Disrupting the educational racial contract of Islamophobia: racialized curricular expectations of Muslims in children’s literature

Teaching Jihad: Developing Religious Literacy through Graphic Novels

“…This false binary in the choice of being either Muslim or modern (i.e., Western) suggests that Muslims cannot have hybrid identities (Bhabha 2004). This reinforces Orientalist views of Muslims positioned in opposition to a more "enlightened," liberating, and modern West (Liou and Cutler 2020;Rauf 2005;Said 1997). In the graphic novels reviewed, each protagonist chose a future either physically located in the West (France) and/or aligned with progressive attitudes and behaviours.…”

“…As schools throughout the Western world seek to better understand Islam, non-Muslim educators turn to texts on topics related to Islam as a way to teach about the faith (Liou and Cutler 2020;Sian 2013). Yet, their questioning of the veracity of these texts and their capacity to impart meaningful understandings of Islam shapes their ability to develop students' religious literacy.…”

“…As a consequence, media representations have inordinately shaped non-Muslim views of Islam and its 1.8 billion adherents (Saleem et al 2017). This suggests an urgent need for non-Muslims in Western contexts to have access to accurate information about Islam, indicating schools as appropriate sites for imparting religious literacy (Baer and Glasgow 2010;Banks 2016;Liou and Cutler 2020).…”

“…This dynamism captures reader attention and can engender an emotive response and critical thinking (Cook and Kirchoff 2017). Graphic novels are an excellent avenue to improve literacy, especially for struggling readers (Jobe and Dayton-Sakari 1999;Tomasevich 2013), and as a tool for teachers to reinforce students' prior knowledge and understanding of themselves in relations to religious Others (Liou and Cutler 2020). They deepen learner understanding of literary elements (Bakis 2012) and develop textual analysis, critique, and higher order thinking skills (Burger 2018), irrespective of the content.…”

“…Further to this, other derogatory portrayals of Islam and Muslims are reinforced through the long-standing tradition in Western film, literature, cartoons, news outlets, and theatrical productions typecasting Muslims as exotic, dangerous, and untrustworthy (Esposito and Kalin 2011; Kincheloe and Steinberg 2004;Said 1997;Scott 2012;Shaheen 1994Shaheen , 2003Tagg 2009). These misrepresentations shape non-Muslims' extant perceptions (Esposito and Mogahed 2007) and raise concerns about the ways in which Muslims and Islamic concepts are portrayed in schools (Liou and Cutler 2020). Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to examine the often misunderstood and miscommunicated concept, jihad, in order to ascertain how it is represented in graphic novels, an increasingly popular medium of instruction in secondary classrooms, and how this may inform the development of religious literacy.…”