The Muslim World

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Muslim nations need true education

By DR MOHD SANI BADRON

The Muslim world is in need of high quality universities, libraries, resource centres and laboratories.

The solution to present-day Muslim nations’ predicaments lies in a strategic vision aimed at building human development.

To provide a Muslim response to global challenges, we need to build a knowledge society in which real and true knowledge (al-hikmah) is the governing principle of all human activity.

As far as the educational infrastructure is concerned, it is quite obvious that the Muslim world is in need of high quality universities, libraries, resource centres, and laboratories.

Indeed, it is of paramount importance for Islamic states to provide quality lifetime education for all its citizens.

This must address not just the most important lifelong education and higher or tertiary education, but basic education as well as early childhood education, too, in order to properly habituate and capacitate every young person towards genuine learning.

However, in confronting the reality, we must admit that statistics and indicators point to the fact that some Muslim countries have failed to catch up with the Information Age.

The previous problems of illiteracy and poor infrastructure are now compounded with the problems of poor educational info-structure, such as the scant ratio of telephone lines per population and difficult access to digital media like computers and the Internet.

It is very unfortunate if in this digital era the Muslim Community fails to benefit from digital technologies to advance the global opportunities for Islamic education (al-ta’dib).

It might be beneficial to study how, for example, in less than seven years, with a less than US$1mil (RM3.2mil) annual budget, and with only seven paid staff members, Wikipedia has been able to muster the collective intelligence of tens of thousands of volunteers.

It produces the most-visited online reference site that contains more than 9.25 million articles in 253 languages.

In its December 2005 accuracy assessment, Nature magazine found that Wikipedia articles on matters of the natural sciences were almost comparable to those of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

We are living in a period of scientific, technological and digital revolution. For this reason, Muslims must not remain passive bystanders.

This revolution also emphasises the importance of innovation and active research and development (R&D) as the dynamo for social progress.

For the welfare and survival of Islamic nations, this R&D must be harnessed in a socially planned and systematic way.

Muslims must take note that today, every product and service is increasingly based on research. New inventions in turn, increase the productivity of the sciences and its social effects.

Infrastructure aside, Muslims must first and foremost allow themselves to be guided by genuine knowledge capital of the worldview of Islam (ru’yat al-Islam li al-wujud), including its history, its thought and its civilization.

Based upon this core of knowledge capital, Muslims must be able to create and disseminate new knowledge and beneficial sciences.

As there are tremendous developments in the domains of contemporary information and data, there is also a great challenge for Muslim scholars to integrate contemporary intellectual perspectives, present-day knowledge and sciences within the framework of the worldview of Islam.

Islamisation of present-day knowledge and sciences is very important in order to ensure that there is always an equilibrium between two types of knowledge, knowledge of the world and knowledge of the worldview of Islam.

This brings us to a most important matter, that we need willing students, whose enrolment figures must reflect the real needs of the Muslim educational system, as well as erudite scholars (al-rasikhun fi al-’ilm).

It is long overdue for Muslims to support genuine reforms in their educational system. I am referring to a creative attempt to establish a system of education (al-ta’dib) which is able to harness the human capital element towards excellent, all-embracing right action (adab).

Obviously, when we say we must aspire towards a knowledge society in which knowledge is the governing principle of all human activity, it also means that we must rid ourselves of all that is against human dignity.

Muslim leaders must liberate good human capabilities so that every Muslim and individual citizen can positively participate in our system of governance.

What is most important is that we must prepare our people to contribute through their intelligent and meaningful participation as citizens in peaceful cooperation.