Development of Muslim Education and the Cause of Its Decline
By MAHMOOD ALAM SIDDIQUI
This is a well-recognised fact that Islam attaches great importance to the pursuit of knowledge and education as it makes seeking of knowledge incumbent upon every Muslim irrespective of colour, caste and gender. There are numerous Qur’ānic verses on the virtue of knowledge and excellence of education, needless to mention all these here, except to indicate that the word ‘Qur’ān’itselfcomes from the word qara,a meaning ‘to read’, and the meaning of the word ‘Qur’ān’is a written work that is read repeatedly.
The first revelation of Qur’ānic verses received by Prophet Muhammad(may Allah bless and greet him) in 612 C.E. was related to education and life science, in which the Prophet was given a command to read.
The Prophet Muhammad himself has, in a number of sayings, emphasised the need of seeking knowledge from cradle to grave and regarded it as a sacred duty of every Muslim. These sayings cover such modern ideas as compulsory education for the sexes, adult and continuing education, and exchanges in the field of education and learning. According to the Prophet, the ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr. Therefore Imam Bukhari, the compiler of the most authentic book of Hadith known as Sahih Bukhari, said the seeking of knowledge in Islam comes before faith and practice. The statement ofImam Bukhariproves the superiority of knowledgeand education to worship and faith. In view of this fact Islam is called a religion of knowledge and education and a religion of science and rational and intellectual reason.
This is the virtue of Islam that it transformed all those cities and countries into universities and research academies in which it entered, despite the fact before the advent of Islam, all these cities and countries groping in darkness of illiteracy and ignorance. For example, when the sun of Islam rose in the city of Makkah, there were only 17 people, who knew how to read and write. But this is Islam which encouraged people to equip themselves with the art of reading and writing and intensified its efforts to curb illiteracy and combat ignorance and took all possible tools and means to spread knowledge and education from hiring Non-Muslim teachers to entrusting the educated prisoners of war with the task of teaching the illiterate Muslims the art of reading and writing against their ransom. Thus the art of reading and writing spread among the Muslims rapidly.
It is noteworthy to mention that Islam encouraged its followers to learn, without any exception, every branch of knowledge and education, as the Prophet Muhammadordered Zaid bin Sabit to learn the Hebrew language, and commanded Hassan bin Thabit to compose stir poetry in defence of Islam and Muslims against the Quraish who were busy to stir Islam and Muslims. Besides, the Prophet Muhammad established a camp for the first Muslim lady doctor Rofaida during the Battle of Tabuk, so that she could treat the injured in the battle.
The Prophet Muhammad gave his followers military training and education, and taught them the strategy of war. In short he provided knowledge and education for his followers according to their interest and inclination. In this way he became successful in making every individual a school of thought and changing them into independent department of knowledge.
CITIES OF ISLAMIC EDUCATION
The light of education and knowledge spread all over the world with the spread of Islam and the followers of the Prophet Muhammad emerged as the torch bearers of Islamic education and knowledge. The most prominent cities and countries where education was in full swing were Makkah and Madinah in Arabia, Basra, Kufa and Baghdad in Iraq, Damascus and Jerusalem in Syria, Qartaba in Spain, Khurasan and Marv in Persia, Lahoreand Delhi in (then undivided) India,etc. These educational cities were centres of Islamic Sciences of Fiqh (law), Hadith, (tradition), Tafsir (commentary of Qur’ān) and History in the Ummayyid period, and thus these have contributed a lot to the development of Islamic Sciences and enriched the Islamic culture.
During the Abbasid period, these cities or Islamic Universities opened their doors for other sciences under the influence of foreign culture, hastened the process of the intellectual awakening of Islam, contributed to the creation of a prosperous culture and harnessed scientific skill for the development of mankind. Thus the Arabic literature, religious sciences, History, Geography, and General Sciences including philosophy, logic and medicine reached a remarkable level of development.
Thanks to the Abbasid rulers of the first period, like Caliph Haroon al-Rashid and al-Mamoon, who officially patronised wholesale translation of Greek, Persian and Indian Philosophy, medicine and other sciences into Arabic, as Caliph al-Mamoon set up a research academy known as the “House of Wisdom” for the same purpose. The pure intellectualism that resulted from this activity reacted on the religion of Islam and produced the famous rationalist religious movement of the Mu’tazala.
RATIONALIST MOVEMENT OF MU’TAZALA
The Mu’tazala movement deserves mention here because it played a very important role in leading Islamic Sciences to a remarkable level of development, and paving ways for the Islamic philosophers who enriched the Islamic library through their most valuable writings on the topic later on.
According to the historical sources, when the philosophical books were translated from Greek into Arabic, the people began to discuss Islam and its tenets in the light of philosophy and began to raise doubt about the basic tenets of Islam, as well as some non-Muslim intellectuals especially Christians and Jews attacked Islamic principles related to philosophy and logic. In this grave situation the Mu’tazala movement came out in defence of Islam, and presented Islam in the light of science and philosophy, as Ahmad Amin writes in his famous book Zuha al-Islam:
“The Islamic History did not witnessed before Mu’tazala this philosophical comprehensive statement about Allah, his characteristics and his doings with the traditional and rational arguments, as it witnessed in the Mu’tazala, they set free the mind to discuss on the sky, the earth, Allah and the human being, as well as on every small and great things. There is not any specific circle but the mind has right to swim in it, in fact Allah has created the mind so that it knows, and it has the capacity to know every things even though metaphysics, the reality is that their researches on metaphysics are more deep and comprehensive from physics, because they were reformists, religious and propagandists of a tenet.”
In the result of this comprehensive thinking of Mu’tazala about nature, and their serious and deep researches on philosophy and metaphysics, some new branches of knowledge namely Theology, Rhetoric, debate and discussion came into being. Above all, the Mu’tazala movement equipped the Islamic philosophers who came later on, with Greek Philosophy. Ahmad Amin further writes:
“The credit of establishing initial principles of theology, rhetoric, debate and discussion goes to Mu’tazala, as well as they are the first saviours who took the help from the Greek philosophy and derived benefit from it in supporting their school of thoughts, some sayings of Nizam, Abu-al-Huzail and al-Jahiz were the pure copy of some statements of Greek philosophy and in some of these statements, a little amendment was carried out.”
In short, the Mu’tazala was not only a religious sect but an educational movement of Muslims, which opened the mind of people and enlarged the meaning of Islamic education to such an extent that all branches of education came to fall under it. But this is unfortunate that this pure intellectual and rational movement was put to an end by the Orthodox Ulama, who at the first suffered at the hands of this rationalist movement, when it was raised to the position of state creed during the period of al-Mamoon. The Ulama gradually gained the upper hand by mustering the strength and borrowing the same weapon of the Greek philosophy. They brought almost all education under their control and worked out and implemented curricula to realise their own intellectual and spiritual ideals.
After the end of Mu’tazala movement, Islamic education began to decline because of narrowing the scope of knowledge and its meaning to the limited number of Islamic Sciences of Tafseer (commentary of Qur’ān), Hadith (Tradition), Fiqh (Jurisprudence) and Ilm al-Kalam (Theology). In all these subjects also, people were not allowed to discuss freely as it used to be during the Mu’tazala. The people were bound to Taqleed or imitation of one Imam among the fours, and kept themselves away from Ijtihad or independent judgment.
IMAM GAZALI
In such a situation, the rising of Sufism added fuel to the fire. The Sufi movement posed a threat to the orthodox Ulama and their supremacy as it paved the way for emergence of scholars like Imam Gazali to occupy the higher pedestal of honour among the orthodox Ulama as well as the Sufi Movement.
Imam Gazali is considered one of the great men of Islam; he was an excellent jurisprudent, great philosopher, best theologian, and moderate Sufi. Imam Gazali was the first man who tried to effect a compromise between orthodox Ulama and movement of Sufism through his famous book al Minqiz min al-Zalal (the saviour from astray). In this book, he mentioned his Sufism and philosophical ideas and emphasised that there does not exist any source of authentic knowledge except “Mukashafa” or revelation. Apart from this, he wrote a book entitled Tahafut al-Falasfa (the collapse of philosophers). In this book, he praised the social science, arithmetic and logic on one side, but the other side he denounced the metaphysics and counted this branch of knowledge hostile to Islamic tenet and proved the Islamic philosophers wrong in their ideas and thinking on the metaphysics.
Under the influence of Imam Gazali’s books, especially these two books mentioned above, Ulama in particular and the people in general isolated themselves from philosophy and resorted to Sufism. Before this, the trend of Taqleed or imitation has prevailed among the Muslim community, thus the Islamic intellectual and educational awakening movement came under standstill and decline.
PREVALENCE OF MADRASA EDUCATION SYSTEM
It is worth mentioning here that since the advent of Islam till the fourth century and the first of the fifth century Hijri, the Kuttab (the elementary place of instruction), circles of Mosque (the place of higher education), library, semi-library and court of Ulama, were the educational institutions of Islam, where all branches of education, without any exception, were taught. In the second half of the fourth century Madrasa education system came into being in Nisapur and spread all over the Muslim world till the later half of the century at the hands of the great and wise wazir of the Seljuk Alp Arsalan and Maliksha “Nizam al-Mulk”, who established Madrasas in Asphan, Nisapur, and Baghdad which were known as Nizamia. He (Nizam al-Mulk) appointed Imam Gazali chief teacher in the Nizamia of Baghdad which in fact was the headquarters of these Nizamias, where he (Imam Gazali) delivered education for about five years from 1091 to 1095. From this educational institution his ideas and thinking spread all over the Muslim world. This newly originated Madrasa education system adopted a confined, narrow, and rigid curricula focused on books not on subjects representing a particular creed. All these factors contributed to bringing stagnation and standstill to the advancement of Muslim education and learning. This lasted till the Napoleon attack on Egypt in 1798, about five century of education stagnation and decline. In this long period Europe achieved a remarkable achievement in science and technology, about which the Muslim world was not aware and at the first time this Napoleon attack made them aware of it.
Radience Viewsweekly
Vol. XLVII No. 3, 2009-04-19
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