Citizenship Education in Pakistan
The purpose of writing this paper is to assess the importance of citizenship education as a part of curriculum. How we can use citizenship education to make young students good citizens. The study is done in Pakistani context with the comparison of countries having well established system of citizenship education, like Canada and UK. Pakistan is a new country and it has inherited many difficult problems from its former rulers, such as illiteracy poverty, disease and social misery. Citizens should not only take interest in the problems of the country, but also participate in solving them. Citizenship education is the most effective way of making people civil so that they can contribute in the development of their country. Citizenship education is necessary for students to become responsible and active citizens of the country. A right approach is needed to establish a strong citizenship education system in Pakistan. The system must include the understanding of updated economic, social and political happenings of the country especially the democratic system. This can encourage students to effectively participate for the right development of their country. Keywords: Citizenship Education, Curriculum, Democracy
Islam, Democracy and Citizenship Education: An Examination of the Social Studies Curriculum in Pakistan.
Since the 1980s the mission of the national citizenship education curriculum in Pakistan has been the Islamization of society. The government curriculum guidelines require textbooks to emphasize Islam as the national ideology of the state of Pakistan. Recognizing the deleterious effect of an exclusivist curriculum on the civic unity of the nation, some stakeholders propose a liberal-democratic reform agenda for social studies. The main goal of the proposed agenda is to use the curriculum for creating a tolerant, moderate, and enlightened citizenry. However, proponents of a theocratic vision of good citizenship, which currently dominates the curriculum, vehemently oppose these reform efforts. Introduction In the Pakistani national school system, citizenship education is imparted through a prescribed social studies curriculum, the main thrust of which has been the Islamization of society since the 1980s. A recent government proposal for curricular reform has stirred vociferous debate from competing stakeholders, whose visions of citizenship and citizenship education have clashed in the nation's mass media, and in organized street rallies causing disruptions to civic life (Gillani, 2004a). The main opposition to the government's curricular reform agenda is driven by religious parties, whose ideology dominates the current social studies curriculum. Religious parties and their conservative allies play a decisive role in determining the ideological core of Pakistan 's national education curriculum policy. Over the last twenty years, they have succeeded in promoting a political agenda marked by a distinctive Islamic ideology (Haque, 1987). Their purpose in presenting Islam as a national ideology has been to: (a) sanctify their political role in society; (b) galvanize social forces in Pakistan against India and the West; and (c) unify the Muslim world. To achieve their political goals, they have revised history, advanced a manufactured heritage of the state of Pakistan, and promoted an Islamic paradigm of citizenship education in the nation's schools through the social studies curriculum (Mustafa, 2004). This paper makes three arguments. First, it argues that the current ideological conflict over the mission of social studies in Pakistan is essentially related to the question of relationship between religion and the state. Second, it posits that Pakistan 's present national policy on the social studies curriculum makes no distinction between religious education and citizenship education in that it seeks to create practicing Muslims rather than democratic citizens. And third, based on my findings of the content analysis of the government-approved secondary school social studies textbooks, the paper maintains that those textbooks adhere to the national policy of promoting Islam as a political ideology for the purpose of strengthening an Islamic state.
Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam, by Gilles Kepel. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. viii + 376 pages. Notes to p. 429. Gloss. to 433. Index to p. 454. $29.95. Few books will so fully and comprehensively intimidate the reader with their depth, breadth, and mastery of argument as Gilles Kepel's new study of Islamist movements. In just 400 pages, Kepel has managed to tell the story of the origins, ideological history, and profile of groups and states which make up the world of "Political Islam." The book is truly a detailed account of the trail of political Islam. Jihad is divided into two parts, but is weak in one important area: it lacks a bibliography! The first of the two parts, a total of eight chapters, tells the tale of the rise of political Islam, tracing its progress across Asia and Africa. In addition to the wealth of information which it provides, Part I also illustrates the ability of Islamists to penetrate Muslim societies of very different cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. The author carefully assesses the impact of key political events - from the Six Day War to the Iranian revolution, from the Jihad in Afghanistan to the rise of the Islamic Salvation Front (Front islamique du salut, or FIS) in Algeria - in the Muslim world on the march of political Islam. By seeking, at each juncture, to evaluate the broader consequences of each of these events on political Islam, Kepel provides readers with a cumulative narrative of forces which have given shape and content to political Islam. He ends Part I with insights on the influence of political Islam in shaping Muslim opinion in one of its newly-adopted homes, Western Europe. In the course of analyzing the multifaceted impact of Muslim immigrants and of political Islam on Western European responses to political Islam, Kepel makes an important statement, and one which has been the source of controversy since Olivier Roy's `Failure of Political Islam' study. Kepel expresses the view that for all its successes, 1989 was to be "the high point of Islamist expansion" (p. 201). In the remaining seven chapters of the book (Part II), Kepel sets out to explain why 1989 may prove to have been the apex of "Islamist expansion." Much of the debate here is about the decline of political Islam since the early 1990s. The analytical focus is very much on the corroding impact on political Islam as a transnational movement of the terror tactics adopted by Islamist groups. Some of the chapter titles convey the message rather well: chapter 11, for example, is entitled "The Logic of Massacre in the Second Algerian War," chapters 12 and 13 are called, respectively, "The Threat of Terrorism in Egypt" and "Osama bin Laden and the War Against the West." These and the other four chapters in Part II make the argument that the Islamists' terror tactics not only turned public opinion against them, not only adversely affected their recruitment drive at home, but also galvanised the ruling regimes into action. The latter made very effective use of their security forces, unleashing them against Islamist strongholds in Egypt, Algeria, and Jordan. But, in addition, the state, with Western support, also attempted to fight the Islamists with economic tools: provision of aid to deprived regions, allocation of extra resources for education, job creation and infrastructural development, and of course, the deepening of economic reform and liberalization strategies in order to attract more private investment. …