Educational Institutions and the Coming Islamic Renaissance

Educational Institutions and the Coming Islamic Renaissance

Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan at IANT, February 2013

Opening Remarks and Introduction

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh. I just wanted to thank everyone on behalf of Sufa Islamic Seminary for attending our program here today. We're very thankful and grateful to Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan for being here with us today. I know that he doesn't really like introductions, and he doesn't need an introduction with any of us, so inshallah, without much further ado, I'll give it to Ustadh Nouman.

Opening Prayer and Introduction to the Topic

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.

All praise belongs to Allah, and may peace and blessings be upon the Messenger of Allah, his family, and his companions. My Lord, expand for me my breast and ease for me my task and untie the knot from my tongue that they may understand my speech.

"(Moses said), “My Lord, expand for me my breast, ease my task for me, and remove the impediment from my tongue so they may understand my speech."

Islamic institutions, Islamic educational institutions, and I've actually picked this title "The Coming Islamic Renaissance." And I felt this conversation is important to have, especially with educators and Muslims in general, about how we are going to be educating ourselves and the ummah, and then by extension the world, about Islam.

The Importance of Education in Islam

From the very inception of this ummah, from the very beginning of this ummah, education has been a priority. The first revelation itself is (ٱقْرَأْ - Iqra) - "Read."

"Read, in the Name of your Lord Who created."

And in that first passage, Allah عز وجل mentions verbs like Iqra (read). Then He mentions (عَلَّمَ - Allama) - "He taught." He mentions (ٱلْقَلَمُ - Al-Qalam) - "the pen," He mentions (عِلْمٌ - Ilm) - "knowledge," (عَلَّمَ - Alim) - "He knew," (يَعْلَمُ - Ya'lam) - "He knows."

So knowledge, pen, teaching, reading are in the first revelation. They're already from the very birth of this ummah - education is a priority. Unfortunately, however, today, the education about Islam itself has actually taken a backseat.

The Three Components of Islamic Education

Overview of the Three Components

What I want to do today, insha'Allah ta'ala, is first of all set before you the three components of Islamic education. There are three parts to Islamic education:

1. Information
2. Understanding
3. Application

Each of these three are important. And there's a problem when you emphasize only one of them, or only two of them, or don't have a strategy to go from one to the next to the next.

Information vs. Understanding vs. Application

A child can memorize Surah al-Ikhlas. A child can memorize even the entire Qur'an. And you can argue that that child inside of him or her has a lot of information. If you ask them to recite, they'll recite it perfectly. What they don't yet possess is understanding.

A child can memorize, in mathematics class, the times table. They can memorize 8 times 8 is 64. They can memorize the entire times table. Even if they understand it, they may not be able to truly understand what that means, how is that beneficial, what does that do for me.

The Qur'anic Perspective on Understanding

Today, this afternoon in the khutbah, I talked to you about one example Allah gives in the Qur'an. About examples themselves, Allah جل و عز says:

"And none will understand them except those who know."

Nobody understands them except people who have information, who have knowledge. People of knowledge understand the examples. So Allah mentioned the information component first, and then He mentioned the understanding component.

The Distinction Between Information and Knowledge

There is a difference between saying "this person has a lot of information" and "this person has a lot of knowledge." You can say someone has knowledge when the first two pieces are combined - when information and understanding are combined, then you have what is called knowledge.

There's a lot of information on the internet. You can get a lot of information. You can download a lot of information on your phone. Actually, on a daily basis, we are exposed to tons and tons of information.

But unfortunately, that information does not increase our knowledge because there is a gap between information and understanding.

Islamic Terminology for the Three Levels

In Islamic terminology, you have:

• (ٱلْعِلْمُ - al-'ilm) - information
• (ٱلْعَقْلُ - al-'aql) - understanding
• (ٱلْفَهْمُ - al-faham) - comprehension

When you have al-'ilm and al-'aql together, and you act on it - (ٱلْعَمَلُ - al-'amal) - (ٱلْعِلْمُ النَّافِعُ وَالْعَمَلُ بِهِ) - they say (فَذَلِكَ هُوَ الْحِكْمَةُ - fathalika huwa al-hikmah) - "That's actually what is called wisdom." Wisdom in Islam is when you have knowledge, not information, knowledge and action together, application together.

Historical Perspective on Islamic Education

The Role of Arabic in Islamic Education

For a long, long time, the information of Islam has been available. Arabic education was widespread. Quran education was widespread. The Arabic language was actually a common second language in almost every Muslim land, even the ones that are non-Arab.

If you go to a website like altafsir.com, which is the Jordanian government's effort to compile as many tafasir in one website as they can, when you look through the names of the mufassirun, actually the vast majority of them are not Arab. The vast majority of them are from some other region. There are Andalusian scholars, there are African scholars, there are Indian scholars. (وَكُلُّهُمْ كَتَبُوا بِالْعَرَبِيَّةِ) - "All of them authored their works in Arabic."

The Traditional Teacher-Student Model

But the thing about understanding was, you have to go to the alim to understand. People would travel to different lands to go sit under a scholar to understand, to try to understand the Qur'an better, to try to understand the sunnah of the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم) better.

Historically, people, individuals, were institutions. We didn't have something called "the university of so and so." We had Abu Hanifa rahimahullah. We had Imam Malik rahimahullah. We had Imam Shafi'i rahimahullah. These scholars - students would go and flock to them and learn. There were certain individuals; they were the university.

The Mentor System

The highest forms of education in the West is the PhD, doctorate. And in the doctorate program, what do you end up with? You end up with one mentor that is going to guide you through your PhD thesis. So you end up in the highest form of education where the ummah began with its education - with a mentor.

Learning Through Companionship

The reason to go to a person was not just to get information. You also wanted to get understanding. But not even that - (ٱلصُّحْبَةُ - as-suhbah) (ٱلصَّحْبَةُ ٱلصَّالِحَةُ - as-suhbah saliha) - righteous companionship. In their company, you would learn how to act on that knowledge.

When you have the scholar of hadith, every time he's about to quote a hadith, he goes and makes wudu, and then he tells the hadith. Or before he teaches his dars, he teaches something about the Qur'an, he prays to Allah عز وجل, he makes dua, and then he starts teaching about the Qur'an. The students would see that and say, "Man, this guy has a lot of respect for what he does."

Problems in Current Islamic Education

The Information-Only Approach

There was originally an emphasis on information. I'll speak, for example, of Muslims that live in India, Pakistan, South Asia. There's a particular philosophy about Islam, a particular approach to teaching our children Islam. What is that? They should learn the nurani qaida, they should learn to recite the Qur'an. After they learn to recite the Qur'an, they should memorize a couple of short surahs at least.

In official schooling, in Muslim countries even, you have studied the seerah a little bit. Maybe one or two surahs, the tafsir of them, and that's it. For example in Pakistan, they have until matric 10th grade - you have a couple of surahs (أَلَمْ نَشْرَحْ لَكَ صَدْرَكَ - Alam nashrah laka sadrak) (وَالضَّحَى - Wadduha), (وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا سَجَى - wa layli idha saja) - you have tafsir of those surahs, tashreeh they call them, and that's it.

What that means is that Islamic education has been reduced just to information. All of what I described so far - reciting the Qur'an, memorizing a few surahs, reading a little bit from books - all of that is information. Understanding does not happen from books alone.

The Understanding Gap

Understanding comes from discussion. Understanding comes from questions and answers.

Understanding comes when the teacher asks you a question to make sure did you understand, and you're not able to answer, and he discusses it with you, and then you say, "Ah, I get it."

Even outside the Indo-Pak subcontinent, you have emphasis on information. Some student might memorize Al-Ajrumiyyah. Now the guy knows Al-Ajrumiyyah by heart. But if you sit him down and say, "What does that mean? What does this first line mean? And how does it apply to this ayah?" He's not able to do that because he only learned information.

"A past tense verb built on fathah and the sign of raising the verb..." They could say that. What does that mean? What's the point of that? "I don't know, we just memorized it."

Comparison: Eastern vs. Western Education Approaches

In western education, there is actually a great deal of emphasis on understanding. But unfortunately in western education, there is a lack of emphasis on information. They don't make you memorize anything. All the exams are multiple choice questions, true/false, multiple choice, matching answers.

You go to India, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Sudan - what are the students doing all day? They're memorizing. The teacher says, "You cannot have education until this information is in your head."

I did 8th grade in Pakistan. In physics class, our teacher had a class on calculating the mass of the earth. He wrote down the formula to calculate the mass of the earth on the board - took up the whole chalkboard. And he says, "On Thursday, there's an exam on calculating the mass of the earth." You have to memorize that formula and reproduce it line by line, word by word.

Problems with Both Approaches

Both approaches have a weakness. The problem of the information approach is you could memorize something and still not know why you did it. I met a Muslim kid who said, "I memorized Qur'an, but I forgot so much. I felt like my parents made me memorize the Qur'an so they could show me off during Ramadan. I didn't really see the point. I could recite it, but what am I reciting? I don't even know."

On the other hand, with the understanding approach, you took the test, got 100 because you understood all the problems. But if I gave you the same test six months later, you wouldn't remember anything because the understanding was there, but information is not in your head.

The Traditional Islamic Approach

Age-Appropriate Learning

In the Islamic tradition, an interesting thing used to be the case. They would argue that children when they're younger are better able to take in information. Their understanding has not developed, but their ability to absorb information is very powerful.

When people get older, their ability to understand gets more powerful, but their ability to absorb information gets weaker. You at this age cannot memorize the Qur'an now - you have a hard time. But younger kids can memorize in no time.

The Two-Phase Strategy

The approach in Islamic tradition was: when children are young, whatever you can get them to memorize, get them to memorize. Then, since the information will already be sitting there, as they start getting older, we start developing understanding.

It's a very intelligent approach because when people get older, they have a hard time memorizing and retaining information, even though their understanding becomes a lot more sophisticated.

Where We Went Wrong

Unfortunately, we left that building halfway. So what we started doing in the Muslim world is: for children, Islamic education is information - memorize, memorize, memorize, forget about the understanding. So the understanding phase never came.

The kids memorized the entire Qur'an, but the Arabic training never came. The tafsir training never came. So you have hundreds of thousands of memorizers of the Qur'an, which is information, but they never graduated into some kind of program that would allow them to actually engage with that Qur'an that they've memorized.

A New Framework for Information Categories

Target Audience: The Entire Ummah

My philosophy is that we have to build a strategy for educating the Ummah from scratch. We have to assume that the Ummah knows nothing about Islam. We're thinking about the average Muslim - everybody. When we say education, we should democratize it.

We should think about the Muslim parents that don't even know the address of this masjid. Maybe they want to learn - just because they're not here doesn't mean they don't care. The vast majority of Muslims today are disconnected from Islam in a practical way.

Three Categories of Islamic Information

Instead of breaking information down into Qur'an, Tafsir, Hadith, Fiqh, Aqidah, Ta'rikh, Seerah, I offer you a different categorization:

1. Spiritual Information
2. Practical Information
3. Historical and Philosophical Information

Spiritual Information

By spiritual information, I mean: What is the dua to enter the house? What is the dua to leave the house? What do you say when you raise your hand in salat? (سُبْحَانَكَ اللَّهُمَّ وَبِحَمْدِكَ - Subhanaka Allahumma wa)

Subhanaka Allahumma wa bihamdik

bihamdik), the Fatiha, the short surahs.

What do you say when you're in ruku? What do you say when you get up from ruku? What do you say when you are about to eat? What do you say before changing clothes? What do you say when you come out of the bathroom?

Spiritual information in Islam boils down basically to duas.

"Salat itself is a dua." The most important spiritual information a Muslim will have is dua.

How do you send salutations upon the Prophet (صلى الله عليه وسلم)? How do you say durood? What adhkar do you make at night? What do you recite before you go to sleep? This is all spiritual information.

I'm arguing that this is the easiest aspect of Islamic education. It is also the most beneficial, immediately beneficial aspect of Islamic education. A first grader, even if they don't understand any of these duas, should know at least 20 duas.

(Bukhari 660, Muslim 1031)

The Rasul (صلى الله عليه وسلم) says about judgment day: - "A young person who grew up in the worship of Allah" is one of those under the shade of Allah.

Practical Information

How do you make wudu? What are you supposed to eat? What are you not supposed to eat? What is the dress code? Not advanced fiqh, just the major halal and haram. How do you interact with non-Muslims? How do you talk to your teachers? How do you talk to your elders? How do you clean yourself when you go to the bathroom?

Manners are part of this. Cleanliness is part of this. Social dealings are part of this. This is practical information.

Historical and Philosophical Information

Who is Allah? What do we believe? What are His names? How do we remember Him? What does He do for us? Where did all human beings come from? Who is the Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه وسلم)? (عليه السلام) Who is Adam?

This builds a world view of Islam. The dua does not build a world view - it just helps you remember Allah on a daily basis. But knowing about the Prophets, knowing about their missions (عليهم الصلاة والسلام), knowing about Rasulullah (صلى الله عليه وسلم), knowing about Allah as He wants you to know about Him - it gives you a view of how Allah wants you to think about life.

Revolutionizing Understanding Through Technology

The Information Revolution

We're living in a time now where information is no longer a problem. People used to travel 6, 7 months to hear one scholar say one hadith. Now the problem is no longer information. On your iPad you can carry an entire library.

Maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, if you wanted to study tafsir of Qur'an and compare 5 mufassirun, you had to open stacks of books. Now what do you do? Drop-down menu, surah, ayah, pick the mufassir - bam, tafsir in front of you.

The Khan Academy Model

Understanding is made up of two parts: lecture and practice exercises. The Khan Academy model says: let's take an hour lecture and break it up into just 10-minute parts. Give you a lecture for just 10 minutes on YouTube. When you go to class, all you do is practice.

The lecture is what you traditionally do in the classroom, and practice is what you do at home. Khan Academy model says: do lecture at home, do practice in the classroom. It's genius.

When you're doing homework and making a mistake, nobody's correcting you right away. But what if you saw the lecture on your own time, came into class, and started doing what used to be homework as classwork? Every time you get stuck, the teacher is there.

Applying This to Islamic Studies

We can bring this philosophy to Islamic studies. Find the best seerah teacher, find the best tafsir teacher, find the best fiqh teacher. 10-minute lessons, 40-minute practice in class. The entire time in class is spent doing practical work with a guide correcting you.

Understanding has three components:

1. Lecture
2. Practice (which should happen in class)
3. Discussion

This turns the classroom into a living place. Otherwise, the classroom is a one-way street - the teacher is talking, students are half asleep.

The Challenge of Application in Modern Times

The Broken Model

In the traditional model, information, understanding, and application all came from the sheikh. When the tabi'een were learning from Ibn Abbas (رضي الله تعالى عنهما) they were getting all three components of education at one time - information, understanding, and application/mentorship.

In the modern world, that is simply not possible for everyone. Schools are institutionalized. When our children go to school, they have a great math teacher, but is that math teacher their character teacher too? No. They're just learning math.

We have alienated these things. We have to accept that's reality and work with it.

Application Must Happen in the Home

There is no school, and there is no collective institution that can teach application. Schools, masjids, universities cannot teach Islamic application. They cannot teach adab - very limited. The true application, the practical dimension of Islam, that education can only come inside the house.

If you don't address it inside the house, you can kiss Islamic education goodbye, because Islamic education will then only be information and understanding, but it will never be applied.

I just taught my child to make dua to enter the house, but she never hears me make it. I never tell her, "Hey, we're going into the house. No, no, no. You forgot. Come back out. Go again. Make the dua and go again." That is not just knowledge now - that's application.

Building Community for Application

Application will not come anywhere except family. Families that are worried about these things have to come together. Not to learn deen, not to sit in a lecture, but to interact with each other. When you spend time with each other, that's when practical teaching of Islamic manners happens.

You need to have family get-togethers. All the family gets together once a summer. If you don't have large extended family, then do it with friends. Friends going on a journey together, spending time with each other, building brotherhood, sisters building sisterhood, children building bonds with each other.

I'm a big fan of the Boy Scouts, for example. There's a Muslim Boy Scout thing in Florida. The brother takes them from the masjid, they pray Fajr, they go out in the woods. By evening, the boys are told how to build a fire, cook their own food, decide who's going to clean the plates, who's going to mind the tent. No cell phones, no video games, no technology.

It builds brotherhood, character, sense of responsibility. Practical stuff will come when we start institutionalizing healthy family activities.

Vision for Higher Islamic Education

Current Gap in Islamic Education

Currently, we have Islamic institutions all over the Muslim world that offer different certifications - Darul Uloom Deoband, Jamiatul Azhar, Islamic University Medina. Though those institutions are great, there is a new need.

If somebody says, "I want to study counseling and help Muslims with marriage counseling," where do I study Islamic counseling? I don't know where to point you. We don't have a bachelor's, master's, PhD in Islamic counseling. We don't have these in Islamic political science, Islamic sociology, Islamic economics.

The Need for Practical Islamic Higher Education

Does Islam have something to say about psychology, counseling, sociology, economics, politics? Absolutely. But our education is based on the text itself - Sharia studies, Aqeedah studies, History studies. I'm arguing that those texts actually address all human concerns.

We have an opportunity in the United States to start building specialized programs in Islamic studies. I don't want to build something that's already there. What isn't there? Schools that, with the help of traditional Islamic scholars, are teaching the humanities, the social sciences.

I want a degree in Islamic education - how do you teach children Islam? I want to get into marriage counseling from the Islamic perspective, teen counseling from the Islamic perspective, medical ethics from the Islamic perspective.

The Psychological Example

Modern psychology begins with the assumption that human beings are flawed, that they have to be fixed. From Freud onwards, we're messed up and have to get un-messed up.

Islam begins with the premise that you are flawless. - "Every child is born upon the fitrah."

You start with fitrah. Then there were corruptions that came in. If you can undo the corruptions, there's something good at the bottom, something pure at the essence of the human being.

Islamic psychology says your desires - Allah put that in you, but you have to control it to achieve happiness. If you let your desires control you, you will be miserable in this dunya and akhirah. Modern psychology says do what feels good.

Conclusion: The Coming Renaissance

The Global Vision

I want to get to the point where if I travel to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, and meet a 10-year-old, they have the same education by the age of 10 that my child has in Texas - in Islam, in Arabic. They're on the same curriculum, even though their teachers are entirely different, because they access the same standard, the same resources.

The way the ummah will look in 50 years will be completely different if we pull this off.

Creating Intellectual Respect for Islam

When we create practical Islamic education that deals with realities of our time, then we are able to display in the most intellectual fashion that Islam doesn't just deal with the situations of our time, but actually has solutions in these areas that haven't yet even been discovered.

The vast majority of Muslims today are educated - maybe they're physicians, middle class or upper middle class. The assumption in so many Muslim minds is that Islam is backwards, that religion itself is backwards. When we show that Islam has things to offer the world of psychology that the world of psychology has never known, we change that perception.

Final Message

This deen came to help humanity. We are going to be able to give the highest levels of education in Islam if we address the foundations. I'm completely optimistic that this Islamic renaissance is coming. If we have the vision for it and the drive for it, bi-idhnillah ta'ala, we will achieve it.

In our own lifetime, we will see a revolution in how Islam is understood all across the world. The ummah will be uplifted in its information, in its understanding, and in its application.

May Allah bless me and you with the Wise Qur'an, and may He benefit me and you with its verses and wise remembrance.

And peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.