BIQUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION
Year:2012 | Volume:6 | Issue:13|Papers Count:8

Imam Hussein (peace be upon him), the grandson of The Prophet Mohammad and as the third Imam of Shiites is the creator of a Second to none event in the history of mankind, an event which went beyond historical and geographical borders and became the cornerstone for human training. Self-esteem and esteem holding plays such a significant role in his doctrine that it can be considered as the only thing which has revived Islam and human esteem. The authors of the present article aimed to investigate self-esteem and esteem holding based on Imam Hussein's conduct in Ashura event. The finding of the study indicated that Imam Hussein's conduct, especially in Ashura event was a perfect paragon on esteem holding and self-esteem improvement. Imam Hussein (peace be upon him) educational doctrine prepares the ground for social and individual interactions based on self-esteem. The preparations for esteem improvement in families, trust in God, life purposefulness, thinking about death and respecting human beings are among strategies that Imam Hussein brought about in his practical conduct for human self-esteem improvement during Ashura.

The present research aimed to have an analytical study on the concept of "purification" in the philosophical and ethical works of Muslim scholars. The main question this study tried to answer was; in which cases "purification" was used for in the philosophical and ethical works, what did it mean in each case and what are its semantic elements. Through this study, it was shown that the term has started to be used in Ibne-Sina works and there was not any evidence to confirm that the term was common before him. It was by Ibne-Sina which the term appeared. By seventh century (in Islamic calendar), "purification" was a marginal term and it was just after seventh century which had taken as a key term. Four major discourses were attributed to the term; discourses on healing, discourses on ascetic, discourses on happiness and a synthetic one. "purification" was also used in four meaning; elimination of vices and acquiring moral virtues, elimination of moral vices, removing mammonism from soul, putting away moral vices and mammonism. The core meaning of "purification" is eliminating vices. Acquiring virtues is a necessary part of its meaning and not a part only. Elimination of vices and acquiring virtues are two sides of a coin.

This research was to find that to what extent the content of third year of high school textbook "religion and life" conforms to the approved objectives in cognitive area. The method of research was content analysis and its instrument was checkout form for the afore-mentioned textbook, the one which its form and content was validated by experts. Through the calculation of the correlation coefficient of the form its reliability was equal to 88%, respectively. The results showed that to achieve the approved objectives in cognitive area, the textbook used mostly from the subclass of knowledge about 62.44% and the use of subclass of analysis and composition were not remarkable, around zero. That textbook included 37 minor objectives in the form of 10 general concepts such as God, system of the creation, divine and prophets' guidance, Holy Quran, Imamate, the governance of Fagih and Islamic government, tradition and conduct, human being in Islam, Islamic society, way of life (relating to oneself) and the way of life (relating to family and society). It conformed to cognitive area with 231 frequency including 37 minor objectives. Thus, the extent in which the textbook complied with approved objectives in cognitive area was recognized 6 times for each objective.

This study is mainly to distinguish various meanings of patience in Quran, the word that connotes most fundamental moral and educational concepts in Quran. Then, it was also to infer its philosophical and educational implications. The key question of this study focused on the meaning of patience and its philosophical and educational implications. Research questions which this study dealt with are as follows: 1. What does patience refer to in Quran. 2. What are philosophical implications of this concept? 3. And what are educational implications of this concept? To find answer for these questions, an analytical-inferential method was used. Thus, based on this method, the present study is considered a philosophical one with fundamental approach. In one hand, findings confirmed that patience in Quran has a lot of meanings such as patience in misfortunes, avoiding hesitation in speech and performance, worshipping and obeying God, persistence in giving up sins and adjustment in mutual interactions and in the other hand, results showed that philosophically this concept can be scrutinized anthropologically and epistemologically and also it has axiological potentiality. Educational inferences suggested that this concept not only should be considered in educational objectives in general but also for the other elements of curriculum. Furthermore, it is applicable in formal and informal education, too.

As a descriptive one, this research was to evaluate the literacy development among Muslim countries. The required data for this research were collected from related documents and were analyzed through using secondary method. Results showed that 78% of men, 64% of women, 71% of total numbers were literate and 267 million people were recognized illiterate. However, among Muslim countries, the scale of men's literacy development went to a middle situation and for women; it was relatively in a low level. It showed that the literacy development among Islamic countries was totally in an average level.

Islamic education meets various challenges today. Some of them have risen from the encounter between theism and materialism. Post modernism aroused such paradoxical standpoints among Muslim scholars that in one hand some scholars have taken it as a golden opportunity for religious education and a solution for revamping its weakness, and in the other hand there are some ones who have asserted that postmodernism basically rejected possibility of religious education. To establish postmodernism's doctrines, rhizomatic approach had entered into the 20th century's knowledge system. It naturally carried with itself positive and negative attitudes to religious education. Through this research paper, it was presumed that rhizomatic approach to knowledge posed some threats to religious education and the author was to respond to these challenges based on knowledge system of critical realism. Therefore, in this study, first the characteristics of rhizomatic approach to knowledge are presented, second, its challenges for religious education are recognized, and third the enumerated challenges are scrutinized from a critical realism's point of view.

To analyze the content of religious stories published for children and teenagers during 2001-2006, 291 religious story books from information center of Iran's book home (Khaneye Ketab) were selected for evaluation. Twelve categories were recognized in which each book was subtitled under a subject category. By subject, those books that featured prophets' virtues, their histories and Imams' virtues and moral stories were ranked from one to three. Prophets' relatives and religious leaders have obtained the lowest ranking among others, though the total number of books under this category was not considerable. Among prophets, most of the books were allotted to Mohammad, Ibrahim and Josef and among Imams the highest ranking was belong to Imam Mahdi, Imam Ali and Imam Hussein. According to the presented issues, some suggestions are presented at the end.

For most of the psychologists who are working on the process of children's understanding of religious concepts it is a belief that teaching of religion to children should be delayed until they can acquire abstract thought. Through the present study, while it was critically assessed, this approach was presented. Referring to documents, the data required for the study was gathered and analyzed in both analytical-descriptive and critical-descriptive method. Results have showed that this approach faced with five basic challenges; first, the theoretical framework, in which religious education was studied and the research instrument for assessing religiosity were not reliable ones. Second, the uniqueness and complexity of religious development was ignored. Third, a vague interpretation of religious concepts was suggested. Forth, it was not conformed to the approach derived from sayings and the fifth, not only the delay in religious education has not been possible, but also it remains inadequate educational effects.