Islamic Education: Historical Perspective, Origin and Foundation

Abstract

Whereas the concept of ‘ilm (knowledge) includes both religious as well as mundane knowledge, the traditional Islamic thought tends to identify the totality of and specify knowledge as religious knowledge. The typology of knowledge in Islam divides the entire human knowledge into two all-embracing categories: al- ‘ulūm al-‘aqlīyah (rational/argumentative knowledge) and ‘al-ulūm al-naqlīyah (knowledge by transmission). This division conceptualizes the foundations of the Islamic epistemology and forms the educational arrangements in Islam. Four major approaches to education and knowledge acquisition include: (1) Construc- tive approach, which is using rules of logics and qiyās (analogical deductive reasoning) aims to attain human knowledge; (2) Theological approach which is based on kalām (dialectical theology) aims to decipher the divine knowledge as well as mundane one; (3) Philosophical approach which is inspired and informed by the Neo-Platonist movement and Peripatetic Islamic philosophy in which knowledge is attained through the process of wham (estimation) and using the active intelligence to achieve the unknowns through the known premises; and (4) Mystical/theosophical approach which argues on the notion of knowledge by presence. The mystical approach rests on the argument on the divine knowledge as the source of all knowledge and intuition as an instrument to achieve it. Such an epistemological principal has informed not only various approaches to the acquisition of knowledge but also institutions of education and learning. Although the social and political climate and the local cultures have significantly affected the development of the educational institutions across the Muslim world, a trifold model of the educational institutions prevail across the Muslim world. Madrasah as the final product of this development, however, is challenged by the waves of modernization and domination of western values across the Muslim world.