Muslim Education in the 21st Century

Asian perspectives

Sa’eda Buang, Phyllis Ghim-Lian Chew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317814993
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Muslim Education in the 21st Century reinvestigates the current state of affairs in Muslim education in Asia whilst at the same time paying special attention to Muslim schools' perception of educational changes and the reasons for such changes. It highlights and explores the important question of whether the Muslim school has been reinventing itself in the field of pedagogy and curriculum to meet the challenges of the 21st century education. It interrogates the schools whose curriculum content carry mostly the subject of religion and Islam as its school culture. Typologically, these include state-owned or privately-run madrasah or dayah in Aceh, Indonesia; pondok, traditional Muslim schools largely prevalent in the East Malaysian states and Indonesia; pesantren, Muslim boarding schools commonly found in Indonesia; imam-khatip schools in Turkey, and other variations in Asia.

Contributed by a host of international experts, Muslim Education in the 21st Century focuses on how Muslim educators strive to deal with the educational contingencies of their times and on Muslim schools' perception of educational changes and reasons for such changes. It will be of great interest to anyone interested in Asian and Muslim education.

1 Madrassah education in Bangladesh

Contestations and accommodations

Ali Riaz

In popular discourse, media parlance and policy articulation, the Islamic religious education sector, particularly madrassahs, is presented as a monolithic entity. These discussions provide an impression that the curricula of all madrassahs are similar, if not the same. Although regional variations (for example variations between madras-sahs in Southeast Asia and South Asia) and social contexts (for example Muslim majority and Muslim minority societies) have gained some recognition in recent years, understanding of the varieties of madrassah – particularly their objectives and role in society – is sorely lacking. These variations have significant implications for understanding these institutions and in formulating policies to interact with them. An image of two systems of education, secular and religious, in constant contestation with little room for accommodation, is widespread.

This chapter intends to challenge these misapprehensions, drawing on the educational landscape of Bangladesh, the third largest Muslim majority country. I argue that not only does the Islamic education sector, particularly madrassahs, possess intramural diversity, it is also a site of vigorous contestations between various schools of thought on the socio-political roles of these institutions in addition to its contestations with the secular education system. In the course of my argument, I will also show that the secular education system has room to accommodate religious educational institutions as has been the case in Bangladesh. Such accommodations are reciprocal as both the secular education system and religious education institutions had to embrace changes and incorporate new content and pedagogy. Our discussion will also demonstrate that not all religious educational institutions are willing or ready to embrace such changes although current social realities call for newer approaches, and that adaptation has been a hallmark of Islamic education for centuries.

I make my case through two interrelated steps: first, I show that education is not only about knowledge but also about power; educational institutions represent, naturalize and institutionalize power through curriculum and pedagogy. Therefore a liberal secular state’s education policies favor a certain kind of education while Islamic scholars (ulema) and Islamists provide different visions. Second, I demonstrate that these normative differences are translated into reality through different kinds of madrassahs. The differences between these madrassahs are not limited only to their differences in curricula; they offer different worldviews, and teach doctrinal differences on being a ‘true Muslim.’ The notion of a ‘true Muslim’ is a dynamic concept and shaped not only by the fundamental precepts of Islam but also of its interpretations influenced by social contexts and time. The perceived challenges to being true Muslims determine the contours of the identity and the responsibilities. This chapter is divided into six sections. The point of departure for the discussion is the role of education vis-à-vis knowledge and power, which is the focus of the second section. This provides us with a context for understanding the relationship between various strands of educational systems, including different categories of madrassahs. In the third section, I provide an overview of the madrassah system in Bangladesh. This will be followed by a discussion on the various dimensions of differences of madrassah systems in Bangladesh, including their ideological positions. Relationships between secular/general education and the religious education system are also discussed. In the fifth section, I examine the implications of these contestations. In the concluding section, I summarize the three central points made in this chapter.

Education: Contestations between ideologies

In agreement with Michel Foucault, I argue that knowledge is one of the manifestations of the presence of power (Foucault, 1979, p. 27). In similar vein, I agree with Michael Apple that, “any analysis of the ways in which unequal power is reproduced and contested in society must deal with education. Educational institutions provide one of the major mechanisms through which power is maintained and challenged” (Apple, 2004, p. vii). Thus the modes of selection, classification, distribution, transmission, and evaluation of educational knowledge in a society are manifestations of power relationships within that society and means of social control. Control over knowledge provides on the one hand an unchallenged legitimation for certain hegemonic versions of truth, while on the other hand it allows the presentation of specific forms of consciousness, beliefs, attitudes, values, and practices as natural, universal, or even eternal.

The history of the emergence of the liberal bourgeoisie state as an institution and enlightenment as an ideology shows that educational institutions have replaced the church (i.e. religious institutions) as the dominant ideological state apparatus (Althusser, 2001, pp. 103–104). The elevation of educational institutions to the primary instrument of ideological hegemony also made them a site for contestation: between social classes/groups for dominance in the form of debates on curriculum, content, and pedagogy. In the words of Apple, “Education is also a site of conflict about the kind of knowledge that is and should be taught, about whose knowledge is ‘official’ and about who has the right to decide both what is to be taught and how teaching and learning are to be evaluated” (Apple, 2004, p. vii).

These struggles are universal in the sense that they are present in any liberal bourgeois society; but historical and social contexts shape the scope and determine the mode of manifestations of these struggles. In Muslim majority societies, these struggles are two-fold: on the one hand it is between contending opinions on the objectives of education and on the other hand between various educational institutions. As for the objectives of education, it is important to note that knowledge, particularly education, is central to Islam. Notwithstanding the fact that ‘ ilm (knowledge)¹ is the third most used term in the Qur’an, which shows the importance attached to knowledge and that Islamic texts repeatedly insist on the lifelong pursuit of learning as fundamental to piety,² there are at least four roles that education plays in Islam. They are: transfer of knowledge, dissemination of the faith, the formation of character, and the mobilization of followers (Reetz, 2010, pp. 106–139). Therefore, from an Islamic point of view, education is “synonymous with preaching. Converting the world to the ‘true’ religion [is] inseparable from educating others in the ways of Islam” (Reetz, 2010, p. 107) Within this frame, the objective of education is not only to impart knowledge but also to guide the recipients in their lives, and ensure that the educational institutions are creating more followers. As I will show later, not all protagonists agree on how these goals can be achieved through Islamic education; thus it opens up space for contestations within them. The second dimension of struggle is its relationship with other extant institutions. In Muslim societies, the educational arena comprises not only ‘Islamic’ educational institutions which have a long tradition and are deeply embedded in the societies but ‘secular’ educational institutions which have emerged as part of modern state/nation-building endeavors.³ In Muslim societies, debates on the goals of education and content of curricula, therefore, have three distinct dimensions – between religious educational institutions and state-sponsored secular educational institutions; and within two separate educational arenas – ‘secular’ and ‘Islamic.’⁴

Contacts with the West through colonialism in the 19th century or modernization schemes in the postcolonial era, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, either replaced religious educational institutions with secular educational institutions or strengthened the latter remarkably in Muslim societies. Secular schools were viewed as agents of development and modernization; governments introduced centralized, secular, and homogenized systems of education with an emphasis on imparting skills to the students and reproducing the vision of a secular nationhood. The objectives of education include transforming the individuals who constitute the community, and transmitting a particular interpretation of history and ideology. This policy is an integral part of the secularization of the society. Secularization, within this context, means not only the demise of political saliency of religious structures but also the marginalization of values and belief systems based on religions (Moyser, 1991, p. 14). In the words of Dan Diner:

The question of secularization cannot be reduced to religion, however; it far transcends religion. Ultimately, secularization is a drive to transform that affects all areas of life…secularization in the sense of a separation of spheres of life and social intercourse – the spheres of the intimate, the private, and the public. Secularization implies an endless process of definition, interpretation, negotiation, transformation, and conversion of the boundary between the modes of inner life and the outer world. It also means the decoding and appropriation of the world by human reason. Religion as a system of belief impregnating societies hampers this process (Diner, 2009, p. 17).

This marginalization of religion was one of the results of the post-Enlightenment western concept of modernity, especially the idea that there can be only one meta-narrative of modernity. This meta-narrative had little, if any, space for contending visions – religious or otherwise. The new objectives of education and institutions were also the results of another important historical development: the meteoric rise of (secular) nationalism as a hegemonic ideology. The anti-colonial movements and post-colonial states subscribed to and internalized the idea that ‘nationhood’ is imperative for the survival and success of the community. As we now know, thanks to Benedict Anderson (1991), the nation is an ‘imagined community’ and imagination is not a natural entity but a constructed project. This construction required elimination of allegiance to any marker of identity and ethos (for example, ethnicity, religion, tribe, and clan) other than the ‘new nation.’ It would be erroneous to suggest that nationalism was the rallying cry of the secularists alone; religious communities also embraced it, because to minority religious communities it provides a safeguard against the majority (Juergensmeyer, 2008) and to majority Muslim communities in the Arab and Muslim world it is a way to participate in the world of nations (Coury, 2004, pp. 128–171). Thus, throughout the 19th century we witnessed the emergence and ‘universalization’ of “the trinity of secularization, enlightenment, and modernity” (Diner, 2009, p. 17).

Secularization of society, or at least the effort to do so, underscores the presence of two contending spheres – private and public. Within this framework, religion is placed in the private sphere. In Muslim-majority societies, the privatization of religion undermines the Islamic scholarly tradition. Throughout Islamic history, ulema (Islamic scholars, plural of alim) have played an important role in the public sphere and in many instances the scholar community served as the bridge between the state and civil society.⁵ Although in the early Islamic age a wide range of individuals, from jurists to individuals with familiarity of Islamic traditions, were described as ulema (Mottahedeh, 1985, p. 231),⁶ over time more nuanced understandings of ulema emerged. Those specifically engaged in Islamic scholarship are commonly identified as ulema; they are seen as “the recognized authority to interpret the Qur’an, to derive the rules of fiqh [jurisprudence] from cardinal sources, and to define the religious outlook of society” (Nafi and Taji-Farouki, 2004, pp. 5–6).

As such, the primary function of the ulema became one of protecting and transmitting a venerated tradition in its most pristine form and without any distraction from the original intents of the tradition. The source of their authority was intrinsically related to how they acquired the knowledge and how it was transmitted to the next generation. The ulema played a pivotal role “in safeguarding the tenets of religion, holding the societal nexus, and extending legitimacy to the state” (Nafi and Taji-Farouki, 2004, p. 6). Notwithstanding the variations in time and place, generally speaking, the ulema encompassed numerous social roles “qadis, teachers, muftis, guardians of waqfs, market inspectors, and scribes” (Nafi and Taji-Farouki, 2004, p. 6), to name but a few. According to Francis Robinson, “They performed a wide range of functions. They might administer mosques, schools, hospitals, and orphanages; they might also be courtiers, diplomats or leading bureaucrats” (Robinson, 1996,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Critical Studies in Asian Education
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• 1. Madrassah education in Bangladesh: Contestations and accommodations
• 2. Contemporary madrasas and contested modernities: Educational reform in Pakistan
• 3. The role, developments and challenges of Islamic education in China
• 4. From Jingtang education to Arabic school: Muslim education in Yunnan
• 5. Pendidikan Islami (Islamic education): Reformulating a new curriculum for Muslim schools in Aceh, Indonesia
• 6. Crafting a new democracy: Civic education in Indonesian Islamic universities
• 7. The Hikmah (Wisdom) Program: A philosophical inquiry for the teaching of Islamic education in Malaysia
• 8. Coming to grips with modernization: The Teens aL.I.V.E. programme and the teaching of Sadaqah (giving of alms)
• 9. Confronting and integrating modernity: Religious education and curriculum reforms in Turkey
• 10. Pedagogical innovations and the reinvention of ‘old’ pedagogy in Muslim schools in Russia
• Glossary
• Index