Farah Ahmed
Agency WIthin Relationality: formations of a dialogic Muslim-self

This paper draws on a Bakhtinian ontology putting it into conversation with neo-Ghazalian and Akbarian thought on relationality and selfhood. This allows for exploration of Islamic conceptualisations of personal agency and selfhood in a secular-liberal context. It theorises shakhsiyah Islamiyah as an educational aim that addresses the challenge of Muslim selfhood in a modern and postmodern world. Shakhsiyah Islamiyah is understood as an agentic dialogical Muslim-self, reflexive in its relationality with self, community, and God, and existing in dialogue with the non-Muslim other. A Vygotskian lens allows the development of a pedagogical approach that meets this educational aim.

Farah Ahmed is Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She convenes the ‘Cultural, religious and philosophical traditions in educational dialogue’ strand of the Cambridge Educational Dialogue Research group. Her current project is: Rethinking Islamic education for British Muslim children: a philosophical investigation of dialogue in Islamic educational theory and an empirical study trialling dialogic pedagogy in Muslim educational contexts. Farah has published widely on holistic Islamic educational approaches and is founder and Director of Education at Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation. She is also Founding Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching.