On Education

LAST Friday I attended Jum’uah prayer at a relatively small masjid in Elmont, New York. It has since become a habit of mine, since becoming a practicing Muslim, to visit as many masjids as possible. I learned of this small masjid in Elmont when a visiting Imam performed Jum’uah prayer at a mosque where I took my shahadah, or declaration of faith, almost nine years ago.

The Imam chose as his topic on that Friday the subject of education. As is the habit of most Imams, he delivered the sermon in both English and in his native language for ease of communication to a diverse linguistic audience. As soon as the Imam made a crucial point towards the end of the sermon in English, he switched, without effort, into his native tongue related to the Indian continent to address both the young and the old. It seemed to me that he made that switch to appeal emotionally to native speakers, because his voice cracked as he spoke. Nevertheless, the Imam maintained his composure.

Without berating the congregation he spoke of his experiences with parents who entrust him with their children’s religious education on a daily basis. The Imam spoke passionately of the parents’ apparent aloofness with their children’s religious education, and I am certain that he, like other Imams, struggle to understand this parental aloofness as it pertains to their children’s religious education.

The Imam then switched gears to speak passionately about the importance of a secular education. As is his custom, he referred directly to sources from Hadith on the issue of education. The Imam then illustrated that the modern mode of a university lecture, where students listen to an instructor for hours on end, in some instances, without interruption, can be traced to verses in the Qu’ran. As an example, he spoke of an episode in Surah Kah’f, during which Allah (May He Be Glorified) tested his servant Musa (alihis salam) to learn from Khizr (alihis salam) specific knowledge bestowed on him by Allah (May He Be Glorified). Khizr (alihis salam) warned Musa (alihis salam) to be patient with him but Musa’s impatience, as shown by his constant interruption, finally led Khizr (alihis salam) to disclose the secrets of events taking place before Musa’s eyes (18:65-82).

This particular episode in the Qu’ran, the Imam asserted, pointed to one important lesson: Muslim students must remain humble and silent when seeking both religious and secular knowledge.

I can relate a few episodes in public school when I immigrated to the United States. A female high school student constantly interrupted the teacher. To my surprise, the student stood up and began to berate the teacher. Up to that time I had never seen this display of lunacy, given that I was reared in Catholic schools in the West Indies, where no student dared to speak to the teacher on any topic at all, except to challenge ideas the teacher presented in the classroom.

I say all this to emphasize that the Imam wanted the congregation to know that Islamic sources point to the fact that Muslim students who seek knowledge today must treat both religious and secular knowledge with the same intensity. The Imam reminded Muslim students that they must respect their teachers, whether in public school or in the university setting, who may not subscribe to Islam or who don’t care about Islam. Muslim students must remain humble to learn both secular and religious knowledge.

Modern students eschew religious knowledge today because there exists, both here in the United States and in Arab countries, a cultural divide between a traditional Islamic education and a secular Western education, now the staple of public schools and universities. The mainstream media has propagated the absurd belief that Islamic madrassas, or religious schools, are breeding grounds for terrorists.

Modern education today is viewed as a means of acquiring scientific knowledge and technology so as to progress economically in the modern world. This educational paradigm is in stark contrast with the aim of education from the 10^th to the 15^th centuries. The expressed aim of educational during these historical periods is to search unceasingly for the truth by an attempt to fuse religious and secular knowledge.

The current cultural divide between religious education and a secular education is directly responsible for the nauseating level of arrogance displayed by students for their teachers and has deleteriously limited their capacity to understand a unique connection between secular and religious knowledge.

I have come to understand, and I’m no scholar, that a great many modern European philosophers of the past three hundred years - Leibniz, Locke, Kant, Neitzsche - attended Christian religious institutions. They lived in an age called the Enlightenment, which began somewhere in the 17^th century and culminated in the 18^th century. The dawn of the 20^th century witnessed other philosophers who became disenchanted with religious knowledge – and here I speak of the Christianity – because they lived in a scientific atmosphere stripped of religious knowledge altogether. Modern scholars call this scientific atmosphere materialism. It was an age where human reason neglected Revelation and man believed, erroneously, that human reason alone is the key to human happiness and technological progress. Yet Christian, Muslim and Jewish philosophers who lived in a spiritual atmosphere of the “Middle Ages” never thought of divorcing religious from secular knowledge, as both sources of knowledge were reciprocal.

Anyone with a religious education knows that secular knowledge flows from religious knowledge. How else does someone achieve an appreciation of man and Nature without appreciating the One who created both man and Nature? Yet, as the Imam intimated, there is a widespread disregard for religious knowledge in today’s secular world-view.

The writer is a recent revert to Islam and can be contacted at: drummondhugh@verizon.net