Abstract
This paper examines two sets of interrelated issues informing contemporary discussions on Islam and education that take place within both Muslim majority and minority contexts. The first set of issues concerns the academic conceptualisation of the study of education within diverse historical and contemporary Islamic cultural, intellectual, political, theological and spiritual traditions. After a critical examination of the current literature, the paper suggests that ‘Islamic Education Studies’ offers a distinctive academic framing that incorporates an interdisciplinary empirical and scholarly inquiry strategy capable of generating a body of knowledge and understanding guiding the professional practice and policy development in the field. Lack of conceptual clarity in various current depictions of the field, including ‘Muslim Education’, ‘Islamic Pedagogy’, ‘Islamic Nurture’ and ‘Islamic Religious Pedagogy’, is outlined and the frequent confusion of Islamic Education with Islamic Studies is critiqued. The field of Islamic Education Studies has theological and educational foundations and integrates interdisciplinary methodological designs in Social Sciences and Humanities. The second part of the inquiry draws attention to the lack of new theoretical insights and critical perspectives in Islamic Education. The pedagogic practice in diverse Muslim formal and informal educational settings does not show much variation and mostly is engaged with re-inscribing the existing power relations shaping the society. The juxtaposition of inherited Islamic and borrowed or enforced Western secular educational cultures appears to be largely forming mutually exclusive, antagonistic and often rigid ‘foreclosed’ minds within contemporary Muslim societies. The impact of the educational culture and educational institutions on the formation of resentful Islamic religiosities and the reproduction of authoritarian leadership within the wider mainstream Muslim communities have not been adequately explored. The study stresses the need to have a paradigm shift in addressing this widely acknowledged educational crisis. The formation of a transformative educational culture remains the key to being able to facilitate reflective and critical Muslim religiosities, and positive socio-economic and political change in Muslim majority and minority societies. This inquiry explores a significant aspect of this crisis by re-examining the degree to which Islamic and Western, liberal, secular conceptions and values of education remain irreconcilably divergent or open to a convergent dialogue of exchange, reciprocity and complementarity. The originality of the paper lies in offering a critical rethinking of Islamic Education through mapping the main relevant literature and identifying and engaging with the central theoretical issues while suggesting a new academic framing of the field and its interdisciplinary research agenda.
Highlights
Despite a plethora of recent publications on Islamic Education, Islamic Schooling and Muslims in Education, the attempts to define the field remain unsystematic and often lack conceptual depth and clarity
Collaboration between mainstream and faith-heritage universities is crucial. Such a collaboration should not be based on a pragmatic motive of simple degree-validation/income-generation but in order to integrate Islamic higher education within the wider mainstream university system
‘compassionate transformative pedagogy’ that shapes the heart of the Islamic message and its core sources (Sahin 2017)
Summary
Despite a plethora of recent publications on Islamic Education, Islamic Schooling and Muslims in Education, the attempts to define the field remain unsystematic and often lack conceptual depth and clarity. It is interesting to note that most of these studies originate in the anti-racism education movement and continue framing Muslims in an explicit secular category of ‘race and ethnicity’ They largely avoid engaging with the Islamic ethos of these schools and are unable to assess whether they foster or hinder social cohesion and integration within contemporary religiously and culturally diverse European societies. Such a collaboration should not be based on a pragmatic motive of simple degree-validation/income-generation but in order to integrate Islamic higher education within the wider mainstream university system This can be achieved through facilitating exchange and dialogue leading to the formation of a genuine reflective pedagogic culture, a modern critical/reflective Muslim paideia, rooted in the transformative/holistic conception of education in Islam (tarbiyah) (Sahin 2014). With such an integrative educational ethos, these intuitions would be in a better position to facilitate a contextual Islamic faith leadership training in the modem world and more effectively respond to the educational needs of students under their care
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