A response to Brian Wakeman's email Saturday 11th June 2005, 09.57 in which
Brian asks,

"If you do not think it impertinent:
How does A/R relate to your Muslim faith?
Is there a dimension of A/R as spiritual practice?
How far would you say Islamic theology embraces thge cyclical throught
processes of A/R, of enquiry?"

Hello Brian, Impertinent, no; invitational, yes.

1.How does A/R relate to your Muslim faith?

i don't know, Brian. i really can't explain or account for how action
research relates to the many aspects, and expressions of Islam. From the
absence of Muslim writers in the Handbook of Action Research, from the AR
journal, from AR circles such as Bath University, i might draw an inference
that Action Research doesn't 'speak' to Islam. Perhaps i might suggest that
AR hasn't found a way of enticing Islamic voices, and participation, or AR
may appear from the visibility of its participants to be a white, European,
and Christian/Buddhist/Humanism-centrist space. A space that could seem
to 'represent' to sensitive Muslims those historical, social, ideological
and currently Islamophobic exclusions that whiteness-centred society seems
to savour in respect of Muslims, and our ways of expressing loyalty to
humanity. Thus, it is that AR spaces seem empty of Islamic educators and
scholars. Why, I don't know.

I can write about what i do. What i seem to do is infuse my explanations
and explorations of my approach to Action Research from the grounds of my
Progressive Islam. i call this emergent AR approach, 'Live Theorising'
(Murray, 2005). I try to explain to others why I am producing a 'Live
Theorising' thesis as the chosen expression for my postcolonial critical
pedagogy by making reference to my embodied values of progressive Islam:
pluralism; gender equality, and social justice.

In the everyday ordinariness of my educative practice i try to migrate
these embodied values from my propositional understandings held in the Holy
Qur'an into day to day 'live practices' of love as i work with students to
support them in appreciating and valuing their degree programme as an
opportunity for the further realization of their selfhood. I believe this
to be a live contribution to the evolution of postcolonialism in British
higher education in the sense that Don Macedo (2000) refers in Noam
Chomsky's Mis-Education, to a 'colonial education'.

i distinguish Macedo's use of 'colonial education' from that used by
Abdulrazak Gurnah in his novel, By The Sea, where Abdulrazak includes
within 'colonial education' all of those practices that strip him of his
indigenous stories and ways of knowing in the service of a civilizing
mission that confuses Christianity and white supremacy. Something we have
been witnesssing in Iraq in recent past, of course.

The late Edward Said reinforces Abdulrazak Gurnah's meaning of a 'colonial
education'in his work, Culture and Imperialism when he refers to the most
outrageous colonial intervention as the stifling of the Other's stories,
culture and ideology. From first and second person inquiry i can see this
as having a living veracity for me. My first person encounter with the Bath
Monday group in the period 1998-2002 was an encounter with the vestiges of
colonialism, whiteness and the very worst excesses of a white, liberal so-
called 'colour-blindness'. My second person encounter is with my fathers
and grandmother's colonial stories from South Africa told in the 'dark of
their Griqua non-white origins'(to subvert, invert and appropriate the use
of your phrase, Brian, 'He perceived it as racism, an unjust decision in
the 'light' of his Pakistani origin'. My experience is that i experience
racism and unjust decisions in the 'dark' of my mixed-race, white~brown
origins and Islamic performativity of self).

2. Is there a dimension of A/R as spiritual practice?

i don't know the answer to this either. There isn't for me.
i can say i 'know' that little.

But then again i have a bias. My interest in AR is not in influencing
the 'dominant' social formations of AR practitioners to explore issues of
AR and spirituality.

Instead, my bias and interest is in influencing AR practitioners and
scholars to consider integrating what they seem to have forgotten in their
accounts: the psycho-social, the sociocultural, the hegemonic third person
analyses of state violence, for example. In integrating these third person
sociocultural analyses into LET accounts, I believe that a more realistic
rendering of 'agency' AND 'structure' (determinism) can take place. In this
way, the third person significance of much first and second person AR work
can be more widely appreciated than i believe it to be just now. I could be
mistaken in this insight.

In contemporary AR, the personal and professional elements of Susan
Noffke's three 'P's seem to be extant in LET accounts for example. Yet
the 'political' dimension in the sense of a politics of hegemonic power
relations, of whiteness as racism, of postcolonialism as a continuation of
white supremacy, seems to be absent from LET accounts. I'm hoping
that 'Live Theorising' (Murray, 2005) will contribute to addressing this
omission and complement the wonderfully rich first and second person
narratives that hallmark those LET accounts legitimated in the Academy.

I also perceive that Pushkala Prasad's (2005, Crafting qualitative
research) third tradition of the 'Post' is missing from across the range of
AR accounts.

Prasad believes that postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism
are the three elements in "The Tradition of the 'Posts'" that are now
influencing qualititive research perspectives. I can see, in LET accounts
for example, and in AR journal articles, how postmodernism and
poststructuralism are being addressed: but what of Postcolonialism? This
colour-full tradition of the 'Post'is still being woefully ignored, and
either excluded from AR circles, spirals and cycles, and/or not
sufficiently being invited into AR circles/spirals/cycles. This is how it
seems to me, out here, on the margin. Where is the postcolonial enquiry
within contemporary AR?

Because i am a postcolonial critical pedagogue I 'imagine' I can't possibly
be an Action Researcher, as well!

How could this situation be improved? By the presence of practitioners and
scholars in AR who share a certain ethics and politics of Postcolonialism,
perhaps. Perhaps a more inclusive 'colour-sighted' sensitivity on the part
of Action Researchers? What is it about AR spaces that don't seem to be
invitational for Postcolonial activists, practitioners and scholars?
Postcolonialism is a form of praxis and practice after all.

I suppose, Brian, i'm responding to your question about spirituality by
asserting the importance of putting the 'P's of politics and tradition of
the 'Post - Postcolonialism - into AR.

As for spirtituality: i satisfy my spirituality through Islam, my extended
family relationships, and the dialogic relationships held in my
postcolonial critical pedagogy with those i teach (such as that with
Polykarpos, a Christian minister, Greek, whose Action Masters thesis i
supervised, and who is here to talk with me now about the supervision of
his doctoral enquiry into the dialectics of 'managing' in the Salvation
Army while trying to find his own spiritual 'salvation').


3.How far would you say Islamic theology embraces the cyclical thought
processes of A/R, of enquiry?"

Islam, especially Progressive Islam, provides me with a process of enquiry
not dogmatism. I like Jelloun's notion that Islam is an 'umaa' (a community
of practice in belief) that has a history of agonistic dialogue in
community. Traditionally this has been gendered without doubt, and sadly,
without shame: my Islam would invite women into the very fabric of
agonistic dialogue. I draw no distinction between sexism and racism: both
are a treason to humanity.

The early Islamic schools of Al Andalus (Medieval Spain)
practised 'convivencia', the inclusion in equality of all religious beliefs
of the book. My Islam would extend this 'convivencia' spirit of enquiry to
many more religious and belief-systems:  for example, Sikh, Hindu,
Buddhist, Jain, Zoroastrian... and so on. Here is where pluralism beats a
powerful resonance in Progressive Islam.

Islamic enquiry as a feature of one's faith is classically a 'first person
action/reflection enquiry' within a space of mutual availability with
Allah. There is no interlocutory priest. Yet there is the second and third
person forms of dialogue and influence, and peer review too. There is umaa,
the Masjid, the Sheikh, and there are the numerous dialogical communities
associated with multiple interpretations of the 'hadith', the storied and
narrative knowledge of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him.

Brian, i find that AR processes are easily integrated within my Progressive
Islam.

What is more troublesome to me is knowing how mutual and two-way this
relationship is, and what is my evidence that AR communities hold out an
embrace of Islamic ways of knowing, and Islamic processes of dialogue and
dialectics?

If my 'Live Theorising' doctoral thesis, supervised by Jack, is legitimated
in the Academy I may come back to this question of evidence with a vitally
different perspective.

Best
Yaqub-Paul