Traditional and Modern Muslim Education at the Core and Periphery: Enduring Challenge

Abstract

This chapter provides a general theory of the salient concerns affecting Muslims in education across the globe today, from Muslims in Muslim majority countries to Muslims as minority citizens. From concerns around resource investment in educational infrastructure to anxieties over curricula and pedagogy, matters affecting Muslims in education differ the world over, where Muslims in education can often conjure up more uncertainties than positives. The experience affects not only young children at the nucleus of the attention but also parents, teachers, education managers, as well as wider society. In rationalizing the political and sociological milieu in different societies, it emerges that the themes of religion, ethnicity, and gender are as significant as ideology, culture, and policy, but that they are set within the context of secularization, desecularization, sacralization and the re-sacralization of Islam in the public sphere. In order to generate a philosophical, spiritual, and intellectual evaluation of Muslim education across the world, this chapter synthesizes the apprehensions that are internal and external, local and global, and which affect all Muslims, minorities and majorities.