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Links these reflections to a children’s picture book about Alia Muhammad Baker, a Basra librarian who protected 30,000 books during the American invasion, even as war threatened to erase both texts and the meaning educators attribute to truth.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":15,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/learning-not-to-speak-in-tongues-thoughts-on-the-librarian-of-basra/597328/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/learning-not-to-speak-in-tongues-thoughts-on-the-librarian-of-basra/597328.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Blue Pony","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-21","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":8},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"How does the text contrast educational approaches across time?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"It contrasts contemporary “Taliban-like” schools of rote repetition and authoritarian literalism with a more generous historical relationship to knowing found in some Islamic scholarship.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"Who is Alia Muhammad Baker, and why is she central to the argument?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Alia Muhammad Baker is the Basra librarian who secretly moved 30,000 books to protect them during the American invasion, and her story is used to examine what educators should do with questions of truth.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What broader concern does the article connect to the Basra narrative?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"It frames war as both damaging to material life and threatening to the fragility of knowledge, treating books as ideological motives and unintended victims of conflict.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},597328,1792590048,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":14,"category_name":15,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":8,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145},962090760266,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_276721f389ce27ea32af1340a28f341c","LEARNING NOT TO SPEAK IN TONGUES: THOUGHTS ON THE LIBRARIAN OF BASRA  \nDavid Jardine & Rahat Naqvi University of Calgary  \nWe explore the nature of knowledge and education and how Islamic traditions have shaped understanding of these matters. We contrast this with contemporary images of “Taliban‐like” schools full of rote repetition and harsh, authoritarian literalism. Some of the history of Islamic scholarship venerates a much more generous relation‐ ship to knowing. We link these explorations to a recently published children’s picture book, a true story about a librarian in Basra, Iraq, during the recent American in‐ vasion. Even if it is a “true story,” we consider what its truth is and whether educators might or should or could stand by this truth.  \nKey words: Islamic philosophy, curriculum knowledge, knowledge formation, politics and education, multiculturalism  \nNous explorons ici la nature du savoir et de lʹéducation et comment la tradition islamique a modelé leur compréhension. Nous comparons les images contemporaines des écoles « style Taliban » qui sont faites de « par cœur » et de litéralité dure et autoritaire avec certaines écoles dans lʹhistoire de lʹIslam qui affichent une plus grande générosité face au savoir. Nous établissons un lien entre ces notions et un livre illustré pour enfants récemment publié, une histoire vécue dʹun libraire de Basra, en Iraq, pendant la récente invasion américaine. Même si cette histoire est une « histoire vraie », nous considérons sa valeur et nous pensons que les éducateurs pourraient accepter cette vérité ou même quʹils devraient lʹaccepter.  \nMots clés: philosophie de lʹIslam, connaissance du curriculum, formation du savoir,éducation et politiques, multiculturalisme  \n__________________________  \nCANADIAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 31, 3 (2008): 639‐666  \n“In the Koran, the first thing God said to Muhammad was ‘Read.’”  \nAlia Muhammad Baker, from the New York Times, July 27, 2003  \nI  \nThe passage cited above forms the frontispiece to a wonderful new children’s picture book written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter (2005) entitled The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq. At the early outset of the American invasion of Iraq, the librarian in question, Alia Muhammad Baker, took it upon herself to protect the 30,000 books in the library in Basra, Iraq, where she had worked for 14 years. The library had been “a meeting place for all who love books”(p. 2), but now, the only talk was not of books but of impending war: “Alia worries that the fires of war will destroy the books, which are more precious to her than mountains of gold . . . books in every language, new books, ancient books, even a biography of Muhammad that is seven hundred years old”(p. 3) . After being refused official permission to act, she began secretly putting books into her car and taking them, first to a nearby restaurant belonging to her friend Anis, and then, eventually, after the library was burned to the ground, to her home and the homes of her friends.  \nAt first blush, it is difficult to avoid parallels thoughts of Hypatia (c. 350‐415 CE) and her failed attempt to protect the Library of Alexandria from ruin (see Smith, 2006b). The ruin of the Alexandrian library is often cited as one of the initiating gestures of what later became known as the“Dark Ages”(Humphreys, 2004). Jeanette Winter’s seemingly simple tale thus involves profound questions and images regarding the nature of knowledge and its safe‐keeping. It evokes thoughts of the ravages of war not only regarding the materiality and flesh of our lives, but also regarding the fragility of knowledge itself and how often it has been both the ideological motive and innocent victim of embattlement and war.  \nWhat educators have with this simple children’s book is an image of taking care of knowledge in difficult and dark times, our time, this time, under the current shadow of war consciousness (Jardine, 2006; see also Gray, 2001, 2003; Jardine, 2004, 2005,","cbCais1BkX4XxhB9","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCais1BkX4XxhB9","pdf",345175,28,"English","# I\n## The librarian’s story and questions of knowledge and truth\n# II\n## St. Augustine and Petrarch as lenses on “darkness”","[{\"question\":\"How does the text contrast educational approaches across time?\",\"answer\":\"It contrasts contemporary “Taliban-like” schools of rote repetition and authoritarian literalism with a more generous historical relationship to knowing found in some Islamic scholarship.\"},{\"question\":\"Who is Alia Muhammad Baker, and why is she central to the argument?\",\"answer\":\"Alia Muhammad Baker is the Basra librarian who secretly moved 30,000 books to protect them during the American invasion, and her story is used to examine what educators should do with questions of truth.\"},{\"question\":\"What broader concern does the article connect to the Basra narrative?\",\"answer\":\"It frames war as both damaging to material life and threatening to the fragility of knowledge, treating books as ideological motives and unintended victims of conflict.\"}]","LEARNING NOT TO SPEAK IN TONGUES - THOUGHTS ON THE LIBRARIAN OF BASRA | PDF",1792084821,43]