“Ethical Dimensions of Muslim Education” by Nuraan Davids&Yusef Waghid, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

Book Reviews Ethical Dimensions of Muslim Education Nuraan Davids And YUSEF Waghid Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 162 pages. There has been much debate over the years on what should form the core of Islamic or Muslim education. Should it be Ta’lim, the development of knowledge of the revealed sciences? Should it be Ta’dib, the human manifestation of knowledge and character? Some have taken Tarbiyyah as their framework, questing for a holistic development of mind, body, and soul, while others have looked to contemporary concepts such as values education or character education. All these approaches can be seen to have merit and very often revolve around the same core curricula and pedagogies . This text takes a somewhat different approach in taking ethics to be the core of a sound education and explores how such an approach can be situated within the traditional Islamic teachings and what that could mean in terms of outcomes in the contemporary context. In the introduction the authors explain their preference for the term “Muslim Education” over “Islamic Education,” highlighting the danger of an excessively deontological perspective. This does not match with my experience in the UK, however, where we have “Muslim” institutions that are secular but facilitate quality academic achievement for Muslim pupils and “Islamic” institutions that strive to develop what they perceive to be an authentic education rooted in the Islamic traditions. For some of these there may be a reliance on established knowledge that was often rote learned, but despite this it is these institutions that can potentially be influenced by texts on Islamic educational philosophy. On the other hand, it may be the authors’ hope, by focusing on ethics, which are more universal than other Islamic teachings, that more mainstream schools could be influenced and a broader acceptance of a different approach to education could be achieved. To start with, Islamic ethics is situated within the domain of Islamic philosophy. Inevitably this relies predominantly on contemporary Shi’a scholars as the philosophical traditions have been more actively preserved 104 JournalofEducationinMuslimSocieties · Vol. 2, No. 2 and developed in Shi’a centers of learning. However, the study focuses particularly on the work of the Sunni polymath Al-Ghazali, who achieved more universal acceptance. The discussion here is somewhat superficial as this is not the main focus of the text but it does serve to frame the topic of ethics within the wider Islamic studies discourse. The narrative really takes off, however, with the chapter on Qur’anic conceptions of education, where the key aspects highlighted include the injunctions to think and contemplate, indicating the need for critical thinking, the importance of eloquence, and the need for both revealed and rational knowledge and that these cannot be isolated from each other. This is clearly more central to the authors’ forte, and the ideas flow really well here. These concepts are then built upon constructively by an exploration of the nature of individual autonomy. Here we are given the nomenclature of positive and negative autonomy as a way of expressing the need for personal autonomy and the need for human beings to act in concert as a community. This culminates in the bold assertion that only those that engage in ijtihad (independent Juristic reasoning) can be capable of comprehending the Qur’an. I found this to be a powerful and persuasive argument but felt that the discussion needed to extend to established notions of who is qualified to be a mujtahid (one qualified to engage in ijtihad), debates about the “closure of the gates of ijtihad,” etc. These issues were completely sidestepped, leaving them as the unmentioned elephant in the room. For me this is too important a concept to leave without addressing the conflicts. Identifying the necessity for extensive critical thinking is important, and it links well with the writings of contemporary scholars with a more classical Islamic training such as Warwick University’s Abdullah Sahin. To go so far as to mandate formal ijtihad may, however, alienate some readers. Having explored the roots of Islamic educational philosophy and the place ethics can occupy within it, the authors move on to consider the context by addressing the nature of the Muslim community and that of...