Books by Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Cambridge University Press, 2025
Routledge, 2023
This book examines the works of Medieval Muslim philosophers interested in intercultural encounte... more 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. This 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.
Palgrave, Macmilan , 2019
This book, framed through the notion of double consciousness, brings postcolonial constructs to s... more This book, framed through the notion of double consciousness, brings postcolonial constructs to sociopolitical and pedagogical studies of youth that have yet to find serious traction in education. Significantly, this book contributes to a growing interest among educational and curriculum scholars in engaging the pedagogical role of literature in the theorization of an inclusive curriculum. Therefore, this study not only recognizes the potential of immigrant literature in provoking critical conversation on changes young people undergo in diaspora, but also explores how the curriculum is informed by the diasporic condition itself as demonstrated by this negotiation of foreignness between the student and selected texts.
JOURNAL ARTICLES by Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Religions: Rethinking Islamic Education, 2024
This article explores the pedagogical aspects of intercultural philosophy and identifies instruct... more This article explores the pedagogical aspects of intercultural philosophy and identifies instructional strategies for Islamic school curricula in diaspora. It combines Western teaching methods peculiar to deliberative pedagogy with the Islamic notion of Tadabbur, Arabic for ‘to deliberate’ and 'carefully consider’ the outcomes. It aims to provide insights into implementing intercultural philosophy as pedagogy and highlights examples of its application in Muslim educational contexts. How can intercultural philosophy be implemented in class, especially in the high school curriculum in diaspora? It emphasizes the potential benefits and compatibility of intercultural philosophy from a Muslim educational perspective. It offers practical insights and examples for educators who seek to integrate intercultural philosophy into their curricula. Bridging the gap between East and West provides a unique perspective on incorporating diverse philosophical traditions using the same teaching strategies. More specifically, this article introduces Tadabbur through instructional strategies such as Think-Pair-Share and the 5Es instructional model, which use deliberative pedagogy. Intercultural philosophy, therefore, contributes to the cultural and religious diversification of curriculum theorizing and implementation.
Journal of Gulf Studies, 2024
Drawing on the works of Deleuze and Guattari (1972; 1987), which describe the constituent behavio... more Drawing on the works of Deleuze and Guattari (1972; 1987), which describe the constituent behavior of cultural assemblages, this article argues that deterritorialization marks the twentieth-century Gulf educational landscape, which problematized Arab Gulf identity. What followed is characterized by what Gilles Deleuze describes as reterritorialization, specifically the proliferation of American and Western institutions in the Arab Gulf countries. This article proposes Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization as lenses through which to observe and respond to the resulting Arab Gulf epistemic and identity crises that arose in part from the “study abroad” model dominating twentieth-century higher education in the Gulf states. In contrast, the “study at home” model becomes an example of reterritorialization, which serves as a local epistemic response to the hegemonic internationalization of education. Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of deterritorialization and reterritorialization provide helpful conceptual tools to examine the Western impact on higher education and identity formation in the Arab Gulf region. These two conceptual paradigms characterize two directions in which higher education has progressed during the second half of the twentieth century and well into the beginning of the twenty-first, especially in their intellectual and identity-related aspects. How can Deleuze’s concepts help us characterize an epistemic uqdah that places Arab Gulf education between two antithetical realities, the push towards international education and a sense of adherence to tradition and culture? How does the move for the internationalization of education within the recent history of the Arab Gulf inform identity formation? This conceptual study explores the impact of internationalized education on the Gulf Arab identity from cultural and epistemological perspectives.
Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2023
This study explores critical challenges for global citizenship education (GCE) in Qatar. This stu... more This study explores critical challenges for global citizenship education (GCE) in Qatar. This study contributes to Global Citizenship Education (GCE) studies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. It reimagines cultural practices as pedagogical strategies to reorient students into global awareness and intercultural views, as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In effect, the study draws attention to the pivotal role of education in nurturing a global ethical outlook by achieving a balance between local culture and global citizenship. The aim is to infuse the educational system with myriad social and family ethics in a way that vehemently transcends local specificities. It examines intercultural ethics within the Islamic and Qatari settings. How can intercultural practices born from the Qatari Islamic culture develop global citizenry? The study identifies two Qatari shared values that advocate for an intercultural understanding of global citizenship. More specifically, it examines specific intercultural practices, such as Al-Nafla and Al-Majlis, beyond the local level to endorse ethical responsibility toward global citizenship.
Arab Studies Quarterly, 2023
Qatar has been heavily critiqued for its alleged inability to be hospitable to fans and tourists ... more Qatar has been heavily critiqued for its alleged inability to be hospitable to fans and tourists from different cultural, gender, and religious backgrounds (Todman, 2022). It has been damagingly portrayed as an "unwelcoming and closed conservative country" (Al-Ansari & Zahirovic, 2021: 203). This article examines Qatar's paradoxical positioning of hospitality. It draws on the Derridean notion of hospitality to conceptualize the Qatari cultural and sociopolitical context as being conditioned by "hostipitality," a term that Derrida coined to explain the contradictory nature of hospitality, "a word which carries its own contradiction incorporated into it, a Latin word which allows itself to be parasitized by its opposite, 'hostility'" (2000b: 3). This article, therefore, utilizes Derrida's theory of "hostipitality" to deconstruct the Western mindset of liberalism and the alleged unconditional respect for all. Two examples are used, the Qatari World Cup and Souq Waqif, to further contextualize and problematize the paradoxical positionality of Qatari hospitality. How can applying the Derridean hostipitality help negotiate Qatar's controversial hospitality positioning? How do the cases of the World Cup and Souq Waqif exemplify the paradoxical aspect of conditioned hospitality? Additionally, the "Ship of Theseus" thought experiment is used to situate the paradox and help reconcile hospitality with hostility to form an emerging conception of negotiated conditioned hospitality. This study invokes the paradox of the "Ship of Theseus" to respond to the Derridean contradictory notion of hostipitality and further problematize Qatar's positionality of hospitality.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2022
Drawing on fiqh al-aqalliyyat (the Muslim jurisprudence of diasporic minorities), this article in... more Drawing on fiqh al-aqalliyyat (the Muslim jurisprudence of diasporic minorities), this article introduces a Muslim minorities curriculum and negotiates the notion of diasporicity as a process that signifies a community’s readiness to respond to its own cultural, religious and literacy practices. More specifically, first, I propose a Muslim minorities curriculum (Minhaj Al-Aqalliyyat) that is informed by diasporicity and fiqh alaqalliyyat. Second, the article makes a distinction between diaspora and diasporicity. In what ways can diasporicity itself be conceptualized to advance Muslim education and what are the pedagogical implications? Third, it identifies what I call dialectical constructs within fiqh al aqalliyyat that are conducive to diasporicity, namely, qiyas, ijtihad, istihsan, and taysir. Additionally, this article explores contingency as an overlooked philosophical and pedagogical dimension, which advances intercultural and critical thinking skills. It conceptualizes a Muslim education that is attuned to the “curriculum-as-lived”; hence it develops an educational theory that validates diasporicity.
Culture and Dialogue, 2021
Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 43, No. 4, 2021
Educational Philosophy and Theory (Routledge), 2021
This study examines the Foucauldian notion of “parrhesia” within the context of curricular practi... more This study examines the Foucauldian notion of “parrhesia” within the context of curricular practices through a renewal of scholarly interest in Islamic metaphysics as represented by the Avicennean modalities of reality: necessity, contingency, and possibility. It explores the role of contingency in advancing educational practices that generate inclusive dissemination of knowledge that captures the language of Tajdeed (legitimate renovation) in Islamic education. This article argues that contingency, as a causality-oriented modality, determines whether meaning is relative or absolute, while necessity, as an acknowledgment of universal truth, slips into demagoguery that can be used to canonize strict textualism and absolutism. Contingency is defined here as a practice that stimulates synthesis and dialogical understanding of knowledge. Accordingly, the study asks the following questions: How does infusing the Avicennean concept of contingency into curriculum practices offer opportunities for inclusivity and free speech? How can revisiting Islamic cosmological modalities help Muslim educators and curriculum writers move into the broader path of inclusive pedagogies? From an educational position, the article introduces a curriculum of metaphysics that advocates the implementation of contingency, which is considered essential to parrhesia and democracy. It also draws attention to an anti-metaphysical attitude that is generally present in curriculum theorizing. Accordingly, Metaphysics is invoked to challenge a state of flux or hegemonized assumptions; hence, metaphysics validates parrhesia.
Curriculum Inquiry (Routledge), 2020
This article presents Al-Kindi as the first Arab intercultural curriculum theorizer, rather than ... more This article presents Al-Kindi as the first Arab intercultural curriculum theorizer, rather than the first Arab philosopher as often argued. He envisioned an intercultural and interdisciplinary curriculum within the Arabic intellectual tradition. This article proposes Al-Kindism as a conceptual framework for education that revisits interdisciplinary and intercultural possibilities geared toward conflict resolution and synthesis. It also explores how Al-Kindi was arguably the first in the Arabic intellectual tradition to initiate a move from Majlis to Minhaj, that is from Masjid learning practices centered on theological studies to schooling. In other words, in the absence of actual schooling, his educational vision offered a possibility of a conceptualized curriculum to be taught. Al-Kindi’s scholarly eagerness was driven not necessarily by, as generally perceived, the desire to promote philosophy, but more importantly, by the need to develop an intellectually responsive educational tradition to accommodate emerging intercultural encounters. In his attempt to eliminate the tension between Greek thought and the Islamic culture, he believed that the acquisition of true knowledge could only be achieved through intercultural competence. Thus, as a curriculum theorizer, Al-Kindi initiated a Minhaj marked by indebtedness to intercultural encounters, by a shift away from Majlis, and by the implementation of interdisciplinarity.
Teaching in Higher Education (Routledge), 2019
This study appropriates the notion of deterritorialization, a process that determines the nature ... more This study appropriates the notion of deterritorialization, a process that determines the nature of an assemblage introduced by Deleuze and Guattari, to refer to Al-Ghazali’s conceptualization of scholarship and methodology as the antithesis of the pursuit of a fixed area of research. His response to the deterritorialization of knowledge identifies an interdisciplinary approach, always in flight, which ultimately enunciates rihlah, a sojourn. It negates the notion of research as stasis and recovers its semantic origin of movement and process. The article examines intercultural practices that challenge the institutionalization of knowledge. How can Al-Ghazali’s response to scepticism, knowledge, and authority inform practices in higher education today? Not only does this study aim to connect intercultural philosophical discourses to modern debates about academic expertise and the dissemination of knowledge, it equally seeks cultural and intellectual reconciliation, which is crucial today in a world that is becoming largely xenophobic, and entrapped in ethnocentric academic practices.
Culture and Dialogue (Brill), 2019
This essay looks at two young English-speaking Iraqi bloggers whose internationally recognized wr... more This essay looks at two young English-speaking Iraqi bloggers whose internationally recognized writings describe the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq. It examines sarcasm as a mode of resistance as employed by Salam Pax, characterized by BBC Radio in 2003 as “the most famous diarist in the world,” and Riverbend, whose blog was published as a book and translated into several languages. By subjecting the colonial discourse to ridicule, they not only successfully convey the angst their people suffer, but also mock a stereotypical rhetoric that haunts the Western mentality regarding the Middle East. This essay negotiates their use of sarcasm as a means of non-violent resistance. It demonstrates how, for instance, they shift from the sarcastic to the absurd to unravel the banality of the colonial mind and the conceited position of its liberating enterprises. The aim of the paper is, therefore, to shed light on the emergence of a digitalized group of subalterns who write back to the center in the wake of the American intervention to topple the Baath regime in Iraq. Pax and Riverbend distinctively succeed in subverting the colonial and hegemonic gaze by unravelling the encroaching uncertainties of war through the deployment of sarcasm to signify resistance, and by transforming the coalition forces’ theatre of war into a theatre of the absurd.
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review (Cambridge University Press), 2019
This study challenges present-day dualisms and divisions, which are reflected in socio-political... more This study challenges present-day dualisms and divisions, which are reflected in socio-political and intercultural dialogue. The aim of this study is to connect the philosophical discourse of the ninth-century House of Wisdom to modern conceptions of Islam by extending the dialogical rhetoric of that discourse. This study revisits the House of Wisdom, first, to invoke an inclusive, intercultural Islamic tradition that negates the circumscription of Islam by radical views. Second, it reintroduces the liberal arts as pedagogical tools that are central to the Islamic wisdom tradition. Third, it explores the notions of Aql and Fitrah and how they prescribe Hikmah.
(University of California Press) (2018)
This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relev... more (University of California Press) (2018)
This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.
The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (SAGE), 2017
This article argues that the protagonist in Hage’s Cockroach (2008) introjects the vermin as a re... more This article argues that the protagonist in Hage’s Cockroach (2008) introjects the vermin as a representation of internalized antagonism. As the unnamed narrator struggles in an inhospitable city, he internalizes this unflinching feeling of estrangement through introjection. This process reveals how the loss of home entails the state of a vagabond who resists normalization and seeks the unruly life of the underground. The way the city of Montréal is portrayed as notorious for its indifference towards newcomers aggravates the condition of the divided self in exile, which necessitates the intrusion of the monstrous. In effect, not only does introjecting the cockroach signify a menacing presence but also suggests a decolonizing act of insubordination against a city whose hegemonic order, like its freezing weather, looms large.
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies (Routledge), 2017
Digital literacy undermines the domineering authority of mediascapes or any other forums that tra... more Digital literacy undermines the domineering authority of mediascapes or any other forums that transmit and appropriate knowledge. Blogging, as an offspring of digital literacy, can be used to rediscover identities and dismantle presuppositions. This paper argues that apart from using blogs in schools to integrate technology and motivate students, blogs can be seen as forms of knowledge that challenge conventional venues of information such as textbooks or mainstream media. Blogs by Iraqi citizens, namely, Riverbend and Pax, are discussed as potential sources of postcolonial expression that students may read to discuss the identity or the perspective of the other and to question conceptions sustained by mediascapes. This paper examines the question of using blogs as a remedy for students’ nonchalance on matters that are less relevant to them. In effect, blogging can be utilized to unpack their sheltered worlds or challenge the world as they know it through the media.
Arab Studies Quarterly. , 2017
This study focuses on the deconstruction of dominant perceptions of Arab masculinity, particularl... more This study focuses on the deconstruction of dominant perceptions of Arab masculinity, particularly with respect to Hans, the exiled Iraqi protagonist of Diana Abu-Jaber’s 2003 novel Crescent. Employing the concept of the unheimlich as it intersects with the Iraqi Al-Futuwwa movement, this article explores the ways in which the condition of being exiled strips the protagonist of his masculine ideals that are often associated with nationalism and chivalry, and exposes his internalized vulnerabilities to “unhomeliness,” since he has been disconnected from country and family. In effect, the study subverts hegemonic conceptualizations of Arab masculinity by examining the unsettling repercussions of forced migration.
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Books by Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
JOURNAL ARTICLES by Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.
This study explores Habermas’s work in terms of the relevance of his theory of the public sphere to the politics and poetics of the Arab oral tradition and its pedagogical practices. In what ways and forms does Arab heritage inform a public sphere of resistance or dissent? How does Habermas’s notion of the public space help or hinder a better understanding of the Arab oral tradition within the sociopolitical and educational landscape of the Arabic-speaking world? This study also explores the pedagogical implications of teaching Arab orality within the context of the public sphere as a contested site that informs a mode of resistance against social inequality and sociopolitical exclusions.
grandparents super visa program reinforces inequality by designating the wealthier
as worthier citizens. One of the requirements to qualify for this program is proof that
the child or grandchild in Canada meets a low-income cut-off minimum. The program
ordains privileged citizenship by creating an exclusive membership restricted only
to those who can afford it while precluding other citizens from the same right. Such
a policy negates the notion of citizenship as conducive to a political community
of equals who are entitled to the same rights and privileges. The study points out
that the infiltration of consumerism into the fabric of citizenship is the core of the
problem: citizenship has become a commodity. Citizens who are denied similar
opportunities based on financial factors are marginalized and relegated to secondclass citizenship. In contrast, those who do qualify become what the economist J.K.
Galbraith calls the “contented majority.”
Keywords: Dark Comedy, Ben Jonson, Masculinity, Gender, Renaissance