http://hdl.handle.net/2451/64553 Fri, 01 May 2026 10:11:54 GMT 2026-05-01T10:11:54Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/65757 Title: Meaning of a textbook: Religious education, National Islam, and the politics of reform in the United Arab Emirates Authors: Ozgen, Zeynep; El Shishtawy Hassan, Sharif Ibrahim Abstract: The organisation and content of Islamic education have been an object of Western scrutiny based on claims linking religious education to radicalism. Many Arab Gulf states have responded to such allegations with significant overhauls of their religious curricula. This article focuses on the politics of education reform in the United Arab Emirates. A detailed coding and analysis of 1500 pages of Islamic education textbooks reveal that religious education is a deeply politicised field. However, it promotes loyalty rather than radicalism. The reformed curriculum is used as a pedagogic tool by the state to advance national interpretations of Islam in support of domestic and international policy objectives, such as strengthening national identity against sub-national loyalties, securing political legitimacy, pacifying opposition, rebranding the state's international image, and spurring economic development. This article advances the existing scholarship by bringing in the international dimension of domestic education reform and the precise mechanisms that we call emulation and generalisation through which Islamic knowledge becomes functionalised for the state's nationalist goals. Thu, 08 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/65757 2021-07-08T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/2451/65756 Title: When global scripts do not resonate: International minority rights and local repertoires of diversity in Southern Turkey Authors: Ozgen, Zeynep; Koenig, Matthias Abstract: Under what conditions do global scripts resonate among ordinary people? Neo-institutional world polity theory has tended to sideline this question by privileging macro-comparative explanations of states’ adoption and social movement activists’ framing of global scripts. Adopting a negative case approach, we draw on concepts from cultural sociology to explain why global scripts fail to resonate among ethno-religious minorities in Antakya, Turkey. Antakya has been exposed intensely to global minority rights and multiculturalism discourses; it has been targeted by various ethnic movement activists, and its diverse population has long experienced stigma and discrimination stemming from Turkey’s model of nationhood. Yet, ordinary people there have seldom utilized global diversity scripts in their everyday struggles for recognition. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative fieldwork between 2004 and 2015, we find that global scripts fail to match people’s cultural schemas of perceiving and reproducing boundaries—their local repertoires of diversity—due to a deep-seated ambivalence toward the category of “minority.” This lack of resonance potentially weakens popular support for substantial policy reforms advancing minority rights and is one among several factors explaining why Turkey’s turn from an exclusionary to an inclusionary model of nationhood has remained largely ceremonial. Mon, 27 Dec 2021 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/2451/65756 2021-12-27T00:00:00Z