Network for Religion Education in South Africa

First week of semester with Prof. Ulrich Berner
We started the first week of the semester with a visit from Prof. Ulrich Berner. He presented one talk on sacred spaces, and the second one on Wagner and the prospect of better Muslim-Christian relations.

The first one was an interesting reflection on how to think about a sacred space? Using the example of the extreme sport of mountain climbing without ropes and harnesses, he asked if such experiences may be compared with religious experiences of the sacred. He was of the opinion that this was in fact the case, and offered examples of books written by such individuals. We might see a lot of this in the next week or so with the Argus Cycle Tour. The annual pilgrimage of cyclists is usually a spectacle that matches religious pilgrimages.

The discussion immediately got into the question if such non-theistic or non-sacred religions were not compromising actual, traditional religions? This is a regular question posed in religious studies, and asks if removing the actually sacred from a definition or conception of religion robs us from properly understanding religions? Whilst useful, the question often does not recognize the fact the first premise of the study of religion is that religion is human. And so experiences would count more than the sacred in the study of religions (to put it simply, perhaps).

But another question came with Bastienne Klein's comment that Mount Everest was revered by the people living in its shadows for hundreds of years. Only when the British could measure it, did they decided to climb it. Her question reminds us of the politics of religion making that we can so easily forget. Whilst questions of the sacred may go on about the sacred, the transformation of the landscape into marketable commodities for individual feats obscures the recent history of all such places. Their disenchantment was not only a measure of new forms of "secular"religions". It obscured a politics of control of resources and places that may be missed by "purely" religious questions.

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that the papers presented at the March 2018 Conference on Religion Education in Cape Town, South Africa have officially been published online in a special issue titled "The Politics and Pedagogy of Religion Education" in the Journal Changing Societies & Personalities.

Please click on the following link to access this issue:

Vol. 2, No. 3 (2018): Special Issue: "The Politics and Pedagogy of Religion Education" | Changing Societies & Personalities

Please see the Call for Papers on “Christian and Muslim Development Organizations in Urban Africa: New Challenges for Researchers and Practitioners” on the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hmLjf_-IgDaMJ-44jAg_a0lRRxjv29PWfP8SVGV3Euk/edit?usp=sharing

Please help in sharing this call as widely as possible.

CfP: “Christian and Muslim Development Organizations in Urban Africa: New Challenges for Researchers and Practitioners” “Christian and Muslim Development Organizations in Urban Africa: New Challenges for Researchers and Practitioners” Call for the Papers for the Workshop To be held at the Cape Town Lodge Hotel in Cape Town, 8 November 2018 Conventional assumptions hold that secularization and dev...

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Please click on the following link for more information on the UCT Department of Religious Studies Call for Papers on "Moral and Ethical Frameworks and Performances": https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k5iOCVO6X17EMsOOT6rV-yKAAsJL2d4dZedtN2530hY/edit?usp=sharing

Please send a detailed summary of 1500 words to [email protected] by 30 October 2018.

Moral and Ethical Performances in Religion Department of Religious Studies University of Cape Town Call for Papers Moral and Ethical Frameworks and Performances Convenors: Abdulkader Tayob; Andrea Brigaglia In spite of deep-seated modernist suspicions, religions have been expected by the state and by societies to take some responsibil...

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

We will be hosting a Conference on "The Politics and Pedagogy of Religion Education: Policies, Syllabi and Future Prospects" to be held on 13th-16th March 2018 in Cape Town, South Africa.

For more information on this conference, please click on the following link:

Religion Education Workshop 2018 Religion Education in Southern Africa: Policies, Syllabi and Future Prospects Call for Papers November-December 2017 Convenors: Abdulkader Tayob and Danika Driesen Network for Religion Education, University of Cape Town From South Africa to Kenya, Religion Education is increasingly becoming at...

Ala Alhourani is currently a postdoctoral fellow, involved in a larger project “Ethic of Religion in and of Public Life” at the department of Religious Studies at UCT. Dr Alhourani completed his PhD at the Anthropology and Sociology Department at University of Western Cape in 2017. His PhD’s thesis explored the resurgence of public performances of ‘Muslim-ness’ and the Muslim aesthetic politics of difference, community making, and multiple intersected belongings in the context of post-apartheid South Africa. Providing a genealogy of Islam and Muslims in Cape Town (including migrants and Capetonian Muslims), the ethnography argues that aesthetic formations of Muslim’s religious style serve as a politics of representation and public identification and as sensorial technology of the self implicated in community formation. He was awarded the Monica Wilson Prize for the best student paper at the Anthropology Southern Africa conference 2013. His MA degree thesis in Anthropology (2008-2010), explored the different meanings UWC students make of two locally-produced soap opera – Isidingo and Generations, and some of the various ways in which the SABC contributes to the nation-building project of post-apartheid South Africa. Throughout the last seven years, he conducted many artistic workshop (3 -6 months, drum and drama) in various township in Cape Town, which enable youth South African to articulate and express social concern and feeling living in township.

CALL FOR PAPERS - RELIGION EDUCATION IN SOUTHERN AFRICA: POLICIES, SYLLABI AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
November-December 2017

Convenors: Abdulkader Tayob and Danika Driesen
Network for Religion Education, University of Cape Town

From South Africa to Kenya, Religion Education is increasingly becoming attractive for some educators, teachers and public officials. Shed of its moralizing past, the teaching of religion promises a future of tolerance, respect and mutual discovery. Most of religion education projects, however, struggle with a history of confessional Christian education, quickly being caught up by a matching Islamic education. Religious schools are becoming popular among some educators and parents, and not all of them are committed to explore the religion of the Other in a neutral or respectful manner. At the same time, most schools put the study of religion and culture low on their list of priorities. In their struggle to offer decent numeracy and literacy programs, in the face of often serious socio-political challenges like poverty, violence, and drug abuse, they have little or no appetite for religion education.

What do programmes of religion education offer to schools, learners and parents? Between confessional dogmas and secular challenges, what can the teaching of religion do for better schooling for learners and communities?

This is a call for papers on the diverse interventions and programs of Religion Education at universities and colleges. It is a call to present critical reflections of religion education policies and syllabuses prepared for teachers since the end of colonialism and apartheid. Papers are invited that will focus on the complexities and challenges that have accompanied religion education programmes. The meeting calls for papers to highlight aspects that address the following questions: What are the philosophical and theoretical grounds for proposing religion education? What assumptions of religions are implicit or explicit in the teaching of religion? Which religions are included and which excluded, which aspects of religions are favoured?

Which ethical values are promoted in religion education, and how are these chosen and articulated? Which values are left out? What kind of identity politics accompanies religion education in public debates, policies and laws? What kind of relations are implicit and explicit between religions and state in religion education policies and syllabuses? It is self-evident that not all papers would have to focus on all of these critical questions.

The workshop is envisaged to provide a platform for presenting critical case studies for debate and deliberation. These presentations will be followed by a collaborative session to reflect and work on a syllabus or set of key principles for the future of religion education. Such a vision will be founded on the experiences that participants bring to the meeting.

If you are interested in this meeting, please send a 500-word abstract that clearly spells out the case study and a critical reflection on it. Abstracts will be reviewed, and speakers invited to join the workshop at a time and place agreed upon by all participants chosen.

Deadline: 15 October 2017
Please send your abstract to [email protected]

Religion Education in Southern Africa Religion Education in Southern Africa: Policies, Syllabi and Future Prospects Call for Papers November-December 2017 Convenors: Abdulkader Tayob and Danika Driesen Network for Religion Education, University of Cape Town From South Africa to Kenya, Religion Education is increasingly becoming at...

DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES SEMINAR

Non-Muslim understandings of Islam and Muslims in the Media

Wednesday, 06 September 2017
Time: 13:00 – 14:00pm
Venue: LS 5.67 (Religious Studies seminar room)

by Dr Laurens de Rooij

Non-Muslim understandings of Islam and Muslims in the Media

Inspired by the apparent overtly negative coverage of Islam and Muslims by the mainstream press, this thesis asks the research question: In what ways do depictions of Muslims and Islam in the News inform the thoughts and actions of non-Muslims in Europe? As the media plays an important role in society, the analysis of the influences of the media on a person’s ideas and conceptualisations of people of another religious persuasion is an important social issue. News reports about Islam and Muslims commonly relate stories that discuss terrorism, violence or other unwelcome or irrational behaviour, or the lack of integration and compatibility of Muslims and Islam with western values and society. Yet there is little research on how non-Muslims in Europe engage with and are affected by media reports about Islam and Muslims. To address this gap of knowledge, a content and discourse analysis of news stories was undertaken and then verbal narratives or thoughts and actions of participants were elicited through fieldwork using focus groups.

Laurens de Rooij (post-doctoral research fellow, University of Cape Town) completed his PhD at Durham University, UK, in 2017. His present research analyzes how the media discourse on minorities (particularly Muslims and Islam) effects how they are conceptualized, understood, and treated. This work is based on the research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Reference number (UID) 85397). The opinions expressed herein are that of the author, and the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard. He was a visiting researcher and scholar at Jakarta’s Graduate School Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University (March-April 2013), Duke University’s Department of Religion (fall 2013), the University of Colorado-Boulder’s Centre for Media, Religion, and Culture (spring 2014), and at Brazil’s Fundação Joaquim Nabuco (summer 2016).