Gendering contemporary islamic education

Abstract

Education generally in the world has been a source of concern to the educationalists, researchers, scholars, stakeholders, and particularly of recent the feminist groups that have emerged in different parts of the contemporary world. The content and context of education of modern technology and until recently its methods of delivery, the application of modern technology and until recently its holistically gendered approach have continued to be of concern. While education generally has not escaped with societies all over the world, particularly those in the industrialized and advanced countries, Islamic education has as it is related to the female child education has not received such changes and transformation in the same tempo in terms of quantity and quality. There is the need for the mainstream Islamic education to be more gender focused in context and content as well as methods and strategies for delivery. It is from this backdrop that this chapter interrogates and investigates available secondary source so as to make a comparative analysis on the degree to which contemporary Islamic education has embraced gender in its philosophy, content, and delivery. Information gathered across the African continent was compared with a focus on some communities with a high Islamic population. Findings show that in these African countries with large Islamic communities, Islamic education has been slow-paced in some areas of gendering Islamic education. Specific examples in this chapter pull from North Africa, West Africa, and East Africa to include Algeria, Nigeria, and Kenya. The patriarchal system, the male-dominated political system and processes, the lack of investment in girl-child education, and the inability to interpreted Islamic injections from the contemporary objective realities are some of the salient points responsible for this development.