Islamic Education in The Philippines

Abstract

The main purpose of this chapter is to present a comparative overview of the Islamic education in Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia). Muslim population of these countries is around nine million and is characterized by cultural, ethnical, and linguistic heterogeneity. The Muslim presence in these countries is evident since the fifteenth century, when also the first centers of learning can be traced. Over the centuries, those centers have gone through changes and transformations trying to preserve the Islamic character of its purpose while adopting traditional forms of its being to contemporaneous streams in the society. The chapter focuses on the status of Islamic education in Balkan countries, forms of its organization, curricular paradigms, content struc- turing, and teaching staff. The discourse is contextualized in the sociopolitical circumstances identified as relevant for molding the Islamic education arrange- ments in these countries, which are more or less common to all of them. These are (a) Ottoman cultural influences, (b) establishment of local national regimes at the beginning of the twentieth century and the rule of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in certain parts of the region, (c) establishment of Communist regime in the after- math of WWII (except for Greece), and (d) liberalization of state-religion rela- tions encouraged by democratic processes. The analyses indicate existence of quite similar organizational forms of Islamic education across the selected coun- tries, although with different levels of diversification and institutionalization. However, the main differences are noticed in terms of curricular paradigm and the status of Islamic education within the frame of the official state system.