1st Edition
Medieval Muslim Philosophers and Intercultural Communication Towards a Dialogical Paradigm in Education
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.
The 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 flexibility, 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.
Crucially bridging the gap between medieval tradition and modern thought by promoting interdisciplinary connections and redrawing intercultural boundaries outside disciplinary limits, it will speak to readers interested in the dialogue between education, intercultural communication, and Islamic thought.
.Biography
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 (also funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) at the University of Calgary. His research considers how intercultural communication resonates with educational practices and explores convergences of seemingly differing cultures with the aim of infusing intercultural dialogue into educational discourse. 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, Canada. Prior to that, he was 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).
