Education in Islam
Education has played a central role in Islam since the beginnings of the religion, owing in part to the centrality of scripture and its study in the Islamic tradition. Before the modern era, education would begin at a young age with study of Arabic and the Quran. For the first few centuries of Islam, educational settings were entirely informal, but beginning in the 11th and 12th centuries, the ruling elites began to establish institutions of higher religious learning known as madrasas in an effort to secure support and cooperation of the ulema (religious scholars). Madrasas soon multiplied throughout the Islamic world, which helped to spread Islamic learning beyond urban centers and to unite diverse Islamic communities in a shared cultural project.[1] Madrasas were devoted principally to study of Islamic law, but they also offered other subjects such as theology, medicine, and mathematics.[2] Muslims historically distinguished disciplines inherited from pre-Islamic civilizations, such as philosophy and medicine, which they called "sciences of the ancients" or "rational sciences", from Islamic religious sciences. Sciences of the former type flourished for several centuries, and their transmission formed part of the educational framework in classical and medieval Islam. In some cases, they were supported by institutions such as the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, but more often they were transmitted informally from teacher to student.[1]
Etymology[edit]
In Arabic three terms are used for education. The most common term is ta'līm, from the root 'alima, which means knowing, being aware, perceiving and learning. Another term is Tarbiyah from the root of raba, which means spiritual and moral growth based on the will of God. The third term is Ta'dīb from the root aduba which means to be cultured or well accurate in social behavior.[3]
Modern education in Islam[edit]
In general, minority religious groups often have more education than a country's majority religious group, even more so when a large part of that minority are immigrants.[39] This trend applies to Islam: Muslims in North America have more formal years of formal education than Christians.[40] Furthermore, Christians have more formal years of education in many majority Muslim countries, such as in sub-Saharan Africa.[40] However, global averages of education are far lower for Muslims than Jews, Christians, Buddhists and people unaffiliated with a religion.[39] Globally, Muslims and Hindus tend to have the fewest years of schooling.[41] However, younger Muslims have made much larger gains in education than any of these other groups.[39]
There is a perception of a large gender gap in majority Islam countries, but this is not always the case.[42] In fact, the quality of female education is more closely related to economic factors than religious factors.[42] Although the gender gap in education is real, it has been continuing to shrink in recent years.[43] Women in all religious groups have made much larger educational gains comparatively in recent generations than men.[39]
Europe's treatment of education of Muslims has shifted in the last few decades, with many countries developing some sort of new legislation regarding instructing with a religious bias starting in the late twentieth century. However, regardless of these changes, some level of inequality in access to education is still prevalent. In England, there are only five state-funded Muslim schools; this is in contrast to 4,716 state-funded Christian schools.[44] However, there are around 100 private Muslim schools which can instruct on religious education independent of the National Curriculum. In France, on the other hand, there are only two private Muslim schools. There are 30 private Muslim schools in the Netherlands.[44] This is despite the fact that Muslims make up the second largest religious population in Europe, following Christianity, with majorities being held in both Turkey (99%) and Albania (70%).[44]
Pesantren are Islamic boarding schools found in Muslim countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. These types of schools have received criticism for their tendency to focus more on religious subjects than secular school subjects, and in fact, pesantren taught primarily religious education until the late 1970s.[45] Due to this focus, some have even accused these schools as being breeding grounds for Islamic extremism and terrorism.[46] Others argue that pesantren teach secular subjects at the same level as any other school, steering students from extremism through education and opening the door for young Muslims of all backgrounds to go on to higher education and become involved in such fields as medicine, law, and the sciences.[45]
After 1975 reforms made by the Indonesian government, today many pesantren now include madrasas. Muslim poet and political activist Emha Ainun Najib studied at one of the more famous pesantren, called Gontor. Other notable alumni include Hidayat Nur Wahid, Hasyim Muzadi, and Abu Bakr Ba’asyir.[45]