ہماری دُعا میں اثر ہی کہاں تھا
بھلا بے وفا وہ بشر ہی کہاں تھا
میں گھر کیوں نہیں جاتا سب پوچھتے ہیں
کہوں اب میں کیا میرا گھر ہی کہاں تھا
تجھے مانگنے کے سوا دشمنِ جاں
گرا اپنا سجدے میں سر ہی کہاں تھا
جو آباد تھا کس قدر اُس کے دم سے
بغیر اُس کے ویسا نگر ہی کہاں تھا
زمانے کی حدت سے مجھ کو بچاتا
رہِ عشق میں وہ شجر ہی کہاں تھا
This article shows the Islam and its followers (Arabs) had created a civilization that played very important role on the world stage for more than a thousand years. One of the most important specific qualities of the Islamic civilization is that it is a well-balanced civilization that brought together science and faith, struck a balance between spirit and matter and did not separate this world from the Hereafter. The Islamic civilization in Spain encompasses many fields that left a profound imprint in the Iberian Peninsula and Europe. The cultural climate of Spain in the era of Muslim rule (711-1492) brought about a prospering of different aspects of science and culture. Numerous schools and libraries were established and books were procured due to which the majority of the people were literate. Literature and art flourished. Buildings were constructed and Islamic art with its specific qualities was cultivated. Because of that movement, Cordoba became the civilization capital of both Spain and the West in general. Many schools were established in it, such as medical and technical schools in addition to the general education and other vocational schools. Hospitals, chemical plants and observatories were also built.
This research study aims at exploring narratives of experiences and practices of teachers of English in order to understand how these life stories shape and transform teachers’ personal and professional identities in the process of becoming teachers in the multilingual context of Karachi, Pakistan. Researching teachers’ personal and professional identity constructs is very crucial and significant in order to understand them as individuals and to see how they make sense of their experiences throughout their personal and professional lives and careers, which in turn guide their English language teaching and learning practices in their respective contexts. In order to understand the complex phenomenon of teachers’ identity construction, this study is conceptualized within a narrative framework, exploring teachers’ stories that develop over the passage of time, within their knowledge landscapes and contextual realities, shaping their storied identities of personal and professional selves. To facilitate this in-depth exploration, the study undertook narrative inquiry as its research design. It explored identity construction of two teachers of English; Faiza and Danish from private and public school systems in Karachi, with a gender balance perspective. The field data was collected in nine-month period using a variety of narrative inquiry tools (i.e. observations, storytelling, in-depth interviews, field notes and document analysis) and art-based research tools (i.e. autobiographical storylines, drawings, metaphors and pictures) in order to assist the exploration of teachers’ stories in a creative narrative form that further helped to situate the study within the ‘three dimensional inquiry space’ (Clandinin & Connelly, 2006). The research participants used autobiographical story-lines and metaphors to describe their identity construction. Faiza storied herself while running on her life’s race track and Danish un-revealed his multi-layered onion layered-self, describing his multiple roles wearing different hats. Through these storylines and metaphors, they presented their multiple identities that have developed with the passage of time, experience and situation, and shaped and evolved their personality into who they were, are and aspire to be. From the narratives of the two teachers, it was seen that the complexity of their identity construction lies in their creative portrayals of the way they perceive and represent themselves as persons and as professional teachers of English. This element of teachers’ creativity has facilitated in exploring the multifaceted phenomenon of teachers’ identities under study. Also, the metaphor of ‘creativeness’ has added value in characterizing and understanding the complexity of teachers’ identity construction in the existing literature. The study highlights