The Way Forward

The Role of Education

In responding to the crises we face, the reform of Muslim education is one dimension of the way forward.

The Nature and Extent of Educational Reform

The colonial experience bequeathed to the Muslim world systems of education generally structured upon three mutually incompatible domains of knowledge and frameworks of analysis (hermeneutics):

One, Islamic studies curricula founded upon the Muslim civilization's religious intellectual heritage, which mainly includes Islamic theology, Qur'anic studies, hadith studies, seerah, and shariah sciences.

Two, the physical and technological sciences (STEM) founded upon a materialistic view of reality and the empirical and mathematical method of analysis.

Three, the humanities or the liberal arts founded upon a secular-liberal anthropology that, in principle, privileges the body-mind over the spirit (ruh), the individual over the collective, and worldly success (dunya) over the other-worldly salvation (aakhirah).

In this tripartite architecture, the three domains of knowledge amount to three incompatible systems of education which neither truly 'talk' to one another, nor do the insights gained in one domain truly inform other domains.

The Proposed Reform: Holistic Interdisciplinary Integration

The way forward lies in developing a curriculum that integrates the three domains of knowledge within a single framework of interpretation, and, at the same time, also addresses all aspects of human nature. The curriculum being developed by Unboxed Learning rests on an interpretive framework that takes the Qur'anic concept of signs (aayaat) at its defining insight as a philosophical, epistemological, and hermeneutical category. The outcome of this interpretive framework is the enabling of the three knowledge domains to talk to one another, each learning and incorporating insights from the other domains. The curriculum is also intentional about addressing all aspects of human nature, namely, the moral spirit, the emotional heart, the reasoning mind, and the physical body.

For more details on the framework of integration, review our Curriculum Framework.