ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the transcript of an interview conducted with Professor Mohammed Rustom on the teaching of ‘aqida (creed) as embodied in curricular documents that are commonly used in Western Islamic schools and also Islamic education national curricula from a handful of Muslim majority contexts. In the interview, Rustom drives home the importance and necessity of revising the entire way that the teaching of Islamic creed is conceptualized and taught to students in the K-12 age group. He emphasizes the importance of connecting the conveyance of the Muslim articles of faith to the Islamic tradition as written about and lived by some of its most important and historically influential representatives, such as Ghazali, ‘Ayn al-Qudat, Rumi, and Ibn ‘Arabi. Another point of emphasis in the interview is the necessity of making creedal matters interesting and meaningful to students through the various ways in which Muslim theological beliefs have been communicated, that is, not only through dry scholastic prose, but also through other manners of artistic expression, such as story-telling, poetry, music, and art.
