Early Childhood Education for Muslim Children foregrounds the marginalised perspective of Muslim children aged three to five and examines how they are cared for and educated in centre-based provision in two provinces in post-apartheid South Africa. Both theological and social science perspectives are carefully interwoven to make sense of the construction of service provision for Muslims as a minority group in a secular democracy. This book uses a qualitative, reflexive approach to amplify the voices of mothers, managers and teachers as the community of agents who shape priorities for young children in the context of a rapidly transforming society. The research demonstrates that the quest to establish an appropriate care network and a sound educative environment for Muslim children is riddled with complexities, struggles and tensions. In the light of changes in the home-based network for early education, centre-based provision has become an important infrastructure for Muslim communities seeking one-stop academic and Islamic education. The internal struggles encountered in this form of provision include inequities in access, struggles to package an appropriate curriculum, and dealing with nurturance specific to the faith and for cultural formations supportive of citizenship. This book calls for critical engagement with issues of religious education in early childhood, social cohesion, formal systematic teacher education for Muslim teachers, curriculum development and parental support. It will contribute not only to the development of early education from an Islamic perspective, but will also demonstrate how to expand discourses and practices to deal with diversity and faith development in early years. As such, it will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of early childhood education, religious studies, race and ethnic studies, and childhood studies

Alef Is for Allah is the first groundbreaking study of the emotional space occupied by children in modern Islamic societies. Focusing primarily on visual representations of children from modern Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, the book examines these materials to investigate concepts such as innocence, cuteness, gender, virtue, and devotion, as well as community, nationhood, violence, and sacrifice. In addition to exploring a subject that has never been studied comparatively before, Alef Is for Allah extends the boundaries of scholarship on emotion, religion, and visual culture and provides unique insight into Islam as it is lived and experienced in the modern world.

Explores five centuries of changing attitudes toward children and childhood in the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman attitudes towards children - on the part of adults, religious institutions and the state - from the 15th to the early 20th century are explored in this volume. Specialists in the social history of the Ottoman Empire as a whole, in regions ranging from Anatolia, through the Arab provinces to the Balkans, respond to recent theoretical calls to recognise children as active agents in history. Divided into five thematic sections (concepts of childhood, family interrelationships, children outside family circles, children's bodies, and education) the volume covers the social and political structure of the Ottoman Empire through the innovative prism of children as social agents who are shaped by but also shape society, rather than being the passive recipients of their social environment. Key features -Includes data on Christian, Jewish and Muslim children that shed light on differences and commonalities in family structures and communities -Covers a broad geographic area including Ottoman Romania, Bulgaria, Rumelia, Greece, Bosnia, Syria, Palestine and Istanbul -Paves the way for new directions in research on the history of children and childhood in the Ottoman Empire -Features a Preface by Suraiya Faroqhi, an introductory chapter by Colin Heywood, and includes 8 tables, 8 graphs, 9 illustrations and a glossary of key terms Gülay Yılmaz is Associate Professor at Akdeniz University. She published articles and book chapters on the recruitment process of devşirmes, the janissary involvement on the urban culture, and economy of seventeenth-century Istanbul. Fruma Zachs is Professor at the University of Haifa. She is the author of The Making of a Syrian Identity: Intellectuals and Merchants in 19th-Century Beirut (2005). She published several articles on cultural and social history of the nahda in Greater Syria.

An extraordinary personal journey from Islamic fundamentalism to a new life in the west In this spellbinding portrayal of a life that few Americans can imagine, Ali Eteraz tells the story of his schooling in a madrassa in Pakistan, his teenage years as a Muslim American in the Bible Belt, and his voyage back to Pakistan to find a pious Muslim wife. This lyrical, penetrating saga from a brilliant new literary voice captures the heart of our universal quest for identity and the temptations of religious extremism.

Today nearly half of all people in the Middle East are under the age of fifteen. Yet little is known about the new generation of boys and girls who are growing up in a world vastly different from that of their parents, a generation who will be the leaders of tomorrow. This groundbreaking anthology is an attempt to look at the current situation of children by presenting materials by both Middle Eastern and Western scholars. Many of the works have been translated from Arabic, Persian, and French. The forty-one pieces are organized into sections on the history of childhood, growing up, health, work, education, politics and war, and play and the arts. They are presented in many forms: essays in history and social science, poems, proverbs, lullabies, games, and short stories. Countries represented are Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Israel/West Bank, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen, and Afghanistan. This book complements Elizabeth Fernea's earlier works, Women and the Family in the Middle East and Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak (coedited with Basima Bezirgan). Like them, it will be important reading for everyone interested in the Middle East and in women's and children's issues.