EDUCATION FROM ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVES

I. BACKGROUNG
What is Islamic Education
Education is the process of imparting or acquiring knowledge, values, and skills that, ideally,
contribute to improving learners and society. However, the goals and methods of education vary
considerably between cultures and religions. This distinction is seen in how education is
practiced in Islamic.
Islamic education centers on teaching Islam and its religious way of life. The source of Islam
education is the Qur'an, the central religious text of Islam.

History of Education in Islam

The emphasis on religious learning for Muslims began with the Prophet Muhammad in the first
century A.D. The Prophet himself was the first teacher in an organized religious setting,
a halaqa. The Prophet's followers gathered in Mosques to study Islam and the Qur'an in ancient
Mecca (Saudia Arabia). The Prophet Muhammad instructed the first teachers he sent to educate
others throughout the Arab world and beyond. The number of muallams, teachers of Islam,
increased rapidly during the early days of Islam. By the end of the first century A.D., almost
every village had at least one maktab to ensure that the Prophet's teachings would continue to
flourish and that the moral standards of Islam were correctly observed.
As Islamic education became increasingly common throughout the next few centuries, it also
gained importance. Fathers regarded providing their sons with religious education as their moral
duty. In addition, while the Qur'an continued to be at the center of Islamic learning, the subjects
taught expanded to include arithmetic, writing, history, poetry, and law.

Islam Education Objectives

In Islamic education, instruction is comprised of three key terms and aspects. These three
features form the foundation for the overall objectives of religious education for Muslims. These
are as follows:

1. Ta'līm denotes knowledge that is sought or imparted through instruction and teaching.
2. Tarbiyah implies a state of spiritual and ethical nurturing following the will of God.
3. Ta'dīb calls for the development of social behavior commensurate with Islamic theology.

Islamic religions emphasize the moral responsibility of individuals. For Muslims, the highest
model of moral responsibility is their Prophet Muhammad. The ultimate goal of religious
education is to prepare Muslims to exercise this responsibility correctly. Religious education has
several objectives to accomplish this ultimate goal.

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II. ISLAMIC EDUCATION IN SOMALIA
ISLAMIC REVIVAL AND EDUCATION IN SOMALIA

The concept of Islamic revival is used here in a way defined by Legum (1992), Islamic revival is
a struggle against Western hegemony; the post-colonial Arab and other Muslim leaders, and the
growth of secularism in the Middle East and other countries.

It favors modernizing political systems but without weakening a deep commitment to Islamic
ideas and teachings.

According to Ahmed Akhbar (1992) the revivalist movements demand assertiveness of

Islamic knowledge and the Islamic way of life, and challenges the universal global view based
on Western knowledge. Similarly Halliday (1995) argues that Islamic revivalism is a response to
what is con- ceived as hostility to Islamic threat to the West.

Racism in some European countries, above all France, has taken on a more explicitly anti-
Muslim character. In the United States anti-Islamic ethic is significant in political discourse.
Halliday (1995) rejects the prediction that there will be a direct confrontation between Islam and
the West as Samuel Huntington predicted in his book “The clash of civilizations”. In Halliday‟s
view there has never been a united Islamic force, which advocates one particular Islamic revival.

However, those who advocate Islamic revival have a common agenda: restoration of
the Islamic system of government, education and culture.
The form of struggle of the revivalist movements differ from country to country and it also vary
in different periods.

For instance, islamic revival in post-colonial Africa manifests contradictory causes.

It often arises from economic difficulties, especially at a time of famine and drought as Susan
MacDonald‟s (in Mazrui, 1993) in her account of Senegal and the Sahel asserts.
Now, Islam is consolidating its position as people turn to the strict Muslim moral code to give
them a sense of direction.
Persistent drought and the spreading desert have caused poverty, misery and hardship. This
diversity has created a favorable terrain for increased religious fervor. Two issues relating to
Islam have been manifested in the Horn and North Africa and also in the sub-Saharan African
countries since they gained their independence: Islamic expansion and Islamic revivalism.
The former involves the spread of Islam and conversion of the non-Moslems, “in search of new
worlds to conquer”, while revivalism is“rebirth of faith” among those who are already converted.
Countries such as Sudan and Saudi Arabia have revived Islamic legal systems and other features
of the Islamic way of life, aspects of which go back fourteen centuries. Islamic movements in
countries like Algeria, Egypt, and Afghanistan are also seeking revivalist goals.
A similar sacred nostalgia is evident in other religions, such as the born-again Christian sects in
the United States and Africa (Mazrui, 1997).

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 Islamic revival has developed in rather different ways in different Islamic
countries. Somalia and Senegal have shown similar features. Asexplained by Loimeier (2000):
Somalia is situated in the Horn of Africa, and in 1999 United Nations estimated the population
about 9.7 million. 1 More than half of the population is distinguished as nomads and semi-
nomads (55 percent) that live in semi-desert area and their livelihood depend on pastorals.
About 25 percent live in the fertile areas between two rivers.
III. SCHOLARS FROM ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE EDUCATION
1. Ibn Khaldūn (Ibn Khaldun) (1332- 1406), was an Arab historian, scholar, and
politician, the first thinker to articulate a comprehensive theory of historiography of
history in his Muqad dime (final revision 1402), the introductory volume to his
Universal History (Kitāb al-„ibar, 1377-82). Born and raised in Tunis, he spent the
politically active first part of his life in northwestern Africa and Muslim Spain. He
moved to Cairo in 1382 to pursue a career as professor of Mālikī law and judge.
Ibn Khaldūn created in the Muqaddima (English translation by F.Rosenthal, 1967)
what he called an “entirely original science.” He established a scientific methodology
for historiography by providing a theory of the basic laws orating in history so that
not only could the occurrences of the past be registered but also “the how and why of
events” could be understood.
Historiography is based on the criticism of sources; the criteria to be used are inherent
probability of the historical exports (khabar; plural: khbār)- to be judged on the basis
of an understanding of significant political, economic, and cultural factors- and their
conformity with reality and the nature of the historical process. The latter he analyzed
as the cyclical (every three generations, c.120 years) rise and decline of human
societies („umrān) insofar as they exhibit a political cohesiveness („asabīya) in
accepting the authority of a dynastic head of state.
Ibn Khaldūn‟s sources were the actual course of Islamic history and the injunctions
about political and social behavior found in the Greek/ Persian/ Arab mirrors for
princes and wisdom literature, welded together by an Aristotelian teleological
realism/ empiricism; by contrast, he was critical of the metaphysical platonic utopias
of thinkers like al-Fārābī.
His influence is to be felt in later Arab authors and in particular in Ottoman
historiography. In the West, were he has been intensely studied since the eighteenth
century, he has been variously seen as the founder of sociology, economic history,
and other modern theories of state (Audi, 2001).
The Islamic historian is remembered in philosophy principally for a simple version of
the cyclical view of history. He believed that in a period of about 120 years a people
would pass thought the cycle of primitivism, nomadic life, and civilization, the last of
which would fall as a new cycle commenced. He is regarded as the first (and still the
greatest) historian of Arabic logic, possibly the most outstanding figure in the social
sciences between Aristotle ad Machiavelli (Blackburn, 2005).

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 Ibn Khaldun was one of the most creative of Muslim statesmen and political thinkers,
widely acclaimed by modern historians as the greatest philosopher- historian. In this
major theoretical work, The Prolegomena, he introduced the notion of natural
causality in history, in contrast to Islamic theology, and called for the definition and
study of sociological and political processes (considered to be the principles of
historical methodology) with the express investigative intention of recovering
historical accuracy.
He defined and claimed to be the originator of a „science of culture‟ (‘umrān) that
would study cultures in multiple stages in their natural human, social, and political
development. His methodology emphasizes the study of environmental impact on
social organization and economic processes that define value, prosperity, and
culture. (Honderich, 2005)
2. Persian Abu Hamid Muhammad Ghazali (Alghazal in Latin texts) (1058- 1111)
was the most influential Ash‟arite theologian of his time. His role as head of the state-
endowed Nizamiyya Madrasa, his monumental work Revival of Religious Sciences,
and his time. His role as head of the state-endowed Nizamiyya Madrasa, his
monumental work Revival of Religious Sciences, and his autobiographical account
Deliverance from Error (often compared to Augustine‟s Confessions) furthered the
triumph of revelation over reason.
His specifically anti- philosophical works, Intentions of the philosophers and
Incoherence of the philosophers, called on theologians to use philosophical technique
to oppose „heretic‟ arguments. However, the effects on philosophy proved positive.
The study of logic gained widespread theological acceptance. The identification of
twenty philosophical problems argued to be false (including eternity, immorality, and
rational causality) was brilliantly rebutted by Averroës, thus leading to refinement of
Aristotelian arguments, and Sohhravardī‟s philosophy (Honderich, 2005).
Ghazali was on Islamic philosopher, theologian, jurist, and mystic. He was born in
Khurasan and educated in Nishapur, then an intellectual center of eastern Islam. He
was appointed the head of a seminary, the newly founded Nizamiyah of Baghdad, in
which he taught law and theology with great success. Yet his exposure to logic and
philosophy led him to seek a certainty in knowledge beyond that assumed by his
profession.
At first he attempted to address his problem academically, but after five years in
Baghdad he resigned, left his family, and embarked on the mystic‟s solitary quest for
al-Haqq (Arabic for „the true One‟).
As a Sufi, he wandered for ten years through many of Islam‟s major cities and centers
of learning finally returning to Nishapur and to teaching theology before his death.
Al-Ghazali‟s literary and intellectual legacy is particularly of his work and the esteem

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 in which he is held within Islam he may be compared to Aquinas and Maimonides in
the Christian and Jewish traditions respectively.
His Revivification of the Religious Sciences is considered to this day a major
theological compendium. His mystical treatises also have retained their popularity,
The Deliverance from Error. This book chronicles his lifelong quest for truth and
certainty, and his disappointment with the premises of dogmatic theology, both
orthodox Sunni and heterodox Shiite thought, as well as with the teachings of the
philosophers. The light of truth came to him, he believed, only through divine grace;
he considered his senses and reasoning powers all susceptible to error. (Audi, 2001)
REFERENCES
1. Dr. Lisa McLeod-Simmons holds a PhD and has been an educator and published researcher
for more than 25 years.

2. http:/www.unfpa.org/swp/1999/swep_search.html.
3. https://www.al-islam.org/muslim-scholars-views-education-hamid-reza-alavi/brief-
biography-some-muslim-scholars - al-ghazali
4. https://www.al-islam.org/muslim-scholars-views-education-hamid-reza-alavi/brief-biography-
some-muslim-scholars - ibn-khaldun