Religion, War, and Terror: Insights and Safety Lessons for Educators

It is far beyond time that we begin looking more closely outside our own borders and examine violence in schools in other countries to more fully understand where we fair in this worldwide tragedy. This chapter begins that long trek by probing into school settings in a war-torn region of Iraq, which deals daily with terrorism. Herein can be found two personal accounts about their feeling, perceptions, and experiences in Iraq regarding religion, war, and terror. Through these depictions of their experiences, qualitative information can be gleaned. Each shares through their particular lenses, personal thoughts and ideas, percepts and concepts, feelings and emotions, and ideas and information from Iraq about these three areas. Their writing purposefully touches on aspects of historic, religious, military, and economic reality surrounding violence in Iraq, including in the education setting. The hope is that from these portrayals will facilitate in better educating worldwide audiences including international higher educators and leaders, Pre-K–12 school teachers, administrators, parents, and students. Maturing understanding on religion, war, and terror, by exposing hidden violence in schools abroad, may also help leaders frame future strategies to alter multinational fear increasing collective knowledge. An informed citizenry is after all ideal. Like this section of the text alludes, the war on knowledge development in non-/secular education is increasing at an alarming rate, and that is why the very first step to begin to contemplate how to best prevent violence is to more fully comprehend it from diverse lenses and varied perspectives.