All That We Lost: The Colonized Mind and the Decline of the Islamic Education System
Published: August 15, 2019 • Updated: July 22, 2024
Author: Faisal Malik
بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ
In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Introduction
The philosophical foundations of schooling in the Muslim world
Iqra! The divine commandment and knowledge
Flourishing of education institutes in the Muslim world
Al-Ma’qul and Al-Manqul: The rational and the transmitted
The impact of colonialism on the educational system in the Muslim world
Colonialism and epistemicide
like so many vultures falling on the dead body of Nature, and each running away with a piece of its flesh. Nature as the subject of science is a highly artificial affair, and this artificiality is the result of that selective process to which science must subject her in the interests of precision.
Colonial educational policies
Reformers, the military, and modernization
An exploration of educational reform in the Muslim world
The dilemma of Islamic societies lies partly in the fact that they imported secular education systems and planted them in the heart of Islamic traditional societies. To me this is like planting a palm tree in Alaska and expecting it to grow naturally and give fruit as well. The mismatch between the religious foundation of Islamic societies and the secular building of the Western education system is a major cause of the problems encountered by our universities.
Conclusion
Humanity needs three things today—a spiritual interpretation of the universe, spiritual emancipation of the individual, and basic principles of a universal import directing the evolution of human society on a spiritual basis.
Notes
2 Plural of madrasa.
3 Farish Noor, Yoginder Sikand, and Martin van Bruinessen, eds., The Madrasa in Asia: Political Activism and Transnational Linkages (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2008), 11.
4 International Crisis Group (ICG). 2004, October 7. Pakistan: Reforming the Education Sector. Islamabad/Brussels: International Crisis Group & Arab Human Development Report, 2003, Building a Knowledge Society. New York: United Nations Development Programme.
5 For examples of influential academics of the past see Goldziher, Ignaz, “The Attitude of Orthodox Islam toward the Ancient Science” in Studies on Islam, ed. Merlin L. Swartz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 185–215 & Makdisi, George. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981). For examples of more recent writers see Hoodbhoy, Pervez, Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality (London & New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd, 1991) & Huff, Toby E. The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
6 For examples of historians and academics who have put forth a more nuanced view of Islamic educational institutes in Muslim civilization, see Ekmeleddin, Ihsanoglu, History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization (Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture IRCICA, 2002) & Langohr, Vickie (2005) “Colonial Education Systems and the Spread of Local Religious Movements: The Cases of British Egypt and Punjab,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, no. 1 & Robinson, Francis, 1997, “Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems,” Journal of Islamic Studies 8, no. 2 & Sahin, Abdullah. 2018. “Critical Issues in Islamic Education Studies: Rethinking Islamic and Western Liberal Secular Values of Education,” Religions 9, no. 11: 335, & Iqbal, Muzaffar. The Making of Islamic Science (Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2009).
7 ‘Alaq literally means to cling, has been interpreted as referring to an embryo or a stage in the development of the fetus; see The Qur’an: A New Translation, trans. M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 428.
8 Take, for instance, that the commandment in the first aya is not just ‘Read!’ but to Read in the name of God; the commandment to read is repeated in aya 3 and this time followed immediately with a description of God.
9 Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 78 & Cook, Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought, x & Muhammad Abdel Haleem and Elsaid M. Badawi, Arabic-English Dictionary of Qur’Anic Usage (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2008), 635.
10 Al Zeera, Wholeness and Holiness in Education, 63.
11 Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Kitab Al-‘Ilm: The Book of Knowledge, Book 1 of the Ihya ‘Ulum Al-Din: The Revival of the Religious Sciences, trans. Kenneth Honerkamp (Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2015), xxx.
12 Cook, Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought, xxvi.
13 Kuldip Kaur, Madrasa Education In India: A Study of Its Past and Present (Chandigarh: Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CCRID), 1990), 6 & Safiur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, The Sealed Nectar: Ar-Raheeq-ul-Makhtum. (Riyadh: Darussalam, 2002), 276.
14 Shawkat Omari, “Towards an Islamic Vision of Parallel Education Institutions,” ed. Hussein Abdul-Fattah and Fathi Malkawi, in The Education Conference Book: Planning, Implementation, Recommendations, and Abstracts of Presented Papers: A Conference on “Towards the Construction of a Contemporary Islamic Educational Theory” (Amman: Islamic Studies and Research Association, 1990), 176-177 & Sajid Muhammad Qasmi, Madrasa Education Framework (Dehli: MANAK Publications Pvt. Ltd, 2005),12-15.
15 George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 10.
16 Ibid., 27-28.
17 Ibid., 31.
18 Feyyat Gokce, “Minority and Foreign Schools on the Ottoman Education System,” e-international journal of educational research 1, no. 1 (2010), 42 & Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization (Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture IRCICA, 2002), 2, 371.
19 Cook, Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought, 244.
20 Ahmed Basheer “Contributions of Muslim Physicians and Other Scholars: 700-1600AC” in Muslim Contributions to World Civilization, ed. Syed A.Ahsani, Ahmed Basheer, and Dilnawaz A. Siddiqui (United Kingdom: International Institute of Islamic Thought, Association of Muslim Social Scientists, 2005), 73.
21 Kaur, Madrasa Education In India, 21.
22 Kaur, Madrasa Education In India, 92 & Langohr, Vickie (2005) “Colonial Education Systems and the Spread of Local Religious Movements: The Cases of British Egypt and Punjab.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, no. 1, p. 169.
23 Vickie Langohr, “Colonial Education Systems and the Spread of Local Religious Movements,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, no. 1 (2005), 168, 169.
24 Ihsanoglu, History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization Vol. 2, p. 247.
25 Ibid., 247-248.
26 Cook, Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought, XX & Francis Robinson, “Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared Knowledge and Connective Systems,” Journal of Islamic Studies 8, no. 2 (1997), 152.
27 Cook, Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought, XX & Kaur, Madrasa Education In India: A Study of Its Past and Present, 170.
28 Cook, Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought, XX.
29 Al Zeera, Wholeness and Holiness in Education, 69.
30 Ibid., 69.
31 Ahmed “Contributions of Muslim Physicians and Other Scholars,” 80.
32 Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Kitab Al-‘Ilm, 38.
33 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 370-390.
34 Ibid., 376.
35 Ibid., 422-424.
36 Ware III, Rudolph T., The Walking Qur’an: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), p. 106.
37 Ahmed, “Contributions of Muslim Physicians and Other Scholars,” 87.
38 Ibid., 76.
39 Kaur, Madrasa Education In India, 7.
40 Ihsanoglu, History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization Vol. 2, 373.
41 Ibid., 391, 405.
42 Kaur, Madrasa Education In India, 34.
43 Ibid., p. 52 & Hamid Mahmood, The Dars-E-Nizami and the Transnational Madaris in Britain (Queen Mary: University of London, 2012), 9, 10, 78 & Qasmi, Madrasa Education Framework, 49, 55-57.
44 Ahmed, “Contributions of Muslim Physicians and Other Scholars,” 77.
45 Ibid., 81.
46 Ibid., 80.
47 Ibid., 80.
48 Ibid., 82.
49 Grosfoguel, “The Structure of Knowledge in Westernized Universities,” 78.
50 Ibid., 79.
51 Ibid., 79.
52 Thésée ,“A Tool of Massive Erosion,” 29.
53 ElMessiri, “The Gate of Ijtihad,” 17 & Hamed Ibrahim “Reflections on Technology and Development: A Cultural Perspective,” in Epistemological BIAS in the Physical & Social Sciences, ed. Abdelwahab M. ElMessiri (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2006), 259.
54 Rafik Habib, “Modernizing vs. Westernizing the Social Sciences: The Case of Psychology” in Epistemological BIAS in the Physical & Social Sciences, ed. Abdelwahab M. ElMessiri (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought., 2006), 130 & Thésée “A Tool of Massive Erosion,” 33.
55 Al Zeera, Wholeness and Holiness in Education: An Islamic Perspective, 86.
56 Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Sang-E-Meel Publications, 2010), 44.
57 Qasmi, Madrasa Education Framework, 69-70.
58 Ibid., 69-70.
59 James Dunne-Heyworth, An Introduction to The History of Education in Modern Egypt (London: Frank Cass & Company Ltd, 1969), 98.
60 Ibid., 100.
61 Gokce, “Minority and Foreign Schools on the Ottoman Education System,” 48.
62 Ware III, The Walking Quran: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, 164, 191, 203.
63 Kemal Cicek, The Great Ottoman-Turkish Civilisation (Ankara: Yeni Turkiye, 2000), p. 657.
64 Vernon O. Egger, A History of the Muslim World Since 1260; The Making of a Global Community (Upper Saddle: Pearson: Prentice-Hall, 2008), 309, 339.
65 Ihsanoglu, History of the Ottoman State, Society & Civilization Vol. 2, 424.
66 Adel Hussein “Bias in Western Schools of Social Thought: Our Heritage as the Starting Point for Development” in Epistemological BIAS in the Physical & Social Sciences, ed. Abdelwahab M. ElMessiri (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2006), 95.
67 Ware III, The Walking Quran: Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa, 196.
68 Abdur-Rahman Al-Jabarti, Napoleon in Egypt: Al-Jabarti’s Chronicle of the First Seven Months of the French Occupation of Egypt, 1798, trans. Schmuel Moreh (Princeton: M. Weiner Pub., 1993), 36, 38, 185, 186, 195, 198.
69 Jeffrey C. Burke, “Education,” in The Islamic World, ed. Andrew Rippin (London & New York: Routledge Taylor & Franchis Group, 2008), 313 & Bayad Dodge, Al-Azhar: A Millennium of Muslim Learning (Washington: The American International Printing Company, 1961), 114 & Mona Russell, “Competing, Overlapping, and Contradictory Agendas: Egyptian Education Under British Occupation, 1882-1922,” Africa and the Middle East, Comparative Studies of South Asia XXI, no. 1-2 (2001), 50.
70 Dunne-Heyworth, An Introduction to The History of Education in Modern Egypt, 105 & Ghulam N. Saqib, Modernization of Muslim Education in Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey: A Comparative Study. (Lahore: Islamic Book Service, 1983), 84.
71 Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 64 & Paula Sanders, Creating Medieval Cairo: Empire, Religion, and Architectural Preservation in 19th Century Egypt (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2008), 33.
72 Michael J. Reimer, “Contradiction and Consciousness in ʿAli Mubarak’s Description of Al-Azhar,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29, no. 1 (1997), 62.
73 Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 109.
74 John W. Livingston, “Western Science and Educational Reform in the Thought of Shaykh Rifa’a Al-Tahtawi,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 28, no. 4 (1996), 552.
75 Weber, Peasants Into Frenchmen, 307.
76 Egger, A History of the Muslim World since 1260, 342.
77 David Lelyveld, “Disenchantment at Aligarh: Islam and the Realm of the Secular in Late Nineteenth Century India,” Die Welt des Islams 22, no. 1 (1982), 86 & Syed Mahmood, A History of English Education in India (1781-1893) (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1895), 86, 87.
78 Lelyveld, "Disenchantment at Aligarh,” 86 & Mahmood, A History of English Education in India (1781-1893), 89.
79 Kaur, Madrasa Education In India, 55 & Mahmood The Dars-e-Nizami and the Transnational Madaris in Britain. 11 & Barbara Metcalf, “The Madrasa at Deoband: A Model for Religious Education in Modern India,” Modern Asian Studies 12, no. 1 (1978) 111 & Qasmi, Madrasa Education Framework, 38, 41.
80 International Crisis Group (ICG), Pakistan: Madrasas, Extremism and the Military, (Islamabad/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2002), 5 & Kaur, Madrasa Education In India, 121 & Qasmi, Madrasa Education Framework, 67-68.
81 Muhammad Farooq, “Objectification of Islam: A Study of Pakistani Madrassah Texts,” Pakistan Journal of History and Culture 31, no. 1 (2010), 36.
82 Ibid., p. 36 & Kaur, Madrasa Education In India, 52 & Mahmood, The Dars-e-Nizami and the Transnational Madaris in Britain, 9, 10, 78 & Qasmi, Madrasa Education Framework, 49, 55-57.
83 International Crisis Group (ICG). Pakistan, 6 & Metcalf, “The Madrasa at Deoband,” 117-118.
84 Qasmi, Madrasa Education Framework, 44.
85 Thésée, “A Tool of Massive Erosion,” 34.
86 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, 116.
87 El-Mously, “Reflections on Technology and Development,” 250-251.
88 Al Zeera, Wholeness and Holiness in Education, 139-140.
89 AbdulHamid A. Sulayman, Revitalizing Higher Education in the Muslim World (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2007), 10 & Al Zeera, Wholeness and Holiness in Education, 55, 134-135.
90 Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, Islamization of Contemporary Knowledge and the Role of the University in the Context of De-Westernization and Decolonization (Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit UTM Press, 2013), 7 & ElMessiri “The Gate of Ijtihad,” 19, 20, 50, 51.
91 Abdul Haq, Educational Philosophy of the Holy Quran, 183.
92 Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, 10.
93 Ibid., 136.
94 Abdelwahab M. El-Messiri, “Introduction,” in Epistemological BIAS in the Physical & Social Sciences, ed. Abdelwahab M. El-Messiri (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2006), p. xix.
95 Habib, “Modernizing vs. Westernizing the Social Sciences,” 127.
96 El-Mously, “Reflections on Technology and Development,” 258.
97 Al Zeera, Wholeness and Holiness in Education, xxv.
98 Daud, Islamization of Contemporary Knowledge, 18.
99 Ashraf, Sayyid Ali, “Islamic Education: Evaluation of the Achievements of Previous Conferences,” ed. Hussein Abdul-Fattah and Fathi Malkawi, in The Education Conference Book: Planning, Implementation, Recommendations, and Abstracts of Presented Papers: A Conference on “Towards the Construction of a Contemporary Islamic Educational Theory” (Amman: Islamic Studies and Research Association, 1990), 73-74.
100 Thésée, “A Tool of Massive Erosion,” 35.
101 See Sahin, Abdullah. 2018. “Critical Issues in Islamic Education Studies: Rethinking Islamic and Western Liberal Secular Values of Education,” Religions 9, no. 11: 335. & Henzell-Thomas, Jeremy & Sardar, Ziauddin Rethinking Reform in Higher Education: From Islamization to Integration of Knowledge (Herndon: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2018).
102 Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, 156.