Heavenly Readings: Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context (New Perspectives on Language and Education, 9) - Hardcover

Rosowsky, Andrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1847690939 ISBN 13: 9781847690937

Verlag: Channel View Publications - IPSUK, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

This ethnographic study investigates for the first time in any significant depth the literacy practices associated with the religion of Islam as they are shaped, lived and experienced within a typical multilingual Muslim community in the United Kingdom. It seeks to counterbalance prevailing views on such practices which have often been misinformed, misrepresented and misunderstood. Making liberal recourse to the words, views and lives of its participants, this book describes, explores and celebrates liturgical literacy as a major contributor to group and individual cultural, linguistic and religious identities. In a political and social climate often inimical to religious practices in general, and to Islamic ones in particular, this book highlights the centrality and significance of such literacy practices to minority ethno-religious communities in their daily lives.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andrey Rosowsky was a secondary school teacher of English and Languages for twenty years spending most of his career working in multiethnic and multilingual schools in the UK and elsewhere. After spending three years working for a local authority as a literacy consultant, he joined the School of Education at the University of Sheffield in 2005 and now works in Initial Teacher Education.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Heavenly Readings

Liturgical Literacy in a Multilingual Context

By Andrey Rosowsky

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2008 Andrey Rosowsky
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84769-093-7

Contents

Acknowledgements, ix, 
Illustrations, 
Foreword, xiii, 
Part 1: The Study of Liturgical Literacy, 
1 Introduction to Liturgical Literacy, or Heavenly Readings, 3, 
2 The Community and its Ethnography, 28, 
Part 2: The Community and its Liturgical Literacy, 
3 Children, 41, 
4 Parents, 73, 
5 Teachers, 89, 
6 Organisers, 113, 
Part 3: The Settings for Liturgical Literacy, 
7 Mosques, 129, 
8 Liturgical Literacy in the Home, 158, 
9 Liturgical Literacy and School, 165, 
Part 4: The Languages of Liturgical Literacy, 
10 Urdu, 173, 
11 Mirpuri-Punjabi, 186, 
12 English, 198, 
13 Arabic, 207, 
Part 5: Concluding Remarks and Implications, 
14 Concluding Remarks, 219, 
Glossary, 229, 
References, 233, 
Index, 238, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Liturgical Literacy, or Heavenly Readings

This book aims to account for some of the social, cultural, linguistic and religious processes that give rise to what I shall call 'liturgical literacy'. Wagner et al. (1986) use the term 'religious literacy' to describe one of the objectives of having attended a Qur'anic school in urban or rural Morocco. Fishman (1989) uses 'religious classical' as a general category of language used for religious purposes only. I prefer 'liturgical' as it restricts the literacy involved to that used exclusively for ritual and devotional practices, which is the topic of this book, and, in itself, is a word intimately linked with notions of words, texts and scripts.

The domain of liturgical literacy is wide and complex. It has a long and often controversial history. Its place in the 21st century is also varied and contested. It has often had a bad press, particularly in its Islamic form, and compared unfavourably with other forms of literacy. Nearly 100 years ago, MacDonald, for example, emphasised the 'rote' nature of the learning involved:

It trains the memory and the power of reasoning – always in formal methods – and then gives to neither any adequate material on which to work. The memory is burdened with verbatim knowledge of the Qur'an and some outlines of Theology and law, and the reason is exhausted in elaborate argumentations there from deduced. (MacDonald, 1911: 228–289)

Another writer, much later in the century, echoed these sentiments with:

Qur'anic school imposes on the child a purely mechanical, monotonous form of study in which nothing is likely to rouse his interest. (Zerdoumi, 1970: 96)

And, at the beginning of the 21st century we even have Muslim writers weighing in with similar comments:

Inevitably, their experiences of rote learning without any understanding left them bored and alienated not only from the madrassah but from religion itself. (Lewis, 2001)

And when an attack on such literacy is not intended, writers often reveal their unconscious disapproval with value-laden words and expressions making invidious comparisons between learning how to read the Qur'an and Western learning as in Bledsoe and Robey:

Arabic is traditionally studied from the Qur'an under a karamoko (Arabic teacher, Islamic scholar) who demands stringent discipline, laborious work, and long-term commitments from his students. (Bledsoe & Robey, 1993: 116; my emphasis)

English (or any other non-liturgical literacy) is obviously taught and learnt effortlessly in an environment of perfect motivation needing only a short time for its mastery ...

This point of view can be interpreted, in many respects, as an example of that dismissive or condescending attitude to the East, and to Islam in particular, discussed by writers such as Said (1997) and Asad (2003). Although this book does not directly deal with Western attitudes to things oriental, it is relevant inasmuch as the marginalisation of literacies, which is one of the themes of this book, is a manifestation of a tendency in dominant cultures to emphasise, and thus exacerbate, cultural differences which, in turn, leads to 'othering', an elected ignorance and deliberate sidelining of alternative cultural practices. A lack of detailed knowledge about other cultures, forgivable if confessed, but criminal if suppressed, inevitably leads to unfounded generalisations and platitudes that inform nobody. In the bigger picture, which may involve communities, nations, or nation-blocs, this ignorance leads to stand-off, distrust and suspicion, with all that these positions may entail. And, indeed, since the events of September 11th 2001 and July 7th 2005, there is even more onus upon those who discuss and write about matters pertaining to aspects of Islamic culture or to Muslim communities to do so in an informed and intelligent manner. When discussing the Other in terms of literacy practices one is mindful of the responsibility to avoid short-cut assumptions and ascribing motives and to present as accurate and honest a description of the literacy practice as is possible whilst admitting any limitations on such a description as might arise.

Respect for the concrete detail of human experience, understanding that arises from viewing the Other compassionately, knowledge gained and diffused through moral and intellectual honesty: surely these are better, if not easier, goals at present than confrontation and reductive hostility. (Said, 1981: lxx)

However, it is not only Qur'anic liturgical literacy which is thus disparaged. Reder and Wikelund (1993) report that the Old Church Slavonic liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church still present in Alaska is being slowly but surely replaced by the dominant English literacy introduced by Baptists.

The technology of the Baptists' literacy was English-based and used the Roman alphabet, whereas the Orthodox literacy used Cyrillic script in Slavonic and Alutiiq. Few if any Orthodox parishioners understood the Slavonic services they attended; participation was by rote, and comprehension of the oral languages was limited. (Reder & Wikelund, 1993: 184)

Note here the substitution of not only language but also script (there are no linguistic reasons why Alutiiq could not be maintained with a Slavonic script). This colonising aspect of the seemingly neutral technology of a script is expanded upon below (Chapter 5: Teachers) where the script associated with a dominant language comes to be used for other languages. One might argue that a single script, when dealing with several languages, would be economic and more practical, allowing for the transfer of skills learnt acquiring the script in one language to facilitate learning literacy in another. It is rare that such a decision (one that is likely to be made officially once official resources come into play) is made solely on linguistic grounds. Rather, the dominant script will be adopted by default for political reasons. Azerbaijan is currently experiencing its fourth major alphabet change in a century. Originally using an Arabic-Persian script reflecting its geographical position and political ties to the Ottoman Empire, the language briefly flirted with Roman script immediately following the Communist takeover, was obliged to conform with the rest of the Soviet Union and adopt a form of Cyrillic, and is now once again attempting to re-introduce a Roman script in the light of the break-up of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Channel View Publications - IPSUK
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1847690939
• ISBN 13: 9781847690937
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland