Islam and the West: Clashes and Cooperations

Abstract

In this chapter, various competing styles of thinking that are found in Muslim thought on education and knowledge, especially in its contacts and responses to the West, will be examined. Apart from the economic and political contacts, the Muslim world interacts with theWest via intellectual and educational realms. As early as in the classical Islam period, the intellectual contact of Muslim with the Mediterranean civilization saw the appropriation of Greek thought and ideas. Muslim thinkers saw Greek thought, including those on education, as wisdom to be cherished. Western renaissance in turn appropriated the intellectual legacy of classical Islam. In the colonial period, Muslims became more exposed toWestern thought, including colonial education based on Western languages and intellec- tual corpus. Some Muslims affirmed the need to learn from the West in order to bring enlightenment and reform in their respective societies. They saw a critical selection of Western education/knowledge as a way to reform their society, battling against ignorance, illiteracy, and scientific underdevelopment. In the postindependent era, Muslim societies are confronted with a more complex response toWestern knowledge and education. There are generally three strands of response. The first was and is more of exclusivist-rejectionist type which objects to any kind of Western knowledge, which is deemed as un-Islamic, wayward, and disruptive. The second is an inclusivist-integrationist response which sees no reason for not embracing Western knowledge as long as it brings benefits to Muslims. The third response, emerged in the period of religious resurgence, is one that is characterized by an exclusivist-inclusivist complex, where the present modernity (Western framework of knowledge and education) is accepted but it can also be legitimate or even “authentic” if it is first Islamsized. Today many Muslim societies are beset by these contending styles of thinking, each promoting its cherished ideal and model, while undermining the other(s). As a result, we see a continuing simplistic Islamic-Western dichotomy, while the efforts of a creative and critical adaptation remains relegated, while pro- blematizing the captivity in knowledge and education remains not very little developed.