian Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies around changing the religion content in Jordanian textbooks to reflect a commitment to more tolerant, inter-religious education. Additionally, I consider the ways in which various individual and institutional actors configure and understand the “inter-religious” by looking into the linguistic and qualitative differences in how these actors utilize this term. Through this research, I embed efforts to reform religious education within the Jordanian political-cultural context and thereby uncover the larger political and social barriers to and meanings of such efforts to shift religious education. This study offers insight into the larger issue of ways in which the education system plays a key role in delineating the role of religious minorities within the nation.
Discipline
Religious Studies/Theology
Geographic Area
Jordan
Sub Area
None