Abstract
This inquiry examines how the love of learning, embodying the transformative educational vision of Islam (tarbiyah), emerged as the humanizing pedagogic vocation within classical Islamic higher education. There is a large body of literature exploring philosophical, literary, theological, mystical and aesthetic perceptions of love in the Muslim tradition. Classical Islamic scholarship has attracted the attention of Western historians of Islam. These studies, however, are limited to providing descriptive accounts of medieval Islamic knowledge systems and institutions. They do not offer an educational reading (hermeneutics) of the Muslim intellectual heritage. The love of learning as a central pedagogical value in classical Muslim higher education has not been subject to systematic inquiry. The study aims to fill this gap within the emerging field of critical Islamic Education Studies and contribute to the interdisciplinary comparative research on values in higher education. The ‘crisis of legitimacy’ facing the modern university is traced to the commodification of its educational good within the economic priorities of neoliberalism and privileging the pedagogy of scientism. The inquiry argues that the love of learning in the Muslim tradition springs from the distinctive image of God in the Qur’an as the loving, compassionate educator (al-Rabb/al-Waduud) and its transformative pedagogies of self-cultivation. The study considers critically whether the love of learning in Islam can accommodate ambiguity, questioning and critical faithfulness.
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01 January 2022
The original version of this chapter was published with incorrect figure (Fig 8.1). New fig 8.1 has been updated in this revised version.
Notes
- 1.
The idea of selecting state bureaucrats by merit rather than by birth started early in Chinese history through the introduction of a written examination system (keju) during the mid-Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). The rise of a gentry class of scholar-bureaucrats apparently helped to legitimize the imperial rule by tempering the power of hereditary aristocracy and military authority (Benjamin, 2002).
- 2.
The Humboldtian model of higher education, emerged out of the early nineteenth-century Prussian reforms, has dominated the European universities. It integrates the arts and sciences with a strong research focus to achieve both cultural knowledge and general learning that caters to the educational needs of the emerging middle classes. Wilhelm von Humboldt (d. 1835), a Prussian philosopher behind the model, championed the humanist goal of ‘education’, which he expressed with the German word ‘building’ (self-cultivation that facilitates mature human development).
- 3.
Srinivasan’s work (2019) examines the imposition of Western education in colonial India and shows that the colonizer did not introduce the education reform to facilitate flourishing of a people from another culture who had their own traditions. On the contrary, it made these traditions of knowing subordinate to the new ‘useful’ knowledge. When the reforms failed, instead of taking seriously how education and learning are imagined in people’s local culture, the colonizer started to blame the Indian student’s failure to acquire a certain kind of cognitive ability required for the acquisition of ‘modern knowledge’.
- 4.
As noted by Yovel (1989), this humanist study attitude towards the Bible as a secular text/document was advanced by Spinoza (d. 1677).
- 5.
Lazarus-Yafeh (1992) argued that the critical Muslim attitude to the Hebrew Bible was among the early catalysts for the rise of modern biblical scholarship. The Qur’an criticizes the ancient Jewish exegetical authorities with ‘text-tampering/falsification’ (tahrif). Kugle (2008) acknowledges that text modification and additions did occur within early Judaism, but argues that this was not seen as falsification. Ancient Jewish interpreters worked with a perception of sacred scripture that allowed text expansion. Kugle observes that medieval Muslim Qur’an commentators, well before Western European scholars, appear to have discovered Ezra the scribe and noted his interpretations included additions/changes to the scripture that altered its message. For Muslim perceptions of the Hebrew Bible and the classical Islamic scholarship on the Bible, see Adang and Schmidtke (2019); Saleh, (2008).
- 6.
The word ‘tradition’ originates in the Latin tradare/ trado, which has meanings of both to hand over, deliver, transmit something, and to surrender and betray (traitor). The Donatists, an early Christian sect (fourth to sixth CE), refused to accept the sacraments and spiritual authority of priests and bishops, who were ‘traditores,’ as they handed over/surrendered the scriptures during the persecution launched by the Roman emperor Diocletian in 303 CE. Williams (1989) aptly notes that considering how much has been handed down and how much is left out or appropriated differently in the name of a tradition, the process can be seen as indicating an element of betrayal and surrender.
- 7.
Monotheism, unlike ‘henotheism’ (adherence to one particular god out of several deities) and ‘monolatry’ (belief in the existence of many gods, but with the consistent worship of only one deity), refers to the exclusive commitment to one true God. However, this exclusivity also implies that there is a strong sense of universality embedded in the concept of monotheism; that is, if there is only one true God, He must belong to and care for all humanity even if some people choose not to recognize Him.
- 8.
The perception of the heart as the organ of thinking, feeling and love can be traced back to languages and imagination of the ancient Near East. In Akkadian, the language of the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, the word libbu is used for the heart, which has etymological similarity with the Quranic lubb/albaab: deep, heartful understanding and insight.
- 9.
The Qur’an references: first number is chapter, surah, and the second is verse, ayah.
- 10.
Al-Raghib al-Isfahani (d. 1108) (2003) notes that the literal meaning of the Qur’an as ‘a short collection’ originates in the word quru’, the collection of blood in the mother’s womb sustaining the life of the unborn child. Similarly, revelation is called Qur’an, a special type of collection: ‘it gathers/joins all previous knowledge/wisdom God shared with humanity and became its perfect expression to nourish the human soul.’ Istiqra’ refers to the process of investigating/gathering knowledge and aqraa is ‘to teach/study’ (87:6). Al-Suyuti (d. 1505) (2001) discerns the same educational meanings from the word ‘kitab’ (book/scripture), as it also literally means that which brings together/connects all types of ‘knowledge/wisdom including stories in the most eloquent way’, ready for human reflection and learning.
- 11.
See Psalm 119:97; 2 Kings 22.8.
- 12.
Erotic themes feature in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry (profane love) (Giffen, 1971) and within classical Islamic mystical poetry (passionate Divine love/ishq) (Zargar, 2017; Lumbard, 2007; Abrahamov, 2003). The integration of eroticism (sensual/passionate love) with contemplative spiritual longing (shawaq) was an undeniable achievement of the Persianate expression of classical Islamic aesthetics. The Persian mystical and lyrical poetry of Rumi (d. 1273) and Sadi (d. 1291) expresses the beauty of the visible and the intuitive sensuality in the experience of the invisible: an illustration of this creative Muslim aesthetics (Ingenito, 2021; Tourage, 2007).
- 13.
It needs to be stressed that Al-Ghazali’s famous work ‘Incoherence of Philosophers’ is not an attack on philosophy as such but a critique of the aims and methods of Aristotelian science (philosophia naturalis, which included a strong metaphysical component) as appropriated/interpreted by the medieval Muslim philosophers.
- 14.
For Plotinus (1988) reality is structured hierarchically, and the existence of each ontological level depends solely upon its superior. He argued that love implies deficiency; hence, only an inferior being would aspire to its erotic union with the superior ontological levels. Eros was identified with the self-constituting reversion of an entity towards its progenitor. However, eros can also be the descending (emanating) love of the superior orders for the inferior ontological ranks (Vasilakis, 2021).
- 15.
For a compelling introduction to Ibn Taymiyyah’s dynamic theology, see Hoover (2004). Ibn ‘Aqil (d. 112) is another hanbali humanist who prefigures Ibn Taymiyyah in advocating the complementarity of reason and revelation without privileging one over the other.
- 16.
Wilayah, closeness to God/friendship with God, constitutes the foundation of Islamic spirituality. The early Sufi mystics (al-Tirmizi d. 869, al-Kharraz d. 899) as well as later systematizers of Sufi doctrines (al-Qushayri d. 1077, al-Hujwiri (d. 1077) identify wilayah as a significant spiritual state that resembles the experience of prophecy. Sainthood (wilayah) might even be a higher state than the rank of the prophets, except Muhammad. Rumi (d. 1273), who wrote influential didactic works, the best examples of Sufi pedagogy in practice, shows how closeness to God can reveal limitations of literal perception of faith, as illustrated in his story about Moses and the shepherd in the second book of his Masnavi. However, often Rumi’s critical stance towards literalism of religious scholars, coupled with his views on supremacy of friendship with God, is rather hastily interpreted, for example, by Mojaddade’ (2012), to suggest that he ignored the Islamic religious teachings.
- 17.
The English Qur’an translations inadequately render Al-Rabb as the ‘Lord’ (political sovereignty). Rabb includes the meaning of lordship (12:23), but literally refers to the one who assumes the care of someone—hence marbub, that is, humanity under the care of God. The sense of being in charge invoked by rabb is not purely paternalist (the Qur’an uses ab/abaa’ for father) or political. The Qur’an uses mulk/malik for political sovereignty (mamluk/a slave). The etymology of Rabb primarily suggests relational, educational qualities of care, nurture, reform and guidance: the one who facilitates/guides a thing to a state of completion by degrees. Most Orientalists simply assume the Quranic expression rabb al-alameen (1:2) is borrowed from the Jewish or Syriac Christian liturgical formulas, ignoring the fact that it was used in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. In Arabic both knowledge and world (‘ilm/alem) have the same etymology, which gives rabb al-alameen a unique pedagogical meaning: God, the educator, has complete knowledge/awareness of all worlds and is in a caring, nurturing and guiding relationship with them all. The poet companion of the prophet, Hassan b. Thabit (d. 674), used the word tarabba to describes a white, clear pearl which the depth of the sea has nurtured to maturity (Ibn Manzur, 1957). Western scholars, such as Gunter, seem unaware about the Quranic subtle educational rearticulation of the concept as part of its pedagogical critique of a banking approach to religious/spiritual knowledge and its misuse (62:5). Günther (2006) assumes the Quranic expression kuunuu rabbaniyyin (3:79) calls for ‘mastery of knowledge’ and fails to see the critical pedagogy embedded in the expression, that is, ‘embody the knowledge/values you study/preach in your lives or lead godly lives’ (Sahin, 2019).
- 18.
Realizing the total loss/extinction of human self (fana) in the Divine being, advocated by Neoplatonism, is not compatible with Islam, some mystics suggested a higher state of spiritual development, that is, baqa, the reconstituted, subsisting self that is embedded in the Divine awareness and love.
- 19.
Riyadat al-nafs/Adab al-nafs/tahzib al-akhlaq is a specialist study genre within classical Islamic higher learning that focused on self-cultivation, therapy, wellbeing and spiritual/moral development. A large number of popular works have been produced under these titles which are similar to the contemporary psychological self-help books.
- 20.
Goodey (2021) traces the modern psychological concept of ‘development’ to the medieval Christian theological discussions on human self (interior) that was conceived as structured according to the stages of linear time heading towards an identifiable destination, that is, salvation or damnation. The concept of predestination (development as the unfolding of predetermined stages of human condition), the elect, the role of human freedom and responsibility and so on had a formative impact on the emergence of the modern notion of human ‘healthy and pathological’ development. In classical Islam similar theological discussions took place. However, the Islamic conception of human development, as argued above, originates directly in the Quranic explicit psychological and educational vocabulary, suggesting a dynamic conception of human agency and spiritual formation.
- 21.
There is a distinctive theology of protest in the Hebrew Bible that includes criticizing/rebuking God (tokhehah), which is discerned from the protest speeches of Abraham, Moses and above all Job directed to God. Weiss (2017) shows that during the early rabbinic period, the commentaries on these biblical narratives mostly explained away this ‘irreverence’. However, rabbis in post-tannaitic period (late Midrash) through re-narrating these biblical dialogues validated the notion of arguing with God. Weiss claims some rabbis of late antiquity even reached the conclusion that God is not morally perfect. In the Greco-Roman world critiquing a friend (parrhesia, frank speech) was assumed a virtue. Christianity, despite the famous lament of Jesus on the cross (My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?) (Mark 15:3), appears not to have followed this Jewish model of theological dissent. The biblical protest passages were taken to be allegories—hence dismissing the notion of challenging God. Once Christianity was integrated into the Roman political apparatus, it was much difficult to criticize authorities. Having no political power of its own seems to had led Judaism to capitalize on a theology of lament and protest. The Qur’an retains the prophetic, critical consciousness and stresses that justness of God is informed by compassion and love. Divine–human relations, whilst remaining hierarchical, accommodated reciprocity and critical faithfulness: God welcomes Abraham’s searching questions over resurrection but rebukes him for his unjust request that God guarantee the leadership position to all of his offspring (2:124).
- 22.
The absence of a Church-like authority in Islam meant determination of ‘right scriptural reasoning’ required a mental/rational effort (ijtihad) to provide evidence/insights (bayyinah/basirah) for one’s position. Scholars who championed the use of reason (ahl al-ray) or valued transmitted knowledge/traditions (ahl al-athaar) had to develop rigorous methods for defending their approaches. Such a pedagogical habitus advocated study/inquiry as an obligation with as much religious valence as prayer. Muslim higher learning within its various specialisms produced distinctive pedagogical cultures of scholarship, for example, that of the Muhaddith (experts on prophetic reports), faqīh (scholar of jurisprudence), adib (man/women of letters), hakim (philosopher-scientist), mutakallim (theologian) and Sufi (practitioner of/expert on Islamic spiritual sciences). Islamic higher learning was most creative when the practitioners of these disciplines maintained a dialogue and interdependence. The disciplines were divided according to subject matters which were integral parts of a whole which could be grasped as a whole. With the loss of a wholistic pedagogical culture enabling the learners to integrate these diverse traditions of knowledge in their overall education, disciplinary rivalry has caused reification, compartmentalization and narrowing of Islamic scholarship. Generations of Western scholars of Islam, from Goldziher and Hodgson to Rosenthal, van Ess and Robinson, whilst impressed with the cosmopolitan Islamic civilization (the infamous Islamicate), insisted that education in classical Islam was mainly a conserving/conservative activity. Not only did they ignore the critical faithfulness advocated by the Qur’an, but they also appear keen to declare any scholar with a critical humanist attitude to be considered a heretic within the Muslim tradition. Translators of Al-Ma’arri’s ‘Epistle of Forgiveness’ into English (2013) draw attention to the controversial reception of this great Muslim humanist within the Muslim tradition. They only cite those who accused him of heresy but fail to mention the Sharia-minded scholars, such as Ibn Al-Adim (d. 1262), who wrote a special work defending Al-Ma’arri. The love of learning in Islam stems from acknowledging the pedagogical value of epistemic ambiguity/uncertainty in the first place. The Qur’an encourages the prophet to base his public decision-making on verifiable evidence (4:83). He is warned that the ultimate truth lies with God and he should pray for God’s guidance to get him closer to the truth and to best conduct in life (18:24). Heck’s study (2014) reveals how sceptical thinking, though defined around the concept of perplexity/confusion (heyrah) rather than shakk or rayb (used more frequently in the Qur’an), was integral to classical Islamic scholarship/religious thought. This epistemic humility in Islam, observed by Bauer (2021) as ‘cultural ambiguity and tolerance’, led to the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture. Bauer’s thesis that Islam’s encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty are responsible for the intransigent religious extremism has some truth. However, this is not an alternative but a typical selective Western reading of Islam’s cultural history (Bauer simply cherry-picks Islamic sources and offers a highly selective interpretation of them, often ignoring their multi-layered perspectives, some of which exhibit a lack of tolerance for difference that contract his overall rightly defended position). Certainly, Islam was reinterpreted rigidly within a strong reaction to colonial modernity. Islam was reduced to a closed system like capitalism and socialism. However, the tension between keeping epistemic openness and the desire for literal puritanism, which produced a foreclosed culture of conformity/stagnation (taqlid), preceded the Muslim encounter with Western colonial modernity.
- 23.
Western scholars of the Qur’an are mostly interested in excavating/demystifying its historical origins—hence are most oblivious of the Qur’an’s pedagogical significance. See Wheeler’s study (2002) ‘Moses in the Qur’an’. Neuwirth (2019) and her student Sinai (2017) seem to take seriously the self-perception of the Qur’an in the Muslim tradition. Their study approach integrates literary analysis and critical historical study traditions. However, Sinai tries to historize the Qur’an by reducing it to the liturgical/homiletic genres of worship widely practised by the Syriac-speaking Christian communities of the late antiquity, for example, hymns of Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373). This resembles the discredited Orientalist hypothesis that the Qur’an is the Arabic version of a Syriac lectionary. The claim regarding the idea of a lectionary as the literary form employed in the composition of sacred texts is not new. Goulder’s lectionary theory (2004, 2009) of how Gospels were composed is a fascinating example. Neuwirth (2010) tried to discern the impact of pre-Islamic oral poetry (qasidah) on the Quranic composition style. However, she also sees the Qur’an as a fine piece of writing reflecting the Hellenistic literary genre of rhetoric. She argues that the Qur’anic revelation is contemporary to the exegetical corpora of monotheist traditions that were edited/published, such as the two Talmudim in Judaism and the patristic writings in Christianity. She thinks these exegetical/rhetorical writings, not the Bible, are the literary counterparts of the Qur’an. She claims the Qur’an should be understood as an exegetical work containing polemical-apologetical content conveyed via polished rhetoric in Arabic. However, she does not consider the vast differences between the composition style, concerns of the Qur’an and the rabbinic writings of late antiquity such as the Midrashim of Tanhuma. The Qur’an does not belong to the late rabbinic re-written Bible genre (Midrashim). Furthermore, the absence of a documented book culture in the seventh-century Arabia makes her position resemble the so far unsubstantiated claim that the Qur’an was produced not in the seventh-century Western Arabia as Muslims assume, but much later, in a different location and by a highly literate community of authors/redactors. The early commitment of the Qur’an to writing was an act of preservation rather than symbolizing the presence of a written/writerly culture. As Watt (1995) observes, the Greek classical heritage was a later graft on to Arabic-Islamic culture which was successful in philosophy and science, but not in literature and rhetoric. The Qur’an is pre-eminently an oral, not a ‘written’ discourse. Neuwirth seems impressed with the rich educational vocabulary of the Qur’an and agrees that there is a novel epistemic (educational) self-awareness in the Qur’an which might be behind its success in transforming the world of late antiquity. As Becker (2004) argues, the institutionalization of learning among ancient Syriac Christians, together with the pedagogical vocabulary in the Babylonian Talmud, contributed to the projections of an educational imaginary to the heavenly realm. Rabbinic readings of the Hebrew Bible reveal depictions of God as teacher and parent (Alexander, 2001). Witmer (2008) examined the idea of divine instruction in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. He concludes that while Jesus is depicted as the teacher of Divine instruction, the didactic terminology is rarely referenced to God. In the Qur’an, not only God is explicitly imagined as educator but also the Divine pedagogy is exclusively directed to transform the human condition on Earth.
- 24.
A similar process of bottom-up indigenization of Islam occurred in China. The Chinese Muslim scholars of the late Ming (1368–1644) and early Qing (1644–1911) periods produced a complex body of literature collectively called the Han Kitab that simultaneously preserved and expressed both Islamic and ancient Chinse teachings and sensibilities through a creative pedagogical dialogue (Frankel, 2011).
- 25.
In classical Islamic higher learning classification of knowledge (sciences) and detailed recoding of the book titles and names of the authors in all branches of knowledge quickly became an interdisciplinary field of specialism. Under the impact of Greek legacy, al-Farbai (d. 950) wrote his well-known Kitaab Ihsaa alUluum (Introduction to Knowledge/Classification of Sciences). Abu Abdullah Al-Khawarzimi (d. 975) in his Mafatih alUluum (Keys to the Sciences) used the methodology of al-Faribi but much consciously tried to integrate the indigenous Islamic and what he called sciences of the ancients (awail), that is, the Greek, Indian and Persian scientific heritage. More significantly, the book exhibits a practical pedagogy, as it was intended to be a manual for the training of the state secretaries. This genre of writing quickly gained the form of an encyclopaedia of sciences exemplified by the tenth-century Brethren of Purity. However, Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889), an expert on Islamic sciences, a teacher and a philologist, is considered to have created the first encyclopaedia, kitab uyun al-akhbar (The Book of Choice Narratives), which was emulated by others. The book covers power, war, nobility, character, learning and eloquence, asceticism, friendship, prayers, food and women. Ibn Abd Rabbih (d. 940) of Cordoba improved on Ibn Qutaybah’s work in his ʿIqd al-farid (The Precious Necklace), later perfected by figures like al-Nuwayrī (d. 1332), Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab (The Aim of the Intelligent in the Art of Letters); al-Qalqashandī (1418), Ṣubḥ al-Asha (The Dawn for the Blind); Al-Ibshihi (d. 1446), Mustaṭraf fī kull fann mustaẓraf (A Quest for Attainment in Each Fine Art). In the seventeenth century the bibliographic encyclopedia of books and sciences by Hajj Khalifa (Kashf al-Zunun an Asami al-Kutub wa al-Funun) constitute 15,000 book titles, 9500 names of authors, and about 300 sciences and arts.
- 26.
Adab refers to the ‘mode of correct, refined conduct or custom’ as well as to the sayings that give them expression. By the tenth century the earlier conception of adab—moral training, self-disciplining/courtly etiquette—grew into the cultivation of a literary imagination, bibliophilic instincts and encyclopaedic education. Adib meant the erudite who is well trained to know by heart, on any conceivable topic, all the relevant quotable materials from all the genres of knowledge. Adab as an area of expertise meant specialism in literature, including linguistics, grammar and poetry. In classical Islamic higher learning ilm (knowledge, science) and adab (culture/manners) were seen as complementary domains of education. In ancient Greece a similar distinction existed between episteme (knowledge) and paideia (culture). Adab as high culture seems to have emerged as a ‘translated/appropriated’ concept from ancient Persian heritage as well as from the Greek paideia, which like ta’dib also meant ‘disciplining’.
- 27.
Western historians of Islam suggest conflicting accounts regarding the origins and function of madrasah. Recently Beckwith (2011) claimed that madrasah was modelled on the Central Asian Buddhist monasteries called vihara, thus tracing its origins to the conversion of Central Asia to Islam during the early Abbasid period. Goldziher saw it as the state-sponsored institution to propagate Sunni Asha’ri school of thought against both rationalist Mu’tazilah and the larger threat of the Shia Fatimid dynasty, which established its own higher education institution in 972 (al-Azahar) to propagate Shia Ismaili ideology. Leiser (1986) suggested that the role of madrasahs was crucial in exerting pressure on non-Muslims (Christians) by producing graduates, who filled the official positions. Gilbert (1980) argued that the madrasah marked the institutionalization of Muslim scholarship and professionalization/bureaucratization of the ‘ulama (the scholarly class). Pedersen saw madrasah not as an independent institution but simply as a specialist study section in the masjid. The thesis by Makdisi (1990) that madrasah was an exclusive law college has been widely criticized (Ephrat, 2000; Chamberlain, 2002). There is more evidence supporting the view that students in the madrasah, like in any other study circle (halaqa/majlis), continued to choose their own teachers and the subjects (texts) they wished to study. They gained authorization/licensing by their teachers to teach specific texts or provide expert opinion on a subject. Madrasah did not award degrees and monopolize higher Islamic learning. The classical biographical dictionaries about the learned communities barely mention the names of the madrasah where the scholars acquired an education. However, the entries are replete with information about the texts and teachers with whom these scholars studied. In addition, a madrasah teacher could teach highly specialist subjects in the mosque/masjid or majlis, khangah or ribat.
- 28.
The word for such a large congregational mosque compound is Jaami’, which is related to the modern Arabic word for university, al-Jamia’ah. Professors would hold permanent study circles called halaqahs and zawiyahs in jaamis. In the al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, Imam al-Shafii (d. 820) had taught in person and his Zawiat al-Shafii was retained for generations. This is rather different from the Latin word for university, universitas, which originally meant an ‘incorporated’ guild of masters/scholars (something like a modern trade union). It did not mean the university as understood today. The all-inclusive academic institution with a permanent endowment was the college, which is the equivalent of the medieval Muslim madrasah.
- 29.
Some scholars argue that the kalaam-type argumentation can be traced back to the seventh-century Syriac Christological disputations (Treiger, 2016). Muslim sources depict Wasil b. Ata (d. 748), the founder of the movement, having a keen interest in arguing with Christians and Buddhists in order to defend Islam. He applied logical criteria in ascertaining truth (epistemology) and in understanding the Qur’an (exegesis). Mu’tazilah, which flourished between the eight and the tenth century, is the first systemic rational Islamic theological school that influenced medieval Christian and Jewish thinkers to the point that it gave rise to the distinct Christian and Jewish kalaam (Mu’tazilah) traditions. Despite its emphasis on primacy of reason/rationality over revelation, the Mu’tazilah was a strict pietist movement and advocated political pluralism in the thorny disputes over the succession dispute in early Islam. The word mu’tazilah originally meant those who separated/withdrew (i’tizalah) themselves from the general public to engage with ascetic practices (Stroumsa, 1990).
- 30.
The first proper account in English on classical Islamic pedagogical literature is provided by Totah (1926). Shalaby’s significant study (1954) offers a comprehensive account of the medieval Muslim education. Recently, Gilliot (2012), in his edited volume ‘Education and Learning in the Early Islamic World’, provides a succinct overview of the important Western studies on Islamic education, its key institutions, traditions of scholarship and pedagogy. It is important to note that in Confucianism there is a strong link between ‘ethics of reading’ (textual study/learning) and moral self-cultivation (Reichenbach & Kwak, 2020). There are renewed calls among contemporary Western scholars in humanities to take seriously the humanizing pedagogical ethos embedded in the act of ‘ethical reading’ (Brooks & Jewett, 2014; Miller, 1987).
- 31.
Makdisi’s view about the formative influence of madrasah on the pedagogical culture of the early Western higher education institutions has remained influential. His thesis can be summarized as follows: the first European universities, like Bologna, founded in 1088, were formed around a scholastic pedagogy originated in classical Islamic colleges of law. This law-centred textual study method was essential to determine ‘orthodoxy’, as Islam lacked a centralized institution of authority. The mastery of the scholastic method led to the formation of a qualification framework, license to teach law (ijazat at-tadris), in Islam that was translated in the medieval Western university as the licentia docendi, which, together with the stadium, formed a new professorial magisterium overseeing the theological orthodoxy in the West. Beckwith (2011) supports Makdisi’s general thesis but challenges his view that the madrasah grew organically out of Islam’s native religious institution of the mosque–school complex with an increasing specialism on legal education. Beckwith claims that the madrasah is simply an Islamicized form of the earlier Central Asian Buddhist college, the vihara, and its ‘unique’ pedagogy of the ‘recursive argument method’. Theses by Makdisi and Beckwith about the origins of madrasah and its pedagogic culture lack historical/archaeological and literary/textual evidence. Beckwith does not discuss the fact that vihara was foremost a monastic institution for the Buddhist renunciates. His claim that the earliest mention of madrasah is the school endowed by Abu Hatim al-Busti (d. 965) is based on the secondary Western literature and lacks evidence. Muslim accounts provided by historians like Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 1071) (2001) note that this great Hadith scholar of Central Asia established a dar al-Ilm (not a madrasah) with a dedicated library (khazant alkutub) in his native town of Bust. He also provided scholarships and lodging for his students, which apparently were the common practices of a vihara too. However, this does not mean that al-Busti simply converted the local vihara to a dar al-ilm. Beckwith acknowledges that he lacks knowledge of classical Islamic textual heritage and its pedagogic practices, yet he claims that the ‘recursive argument method’ was only visible in the works of Ibn Sina, the famous Central Asian Muslim philosopher who, by his own admission, as Beckwith notes, apparently learned the science of argumentation from the Muslim legal scholars (fuqaha). Finally, both Makdisi and Beckwith erroneously equate madrasah exclusively with legal studies, ignoring its diverse curriculum and specialisms. Most crucially, they seem unaware of Islamic higher learning that took place in non-religious institutions like khan (Ahmed, 1987).
- 32.
Garden (2014) offers an interesting reading of the intellectual/spiritual crisis presented in this work. He argues that Al-Ghazali had a lifelong ambition to promote himself as the first ‘reviver of faith’, a lofty title mentioned in the prophetic traditions. To achieve this, Al-Ghazali critiques the religious sciences of his time. He aimed to restore/revive religious learning by recentring knowledge around a new discipline, the Science of the Hereafter. For him the ultimate guidance lies in not pure rational inquiry (claimed by philosophers), but in prophecy (Divine revelation), a taste of which can be gained through Sufi insights unveiled (kashf) by spiritual practices. This new science integrates Sufism and philosophy. However, it is not reducible to either. The reflective philosophical inquiry in attaining knowledge remained a significant part of Al-Ghazali’s pedagogy even after criticizing Muslim philosophers and embracing the Sufi practices. Gardner’s suggestion that Al-Ghazali had worldly motives behind articulating/constructing his ‘spiritual crises’ has merits. The search for the best method to discern the truth occupied many other scholars in his time. Al-Ghazali was consciously adopting this debate on method format for advancing his agenda for originality and defending himself against the charges of being a crypto Shia Ismaili. In fact, the title of his autobiography, as Garden argues, might have been a deliberate choice depicting him to be the awaited deliverer (al-munkidh) from the error. Al-Ghazali spent most of his scholarly life under political patronage. Even after this spiritual turn, he assumed paid teaching positions and did not, as is mistakenly assumed, become an ascetic. Whatever motives he had, however, what is beyond doubt is that Al-Ghazali’s pedagogical creativity is evident in the way he integrated critical inquiry with reflective spirituality, fulfilling the Quranic educational aim of forming ‘hearts capable of reflection’ (22:46). His educational vocation embodied the love of learning as critical faithfulness.
- 33.
It needs to be stressed that some of the unique works with an unprecedented level of methodical and pedagogical creativity that pushed the boundaries of classical Islamic epistemology and medieval knowledge genres in general were neglected within classical Islamic higher education. For example, al-Biruni’s (d. 1057) study of India and its cultures and religious traditions (Taḥqiq ma li-l-Hind), considered to be the precursor of modern ethnography and anthropology, as well as Ibn Khaldun’s (d. 1406) Muqadimah, which advanced a social theory on exploring human nature, education and how human societies are formed, hence heralding modern sociology, do not appear to have been studied or built on.
- 34.
The contemporary presence of Muslims in Europe has created a new encounter between Islam and Western secular modernity. This so far has not led to recognizable European expressions of Islam. Can European Muslims facilitate something like a Jewish Haskala? This so-called Jewish Enlightenment of the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century intellectual movement attempted to integrate Jewish life into the mainstream of European culture through a reform of traditional Jewish education and inclusion of European languages and secular subjects into the curriculum, supplementing the traditional Talmudic study (Feiner, 2011). The Hebrew Haskala promoted a new, hybrid type of Jewish scholarship. Despite strong opposition from orthodox Judaism, which saw this as a process of assimilation, and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Haskala did create a middle class loyal to historical Jewish traditions and yet part of the modern Western civilization. There are different and more complex challenging historical, political and demographic dynamics framing the modern Muslim presence in Europe. As the ethnic, linguistics heritage of the first migrants become less accessible to their offerings, European Muslim youth seem to be identifying more with Islam as a distinguishing identity promising an authentic sense of belonging. As such, the role of Islamic education remains critical in the contextualization/indigenization of Islam in Europe.
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Sahin, A. (2021). Love of Learning as a Humanizing Pedagogic Vocation: Perspectives from Traditions of Higher Education in Islam. In: de Rijke, V., Peterson, A., Gibbs, P. (eds) Higher Education and Love. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82371-9_8
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