Karen Armstrong’s Works on the Life and Mission of the Last Prophet (S. A. W.): A Critique of Her Distortion of Historical Truths

Karen Armstrong is a well-known prolific writer on Christianity, Islam, and Prophet Muhammad. She appears in her writings very much objective. In her books on the Las Prophet (s. a. w.) “Muhammad: A Biography of The Prophet and “Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Times” she generally appears to be attempting, unlike many Orientalists, to creat soft image of the Last Prophet (s. a. w.) . Methodologically he works may be considered highly appreciable but from historical angle she seems to have distorted certain evidenc related to the Last Prophet (s. a. w.) . The basic reason for such lapse in her books is that she did not consult the original and basic authentic sources of Islamic history. This articl analyses where she faltered in her presentation of historica truths concerning the Last Prophet (s. a. w.) .

Creating Professional Learning Community Through Appreciative Inquiry Approach

Schools always strive to improve the quality of education by strengthening, and making the teaching and learning process more effective. For this aspect, school provides opportunities to the teachers to bring effectiveness in their performance by arranging professional development sessions or workshops. However, teachers require continuous support on regular basis for their capacity building. Thus it requires developing a culture of professional learning community (PLC) that not only provides support to teachers on regular basis for their development, but also builds a collaborative learning environment for the teachers. With this objective, this study explored the factors that were required for creating the environment based on PLC in the school particularly in the ECD context. Further, this study also identified the processes that helped to build PLC using appreciative inquiry approach. In addition, the support of appreciative inquiry as an approach for building PLC was also measured. In this regard, eight research participants were selected who were involved in four stages of appreciative inquiry i.e. discovery, dream, design and destiny. The data revealed that trust, collaborative learning and reflective dialogue were some of the factors that are required for creating a PLC environment. However, three processes for initiating PLC culture were included which are classroom teaching and observation, constructive feedbacks and reflective dialogue sessions. At the end, this research found that appreciative inquiry approach was significant as a value-added tool that helped to build the collaborative environment in the school and provided participants an opportunity to share their skills and expertise as well as their dreams and imaginations with each other.