Education

More...

A Holistic and Institutional Analysis of Islamic Education

Knowledge is the source of economic, social, and political energy as well as divine enlightenment. An individual or a nation succeeds only by gaining and using beneficial knowledge. Gaining useful knowledge and using it for a proper cause for the pleasure of Allah is emphasized in Islam. The Qur’an mentions repeatedly the importance of knowledge (Qur’an 30:22, 36:36, 39:9, 58:11). The Prophet also emphasized the importance of acquiring knowledge in many contexts: “A person who follows the path of acquiring knowledge, Allah will make easy for him/her the passage to paradise” (Muslim) and “A person who goes out of his/her house in search of knowledge, he/she is on Allah’s way till the person returns” (Tirmidhi).

• Mawdudur Rahman

Designing the Islamic Component of a Proposed World Religion Curriculum for South African State Schools

An aspect of curriculum policy-making under the past Nationalist government had to do with policy being used to develop and impose the state’s nationalist and religious ideology - Christian National Education - on all schools in South Africa after its assumption of power in 1948. One consequence of this policy was that the rich diversity of South Africans as a people holding to multiple, positive, and idiosyncratic beliefs linked to various communal identities was sacrificed to a state-imposed pseudo-commonality. Part of the challenge of educational reconstruction under the democratic government elected in April 1994 is to develop curricula that both recognize the diversity of positive ideals, beliefs, and faith while remaining impartial, if not agnostic,’ toward any one belief and to contribute to the development of a new and shared national identity.

• Ray Basson
• Zein Cajee

The Golden Generation: Integration of Muslim Identity with the World through Education

Turkey is a crucible in which Eastern and Western civilizations, secular ideas, and Islamic tradition merge. Using ideas born in the Turkish context, Fethullah Gülen and his followers have developed and put into practice an educational system that combines the strengths of both European and Islamic cultures, cultivating students of academic achievement in the sciences who possess deep ethical grounding. Founded in universal values of honesty, hard work, harmony and conscientious service, Gülen’s model appeals to people with a wide range of beliefs. Through Gülen’s teachings, this educational system stresses the compatibility of science with Islam and aims to bring up people equipped with the moral values and knowledge to use science for the benefit of mankind.

• S Kirmizialtin
• Y Yildirim

The Future of Muslim Education in the United States: An Agenda for Research

This paper addresses some of the Muslim community’s concerns regarding its children’s education and reflects upon how education has shaped the position of other communities in American history. It argues that the future of Muslim education will be influenced directly by the present realities and future trends within American education in general, and, more importantly, by the well-calculated and informed short-term and long-term decisions and future plans taken by the Muslim community. The paper identifies some areas in which a well established knowledge base is critical to making decisions, and calls for serious research to be undertaken to furnish this base.

• Fathi Malkawi

Perceptions Of Islamic Educators About The Conflict Between Conservative And Secular Muslims Regarding Islamic Education And The Teaching Of Science, Philosophy, And Mythical Stories To Muslim Students.

Ali, Yacob Mohammad, Ph.D. The University of Oklahoma, 2000. 153 pages. Adviser: McQuarrie, Frank. Publication No: AAT 9985571

This qualitative study explores the perceptions of Islamic educators in a southwestern state about the conflict between Islamic secularism and conservatism regarding the education of Muslim students. It also examines these educators’ perceptions as to whether science, philosophy, and mythical stories contradict Islam, and whether these educators can teach these topics to Muslim students. Semi-structured, in-depth, face-to-face interviews were used to collect data that were analyzed using grounded-theory methodology. Analysis showed convergent and divergent views about Islamic education. Many perceived a conflict between Islamic secularism and conservatism in education and were pessimistic about a compromise between the two groups. Almost all of the participants perceived a harmony between science and Islam including astronomy. However, as related to the teaching of Darwin’s theory of evolution, philosophy and mythical stories, supporting, opposing, and ambivalent views were expressed.

• Yacob Mohammad Ali

What Are The Perceptions, Problems, And Concerns Of Female Pakistani Students Attending Secondary Level Public School In The United States?

Spencer, Sharon Michelle, Ph.D. 2000. 232 pages. University of Houston. Adviser: Carspecken, Phil. Publication Number: AAT 9989832

Muslims comprise a significant percentage of the world’s population (Lippmann, 1994). Muslims form a growing percentage of the population in the United States, and each year more and more Muslim students enter America’s public schools (Siddiqui, 1998). Many of these Muslim students are Pakistani. A group such as Pakistani secondary school-age females attending public schools in the United States, the focus of this qualitative study, is important because they are both Muslim and Asian, and therefore, often experience the problems that come with being members of either of these groups in America. Being Muslim and female also poses challenges to the students. In addition, they are a relatively overlooked subgroup among both Asians and Muslims. Multicultural Education has become important, and is one solution for the concerns and problems of Pakistani public school adolescents (Banks 1988; Sleeter, 1988; Ladson-Billings, 1992; Bennett, 1992); global education too, has taken on great significance (Hanvey, 1979), especially as the conflicts and misunderstandings between the West and Islam, as well as in the global society continue. The responses received from these five participants could not be treated as a sample that comprehensively represents the population. However, from these five cases, the thorough analysis certainly yielded data from which a broadly applicable theory could be constructed.

• Sharon Michelle Spencer

The Influence of Islam, Gender Roles, and Social Class on Educational Attainment of Pakistanis in Los Angeles County and Lahore, Pakistan

Abu Halimeh, Debbie Ismat, Ed D. Azusa Pacific University, 2000. 101 pages. Adviser: Rooney, Patrick. Publication Number: AAT 3001506.

Educational patterns are greatly affected by numerous factors such as cultural values, gender roles, economics, and religion. This study analyzed socioeconomic factors and the influence of Islamic practices on the educational attainment of Pakistanis in Los Angeles County and Lahore, Pakistan. The methodology of the study included a total of 270 written surveys that were distributed by mail, in person at an Islamic Center in Los Angeles County, at a Pakistani community in Culver City, and in Lahore, Pakistan. A total of 85 responses were received among which were 40 males, 35 females, and 10 children. A total of 55 respondents were selected for in-depth interviews which were conducted in Los Angeles and in Lahore.

• Debbie Ismat
• Abu Halimeh

Krashen Apostasy: Popular Religion, Education, and the Contest over Tatar Identity (1856–1917) (Russia)

Kefeli-Clay, Agnes, Ph. D. Arizona State University, 2001. 437 pages. Adviser: Batalden, Stephen. Publication Number AAT 3004116.

Located on the frontier between Islam and Eastern Orthodoxy, the baptized Tatars of the Russian Empire, the Krshens provide an excellent field for exploring the ways that both colonizers and colonized used education and religion to forge new identities. In the late nineteenth century, the Krshens, descendants of Muslim, nominal Muslim, and animist Volga Tatars who had converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity before 1800, were subject to several great experiments in education. Muslim Tatars sought to win them for Islam, and Orthodox Russians struggled to keep them from apostatizing from Christianity to Islam. Before the 1917 revolution, several cultural systems, including popular Orthodoxy, mystical Islam, animism, and Islamic modernism, competed for allegiance in the middle Volga.

• Agnes KefeliClay

Faith in our Schools? A Study in Portraiture of Three Teachers of Religion (Massachusetts, Susan McCaslin, Jack Heidbrink, Jonathan Yu-Phelps)

Garfield, Eliza Newell, Ed.D. Harvard University, 2000. 525 pages. Adviser: Lawrence-Lightfoot, Sara. Publication Number: AAT 9968303.

American classrooms at the dawn of the twenty-first century are as religiously pluralistic as they have ever been, yet like the public sphere they are preparing their students to join, classrooms are often the sights of religious controversies, misunderstandings, and prejudice. In the last decade of the twentieth century, controversies involving religion and schools have drawn increasing attention – in the press, in the courts, and among many diverse constituencies affected by issues of religion and education. Among this increasingly loud debate two constituencies are often overlooked: teachers and students.

• Eliza Newell

The Islamic Concept of Education Reconsidered

Some authors have analyzed the Islamic concept of education in parallel to the assumed contrast between Islam and the liberal tradition. Hence, given the latter’s rationalist tendencies, an almost indoctrinatory essence is assumed for the Islamic concept of education. However, we argue that rationality is involved in all elements of the Islamic concept of education. There might be some differences between the Islamic and liberal conceptions of rationality, but these are not so sharp that the derivative Islamic concept of education can be equated with indoctrination. We suggest an Islamic concept of education that includes three basic elements: knowledge, choice, and action. Then, we show that, according to the Islamic texts, these elements have a background of wisdom.

• Khosrow Bagheri
• Zohreh Khosravi

Intellectualism in Higher Islamic Traditional Studies: Implications for the Curriculum

The number of faculties and universities offering Islamic traditional sciences or studies has slowly increased over the past decades. However, the Islamic community has not felt their graduates’ impact other than as teachers or religious personnel. In fact, if the criteria used to assess Islamic education is the growth of a genuine, original, and adequate Islamic thought or intellectualism, then most of these institutions have failed to provide such an education. I examine the goals and curriculum of higher Islamic education and the conditions conducive for the growth of intellectualism. I argue that poor pedagogy, which does not offer teaching methods that encourage critical and ethical thinking, contributed to the state of affairs. Further, I argue that the basic problem is the inadequate conceptualization of knowledge as regards Islamic epistemology in the curriculum and the lack of academic freedom. I assert that the issue of what knowledge is most valuable for today’s intellectual and ethical Muslims has not been resolved and that this affects the curriculum structure and, inevitably, the programs of Islamic traditional sciences. The need to reintroduce Islamic philosophy into the curriculum is one of this article’s major arguments. 

• Rosnani Hashim

Secularism and Spirituality: Seeking Integrated Knowledge and Success in Madrasah Education in Singapore

Noor Aisha Abdul Rahman and Lai Ah Eng, eds., Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies & Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2006. 191 pages.

This compilation provides a systematic overview of the development and challenges of Islamic education in Singapore. After the introduction by Noor Aishah and Lai Ah Eng, Chee Min Fui focuses on the historical evolution of madrasah education (chapter 1) and Mukhlis Abu Bakar highlights the tension between the state’s interest and the citizens’ right to an Islamic education (chapter 2). In chapter 3, Noor Aishah elaborates on the fundamental problem of the madrasah’s attempt to lay the educational foundation of both traditional and rational sciences. Azhar Ibrahim surveys madrasah reforms in Indonesia, Egypt, India, and Pakistan in chapter 4, while Afiza Hashim and Lai Ah Eng narrate a case study of Madrasah Ma`arif in chapter 5. Tan Tay Keong (chapter 6) examines the debate on the national policy of compulsory education in the context of the madrasah, and Syed Farid Alatas (chapter 7) clarifies the concept of knowledge and Islam’s philosophy of education, which can be used to assess contemporary madrasah education.

• Noor Aisha Abdul Rahman
• Lai Ah Eng

Teaching the Study of Muslim Minorities in Higher Education in the United Kingdom

In this paper, I reflect on my experiences of teaching sociology of Islam at an elite British university: the University of Birmingham. As a trained economist with postgraduate degrees in social science and sociology and as a former Whitehall civil servant, my foray into the world of Islamic studies has only been recent. Indeed, it was the events relating to British Muslim minorities between 1999 and 2001 (namely, the arrests, trial, and sentencing in relation to the mostly Birmingham-born “Seven in Yemen” in 1999; the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC; and the urban disturbances in northern England 2001) that propelled me to interact with this vast and rich field of learning and scholarship. These three events compounded matters in relation to identity politics, Islamism, and international political economy. Having already researched and written on matters related to education and class,1 entrepreneurship and culture,2 and Islamophobia and the print news,3 my new focus on Muslim minority issues stemmed precisely from my existing interests in ethnicity, culture, and multiculturalism.4

Upon joining the University of Birmingham in 2003, I spent my first two years concentrating on teaching a specialized course, “Ethnic Relations in Britain,” to finalists. In 2005, I began to teach a new course, “Islam, Multiculturalism, and the State” to finalists. In this article, I discuss the resulting insight into teaching to a largely non-Muslim audience issues relating to Islam and Muslim minorities.

• Tahir Abbas

Religious Education and the Delegitimation of Knowledge

The velocity of information production has increased at all levels, including the global. These expansions lead to the delegitimation of knowledge by equating information with knowledge or the predominance of information over knowledge. Given that this situation has caused epistemological challenges for the process of religious education, this article attempts to study the epistemological problems and challenges posed by information technology (IT) in this area. 

Religion and Religious Education

Religion, commonly defined as a system of thought dealing with the supernatural, sacred, and divine realms as well as with the values, traditions, and rituals associated with such a belief or system of thought, is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system.1 According to some, religion is related to the inner and intuitive aspects of human life. For example, whenever religion talks about guiding humanity, it refers to internal and intuitive (revelation and compliance) guidance. From a religious perspective, intuition is defined as an internal and interior transformation that connects people to the supreme source (God) and makes them capable of receiving religious revelation and inspiration. Thus, whenever God talks about humanity being open to guidance and about the increasing level of guidance provided, He is, in fact, talking about these internal and interior transformations, about people’s readiness to accept divine revelation and guidance.2 Of course, such thinkers as Dewey believe that religion is more related to individual experiences.3

• Seyed Mahdi Sajjadi

Wholeness and Holiness in Education: An Islamic Perspective

Zahra Al Zeera UK: The International Institute of Islamic Thought, and Biddles Limited, 2001. 158 pages.

Wholeness and Holiness in Education: An Islamic Perspective is a very interesting book. Although the book is a result of her experience as a Muslim graduate student in Canada, she does not mention any personal reasons for writing this book, but rather tackles it very lightly without mentioning the hard experiences she faced when her faith was questioned. A Muslim who has taken her faith for granted for years and had had little or no communication with the West was questioned for the first time in her life about many aspects of her faith and found herself unable to provide adequate answers. Her book is the result of such an experience, one which many others in her circumstances and situation have faced and will have to face. Although the author frequently tackles abstract ideas, she always provides scholarly explanations and discussions by quoting and elaborating upon many well-known figures in various disciplines. The book is divided into four parts and has a total of nine chapters. The first part, “Reflection on Personal Experience,” includes two chapters. In them, she tries to take the reader from her own personal experience to the book’s goal: preparing Muslim students in their homelands’ educational systems to think and question their faith so that they can stand on solid ground. In chapter 1, “The Spiritual and Intellectual Journey,” she apologizes for including her personal experience growing up as a Muslim. Actually, more elaboration upon such experiences and on the conflicts she faced while studying in Canada would have been appreciated, as such a topic requires that personal experiences be shared, given that they are not limited to one person but rather to millions of individuals. Chapter 2, “Spirituality: Woman’s Best-Kept Secret,” further analyzes the significance of such experiences to women specifically.

• Zahra Al Zeera