Introduction

Although it has been vociferously and energetically promoted in the Western media in the wake of 11 September 2001, the issue of reforming Islamic thought is hardly new. One of the United States (us) administration’s justifications for extending its war on terrorism by invading Iraq, has been the urgent need to bring political and economic — not to mention cultural — reformation to the entire Arab world by force. This us project of reformation includes religious education, whereby school curricula would be sanitized of religious elements that reflected any type of discrimination whether it be religious, ethical, or gender-based. Instead, under the proposed American reformation, religious education should enhance the values of freedom, equality, justice, and prosperity. Of course, enforcing given values is also not new. This approach echoes similar demands by previous colonial powers in Muslim countries in the 18th and 19th centuries.