Iran to make university courses more Islamic
Iran plans sweeping changes to university courses to make them more compatible with Islam, the official IRNA news agency reported on Friday. Deputy Minister of Science for Research and Technology Mohammad Mehdi Nejad Nouri, quoted by IRNA, said at least 36 courses would be changed by September after revision by a group of university and seminary experts.
The report did not name the subjects that would be changed, but officials said last year Iran would review 12 disciplines in the social sciences, including law, women’s studies, human rights, management, sociology, philosophy, psychology and political sciences, as their contents were too closely based on Western culture. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for modification of these studies in August, saying that many humanities subjects are based on principles founded in materialism rather than divine Islamic teachings.
The Islamic Republic’s hardline rulers accuse the West of engaging in a “soft war”, trying to influence the country’s young generation with non-Islamic ideas. Access to the Internet and illegal satellite television mean Western culture is popular among young Iranians, a vital constituency in a country where 70 percent of the population is under 30 and has no real memory of the 1979 Islamic revolution which toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. Around 50 percent of Iranian university students read humanities.
A senior Education Ministry official, Abolfazl Hassani, said in October that the Islamic state would not allow its universities to teach disciplines it deems too “Western”.
by Mitra Amiri
via Iran to make university courses more Islamic | Reuters.
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Huge Manila human cross for Lent, against abortion
Thousands of Filipinos lined up across a football field in Manila to mark the start of Lent by forming a human cross they hoped would go down as the world’s biggest. Officials at the University of Santo Tomas, a Catholic university that at 400 years old is the nation’s oldest, said the Ash Wednesday event was also a proclamation of the school’s stand against abortion and a controversial bill on reproductive health currently being debated.
More than 20,000 people, including students, faculty members and university personnel, the students wearing black t-shirts or white school uniforms, stood side by side to form a two-colored Dominican cross while prayers were recited and songs sung.
“Forming this biggest cross will make people remember that the Lenten season is all about Christ,” said speech pathology student Erika Claire Gomez. Information about the cross will be sent to Guinness for verification.
In Catholic churches around the country, Filipinos — around 80 percent of whom are Catholic — observed Ash Wednesday by attending Mass and having a cross drawn on their foreheads with ashes. Many will fast or make other sacrifices for the 40-day Lenten period. On Tuesday, lawmakers opened debate on a reproductive health bill that seeks to improve access to information on contraception but faces strong opposition from the country’s influential Roman Catholic bishops.
Read the full story by Michaela Cabrera here.
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Israeli students incensed by ultra-Orthodox benefit
Israeli university students have demanded that the government drop plans to pay stipends to ultra-Orthodox Jews who study the Torah but do not work.
Protests over the so-called Yeshiva bill in the past week highlight growing Israeli resentment of the 600,000 ultra-Orthodox “haredim”, who live almost entirely off state welfare benefits.
Several thousand students held a protest march in Jerusalem on Monday warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they were not “suckers” who would meekly accept what they regard as rank discrimination.
Netanyahu’s coalition government relies for its survival on the support of ultra-religious parties, who have traditionally exacted a price from Israeli leaders for their backing, usually in the form of benefits for their own community.
Students holding strikes and protests on Tuesday were angered by reports that the government also has plans to tax their scholarships, in a little-noticed amendment to the omnibus enabling bill that accompanies the annual budget.
Religion now hottest topic of study for U.S. historians – AHA survey
Religion has become the hottest topic of study for U. S. historians, overtaking the previous favourite — cultural studies — and pulling ahead of women’s studies in the latest annual survey by the American Historical Association. Younger historians are more likely than older ones to turn their sights on faith issues.
The proportion of U.S. historians working on religious issues now stands at 7.7%. If that seems low, compare it with the more traditional fields in the study of the past — political history (4.6%), military history (3.8%) or diplomatic history (3.8%). Cultural studies stood at 7.5% and women’s studies at 6.4%.
Among the reasons cited by the AHA were:
- Interest in the rise of “more activist (and in some cases ‘militant’) forms of religion.”
- An “extension of the methods and interests of social and cultural history.”
- The impact of the “historical turn” in other disciplines, including religious studies.
- Increased student demand for courses on the subject.
- “I think the category has become more popular because historians realize that the world is aflame with faith, yet our traditional ways of dealing with modern history especially can’t explain how or why,” said Jon Butler, a professor of history, religious studies and American studies at Yale University. “The ‘secularization thesis’ appears to have failed and so we need to find ways to explain how and why it didn’t die as so much written history suggests.”
- “I came to recognize that (expressions of faith) were woven into just about every aspect of life, not separate subjects I could leave for another time or someone else,” said University of California at Berkeley historian William Taylor. “My ongoing research and writing about religious matters continues to be carried out in this spirit—not as a field apart, but as integral to my reckonings with how people then understood their lives and acted upon those convictions.”
- Jeanne Kilde of the University of Minnesota said “students in the late 1990s began coming to class with questions about religion” due to its influence on recent elections, growing attention in the media and an increase in public displays of religion.
Religion just like politics is losing its grip because trust is being lost (i think).Religion still holds a lot of power in developing countries with the exception of maybe America.I see it as playing a roll in peoples lives where hope in other things has failed.To me religion should be included under a topic such as ‘Coping Mechanisms’.The world is ever changing and facts or truths about certain things keep coming out – thanks to the freedom of information act.Peoples belief in a lot of things is being corroded.Some people who are losing faith need to understand that if religion is a coping mechanism then there are other alternatives – religiouse or non religiouse of filling the void that adresses issues of the soul.The soul in itself is a grey subject of discussion – which divides religon and science.Who fully understands out of their own understanding what the soul is??? Therefor lets agree to disagree and tackle the important – which is the effects of religion.I have often said – Religion is like a chefs knife, which when used by a Chef can help creat some tasty dishes but in the hands of a Killer can result in the taking of life.As a coping mechanism Religion becomes a tool which an individual uses or needs to deal with day to day issues affected by economic,political,social,e.t.c factors.The use of drugs is on the increase – to me thats a coping mechanism,practising Yoga or Tai Chi, or simply going to the gym or watching your favourite sport (e.g football) are coping mechanisms as all these can make one to ‘religiously’ participate in them for one to feel a sense of belonging, relaxation or distraction from day to day vectors and vagaries that STRESS our day to day lives.It is therefor imperative to tackle the root causes (such as social injustice,lack of jobs, past history e.t.c) that cause people to think, behave and congregate into different social groups or gangs instead of wasting time on plucking the leaves and cutting off branches that can only grow back with time.
POLL:U.S. court to hear faith group vs gays case — what should it decide?
The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday that it would decide whether a university can deny recognition to a Christian student group because its members must agree with its religious views and it has barred gays and lesbians. Read the whole story here. What do you think?
King Abdullah slaps down Saudi cleric criticial of co-ed university
Well, that didn’t take long.
Last week, a senior Saudi Islamic cleric criticised the country’s first mixed-gender university, the King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST), and suggested an Islamic committee to make sure it followed Islamic principled and didn’t teach “alien ideologies” such as evolution.
Late on Sunday, the state news agency SPA reported that King Abdullah had removed Sheikh Saad Al-Shithri from a top council of religious scholars.
Al-Shithri’s comments sparked angry reactions from liberals who saw the new university as a beacon for research that will eventually produce Saudi scientists, spearheading modernity in the conservative Islamic State. For those of you who read Arabic, here’s a sample of several op-ed pieces that ran in the daily Okaz.
“This is a strategy for the conservatives to control the university. Or at least to have a major say in it. This is the old trick for them to have the upper hand to sabotage reforms,” said Jamal Khashoggi, editor-in-chief of Alwatan daily newspaper, about the clerics comments on the university.
Saudi Arabia follows an austere version of Islam and religious police patrol the streets ensuring that the country’s strict segregation laws are implemented. Clerics like Al-Shitri have a major influence on school curricula as well as the judicial system and some have issued fatwas against co-education (here in Arabic).
University of California, Berkeley is a major partner with the KAUST project. Amazes me why every story never focuses on this fact. March 4, 2008 was the date of the announcement. Without the participation of UC Berkeley, or other internationally recognized university, KAUST would not have materialized. KAUST will provide UC Berkeley’s Mechanical Engineering Department with $28 million over five years. These funds will pay for fellowships for the department’s graduate students, help support its research projects, fund joint-research with KAUST, provide additional lab equipment at Berkeley, and cover administrative costs. In addition, the Mechanical Engineering Department will allocate part of the funds to increase its efforts to recruit and retain women faculty and students
.The issue of women on campus: The agreement with UC Berkeley’s Mechanical Engineering Department makes it clear that women are encouraged to attend the new university and are to receive the same education and in the same manner as their male counterparts. Women faculty also are to be treated equally. UC Berkeley would not have entered into the agreement if that were not the case, said campus officials.
Article 2 of KAUST bylaws states “The admission of students, the appointment, promotion and retention of faculty and staff, and all of the educational, administrative and other activities of the University shall be conducted without regard to race, color, religion or gender. Discrimination, on any such basis, is strictly forbidden.”
For some reason, the agreement prohibits either university from using a name or trademark of the other party in any advertisement or publicity unless it has the written consent of the other.
(some above text taken from UC Berkeley “News”)
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