Ethno-religious tragedy rebuilds in Iraq

In the shadows of Syria's deadly civil war, a new tragedy is building right next door, in Iraq

“Never read anything that can at all unsettle your religious faith”: reading and writing in the monthly packet

The Monthly Packet of Evening Readings for Younger Members of the English Church (1851–99) reveals the interest that Charlotte Yonge had in promoting and supporting girls as readers and writers. As the editor and as a major contributor, Yonge provided a variety of material for the magazine as part of a strategy for the development of girls' reading and writing habits in ways that were consistent with their High Anglican beliefs and that would never cause them to question their faith.

Teaching and learning in the crucible: Actors with disabilities as experts preparing pre-service teachers to be inclusive educators

Dorothy Heathcote understood teaching and learning to take place in a kind of ‘crucible’ in which participants, who are both teachers and learners, contribute to the mix sometimes resulting in a radical transformation. This paper reports the ways Heathcote’s ideas have influenced both research and practice in the Teaching for Diversity workshop - a drama workshop that brings together pre-service teachers, teacher educators and actors from Fusion Theatre, a community-based theatre company for people with intellectual disabilities.

Thai cyber-actors : evidence of an Islamophobic effect

The long-standing Patani Muslim separatist resistance of Southern Thailand is not one that is well known, and its contemporaneous spill over onto the Internet even less so. The more radical Patani online propaganda is in fact symptomatic of the relocation of the struggle within the sphere of influence of global jihadism, distancing itself from the ethno-nationalism characteristic of a previous generation of fighters. New media propaganda, in particular Jihad 2.0, has opened a new sphere of influence to the Patani neojihadist movement, allowing the militants to expand their propaganda campaign to a wider audience, while reaching out to a younger Melayu public. While Jihad 2.0 has presented the resistance movement with new ways to diffuse its message, in a more innovative and appealing manner, it also has enabled it to engage with its audiences more interactively. Because the message is no longer linear, anyone can contribute to the dialectics of the struggle, which in fine results in the alteration and reshaping of its ideological discourse in unprecedented directions. Arguably the ‘glocalisation’ of Islamophobia within Thai culture has resulted in the alteration of the Thai cultural stereotype of the Muslim khaek ‘Other’, transforming the khaek into an evil violent Muslim, both in real and virtual worlds. This further leads to discriminatory attitudes and behaviours towards Muslims, which causes the hardening of the views of the online Patani community of support towards the Thais and possibly its radicalisation.

Impossible triangles: flat actors in telematic theatre

In fact, in this scene, both A and B are online. A is in a classroom at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands, and B is in a television studio at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia. The two locations are connected through video conference and, in each space, a local audience watches the local performer in the room, and the remote performer projected on a screen. The performers are captured in profile, and appear to be looking at computer screens in front of them but cannot actually see one another. The text is consciously banal, composed to replicate the broken rhythms and sequences, flattened tone and repetitions of scrolling words in a text box on a screen. Information about presence and absence (A or B is offline or online) is spoken as text. Although the two performers speak in accents that declare their different language/ cultures, the vernacular is generic 'internetslang'. The relatively monotonous and unpunctuated delivery of the textual rhythms is interrupted and counterpointed by a sound lag of nearly a second, and by a faint audio echo as one voice 'lands' in the second location. Its orchestration allows the sound fracture and dispersal in some moments. In other moments, the actors anticipate or absorb the gaps in transmission, driving the speech rhythms through so that the utterance 'arrives' precisely at the end of the prompt line.

Deconstructing religious identity, difference, and belonging : implications for anti-racist pedagogy

Increasing numbers of Australians identify with a multiplicity of religion groups or have no religious affiliation. Despite this, the representation of religious groups other than Christian—and the implications of this for anti-racist pedagogy in Australian schools—is seldom explored. This article interrogates the ways in which the most prominent of these minority religious groups (Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish) were spoken about in two Melbourne newspapers and considers the implications of this interrogation for multicultural pedagogy in globally integrated local school contexts, such as those in Australia. Methodologies of social cultural theory and critical discourse analysis (CDA) are used to investigate newspaper discussions from the different viewpoints of their experiential, systemic, and normative focus. I find that notions of religious identity described in the media are stylized in form and an almost-silent normative self-identity is defined against clichéd typologies made within a crucible of race, identity, and belonging.

Scientific and Religious Mindsets: A Candid Look at the Perils of a Panglossian President

Through Voltaire’s novella Candide, this essay examines the differences between a scientific and a religious mindset and the consequences of poor decision-making when a political leader has a religious mindset that he misapplies to fundamentally scientific questions. By analyzing various decisions that President Bush has made, it is argued that he has a religious mindset that has resulted in several fallacious choices of extreme import, yielding considerable losses. As such, a decision-maker with power should be able to distinguish questions best answered with a scientific mindset from those that are in the realm of philosophy or religion and apply a scientific mindset to the former. A scientific mindset formulates a theory that yields testable propositions, it acquires data and uses that to evaluate the verity of the theory. As the data contradict the theory’s predictions, the theory is adjusted. The religious mindset proffers certain explanations but then holds steadfastly to them. It ignores contrary evidence, does not adjust its tenets, or alter its prescribed behaviors, attacks the integrity of those who espouse contrarian viewpoints, and commits logical falla- cies, such as inverting the causative relationship.

Friend or foe? Finding common ground between development and Pentecostalism

Religious belief is a common human characteristic, with 80 per cent of the world's population professing some religious affiliation. Indeed, global surveys report an increase in "religiosity" across the globe in recent decades. Within Christianity, Pentecostalism has experienced considerable growth, in contrast with the more traditional Christian churches. This growth is occurring across the globe, but is extremely evident within developing countries. Within development studies (both the theory and practice), religion has been negatively portrayed, misunderstood or set aside as not being of importance to development outcomes. Such an approach towards religion is misguided and limits development effectiveness. While religion is certainly not the "answer" to eradicating poverty or overcoming global injustices, authentic engagement by development actors with religion does provide important opportunities to enhance development outcomes. This paper will consider the basic tenets of development theory and practice, and contrast those against Pentecostal theological teaching in order to determine where there exists common ground and where there exists misalignment of values and thus tension. Such assessment is important in order to enhance the religious literacy of the development sector and to better understand how to authentically engage with communities expressing this belief.