Abstract

The overthrow of despotic regimes in the Arab and Muslim world, and the struggle for national liberation cannot be educationally motivated because countries in the region lack defensible citizenship education programmes. My argument is that the dearth of citizenship education programmes in the Arab and Muslim world has left their education systems vulnerable to the dominance of authoritarian values, lack of opportunities for participation in governance and decision making, prevalence of non-democratic and corrupt political regimes, and the curtailment of freedom of speech and belief. One therefore can assume that the education systems in the Arab and Muslim world could not have done enough to teach citizens to be democratic and hence, my argument is that the ‘Arab Spring’ projects were not educationally inspired change in the Arab and Muslim world. Following such an analysis, I examine an Islamic education for cosmopolitanism, in particular what Muslim reformists ought to do to ensure the achievement of such an education.