Contents

Introduction

We praise Allah, seek His forgiveness and assistance, and pray for His most honorable and generous Messenger.

Muslims belong to an ideal Divine system perfected by Allah as a way of fulfilling His grace and blessings unto mankind. The system honors human beings by submitting to them everything that exists in heavens and on earth; but it also obligates them to live peacefully together, admonishing them to do good deeds and to abstain from doing evil deeds, for their own good and interest.

It is a system that compels them to preserve human life, to save and protect property, and to safeguard honor and lineage, making clear to them all the things that are not permissible to them, except when driven by necessity, neither craving nor transgressing. The purpose of all this is to enable Muslims to attain the exalted position of the “middle nation”, which is the best community that has been raised up for the benefit of mankind, for it enjoins right conduct, forbids indecency, and believes in Allah, Who grants it success and prosperity.

A comparison between this system and other systems provides clear evidence that it is by far the best of all systems. On the one hand, it is not a system that inhibits the individual by denying him the right to property and ownership, or the freedom of opinion and thought. On the other hand, it is not a system that gives free rein to the individuals' actions. For instance, it does not allow for usurious interest to become the basis for financial transactions as is the practice under other systems, in spite of the fact that usury has, on many occasions, brought about dreadful economic crises. Also, unlike other systems, it does not permit the consumption of liquor, for it destroys both the mind and the body. Finally, it is not a system that tolerates immoral permissiveness that results in the appearance and spread of epidemic diseases that require huge amounts of money to be spent on their treatment, or a system that allows for such evils to thrive as organized crime, terrorism, robbery and forgery.

Given this state of affairs, why is it that Muslim societies today are in such a weak and pitiful position, being divided by heretic tendencies, destroyed by wars, and firmly controlled by the industrialized nations which impose on them their own views and will, exploiting the resources of Muslim peoples and deriving their power and supremacy from the weakness and division of Muslim nations ?

There may be different reasons for this unusual situation. One of the most important reasons is that God helps him who helps His cause and forgets those who forget Him. Indeed, one of the signs of His divine guidance would consist in giving Muslim young generations the kind of education that would enable them to attain a degree of strength in accordance with His divine instructions, so that they would not slacken or grieve.

Today's Muslim youth is torn between different tendencies and assailed by doubts and uncertainties from all sides. They hear that Western civilization is bankrupt, but at the same time they see its potency in economic and political hegemony ; consequently, they come to believe that the notion of Western bankruptcy is merely a joke that has been spread by Westerners themselves to show the extent to which they can enjoy their freedom of speech. If it is the case that Muslim youth in general refuse to let themselves be definitively carried away by the Western current, it is because they can see for themselves that the West is extremely selfish and that, in order to satisfy its greed and avidity for control, it does not hesitate to resort to brutal force to impose its direct rule through colonization, or indirect control through political, economic and military influence.

This kind of awareness enables the Muslim youth to understand that the concept of “ethics”, or “morals”, has a very narrow sense and a limited value in the West, since the sole criterion for the Western model consists of “interests”, We might be doing our youth great wrong if we assumed that the kind of cheap permissiveness, which is widely spread in many Western societies, constitute a form of temptation that could make them yield easily to the Western influence. Surely, our youth are fully aware that behind the bright lights of discos lie the hellish darkness of moral degeneration, the evil effects of drugs, the danger of destructive diseases, and the humiliation of sin.

However, in spite of all that, our youth have no choice but to acknowledge certain fundamental qualities of the West, namely its scientific development, its technological supremacy, its administrative discipline and efficiency, and its political cohesion.

If they turn towards the East, they are again lured by powerful slogans, but of a different kind, such as solidarity with the oppressed peoples and social solidarity, in addition to the claim that wealth is not to be enjoyed by the rich only, and that the worker should get what he deserves for his labour in terms of both wages and power. But they soon find that, in the socialist world, every individual wears fetters around the neck which constrain not only his religious liberty, but also his freedom of movement as well as of thought and expression.

Then it becomes apparent to our youth that the states which adopted communism as a system of government are stepping back and do not any longer consider communism as the sole way to ensure social justice for all.

Indeed, the worst thing about atheism is that it forces the individual to become an atheist. But the fact is that it is God Alone Who has the power to guide or misguide whoever He wills. Thus, there is no doubt, thank God, that Muslim youth do not prefer unbelief to belief, or atheism to faith, but they are simply waiting to be persuaded by convincing arguments.

Today's youth will be convinced only if the following two conditions are satisfied. The first condition has to do with the degree of seriousness with which Muslim leaders, governors as well as intellectuals, commit themselves to a wise Islamic course of action for the purpose of bringing the Muslim society itself back to reason in order to secure the nation's future. The second condition consists in adopting an Islamic educational strategy for the purpose of reforming the new generations by educating them according to the Quranic principles and the Prophet's teachings .

There is no denying that education provides the basis for the building of a nation, as the Prophet (Peace and Blessing Be Upon Him) put it : “Every newborn comes to the world with a natural disposition ; it is his parents who judaize or christianize him”(1). In fact, in addition to instilling in the individual his first religious faith, education has other far-reaching consequences : it instils in the individual child certain specific patterns of behaviour and inculcates in him a set of values which he cannot get rid of completely in adulthood.

Also, the idiosyncratic characteristics of the individual can have their own effect on the society as a whole. When such characteristics are widely accepted and adopted by other members of the community, they become a general feature of the whole community. At this point, the individual and the society share the same characteristics. The latter take the form of a permanent distinguishing feature of the society in question which is in turn transmitted to the individual. This is what accounts for the importance of the role of education in the psychological growth and moral development of the individual, or his socialization.

This is why the issue of education has always engrossed the attention of mankind, since the beginning of history. In ancient times, education preoccupied both the Prophets, who issued their instructions in favour of promoting it, and the philosophers, who made of it a subject of their studies and investigations. In the modern era, however, education has become one of the major preoccupations of both international and regional organizations: conferences and colloquiums are regularly organized to discuss the question of education, and special committees are set up to study in detail the issues related to this question.

This universal interest in education is not surprising or unusual, given that there is nothing more closely and intimately related to man than education. In addition to shaping up the character and personality of the individual, education provides the means whereby national identity is preserved. Most importantly, it paves and illuminates the way to peoples in their steady march towards progress and development. The wide range of uses of the concept of “education”, on the one hand, and its rich pedagogical and ethical implications, on the other, seem to account for the large body of literature produced in this domain.

Furthermore, our use of the adjective “Islamic”, in the title phrase “Islamic Education”, means that education is intimately related to Islam, which God completed and perfected over fourteen centuries ago, consecrating it as the way for mankind to achieve salvation both in this world and in the hereafter. Islam, which encompasses both religious observances and everyday secular transactions, thus constituting a way of life for different peoples worldwide, assigns “Islamic education” a very special task, the general purpose of which is to make of Muslims “the best community that has been raised up for the benefit of mankind” (Qur’an, III : 110), a community which follows the best of examples and relies on learning and meditation as methods for achieving its ultimate goal.

Both in the past and the present, Muslims have been concerned to define the specific task of Islamic education and have, for this purpose, sought to derive the fundamental principles of Islamic education from the primary sources of Islam, namely the Qur’an and the Sunna (Tradition). From the same sources, they worked out educational methods and programmes which they supplemented with the insights and experiences of other nations in this domain.

The combined efforts of both ancient and modern Islamic educationists have resulted in a huge wealth of pedagogical views and theories which, in our view, require a simplified presentation from a practical perspective in the hope that their application would contribute to resolving a number of fundamental problems which the Muslim society at large has been contending with for many centuries.

It is hard to understand how a society that abides, in principle, by the divine law, should remain in a state of permanent weakness, while a society which God has not guided to the right path, grows from strength to strength. Why is it that the Muslim society, which believes in God and is committed to the way of God, is so backward ? How can we account for the fact that most technological inventions that characterise modern civilization have seen light in the heretical society, the same that has the monopoly over the means of material control ?

These and other similar questions constitute the main challenge that faces the Umma today. For a decade or so, there has been growing awareness regarding the various dimensions of such a challenge. In its present awakening, the Umma fully understands the meaning of this challenge and its implications. However, the prescribed treatment will produce its desirable effect only if it combines all the necessary ingredients. Some of these ingredients may have to do with the political will to coordinate Islamic action. Some other elements may depend on the provisions of the educational programme, which would enable the new generations to face this challenge and to win the battle of faith, morals and science.

The purpose behind writing this book is merely to attempt to make accessible to the reader the basic concepts and objectives of Islamic education, as well as its programmes and methodologies, by presenting them in a simplified form.

In this presentation, we have tried to distinguish between “education” and “learning”, because we believe that education aims at giving the individual human being a specific kind of personality, in conformity with specific models formed by the culture of the group to which the individual in question belongs. On this basic assumption, we have provided the reader with a historical survey of Muslim thinkers' views on Islamic education in order to extrapolate its objectives from the relevant literature. Finally, we have offered a number of brief summaries of works pertaining to development strategies of the Umma and to the coordination of its intellectual efforts in order to reach a common stand regarding the challenges that face it today.

In the last chapter, which treats of “the means of development”, we have attempted to propose a programme for curriculum designs and teaching methodologies for the purpose of providing a short cut to acquisition of knowledge and establishment of cooperation relations among the various potentialities of the Umma so that their sense of direction would be one, and their efforts combined, in compliance with God's sublime command : “Hold fast, all of you together, to the rope of Allah, and be not divided” (V : 103)

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(1) Accepted by consensus. Related by Abu Hurayra.

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