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The
Concept of Education in Islam
It is both fashionable and academically useful
sometime to understand and analyze etymological definitions. In
the case of English words, these are definitions in terms of the
word from which it was derived (normally Greek or Latin). In
this sense the word "education" is taken to come out either from
educere or educure. In the first sense to educate is to "lead
out or bring out," while in the second it means to "form or
train." According to an eminent British scholar, G. Langford,
education is an activity which aims at practical results in
contrast with activities which aim at theoretical results. We
agree with Prof. R.S. Peters when he says that education forms a
"family" of ideas united by a complicated network of
similarities which overlap and criss-cross.
It will be generally agreed that education forms
the most important link between man’s past and future. In fact,
it constitutes that process of evaluation and transmission, of
coping with the present and planning for the future, which
determines a community’s survival. It is through education that
the cultural heritage, knowledge, and values of a social group
are preserved and the continuity of its collective life ensured.
In short, education imparts meaning to the existence of a
culture and helps it sustain its world-view. As such, it cannot
be equated with a mere inventory of the paraphernalia and
instruments of instruction, including even institutions and
external structures. On the contrary, in every meaningful and
constructive way education is inextricably linked with the
general intellectualism of a culture, the principal task of
which is to provide a forum for self-analysis, criticism, and
search for authenticity. Educational philosophy, therefore, not
only shapes the destiny and identity of any historical community
in its functions as the guardian and cultivator of values, it is
also the very basis of all culture and civilization.
Endorsing the above ideas, the well-known
Pakistani educationist, the late Dr. Mahmood Hussain, writes in
a collection of excellent articles entitled Education and
Culture: "Education is a social process and it receives its
meaning and essential logic from the human society of which it
is a part. In its broadest sense the totality of human
experience within the society, whether tangible or intangible,
is called its culture.... This consensus within a society, which
is both emotional and intellectual, is what gives a culture its
inner source of strength and motive force.… The cementing force
within a society is a system of sentiments which we can call its
value-system. The system of values is essentially a set of
inter-related ideas, concepts and practices to which strong
sentiments are attached. The value system is nurtured and
reinforced primarily by the system of beliefs of a group and by
its sense of history and traditions."
In a similar vein the above mentioned ideas are
emphasized by A.K. Brohi thus: "By education we understand a
participation in a cultural process by which successive
generations of men and women take their place in our national
history upon the foundation of an ideological commitment to the
Islamic way of life, and a certain manner of thinking and action
conforming to its tenets and commands." (Cf., Education in an
Ideological State, published in Aims and Objectives of Islamic
Education ed. S.M. Al-Naquib Attas).
One of the most damaging effects of Western
colonialism has been the creation in all colonized countries,
particularly Muslim countries, of a class of people called "the
elite" but which may be more appropriately called the "deluded
hybrids". They are the products of the imposed system of
education, which is designed to create a class which is almost
totally uprooted from its cultural and moral traditions. They
were nurtured as alternatives to the Ulama (men of real
knowledge and character) who had refused, with remarkable
consistency, to have anything to do with the colonial
government. The Euro-Christian educational system of the
colonial powers was purposely designed to destroy the identity
of its victims while at the same time exalting the European race
and culture. The elite class in many Muslim countries exhibits,
like their European counterparts, a servile spirit, and can only
play the role of slaves to political and cultural imperialism.
This obtains even when they claim to be free. This is, of
course, in marked contrast to those who are imbibed with true
Islamic values and are educated as Muslims. They have remained
intellectually and morally independent and do not exhibit, even
for one moment, the sickening servility and moral emptiness from
which the colonial elite suffer. This is so because the Islamic
education, as the celebrated African scholar, Edward Blyden has
observed, elevates and exalts the human personality in Africa.
On the other hand, the Euro-Christian education which dominates
African education today, degrades and demoralizes the human
personality. (Cf., Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race,
Edinburgh University Press, 1967.)
What produced this difference between Islam and
imperialism, Blyden explains, is that "when the religion (Islam)
was first introduced it found the people possessing all the
elements and enjoying all the privileges of an untrammeled
manhood. They received it as giving them additional power to
exert an influence in the world. It sent them forth as the
guides and instructors of their favored neighbors, and endowed
them with self-respect which men feel who acknowledge no
superior. While it brought them a great deal that was absolutely
new, and inspired them with spiritual feelings to which they had
before been strangers, it strengthened and hastened certain
tendencies to independence and self-reliance which were already
at work. On the other hand, Christian influences, along with
other colonial menaces were imposed on the African when he had
already been dispossessed of his freedom and had been put in
chains." Along with the Christian teaching, says Blyden, "he
[the African] and his children received lessons of their utter
and permanent inferiority and subordination to their
instructors, to whom they stood in the relation of Chattels....
their development was necessarily partial and one-sided, cramped
and abnormal. All tendencies to independent individuality were
repressed and destroyed. Their ideas and aspiration could be
expressed only in conformity with the views and tastes of those
who ruled over them." Consequently, those who have gone through
this slave education suffer from "general degradation" and could
only play "the part of the slave, ape or puppet" as Blyden
laments.
A system of education derives its legitimacy from
its world-view. Contemporary Western concept of education is a
sibling of the reductive, arrogant, and capitalistic world-view
of Western civilization. The West "secularized" knowledge in
order to overthrow religion and Truth. On the contrary, the
concept of education in Islam incorporates positive spiritual
and social dimensions. It makes sense only within the ethical
and social frame-work of Islamic metaphysical world-view. As
modern ecology has taught us, and Western science is
rediscovering, nothing in nature behaves as an isolated system.
Everything is connected to everything else — an all-pervasive
principle of interconnectedness is in operation. Thus, there is
no such thing as pure physics or pure economics devoid of
social, political, cultural, environmental and spiritual
concerns. Looking specifically on the subject of education, it
is worth remembering that data or information of any sort is not
generated in a vacuum. It is accumulated in accordance with a
pre-conceived pattern and purpose. Its subsequent analysis and
dissemination is thus only an extension of the data generation
process. Indeed, an authentic classification scheme, or — to use
a somewhat Kantian phraseology — a categorical framework must
precede collection, processing, storage, and dissemination of
information. If it is not sufficiently realized by a Muslim
intellectual and educationist, he would unwittingly end up
promoting an alien world-view. Saturation with information
without the analytical capabilities to sift it, and the
value-bias involved in the generation and use of data, are the
twin problems which need to be firmly kept in mind by a
convinced and committed Muslim if one is not trapped in false
illusion of the "information ocean" and if one is to remain
faithful to one’s tradition and metaphysical world-view.
For a true Muslim, Islam is the norm for judging
and evaluating everything. Not very long ago the dearth of
information on a particular subject was the limiting factor on
one’s correct cognition of events. With the advances in
communication and information technologies, there is an
avalanche of data being generated and exchanged. Now one can
safely say the limiting factor on analysis of a particular fact
or event is too much raw data and too little analysis or too
ill-developed analytical tools or norms to handle the data
adequately. However, as any intelligent person can see, there is
a vital difference between the two situations. Previously the
sheer lack of data meant that those privileged to have access
could manipulate the information to serve their ends at will.
Now, provided one develops sufficiently powerful analytical
tools and normative categories, most situations can be
understood in their proper perspective. The purveyors of
information and so-called value-free empirical data have thus
resorted to other means to confuse the public. They bombard the
populace with a mass of raw data so that an impression is given
that all that is to be known about a situation or reality is
available, and the interpretation given to them by the media is
the only valid one. Soon, an unshakable image about the "facts
of the case" is formed in the public mind which, in turn, is
used to shape events and achieve desired results. The Islamic
concept of knowledge (ilm) and the process of education is
diametrically opposed to all this humbug. In order to sift the
relevant from the irrelevant, Muslims have their own scheme of
classification, as the mental effort of "constructing" facts
precedes their collection.
As a matter of fact it is the Islamic concept of
knowledge — ilm — which must form the basis of the theoretical
and institutional structure of education in Islam. In other
words, what makes education truly Islamic is the fact that it is
based on a genuinely Islamic notion of knowledge. The concept of
ilm, as has been argued forcefully in recent years by numerous
Muslim scholars, integrates the pursuit of knowledge with
values, envelopes factual insight with metaphysical concerns,
and promotes an outlook of balance and genuine synthesis. This
is the ultimate difference between the western notion of
knowledge which keeps "knowledge" and "values" in two separate
compartments, and does not appreciate any form of knowledge
which is not gained by sense perception. The integral world-view
of Islam, on the other hand, furnishes us with a number of
concepts which, when operationalized and actualized in all their
sophistication at various levels of society and civilization,
yield an integrated infrastructure for the distribution of
knowledge. In addition to the core concept of Tauheed, at least
five other Islamic concepts — of ilm (knowledge), adl (justice),
Ibadah (worship) Khilafah (trusteeship), istislah (social
welfare) — have a direct bearing on education to be pursued in
the true Islamic spirit. The all-embracing Qur’anic concept of
ilm shaped the outlook of the Muslim people right from the
beginning of Islam in Arabia. Islam actually made the pursuit of
knowledge a religious obligation: by definition, to be a Muslim
is to be deeply entrenched in the generation, production and
dissemination of knowledge. This is significantly borne out by
the first revelation of Iqra (Read!) given to our beloved
Prophet Muhammad (SAW). Again the concept of ilm here is not a
limiting or elitist notion. Ilm is distributive knowledge — it
is not a monopoly of a few individuals, or a certain class,
group, or gender; to acquire it is not an obligation only for a
few, absolving the vast majority of the society; it is not
limited to a particular field of inquiry or discipline but
covers all dimensions of human awareness and the entire spectrum
of natural phenomena. Indeed, it seems that the Holy Qur’an
places ilm at par with adl; the pursuit of knowledge is as
important as the pursuit of justice. One is an instrument for
achieving the other. Only when knowledge is widely and easily
available to all segments of society can justice be established
in its Islamic manifestations. The Islamic civilization has
rightly been described by some historians as the civilization of
"the book."
Dr. Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi, in his perceptive work
entitled Tawhid: Its implications for Thought and Life, has
unfolded in a very scholarly fashion the paramount importance of
the concept of Tauheed in the ideational and practical spheres
of a Muslim polity. We fully agree with him that Iman is
primarily and basically a cognitive or gnoseological category.
That is to say, it has to do with knowledge, with the
truthfulness of its propositions. And since the nature of its
prepositional content is that of first principle of logic and
knowledge, of metaphysics, of ethics and aesthetics, it follows
that it acts in the believer as a light which illumines
everything. As Al-Ghazali has described it, Iman is a vision
which puts all other data and facts in the perspective which is
proper to, and requisite for, a true understanding of them. It
is the grounding for a rational interpretation of the universe.
In itself, the prime principal of reason cannot be non-rational
or irrational, and hence in contradiction with itself. To deny
or oppose it is to lapse from reasonableness and hence from
humanity.
In the end it must be said that only by rooting
their education policy firmly in the matrix of Islamic concepts
can Muslim countries generate the type of intellectual energy
and productivity needed not only to meet the problems of the
contemporary Ummah, but also to rejuvenate and re-establish
Islam. A Muslim needs to penetrate beyond the external form of
the Modern Age to understand and grasp its transcendental nature
and reality. We firmly believe that a dynamic and pulsating
faith is not possible to attain unless our knowledge-edifice is
firmly based on the spiritual foundations of the Qur’an and
Hadith. It is heartening to note that a number of Islamic
revivalist movements as well as organizations in the private
sector are engaged in educating and training youths and scholars
from the Islamic perspective.
Written By: by Dr. Absar Ahmad (Tanzeemi Islami) |
