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Pedagogical Implications of American Muslims’ Views on Evolution

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Evolution Education Around the Globe

Abstract

American Muslims’ rates of acceptance of evolution and those of the population as a whole are similar, because they form three groups: those who accept both macroevolution and microevolution for all species, those who accept macroevolution for all species except humans, and those who reject macroevolution for all species, and because people who have one way of negotiating the relationship between science and religion may be resistant to adopting another method of negotiating this relationship. A difference is that American Muslims generally accept an old age for the Earth, whether or not they accept evolution. Pedagogical implications of these views for Muslims are that curricula could be sequenced to teach microevolution before macroevolution, and that a robust treatment of both the science supporting evolutionary theory and important NOS concepts could help students avoid common misconceptions promoted by American creationists. Introducing students to different methods of negotiating the relationship between religion and science, and to practicing Muslim evolutionary biologists and Muslims from the past who developed proto-evolutionary theories, might help them to view acceptance of evolution in a more favorable light.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All translations of the Quran from the Arabic are my own unless otherwise noted.

  2. 2.

    From Sahih al Bukhari Vol. 4, Book #55, Hadith #543 retrieved from http://sunnah.com/bukhari/60.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, USA

    Khadija E. Fouad

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  1. Khadija E. Fouad
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Correspondence to Khadija E. Fouad .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Education, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

    Hasan Deniz

  2. College of Education, Health, and Human Services, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, USA

    Lisa A. Borgerding

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Fouad, K.E. (2018). Pedagogical Implications of American Muslims’ Views on Evolution. In: Deniz, H., Borgerding, L. (eds) Evolution Education Around the Globe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90939-4_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90939-4_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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