Falsafa for Schools

The AIWG project group ‘Falsafa for schools’ (Arabic: falsafa; English: philosophy) encourages interdisciplinary discourse between the disciplines of philosophy, ethics and Islamic theology and uses extant research to prepare materials for teacher training and school lessons in the subjects of philosophy, ethics and religion.

This project group therefore addresses desiderata in educational media and teaching based on the current state of research: On the whole, philosophy as currently taught in schools, and in foundation courses in philosophy, ethics, religion, history and politics, does not reference Islamicate philosophy. As a result, the thoughts and ideas of philosophers influential in intellectual history and the history of ideas are largely ignored. This also applies to the significant achievements made during the 9th–12th centuries by Islamicate philosophy in the transfer from ancient to modern philosophy. Islamicate philosophy played a crucial role in the development of philosophy in Europe as well as in Islamic, Jewish and Christian theologies by contributing new methods and insights. This incomplete representation results in a distorted image of Islamic and European intellectual history, which, contrary to the general depiction in educational media, have in fact been closely intertwined for centuries.

Furthermore, public debate, teaching and education are primarily dominated by radical Islamic political and theological positions, frequently on topics that are controversial. Existing textbook analyses strongly suggest that pluralistic historic and contemporary philosophical positions from the Islamic cultural world on values such as reason, science, democracy and gender equality are seldom covered. Instead, an apparent dichotomy is presented between, for example, ‘Islam and reason’, Islam and gender equality’, Islam and Europe’, which supports extremist interpretations of Islam as well as colonial and Islamophobic narratives of so-called ‘Western philosophy’ or ‘Western values’.

Using impulses from Islamicate philosophy, the project group will illustrate how a more differentiated image of Islam and Europe, as well as of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim, can be brought into the classroom.

The ‘Falsafa for schools –  Providing concepts and materials to Islamicate philosophy for teacher training and educational media’ project will be conducted jointly by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) and Hamburg University as part of the Academy for Islam in Research and Society (AIWG), subject to funding approval by the BMBF.