Abstract
This study enumerates the principles of education explicitly taught in the text of the Qur’an. As Islam’s only undisputed source of infallible divine direction, the educational principles contained therein constitute a divinely-sanctioned pedagogy. In recent years, much has been said in academic circles about the dangers of essentializing Islam. If academia is to reframe its questions about Islamic educational philosophy to account for its many interpretations, however, a greater understanding of the common text being interpreted, namely, the Qur’an, is essential. Understanding Islamic education in the context of its most central text is lacking, though, as few studies have provided a thorough textual analysis of educational philosophy within the Qur’an itself. To this end, we undertook a systematic linguistic analysis of the Qur’an in its entirety in both the original Arabic and various English translations. From these analyses, we found three main themes, including: first, independent, inferential reasoning; second, orthopractic teleology; and third, memorization and the spoken word. The unique contribution of this article is to provide a strong foundation of strictly Qur’anic educational philosophy upon which further hermeneutical research can investigate how that philosophy has been interpreted and practiced by Islam’s various denominations throughout its rich history.
Highlights
In our search for the foundational principles of Islamic education, three things became clear: first, much of the scholarship on the subject was localized and time-specific; second, generalized statements about Islamic education often failed to account for the many interpretations of Islam’s various denominations; and third, an understanding of Islamic education that allows for these various interpretations would be well-suited to hermeneutical analysis of the issue within the only universally agreed-upon source of Islamic knowledge, namely, the Qur’an itself
The three principles we present here represent a beginning to what possible future analyses of the Qur’an may glean about Islamic educational thought
During the course of our systematic study of educational principles in the Qur’an, we compiled hundreds of relevant passages and identified almost as many principles of education. After thinning this list down to those most explicitly stating or exemplifying principles of education and analyzing which principles appeared in the text most commonly, we decided to focus this study on just three of the most common, overarching principles of education in the Qur’an
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. “Knowledge (ilm),” wrote Hilgendorf, “plays a central role in the Muslim’s attitude toward life, work and being Such knowledge, together with the teaching and learning by which it is attained, is “repeatedly emphasized in the Qur’an with frequent injunctions 344),” including, “God will exalt those of you who believe and those who have knowledge to high degrees (Qur’an 58:11),”. Increase me in knowledge (Q 20:114)” and “As God has taught him, so let him write (Q 2:282)”. Further Qur’anic passages like these include appeals to pursue knowledge (Q 39:9), the emphasis of knowledge over blind acceptance of tradition
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