ISLAM & EDUCATION

Islam & Education – for the learning community

Knowledge is absolutely central to the deen of Islam as recorded in a multitude of texts, among which is: “seeking knowledge is an obligation on every Muslim.” This is an unqualified obligation not restricted to men and not limited to the acts of worship, and indeed not restricted to what are thought to be ‘Islamic’ sources. Thus it is certainly time to take a long and careful look at the institution of education.

It seems we have three perspectives on this:

First, an unquestioning embrace of academia and existing secular educational institutions from the creche, kindergarten and primary school upwards;

Second, a retreat from that to purely ‘Islamic’ sources, or what we might call ‘the madrasa’;

Third, a syncretic combination of both of the above hoping to gain the best of both worlds.

A fourth way is here explored by these authors: gaining from the insight of the late Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi that, “Islam is not a culture, but a filter for culture,” and assiduously and critically taking the best of the Western tradition along with the most traditional possible Islamic perspective. It must be emphasised that this is not merely a theoretical text, for it emerges from communities that have consistently engaged with their own educational models, an engagement which these papers represent.

Authors

Uthman Ibrahim-Morrison, Imam al-Ghazali, Abdalhaqq Bewley, Dr.Amjad Hussai, Ahmad Gross, Ibrahim Lawson, Jakob Werdelin, Muhammad Mukhtar Medinilla, Abdassamad Clarke