Halaman

Sabtu, 28 Juli 2012

ISLAMIC EDUCATIONAL REFORM



ISLAMIC EDUCATIONAL REFORM

The challenge for educational reform in the Muslim world is steep. By the turn of the twentieth century, Islam has become a globalizing force and demands for reinstituting religio-moral education have produced tensions between Muslims and the dominant capitalist Western globalization forces. In the five hundred years since the Spanish inquisition, which dismantled the last intellectual and cultural stronghold of Islam in Europe, Western forces had failed in their goal of “modernizing” the Muslim world, mainly because of their double-standard policies. Focusing on modern skills and vocations as the only means to reform made existing Western-imposed educational reform paradigms almost obsolete. In Barazangi 's opinion, Muslim educators need to understand issues of pluralism, secularism, and the individual belief system. The problem lies mainly in confusing these issues as well as in applying the ethnic-religious divides when addressing the public-private domains within the Islamic belief system (Barazangi, 2004). Barazangi warns against the “addition of contents, concept, themes, and perspectives to the curriculum without changing its basic structure, purpose, and characteristics,” stating that it is twice as important in the context of the current political climate. That is, she explains, “the universal beliefs of Islam that [are] rooted in the Qurān are often confused with the… individual cultural and ethnic interpretations of these beliefs, especially because these interpretations are predominantly exercised by males.”
Understanding the dynamic relationship between the universal belief system and the individual views of Islam was central to the determination of the nature of educational reform in Muslim societies and minority communities during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it has become more central in the twenty-first century. This centrality, represented in the five major challenges that are addressed in the five sections of this article (preservation verses revival of Islamic culture, changing functions of education,…) is essential for discussing changes in curricular and instructional policies and their implications for attitudinal change.
The Muslim world initially rejected as irrelevant changes introduced from Europe in the early nineteenth century. Changes in technical, military, and vocational training dictated by local rulers and elites did not conform to the traditional educational practices that were the remnants of Islamic education. Comparing these practices with recent changes runs the risk of overstating where and how educational reform has taken place, particularly so when outside systems have been imposed. Zia 's (2006) claim that, contrary to modernity, globalization is not an outgrowth of a Western worldview is not credible because neither indigenous ideas and ideals, nor norms and attitudes form the basis of the process of reform. Consequently, transformation of these ideas and attitudes has not occurred.
Literature from the early twenty-first century indicates that old practices have not been reformed and that changes have resulted in no significant attitudinal or cultural development (UNDP, 2002–2005). Changes introduced by colonials and missionaries resulted in setting the European utilitarian mode—training for jobs and services—and the Muslim altruistic mode—developing
the Islamic character—modes against each other. This tension has resulted in centralized state-controlled educational institutions and a complete departure from Islamic education. Postmodern attempts to privatize seminaries (maāhid) of secondary and higher religious or secular education have created business opportunities for 
investors instead of producing changes in the old stagnant systems.
The intellectual stagnation that has characterized the Muslim world since the early fourteenth century has remained despite mass and compulsory schooling in the postcolonial era. The political upheaval found in many Muslim societies in the early twenty-first century has furthered governments ’ resistance to new ideas, particularly those related to female higher Islamic learning, instilling a fear of being stamped by the natives as agents of the Western hegemonic globalization process, or accused by Westerners as “Islamists.” It is also probable that governments ’ resistance has been the result of their own acceptance of the “Islamists” views or in order to appease Western governments that support their hold on power.

Preservation versus Revival of Islamic Culture.

The Islamic world 's reaction to Western-introduced changes in education has lacked the intellectual dynamics that once marked its educational system, in which formal and informal teaching and learning were founded on the accomplishments and needs of teachers and pupils. Nasr (1987) discusses the oral transmission that produced some highly knowledgeable, though illiterate, Muslims. Western educational practices in the Muslim lands did not produce the same economic, intellectual, and social development that they did in Western Europe and North America. Educational objectives outlined by Muslim educators have remained ambiguous; although their philosophy claims to be rooted in the ideals of Islam, their pedagogical strategies contain both modern methodologies and political, nationalistic rhetoric. The present inconclusive, fragmented, and contradictory literature on Muslim educational reform, in both English and Arabic, indicates that educational transformation is an unstable process, one that has been made more uneven because societal fabrics in Muslim societies have been dismantled as a result of contemporary military and cultural wars, in the name of democracy and women 's emancipation.
No full account of curricular reform is available, despite the many reports on changes in the instructional process and the increased number of schools, universities, and student enrollment. Reports by Albert Hourani (1981 and 1983), UNESCO (1995), and others largely praise the progress of the “reformed and modernized” education system. However, Nasr (1987) and Barazangi (2004) question such conclusions, which they argue confuse traditional Islamic reform with fundamentalism and modernity with nationalism. Recently, tensions between Muslim apologists who claim moderation and Muslims who use extreme means and interpretations to reinstate Islam created further confusion between the objectives of preserving the Islamic culture and the imposed norms of reformation coming from outside the Muslim world.
These changes were and are still being rejected by local peoples and religious leaders in majority Muslim societies and minority Muslim communities in different parts of the world who traditionally have been suspicious of any new type of formal education, although foreign cultural practices had been integrated into local systems during the eighth and ninth centuries. Local peoples and religious leaders have considered European and American educational changes irrelevant, alien, and expressions of colonial exploitation and missionary attempts to Christianize the population. These views are not baseless, as missionary education systems, foreign private-school systems, and colonial government–supported school systems attest (British Parliamentary Records vol. 137 [1905]) and as neocolonial strategies, mainly by the United States, that exploit the radical response of some Muslim groups, demonstrate. The idea of special girls ’ schools was introduced by Catholic missionaries in the Indian Subcontinent and the Levant during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In these schools, girls were taught embroidery, home economics, domestic skills, and nursing; they were also taught the Bible. Boys were taught office skills; agricultural, military, and vocational trades; and some fiqh (jurisprudence) to serve government needs. The rising tension between the so-called secularists and Islamists became more polarized with the American neocolonial ambitions in the Middle East and Central Asia during the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. Though these ambitions are especially pronounced in Turkey, Iraq, Egypt, and Pakistan, they have affected all Muslim societies.
Educational objectives in the colonial and postcolonial periods shifted from an emphasis on discipline for both children and adults during the pre-modern era to a formalization of the relationship of citizens to the state to meet its economic and political interests or the recent demands of globalization (Eickelman, 1985). Local governors ’ policies weakened the katātīb (plural of kuttāb) and madāris (plural of madrasah), often distributing the schools’ waqf (endowment) among the ruling class and missionary societies to establish private schools. Heyworth-Dunne (1968) suggests that system imposed by the Egyptian ruler Muhammad Alī (r. 1805–1849) is the key to understanding why Egypt 's present system is so defective and poorly adapted to the country. Although he established a military school (1816), technical and engineering schools and colleges, and a medical school (1827), these schools were for men only and were staffed by European Christians. This instructional system also neglected women 's education, particularly at the secondary level, and training of teachers for the elementary and the preparatory schools. But most of all, the system was not coordinated with traditional practices and appeared to operate as a rival or even as a substitute for them. New subject matters were divorced from Qurānic study and the sciences of antiquity such as biography, astronomy, geography, and medicine. In addition, the system had little or no direct intellectual purpose; it existed primarily to train the local people to serve colonial and local government interests. Despite many recent changes, the Egyptian system is still affected by the tension and confusion between the secular and religious, the national and global (Daun and Walford, 2004).

Changing Function of Education.

Sanderson (1975) points out that Islamic education achieved its goals in colonial Sudan and Northern Nigeria to pass on the customs of the adult community, to teach children the cultural knowledge and skills they needed to function effectively in society, and to instill in them beliefs about the relationship between the seen and the unseen in the universe. In the twenty-first century, however, these skills are seen as “taboo” in response to the Western onslaught against “religious” teaching, as both Westerners and Muslims confuse religious education with Islamic higher learning (Barazangi, 2004).
What remained of the Islamic education system became peripheral during the colonial period, reserved for underprivileged students such as those from poor rural and urban areas. Primary Islamic education, for example, came to a standstill in the Ottoman Empire when Turkish replaced its main language, Arabic, as the medium of instruction in most government schools. This occurred also in the colonial period when colonial languages replaced local languages in occupied Muslim lands. These changes in instructional practices transformed people 's ideas about religion and its importance to community development by removing the teaching of Islam as the basis of character formation and making it a new subject called “religion,” without primary status in the curriculum (Starrett, 1998). Government schools became agents of colonial policy, used to control Muslim rulers, administrative management, and agricultural productivity. As described by Leila Ahmad, when enrollments grew, girls were denied places in classrooms and tuition was instituted in secondary schools, making girls ’ education a low priority (Ahmed, 1992).
The English colonial system penetrated the Indian subcontinent, the majority of the Middle East, and many African nations, even though it claimed that it did not interfere in internal affairs (Ali A. Mazrui, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1986). The French colonial system in North and West Africa and in Syria and Lebanon assimilated the existing system to the point of annihilating it (W. Bryant Mumford, Africans Learn to Be French, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970). It contributed further to diverting the rural system from traditional Islamic education to superstitious social customs, dogmatic and nationalistic creeds, and passive ūfī orders. And instead of strengthening institutions of higher learning, such as the oldest, the 1,110-year-old al-Qarawīyīn in Fez, Morocco, the colonial government dismantled many old centers. The recent revival of such centers as cultural landmarks has not restored their intellectual value. Thus, attempts to reverse the dismantling process with the hope that this process will lure Muslim immigrants to go back to their Muslim lands have also failed as European and North American societies attempt to assimilate instead of integrate the new waves of Muslim immigrants (Barbieri, 1999).

Comparing the Three Schemes of Education.

A comparison of teaching in the katātīb and madāris to the colonizers ’ technical, military, and vocational training or the missionaries ’ book knowledge is not an accurate indicator of educational reform. Neither do the mushrooming Muslim schools in the West represent a reform (Barazangi, 2004). What is obvious, however, is that educational practices have changed from informal family-based, formal teacher-centered, and informal decentralized tarbiyah (character and intellectual development) to either formal missionary-controlled, state-centralized schooling, or privately funded institutions that are attempting to integrate modernized teaching tools and material within the same social norms of the decentralized extended-family and tribal system. These new schemata have added to the debate about reform but have not effected a major shift in the educational process. Inserting tarbiyah within “secular” education does not address the fundamental need to replace the existing bureaucratic system (Barazangi, 2004). The concept of tarbiyah has been reduced to passing on the skills and information needed to qualify for a job.
Classically, the function of teaching was primarily Qurānic talqīn (acquisition and dissemination of meaning and spirit): essentially, instilling community values while combating illiteracy. Other types of kuttāb taught some knowledge of akhbār (history), isāb (simple arithmetic and reckoning), and elementary Arabic naw (grammar), reading, and writing. The function of the madrasah was to complement the objectives of both kuttābs, as well as the halqah's advanced ulūm al-Qurān (Qurānic sciences), ulūm al-adīth (sciences of the Prophetic tradition), and their ancillary sciences of Arabic naw and ādāb (literature). Thus, ikmah (wisdom), kalām (philosophy/theology), maniq (logic), ilm al-nujūm (astronomy), music, and ilm al-ibb (medicine) were part of the curriculum even early in the nineteenth century (Ali, 1983). Government and missionary schools, meanwhile, sought to implant European secular and Christian values of agrarian, office, and class bureaucracy (Bennabi, 1969). In the twenty-first century, governments are still struggling to squeeze specialized courses of study into the old curricular structure instead of dismantling the obsolete systems. Emphasis on computerized instruction and online resources has not changed the dynamics of learning, nor the learner-teacher relations (Barazangi, 2007).
Traditional and colonial modes of instruction represent a departure from the Islamic perspective that was instrumental in the evolution of the Islamic civilization. Rahman (1982) notes that intellectual stagnation occurred during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when manuals and commentaries dominated, and suggests that the educational process had virtually ceased to function by the late 1500s when the Andalusian Islamic community in Spain was dismantled. Eickelman, however, sees the mnemonic devices of Islamic education as a continuation of the socialization process even during and after the colonial period, when systems of mass and compulsory schooling were legislated. Barazangi (2004, 2007) asserts that despite the many efforts to integrate these two modes into a third schema, the basic dynamics of seeing the learner, particularly the female, as a preserver of culture instead as a generator of new knowledge still dominate.
The Islamic educational system was abandoned when state and colonial governments made decisions for local people and Muslims lost their scholarly and intellectual initiative. With the exception of scattered scholars and artisans during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries that Nasr points out, Islamic educational practices fell into abeyance. Attempts to expound the positive attitude of Islam toward science by those Rahman calls “pre-modernist reformers” resulted instead in a complete separation of “Islamic” and “non-Islamic” knowledge. The strategies of nationalist elites such as Marūf al-Raāfī (1877–1945) of Iraq attest to differences in attitude, especially toward the implications of modern science for the traditional Muslims ’ worldview and faith. These different attitudes and strategies created further confusion about how to reintroduce science and technology in the culture. As Bennabi notes, the aspirations of some elites and rulers were not those of the community or the masses, but those of the colonials, missionaries, and romantic Orientalists. Recent new visions—be they the “Islamization of Knowledge” as envisioned by Ismāīl Rājī al-Fārūqī (Islamization of Knowledge: The Problem, Principles, and the Workplan, Islamabad, 1982), or its misapplication in a separatist, radical mode—have further isolated the masses of Muslims from the decision-making process (Barazangi, 2004).The practical implications of these differences in attitude and of alienated aspirations may be seen in the varied and conflicting responses to modernization and in the present disparity between the ideal and the reality of the Muslim world, particularly in educating women. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan 's call in 1860 for the reinterpretation of the Qurān in light of modern experience, for example, failed because his views were not based on the Islamic perspective. He was not able to implement them in the Aligarh Muslim University of India, which he created to integrate religious beliefs with a modern scientific outlook. Other reform ideas put forth by rulers and elites who had studied in Europe had similar negative results.

Community Development and Educational Progress.

The rival Muslim and European education plans were in place until the second quarter of the twentieth century, when turmoil was the common factor in the social, political, and educational systems of occupied Muslim lands until military and political independence was achieved in the 1950s and 1960s. Elites, Bennabi adds, contributed further to this turmoil by adopting Western ideas of change as the only means for reform without considering the actual needs and sociopsychological factors of the community. Impositions and assessments of Muslim education through biased reporting by Western media during the first decade of the twenty-first century have added to the turmoil and the misunderstanding of Muslim educational systems globally. Reports by some journalists and politicians have infringed on the education profession and misled the general public, and some have contradicted their own “vision” in using a double standard when comparing the value of education in America with that of Muslim societies, or when making sweeping statements about textbooks as inciters of violence. Such claims are refuted by the empirical findings in Doumato and Starrett (2007).
Postcolonial changes, which almost uniformly in-
volved modern educational instructional schemes, also resulted in confusing outcomes. Education authorities lost their enthusiasm, lacked planning and balance in educational development, and have been pressured from outside to change, but without being given the tools or the skills to do so (Barazangi, 2007).
The general uncertainty of objectives of educational reform has prevailed with some exceptions. For example, the goal of returning to regional languages (European languages became secondary to Arabic, Persian, or Urdu as the means of instruction in public schools) has been achieved on a limited basis. This uncertainty is evident in African countries, especially those in North Africa (Abdelhamid Mansouri, “Algeria between tradition and modernity: the question of language.” PhD diss., State University of New York at Albany, 1991), and in Asian countries, particularly in Pakistan, where a full transition could not be effected because of misleading popular media accounts about madrasah enrollment (Tahir Andrabi, 
et al., “Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data,” Comparative Education Review 50, no. 3 [2006]: 446–477). With the emphasis on nationalistic sentiments, the restoration of Arabic—the language of the Qurān—for instruction became an ideal. Meanwhile, those using regional languages for instruction expended energy on the translation of European textbooks instead of writing new, native textbooks. Twenty-first-century calls for ethnic minority human rights and the need to recognize minority vernacular languages have diverted educational reform foci and exhausted existing resources instead of solving issues of inequality in instruction.
The rapid increase in the number of schools in Muslim societies in the post-modern era has not kept up with population growth or with the demand for education. High levels of illiteracy persist (UNESCO, 1995; Zia, 2006) and, notwithstanding arguments concerning the definition of literacy and the value of oral transmission, the levels and types of education available to women are still inferior to those available to men (Barazangi, 2004). Educational quality is sacrificed inadvertently in pursuit of universal schooling and mandatory elementary education because of the lack of human and other resources and of coherent regional planning and technical competency (UNDP 2000–2005). Intellectual production, as Bennabi lamented earlier, is still hindered because Muslims value Western products (such as modern technical tools, and, more recently, audiovisual equipment and computer programs) and wish to acquire them, without researching the ideas behind these products.
The nature of educational transformation has varied among Muslim countries, reflecting the development model adopted, the post-1969 Muslim world 's economic and political polarization, and the role played by oil-rich countries and their international benefactors. For example, the relation between tradition and change in the Malaysian context did not arise from the question of cultural change, in which women 's place is used as the central discourse, as in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. Instead, Muslim religious groups have used a new discourse to defend against the encroachment of Western ideas. However, by emphasizing the question of morality, epitomized in attire and sex segregation, particularly in higher education institutions, Malaysian reformers have indirectly restricted the intellectual role of women in the development process. Malaysian educational reform has not changed the intellectual, attitudinal, and cultural development of the Muslim masses. As similar movements of reform are spreading in other Muslim communities from Indonesia to North America, it sometimes seems questionable whether there ever was an educational reform.

Educating Muslim Minorities in the West and the Globalization Process.

Economic openness, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf societies, has not always been accompanied by political, cultural, and educational openness. There are still generational and regional variations in accepting Western standards of globalization (Daun and Walford, 2004). In addition, “Islamists,” in response to globalization, have politicized Islam; but, more importantly, they have made Islam surface again as a globalizing force. Whether by imposing their own interpretation of Islam or by awakening the masses to their Islamic identity, these movements have created a new dilemma for reform: “Who has the authority to 
reinterpret Islamic primary sources, education, and knowledge, and how?” This has become a dominant question as intellectual Muslim women, mainly in the West, such as Barazangi and others, begin to reinterpret religious texts as well as the international civil laws (Barazangi, 2004). It is unknown who may advance the new paradigm in educational reform, and what this new paradigm might be.
See also Education subentry on Religious Education.

Bibliography

  • Barazangi, Nimat Hafez. Woman’ s Identity and the Qurān: A New Reading. Gainesville, Florida, 2006. Theoretical and practical synthesis of Muslims ’ education, particularly women's education in Islam. Offers a bold call for women 's higher Islamic learning and participation in the interpretation of the Qurān and Western human rights documents as the means for attitudinal transformation toward women and by women concerning their education and emancipation from within.
  • Barbieri, William. “Group Rights and the Muslim Diaspora.” Human Rights Quarterly 21, no. 4 (1999): 907–926.
  • Bennabi, Malek. Mushkilat al-thaqāfah (The Problem of Educating). Translated from the French by Abd al-Sabūr Shāhīn. Beirut, 1969. Originally published as Le problème des etude.
  • Bennabi, Malek. Islam in History and Society. Translated from the French by Asma Rashid. Islamabad, 1988. Originally published as Vocation de I’Islam (Cairo, 1959). Realistic analysis of the relationship between education and cultural development in the contemporary Muslim world by a native Algerian Muslim scholar.
  • Daun, Holger, and Geoffrey Walford, eds. Educational Strategies among Muslims in the Context of Globalization: Some 
National Case Studies. Leiden and Boston, 2004. A rich collection of case studies on Muslims ’ education in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Morocco, Somalia, West Africa, Sweden, England, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Greece.
  • Eickelman, Dale F. Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable. Princeton, 1985. Unprecedented anthropological analysis of the power of knowledge in a Muslim society. Chapter 3, which deals with the Qurānic presence in Muslim intellectual and social development, deserves particular attention.
  • Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Cambridge, 1983. This volume and the title that follows are considered by Western and Arabic Middle Eastern scholars as classical works on reform and modernization in the region.
  • Hourani, Albert. Emergence of the Modern Middle East. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981.
  • Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Traditional Islam in the Modern World. London and New York, 1987. Leading work in deciphering traditional Islam and its contrast to fundamentalism and modernism with respect to Western scholarship. Part 2, “Traditional Islam and Modernism,” is particularly illuminating. The notes are rich with primary and secondary sources.
  • Rahman, Fazlur. Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. Chicago and London, 1982. Definitive work for understanding contemporary Islamic intellectualism as the essence of higher Islamic education, and the implications of the method of Qurānic interpretation to the development of the intellectual Muslim.
  • Sanderson, Lillian. “Education and Administrative Control in Colonial Sudan and Northern Nigeria.” African Affairs 74 (October 1975): 427–441.
  • Starrett, Gregory. Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
  • United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Field Mission Reports on Muslim Countries. Compiled by Mumtaz Al Anwar. Delhi, India: UNESCO, 1995.
  • Ayyub Ali, A. K. M. History of Traditional Islamic Education in Bangladesh: Down to A.D. 1980. Dhaka: Islamic Foundation of Bangladesh, 1983. Though reporting mainly on Bangladesh, the author presents the development of Muslim education from Islam to 1980 that prevailed throughout the Indian Subcontinent.
  • Barazangi, Nimat Hafez. “Action Research Pedagogy in a New Cultural Setting: The Syrian Experience.” Action Research 5, no. 3 (2007): 307–318.
  • Doumato, Eleanor Abdella, and Gregory Starrett, eds. Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East. Boulder, Colo., 2006. Insightful empirical studies on the realities of religious education vis-à-vis the United States ’ reaction and proposed educational reform in the Muslim world.
  • Heyworth-Dunne, J. An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt. London, 1968.
  • United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Arab 
Human Development Reports, 2002–2005. New York: UNDP, 2002–2005.
  • Zia, Rukhsana, ed. Globalization, Modernization, and Education in Muslim Countries. Hauppauge, New York, 2006. A different perspective on Islamic education and Muslims ’ education in Indonesia, Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Oman, Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Tanzania, Northern Nigeria, and Turkey.

Jumat, 27 Juli 2012

EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS



EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

As the nineteenth century opened, Islamic societies had highly developed educational institutions—elementary Qurān schools (Ar., kuttāb or maktab) and higher religious schools called madrasahs. Less formal education was available from ūfī lodges, literary circles at princely courts, private tutors, private study circles (alaqah), and apprenticeships in state bureaus and craftsmen's shops.
After 1800, Western-style schools were introduced to meet new needs. Reforming Muslim rulers created new armies and schools in hopes of warding off the intrusive West and local rivals. Today's state school systems in many Muslim countries grew out of such beginnings. Missionaries and local minority communities also founded private Western-style schools. The new schools became rivals of the Qurān schools and madrasahs, with a cultural divide separating graduates of the two systems. Traditional institutions too adjusted and readjusted—and the process has continued—to forestall what they saw as a threat to Islam as a religion and culture, both from without and from the liberal elite within their community. On the part of traditionalists, it has been a perpetual attempt to strike a balance between conserving tradition while also maintaining their social relevance. Education in the Islamic world has also been influenced by the popular traditions of knowledge (often comprising spiritual cults and distinctive rituals) usually associated with mendicants, dervishes, and others and practiced mostly, but not exclusively, in rural regions.
This article discusses five phases of the development of educational institutions in the Islamic world since 1800. In phase one, Islamic schools were unaffected by the West. In phase two, reforming Muslim rulers set up Western-style military and professional schools. In phase three, colonial rulers subordinated schools to their own imperial interests. This phase also saw major reforms of traditional institutions in which the process of transmission of religious knowledge was formalized and standardized according to Western institutional models. More importantly, the transformations that took place during this period have proven to be conclusive for later eras. In phase four, newly independent states unified their school systems and rapidly expanded all levels of schooling. Phase five saw, as an aftermath of various sociopolitical developments, a renewed interest in educational reforms along Islamic lines.
The chronology of these phases varied from place to place, and some countries bypassed a phase or two. The Ottomans entered phase two as early as 1773 by opening a naval engineering school; isolated North Yemen and Saudi Arabia had not yet entered it in 1950. The colonial rule of phase three began before 1800 in the Dutch East Indies and India, but reached Syria and Iraq only after World War I. North Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan skipped the colonial phase. Turkey and Iran won the independence of phase four in the 1920s without having been fully colonized, while the emirates of the lower Gulf did not begin phase four until the British left in 1971.

Phase One: Before Western Intrusion.

The most significant aspect of premodern madrasah education was its informal character, as seen in the lack of central administrative control and the absence of strictly defined categories of religious and nonreligious subjects. This is despite the fact that madrasahs helped construct, shape, and homogenize religious authority and knowledge by encoding standard Islamic religious texts and canon collections. Their informal character was, however, replaced by a much more standardized religious education in the colonial period and onward.
Qurān schools stressed memorization of the Qurān, reading, and writing. Memorization did not always mean comprehension, particularly for non-Arab Muslims. Teachers taught in homes, mosques, or shops, receiving their pay from pupils’ fees or waq fs (pious endowments).
Advanced schooling in mosques went back to the seventh century, but the formal madrasah—an endowed residential college stressing the sharīah—took shape only in the eleventh century. The Niāmīyah in Baghdad was a renowned prototype. In common usage, distinctions between mosque schools and madrasahs disappeared. Subjects more directly tied to the revelation were stressed: Qurānic exegesis, adīth, jurisprudence, theology, Arabic grammar, and logic. Others such as arithmetic, astronomy, medicine, philosophy, and poetry, which were not strictly religious, were also taught in many madrasahs. There were no formal admissions or graduation ceremonies, no grade levels, written examinations, grades, classrooms, desks, or school diplomas. It was not the institution but the teacher with whom one studied and from whom one received a certificate (ijāzah) that determined a student's authority in the subject.
Al-Azhar in Cairo, the Süleymaniye in Istanbul, Qarawīyīn in Fez, the Zaytūnah in Tunis, and various mosque-madrasahs in Mecca, Medina, and Damascus stood out in the Sunnī world of 1800. For the Shīah, 
the madrasahs of Najaf (Iraq) were foremost, with others in Isfahan and other Iranian cities.

Phase Two: Early Reforms: Technical and Military Institutes.

Defeat in wars with Russia and Napoleon's invasion of Egypt (1798) forced Muslim rulers to reform their armies and military support services along Western lines. The Ottomans were the first to open naval engineering and army engineering academies in 1773 and 1793. In 1826 Sultan Mahmud II destroyed the obsolete Janissary corps, a major obstacle to reform. He and his successors opened a bureau to train translators (1821), as well as schools of medicine (1827), military science (1834), civil administration (1859), and law (1878).
Similar developments took place in Egypt, where Muammad (Mehmed) Alī, the sultan's vassal in Cairo, destroyed Egypt's obsolete Mamlūk cavalry. Thereafter he rivaled and at times led Istanbul in military and educational innovations, opening a Western-influenced military school (1816) and schools of engineering (1820), veterinary science (1827), medicine (1827), civil administration (1829), and translation (1836). The school of administration and languages (1868) became a law school. In Tunisia, Amad Bey opened his Bardo military school in 1840.
Three related phenomena (which persist into the early twenty-first century) accompanied the new schools: importing Western educators, dispatching students to study in the West (small missions first left Egypt in 1809, Iran in 1811, and Istanbul in 1827), and putting new printing presses to work publishing translated Western textbooks. Importantly, all these developments bypassed any consultation or collaboration with the existing madrasah institutions.
Cairo and Istanbul next began turning Qurān schools into state primary schools. In the 1860s, ministries of education in Cairo and Istanbul, patterned on the highly centralized French model, laid out blueprints for full state school systems. The French-inspired Galatasary Lycée stood out among eleven Ottoman lycées (one of which was for girls) in 1918.
More isolated from the West, Iran trailed Egypt and the central Ottoman Empire in military and educational reform. Dār al-Funūn (1851) taught military science, engineering, medicine, and Western languages, but it lacked firm support from the shah. Without an official ministry of education until 1925, other ministries set up their own schools: political science (1899/1900), agriculture (1900/1901), arts (1910), and law (1921).

Phase Three: Colonial Rule, Its Impact, and Responses.

Colonial rule lasted anywhere from a few years to a century or more, and a few Muslim countries escaped it altogether. Because the scholarly elite saw itself as custodian of religion and religious education, the bulwark of Islamic culture and intellectual life, colonial rule sparked a major crisis. As a response, existing educational institutions were refashioned and new ones founded, along familiar, Western, or blended lines. These developments and other educational reforms carried out by indigenous and colonizing forces during this period have proven to be decisive for later centuries.
In Algeria, over 132 years, the French established primary, secondary, and higher schools (medicine in 1859; law, sciences, and letters in 1879) for the settlers. The University of Algiers brought the higher schools together in 1909. A handful of Muslims submitted to France's “civilizing mission” and assimilated sufficiently to enter this system, but separate “Arab–French” schools were intended for them. Italian rule in Libya (1911–1943) was too brief to leave a comparable educational legacy. Palestine under British rule (1918–1948) was unique, for there most settlers were European Jews. With their own Zionist agenda and Hebrew-language schools, they left state-run schools largely to Palestinian Arabs. In Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, colonizers inherited Western-style schools from indigenous reformers; other colonial regimes mostly started from scratch.
Whether frankly exploitative or conscious of a “white man's burden,” new Western-style institutions of higher education were intended as secondary and higher schools to train docile government clerks and technicians. In India the British replaced īs (Islamic judges) with British judges and sharīah law with Anglo-Muslim law; rent-free religious endowments (awqāf ) were expropriated and madrasah lands confiscated, especially in Bengal. English-language schools and colleges proliferated thereafter. The universities of Calcutta, Mumbai, and Madras opened in 1857 as examining bodies on the model of the University of London. This was the beginning of the educational dualism (and frequent antagonism toward each other) of madrasah and university, a tension encountered in the Islamic world even today. These developments not only demarcated a strict division between religious and nonreligious sciences absent from the premodern madrasah settings, but also singled out ulamā as possessors of the sole authority to interpret the former.
Perceptively fearful of the nationalist revolt that might be instigated in the “orientals” due to westernized education, Lord Cromer, who administered Egypt for England from 1883 to 1907, severely restricted enrollment in the elite schools, imposed school fees few could afford, and developed a curriculum as apolitical and narrowly professional as possible. Compared to the Westernized elite, the common person at best could only afford underfunded elementary education of poor quality; the masses were thus marginalized socially, politically, and economically. Increasingly, madrasahs lacked the resources for social advancement; this, combined with the progressive availability of Western-style schooling, pushed common people toward state schooling. Consequently, madrasahs lost their foothold in major urban centers and remained oblivious (though not always indifferent) to the subsequent sociopolitical developments orchestrated by colonizers and westernized elites. This phenomenon has persisted through the post-independence period.
Cromer also squelched demands for a university, recommending as a model instead the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in India (which became Aligarh University in 1920). The example of India provides the full range of responses to the colonial challenge. Some explicitly admired Western models or saw in them a remedy for backwardness, as did those associated with the Aligarh movement. Modeled on the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and with an English headmaster, the college turned out officials, lawyers, and teachers—
presumably loyal servants of the British Raj. The Deoband school (founded in 1867), the prototypical madrasah of South Asia, adopted the Western-style model of education, examinations, fixed curriculum, and classroom settings, but the content remained essentially revivalist and indigenous. Nadwatul Ulama (Nadwat al-Ulamā) experimented by attempting to bridge the two, by introducing modern subjects and extracurricular activities to their program. Firangī Maall scholars who stood for the Persianate tradition of learning in the subcontinent, with an emphasis on intellectual over transmitted science, and who designed the niāmīyah syllabus, which with slight variations is still employed in most madrasahs, continued to teach and instruct in informal unreformed settings well into the early twentieth century. Afraid that the ulamā might lead mass protests, colonial rulers often left the madrasahs alone, starved for funds, overshadowed by state schools, and with dwindling prospects for their graduates. Cromer half-heartedly supported Muammad Abduh's effort to reform al-Azhar, but abandoned him when the ulamā and the palace resisted. In a rare case, early tensions between traditionalists (kaum tua) and modernists (kaum muda) in Indonesia were reconciled by the 1920s when both school systems came to look alike, incorporating Western sciences and languages.
The colonial age was golden for missionary and minority community schools. Banned from proselytizing to Muslims, Catholic and Protestant missionaries either tried to convert Jews and Eastern Christians or emphasized a humanitarian mission of medicine and schools for all. The American University of Beirut (the former Syrian Protestant College), Beirut's Université Saint-Joseph, and Boğaziçi University of Istanbul are legacies of the missionary age. The missionaries also led the way in education for girls, with the first state girls’ schools following in Istanbul, Cairo, and Tehran in 1858, 1873, and 1897/1898, respectively.

Phase Four: Post-Independence Educational Unification and Expansion.

In the post-independence phase, the education system was usually geared toward the formulation and strengthening of national identity. To this end, newly independent states moved to unify their educational systems by subordinating missionary, minority, and Islamic schools to state control. In Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk forced national curricula on foreign and minority schools in the 1920s, and Reza Shah nationalized primary and secondary schools in Iran in the 1930s. Syria closed French schools in 1945 during the final struggle for independence. Egypt finally consolidated control over missionary and minority schools as the British left in the 1950s. Exceptionally, the American University in Cairo eluded this control, as did foreign and communal schools in decentralized Lebanon. In Istanbul, Robert College was nationalized and renamed Boğaziçi University.
As for the Islamic schools, Turkey and the Soviet Union simply abolished them. In other places, public schooling was a tool for the homogenization of religious interpretation, as conducive to political ends. The closing of Istanbul University's faculty of theology (the former Medrese Süleymaniye) in 1933 left Turkey without higher Islamic education until Ankara University added a faculty of theology in 1949. Iranian madrasahs survived the Pahlavi regime, but the Qurān schools did not. In 1961 Gemal Abdel Nasser forced al-Azhar into a state university mold, adding colleges of medicine, engineering, and commerce and even a women's college. Indonesia, more diverse culturally, tolerated private Islamic schools and universities alongside its State Islamic Religious Institutes, which trained judges and teachers.
In the project of formulating national identity, language often played a key role. Syria switched to Arabic as the language of its medical school, but often vested interests and the need for Western languages as a means of keeping up with world science prevailed over nationalist pressures. In linguistically fragmented India and Nigeria, the English of much advanced schooling unifies the elite but hinders mass access to higher education. Though the number of Western-style schools and universities increased over the years, quantity overwhelmed quality, financing faltered, standards plunged, graduates scrambled for government jobs, and educational specialties bore little relation to the job market.

Phase Five: The Challenge of Islamization.

Israel's defeat of the Arabs in 1967, the oil price boom following the 1973 war, and Iran's Islamic Revolution (1979) all contributed to a religious (often Islamist) revival. Disenchantment with the secularizing trends of the earlier decades evoked a renewed interest in all things Islamic and again brought the issue of educational reform to the fore, though Muslims differed widely on the specifics.
The Islamic Republic of Iran provides the fullest example of a regime's attempt to Islamize its educational institutions. Although the Free Islamic University and other new institutions were founded after the revolution, the main task was the overhaul of existing institutions, and there was an attempt to introduce Islamic perspectives into every field of study. With the ulamā controlling the state, the neglected madrasahs—and especially Ayatollah Khomeini's Fayz¨īyah Madrasah in Qom—took on a new prominence. Attempts to “Islamize” knowledge in 1980s also saw universities with “Islamic” in their names open in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Niger.
The establishment of jihādī madrasahs to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the coming to prominence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s, and the tragic events of 9/11 in the United States and 7/7 in Britain have sparked particular suspicion of madrasahs. They are indiscriminatingly associated with militancy, more in South Asia and Afghanistan than elsewhere. As a result countries like Pakistan have tried to exert more state control and to reform the madrasah. Indeed, a common impulse since the 1970s has been to systematize madrasah education. To the pressures from the state and Westernized social elites were added dissenting voices within the madrasah system itself. For example, in Iran Ayatollah Murtaz¨ā Muahharī, and in Iraq Ayatollah Bāqir al-adr, demanded reforms of the Shīī madrasah system, to make it relevant to the needs of the age. In Pakistan, the Shīī al-Kawthar Islamic University is a awzah-style institution that began operations in 2002 to equip jurists with an understanding of the modern disciplines. The traditional curriculum has been augmented by English, computers, and economics, taught in modern-style classrooms. Mofīd University in Qom, under the patronage of Ayatollah Abd al-Karīm Ardabīlī, focuses on comparative studies of modern humanities and Islamic sciences undertaken by graduates of Qom's awzah system. The Imam Khomeini Education and Research Institute under the patronage of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdī follows a similar pattern.
Invariably, in this transition from informal to formal education, Western institutional models have set the standards. The cultural divide between university-educated and madrasah-trained graduates persists, although the dialogue between the two has increased. Scholars whose religious training is largely independent of the two systems have also come to exert influence. At home with modern avenues for reaching the masses—using brochures, pamphlets, cassettes, web sites, and other media resources—they are increasingly becoming popular in various parts of the Islamic world. Modern institutes or local schools for Arabic and Qurānic learning are catering to a reinvigorated interest in the Qurān and adith. A successful synthesis of traditional and modern disciplines has eluded Islamic universities that were founded with the vision of “Islamization of knowledge”; instead, the two areas of study are taught side by side, with Islamic sciences as one subject among others.
In the West, the growing communal needs of religious education have led to the founding of Islamic institutes (for example, the Zaytūnah Institute in California) and other neo-traditional seminaries. Informal study circles, Sunday schooling, and Islamic schooling systems have also been adopted. Some of these study circles are extensions of global religious movements such as Tablīghī Jamāat, the Gülen movement, or the Nūrī movement, and some are associated with ūfī circles. Use of the Internet has also made possible distance learning and short courses in Islamic sciences.

Universities, Literacy, and Enrollment Rates


Females
Males
Total
Females
Males
Total
1991
2005
1991
2005
Afghanistan
1932
3
-
-
-
87.4
56.9
71.9
-
-
-
-
Algeria
1879
11
58.7
35.7
47.1
39.9
20.4
30.1
94.6
97.8
94.6
97.8
Azerbaijan
1919
24
-
-
-
1.8
0.5
1.2
89.1
85.2
89.1
85.2
Bahrain
1968
2
25.4
13.2
17.9
16.4
11.4
13.5
99
97.1
99
97.1
Bangladesh
1921
9
76.3
55.7
65.8
-
-
-
89.1
-
89.1
-
Bosnia-Herzegovina
-
2
-
-
-
5.6
1
3.3
-
-
-
-
Egypt
970/1919
18
66.4
39.6
52.9
-
-
-
91.4
96.2
91.4
96.2
Ghana
1961
5
52.8
29.9
41.5
50.2
33.6
42.1
56.8
65.3
56.8
65.3
India
1857
237
64.1
38.1
50.7
52.2
26.6
39
88.8
-
88.8
-
Indonesia
1949
1051
27.5
13.3
20.5
13.2
6
9.6
98.5
97.2
98.5
97.2
Iran
1934
52
46
27.8
36.8
29.6
16.5
23
95.9
90.8
95.9
90.8
Iraq
1962
8
80.3
48.7
64.3
35.8
15.9
25.9
100
94.3
100
94.3
Jordan
1962
6
27.9
10
18.5
15.3
4.9
10.1
93.9
-
93.9
-
Kazakhstan
-
44
1.8
0.5
1.2
0.7
0.2
0.5
89.7
91.9
89.7
91.9
Kuwait
1962
-
27.4
20.7
23.3
9
5.6
6.7
50.6
86.9
50.6
86.9
Kyrgyzstan
1951
-
-
-
-
1.9
0.7
1.3
92.5
87.2
92.5
87.2
Lebanon
1866
13
26.9
11.7
19.7
-
-
-
73.7
92.9
73.7
92.9
Libya
1955
6
48.9
17.2
31.9
-
-
-
98
-
98
-
Malaysia
1904
8
25.6
13.1
19.3
14.6
8
11.3
95.1
-
95.1
-
Maldives
-
0
5.4
5
5.2
3.6
3.8
3.7
92.9
-
92.9
-
Mali
-
-
-
-
-
88.1
73.3
81
25.8
-
25.8
-
Mauritania
1981
-
76.1
53.7
65.2
56.6
40.5
48.8
40.6
72.2
40.6
72.2
Morocco
857/1957
8
75.1
47.3
61.3
60.4
34.3
47.7
65.5
88.7
65.5
88.7
Nigeria
1948
45
61.6
40.6
51.3
-
-
-
64.6
-
64.6
-
Oman
1985
-
61.7
32.7
45.3
26.5
13.2
18.6
70.9
75.3
70.9
75.3
Pakistan
1882
52
79.9
50.7
64.6
64
37
50.1
69.4
-
69.4
-
Palestine
1970s
11
-
-
-
12
3.3
7.6
94
-
94
-
Qatar
1977
-
24
22.6
23
11.4
10.9
11
90.4
96
90.4
96
Saudi Arabia
1957
7
49.8
23.8
33.8
30.7
12.9
20.6
65.6
-
65.6
-
Senegal
1949
2
81.4
61.8
71.6
70.8
48.9
60.7
49.8
69.7
49.8
69.7
Somalia
1954
2
-
-
-
-
-
-
11.5
-
11.5
-
Sudan
1956
26
68.5
40
54.2
48.2
28.9
39.1
45.7
-
45.7
-
Syria
1923
4
52.5
18.2
35.2
26.4
14
20.4
95.2
-
95.2
-
Tajikistan
1948
22
2.8
0.8
1.8
0.8
0.3
0.5
77.5
99.3
77.5
99.3
Tanzania
1970
-
49
24.5
37.1
37.8
22.5
30.6
49
92.2
49
92.2
Tunisia
1961
7
53.5
28.4
40.9
34.7
16.6
25.7
98
96.5
98
96.5
Turkey
1453/1955
30
33.6
10.8
22.1
2.3
2.3
2.3
92.8
-
92.8
-
Turkmenistan
1950
1
-
-
-
1.7
0.7
1.2
-
-
-
-
United Arab Emirates
1976
3
29.4
28.8
29
-
-
-
100
71.4
100
71.4
Yemen
1970
15
87.1
44.8
67.3
-
-
-
73
-
73
-
Sources:
The World Almanac (New York, 1998–2008); Encyclopedia of Education, edited by James W. Guthrie (2d ed., New York, 2003); “Education,” in Europa World Online, http://www.europaworld.com/entry (Accessed April 11, 2008); World Education Encyclopedia, edited by Rebecca Marlow-Ferguson, (2nd ed., Detroit: Gale, 2002).
There is still no reliable compilation of data on the number of madrasahs, especially for those countries where they are not under direct state control.
See also Aligarh; Azhar, al-; Firangī Maall; awzah; International Islamic University at Islamabad; International Islamic University at Kuala Lumpur; Madrasah; Mosque, subentry on The Mosque in Education; Universities; Zaytūnah.

Bibliography

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  • Daun, Holger, and Geoffrey Walford, eds. Educational Strategies among Muslims in the Context of Globalization: Some National Case Studies. Leiden, Netherlands, and Boston, 2004.
  • Doumato, Eleanor Abdella, and Gregory Starrett, eds. Teaching Islam: Textbooks and Religion in the Middle East. Boulder, Colo., 2007.
  • Eccel, A. Chris. Egypt, Islam, and Social Change: Al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation. Berlin, 1984. A mine of information and stimulating interpretation. Despite organizational problems and excessive sociological jargon, the fundamental work in English on al-Azhar.
  • Findley, Carter V. “Knowledge and Education in the Modern Middle East: A Comparative View.” in The Modern Economic and Social History of the Middle East in Its World Context, edited by Georges Sabagh, pp. 130–154. Cambridge, 1989. Thoughtful, concise overview.
  • Gilliot, Claude. Education and Learning in the Early Islamic World, forthcoming. The most comprehensive treatment of the subject.
  • Hartung, Jan-Peter, and Helmut Reifeld. Islamic Education, Diversity, and National Identity: Dīnī Madāris in India Post 9/11. New Delhi, India, and Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2006.
  • Hefner, Robert W., and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, eds. Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education. Princeton, N.J., 2007. Best introductory book on modern developments in Muslim education, each chapter focusing on a particular region and written by a specialist.
  • Ibrahimy, Sekandar Ali, comp. Reports on Islamic Education and Madrasah Education in Bengal, 1861–1977. Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1990.
  • Lelyveld, David. Aligarh's First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India. Princeton, N.J., 1978.
  • Makdisi, George. The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh, 1981.
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  • Menashri, David. Education and the Making of Modern Iran. Ithaca, N.Y., 1992. By far the most thoroughly researched and comprehensive book in English on Iranian education.
  • Metcalf, Barbara Daly. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900. Princeton, N.J., 1982. The definitive work on the formative period of the madrasah reforms in India.
  • Misnad, Sheikha al-. The Development of Modern Education in the Gulf. London and Atlantic Highlands, N.J., 1985. Focuses on Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, and especially useful on the issue of women's education.
  • Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. “The Traditional Texts Used in the Persian Madrasahs.” In Traditional Islam in the Modern World, pp. 165–182. London and New York, 1987. An example of the full spectrum of intellectual and transmitted sciences used in premodern madrasahs.
  • Pacaci, Mehmet, and Yasin Aktay. “75 Years of Higher Religious Education in Modern Turkey.” Muslim World 89, no. 3–4 (July 1999): 389–413. Concise survey.
  • Rasiah, Arun Wyramuttoo. “The City of Knowledge: The Development of Shīī Religious Education with Particular Attention to owza Ilmīyya Qum.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2007. The most comprehensive work on Shīī educational institutions in English.
  • Robinson, Francis. The Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia. London, 2001. An insightful study of the Persianate legacy of learning in South Asia from the Mughal period to the early twentieth century.
  • Sikand, Yogindar. Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India. New Delhi, India, 2005. The most accessible introduction to the madrasahs of India, their history and evolution through the ages, and the question of links with militancy.
  • Szyliowicz, Joseph S. Education and Modernization in the Middle East. Ithaca, N.Y., 1973. Historical overview, with emphasis on Turkey, Iran, and Egypt.
  • Thomas, R. Murray. A Chronicle of Indonesian Higher Education: The First Half Century, 1920–1970. Singapore, 1973.
  • Tibawi, A. L. Islamic Education: Its Traditions and Modernization into the Arab National Systems. London, 1972. Survey by a veteran Palestinian educator.