From Islamization of Knowledge to Islamization of Education

Abstract

Any Muslim intellectual who has a serious concern for the relatively
deteriorating condition of the Muslim Ummah with respect to the Western
World would be depressed and confused. However, the recent history of the
Muslim World shows how many determined reformist movements played
a positive role in changing the Muslim condition. But these movements met
with partial or limited success.
It was in the late seventeenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries,
an ascendant Europe undermined and overran much of the Uthmani
Duwlah (Ottoman Empire) and finally put an end to it, much to the shock
and dismay of the Muslim World. The powerful European challenge and
this drastic event elicited two contrasting responses from the Muslim elite
and the masses. While many of them resorted to superficial imitation and
initiated capricious copycat reform movements, some harnessed the rising
awareness and the attendant spirit of resistance to launch more genuine
efforts and reform movements. Understandably, these efforts were conflicting,
emotional, and limited in their scope but they eventually helped
Muslim societies to gain political independence in the post-World War II
era. At the heart of these reforms and political liberation was the Muslim
peoples’ desire to realize their Islamic, national, and cultural aspirations
along with the hope of enjoying a standard of living comparable to that of
the West.
Unfortunately, these hopes were not achieved and the cultural reforms
continued to be emotional, arbitrary, and patchwork (talfiq). The condition
of the Muslim people continued to deteriorate and the gap between the
Western world and the Muslim world continued to widen. The former continued
to dominate and exploit that latter. All this proved that arbitrary,
emotional, superficial, and limited patchwork reforms would not have a
serious impact on the conditions of the Muslim people and will fail to realize
their national or Islamic aspirations ...