Muhammad Faour is no longer with the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Muhammad Faour was a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center, where his research focused on education reform in Arab countries, with an emphasis on citizenship education.
Prior to joining Carnegie, Faour was a research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at York University in Canada, where he studied social change and demography of the Middle East as well as conflict analysis and resolution. From 2007 to 2010, he was president of Dhofar University in Salalah, Oman. Faour also served as deputy vice president for regional external programs at the American University of Beirut (AUB) from 2000 to 2007. In that capacity, he led teams of AUB professors and staff in planning and implementing education projects that aimed to establish new universities, colleges, and primary and secondary schools in several Arab countries. Prior to that, Faour was professor of sociology for more than fifteen years and chaired AUB’s Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences.
A recipient of numerous prestigious awards and fellowships, Faour has also been a visiting researcher at several U.S. universities including Georgetown, the University of California at Berkeley, and George Mason as well as a peace fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.
In addition to his academic work, Faour has served as a consultant to several United Nations agencies, Lebanese foundations, and NGOs and was a founding member of the Lebanese Association of Sociology.
Faour is the author of several books and monographs, including The Silent Revolution in Lebanon: Changing Values of the Youth and The Arab World after Desert Storm, and the co-author of University Students in Lebanon: Background and Attitudes (with Adnan El-Amine). His work has also been published in numerous journals, including Middle Eastern Studies.
The school system in Syria has failed to be a crucial incubator of social and cultural understanding—notably when it comes to Islamic education. The effects of this failure are keenly felt today as Syria suffers sectarian conflict and a surge of religious intolerance.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, together with the Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development, held a regional conference in Kuwait City to consider the role of citizenship education in the Arab transitions.
Despite paying lip service to reform, many Arab nations’ education programs fail to prepare students to become contributing members of open, pluralistic systems.
While Qatar and Lebanon fared well in the World Economic Forum’s latest Global Competitiveness Report, the study's reliance on business executive assessments casts doubt on the accuracy of its education rankings.
With the rise of Islamists across the Arab world, there is a possibility that the new parties in power will update education curricula to reflect conservative Islamic beliefs.
The Islamist ascent to power in parts of the Arab world has stirred up concerns about the effect this Islamist rise might have on education in the region.
Absent a good education environment, there is little room for the Arab world’s youth to turn into responsible citizens who can consolidate and stimulate social transformation to bring about more prosperous and free societies.
Unless Cairo acts to promote tolerance and understanding of various religious identities to truly build a democratic, pluralistic society, sectarian conflict will continue to plague Egypt.
Arab countries will only become economically competitive and reliably democratic if they start teaching youth to think critically and respect different points of view.
While reforming education in the emerging democracies of the Middle East may prove more challenging than political democratization, without it, the future of democracy will remain tenuous at best.
