There can be no general incompatibility between Islam and science since for many centuries the center of scientifi c investigation internationally was precisely the Islamic world. Some schools or madrasahs that provide a predominantly religious education do not involve themselves much in secular education, but the Qur’an itself provides no support for such a policy. On the contrary, all the evidence suggests that the Qur’an takes a practical attitude to issues like education in general, although of course religious education is regarded as highly signifi cant. Religious education involves study of the Qur’an, the hadith, the sunnah of the Prophet and his sirah or biography. Underlying this education is some type of study of the Arabic language which is a foreign tongue for 80 percent of the world’s Muslims.
Most often, children are taught to recite Arabic, learning rules of pronunciation without any attention to Arabic meaning. The Qur’an is often learnt by rote, and the status of the teacher may be elevated since he is passing on religious truths, not subjects that may be acquired or rejected casually by the student. It is often argued that the pedagogy is based on the view that knowledge is acquired rather than discovered, and that the student’s mind is passive and receptive rather than active and creative, and the general attitude is that all knowledge is seen as unchangeable and books need to be internalized and not questioned. To the extent this picture is accurate, it reveals a contrast between Islamic and modern education. The former has an otherworldly orientation, promotes Islam, uses curricula largely unchanged since medieval times, and treats knowledge as something to be revealed because of a divine command. The questioning of what is taught is then unwelcome, teaching styles may be authoritarian, education is mainly undifferentiated, and memorization is important.
By contrast, modern education has an orientation towards this world, and claims to be directed towards the development of the individual pupil. Curricula change as the subject matter changes, and knowledge is acquired through empirical or deductive methods and treated as a problem- solving tool. Teachers ideally invite student participation and questioning, and the aim is not just to repeat material. Finally, different subjects are clearly distinct from each other, by contrast with the fairly unifi ed notion of religious education. Hoodbhoy has argued that the two styles of education are in conflict with each other since they differ not only in subject matter but also in style. Students who enter the modern education system from madrasahs are unlikely to do well, as they are accustomed to an entirely different process of education, operating under entirely different sets of rules and expectations.
On the other hand, this view of the clash between the two pedagogies, like the clash between civilizations, is regarded by others as overdone. After all, how much of the so- called modern curriculum is really taught in accordance with what we are told are the principles of modern education? There is a good deal of rote learning there also, and students often do not feel that they are encouraged to question or challenge their teachers. Even at the level of tertiary education many students in the modern system are passive and concentrate on taking notes and repeating what they hear in the lecture hall. In addition, how much of the religious curriculum is really as traditional as the stereotype suggests? There is always going to be some mechanical learning when a new language is at issue, and students may also be encouraged to learn to recite the Qur’an on the way to understanding it, but these do not in themselves orient the student away from independent thought. There is no evidence that children brought up within the confi nes of traditional religious education are any less innovative or active than children brought up within the modern system. When it was revealed the Qur’an challenged many of the prevailing views of the time and in particular what had up to that point been authority. The Qur’an argues that individuals should not do what their fathers had done just because that was the accepted practice, but advocates thinking, reasoning, and arguing until the truth is revealed. It is diffi cult to argue, then, that Qur’anic education is in itself opposed to modern principles of teaching and learning. This is not to ignore that in many places Qur’anic education follows a traditional model that does stand in the way of modern education, but then modern education often does not accord in practice with the theory of how it should operate.
Islamic Notion of Divorce: the Process and the Perspective
