6 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

Review Article

Islam, Muslims and Education:Framing an

Interdisciplinary Field of Research, Critical
Scholarship and Professional Practice

ISLAM AS EDUCATION: PEDAGOGIES OF PILGRIMAGE, PROPHECY,

AND JIHAD. By Aaron J. Ghiloni. Fortress Academic, 2019. Pp. 210. ISBN:
9781978707597.

MODERN ISLAMIC AUTHORITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE, VOL 1:

EVOLVING DEBATES IN THE MUSLIM-MAJORITY COUNTRIES.
Edited by Masooda Bano. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Pp.
384. ISBN: 9781474433235.

MODERN ISLAMIC AUTHORITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE, VOL 2:

EVOLVING DEBATES IN THE WEST. Edited by Edited by Masooda Bano.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Pp. 256. ISBN: 9781474433266.

F E M A L E I S L A M I C E D U C AT I O N M OV E M E N T S : T H E R E -
DEMOCRATISATION OF ISLAMIC KNOWLEDGE. By Masooda Bano.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 262. ISBN: 9781107188839

ISL AMIC EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE

EVOLUTION OF RETHINKING REFORM IN HIGHER EDUCATION.
By Sabith Khan and Shariq Siddiqui. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publication,
2017. Pp. 168. ISBN: 978178643479.

MUHAMMAD’S HEIRS – THE RISE OF MUSLIM SCHOLARLY

COMMUNITIES, 622–950. By Jonathan E. Brockopp. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2017. Pp. 248. ISBN: 978110710666.

RETHINKING REFORM IN HIGHER EDUC ATION: FROM

ISLAMIZATION TO INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE. By Ziauddin
Sardar and Jeremy Henzell-Thomas. Herndon: IIIT, 2017. Pp. 226. ISBN:
978156569774.
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 7

WHAT IS ISLAM? THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ISLAMIC. By Shahab

Ahmed. Princeton: Princeton University, 2017. Pp. 624. ISBN: 9780691164182.

MUHAMMAD: PROPHET OF PEACE AMID THE CLASH OF EMPIRES.

By Juan Cole. New York: Nation Books, 2018. Pp. 336. ISBN: 9781568587837.

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEWS: THE WAY FORWARD – A NATIONAL

PLAN FOR RE. National Commission on Religious Education (RE), (2018).

There has been a notable surge in the number of studies exploring different
aspects of the intersection between Islam/Muslims and education in western
universities and in the Muslim world. Researchers from diverse disciplinary
backgrounds are increasingly interested in examining educational issues within
the context of historical and contemporary Muslim majority and minority
societies. However, there is an ongoing, and often confused, debate within
western academia over how best to frame the research on these multi-layered,
intersecting themes around education, Islam and Muslims. An equally daunting
challenge is how to classify and assess the plethora of literature on these themes
produced by researchers working within diverse disciplines and academic
units/departments spread across the Social Sciences and Humanities. Most of
this literature appears to be produced in conventional Islamic Studies centres
which are often located in Middle/Near Eastern Studies, Religious Studies and
occasionally Theology departments or in the few remaining Orientalist institutes.
Some newly-established academic outlets offer a variation of Islamic Studies
by focusing, for example, on the study of British Islam/Muslims or European
Islam. They mostly adopt an ethnographically-informed sociological, political
approach to analyse the presence of ‘Islam and Muslims’ within secular public
space including issues around migration, race relations, social integration,
religious radicalisation and education policy.
There is a need to develop some generic criteria by which to classify and assess
this body of literature. Some of the criteria might include: (a) the discipline,
academic unit and institution wherein research is conducted to produce a specific
type of knowledge; (b) methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks,
i.e. empirical, theoretical/scholarly, comparative and intervention/assessment-
focused study designs; and (c) the specific research context and topic, i.e. whether
the study is examining issues in Muslim minority/majority societies, or in Islamic
or mainstream schooling, in further or higher education settings.
Issues of education in diverse Muslim societies have also been studied
within the subfields of Comparative/ International Education and sometime
8 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

in Religious Education that takes place in mainstream faculties and institutes

of education. In the context of British academia, it appears that the first
academic post established for Islamic Education was at the Institute of
Education, University of London in the early 1950s as a specialist lectureship
within Comparative Education. The post was created for the Palestinian
historian and educationist, Abdul Latif Tibawi (d.1981), who became a refugee
in Britain after the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948. Tibawi offered
some original historical studies on Islamic Education that challenged the
rather narrow readings of the educational heritage of Islam by well-known
figures, such as George Makdisi. It is tragic that a recent research centre
exploring generic education issues in Muslim societies, originally set up with
a considerable amount of Muslim philanthropic investment and hope, at
the Institute of Education, does not make a reference to the legacy of this
important scholar. Although short-lived, the University of Birmingham, with
the strong endorsement from UK’s first professorial post-holder in Religious
Education, J.M. Hull, also created a specialist lectureship on Islamic Education
in 2002 at its then Faculty of Education. More recently, Warwick University,
in collaboration with British Muslim communities, became the first major
Russell group university to recognise Islamic Education as an academic field
of research, teaching and professional development. Within the hybrid British
Muslim higher education institutions, Markfield Institute of Higher Education,
famous for pioneering the study of Islamic Economics, was also the first to
create an academic specialism in Islamic Education. The relatively short history
of Islamic Education in the UK, including the establishment of its diverse
institutions, leading figures and struggles to be recognised and integrated
within British educational system calls out for a proper study.
Through critical review of several recent publications, this paper argues
that ‘Islamic Education’ offers an inclusive academic framework for carrying
out research on the interface between Islam/Muslims and Education. Islamic
Education is a well-established discipline in most of the universities in the
Muslim world, often as part of Islamic and Education Studies departments.
However, the subject is often narrowly defined as Islamic instruction or nurture.
As such, a lack of fresh theoretical perspectives and, most significantly, the
absence of an integrated research agenda, have emerged as concerning lacunae
impacting negatively on literature on Islamic Education. It is hoped that
both Muslim and non-Muslim researchers will go beyond the current binary
attitude of either being sympathetic or dismissive of the field and adopt a
methodologically rigorous critical study perspective. Considering its crucial
role in the educational, intellectual and socio-economic transformation of
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 9

diverse Muslim communities across the globe, Islamic Education needs to

become an interdisciplinary field of research, scholarly study and professional
practice linking traditional Islamic scholarships with contemporary
mainstream academia.
In Western academia, the focus of this review article, the majority of the
research on Islam/Muslims and Education is produced within a generic Islamic
Studies field reflecting a variety of specialisms in the Humanities and Social
Sciences: predominately history, linguistics, sociology, politics, anthropology
and occasionally theology, philosophy and education. In such an academic
discourse, sometimes the ‘Islam/Muslims and education intersection’ is
conceptualised as Islamic Education but it is predominately treated as a
subtheme. In terms of professional practice, Muslim educators in Islamic-
ethos schools as well as in traditional and hybrid Islamic higher education
institutions often conceive their work as falling under Islamic Studies. In these
faith-based Muslim institutions, a confessional approach to Islamic Studies is
mostly discernible. This has developed in opposition to what has been perceived
to be harmful Orientalist/Colonial framings of the field. However, it is often
forgotten that ‘Islamic Studies’ was originally conceived by an Orientalist
discourse. ‘Islamic Theology’ or ‘Islamic Education’ seem rarely considered as
possibly better, more inclusive, alternatives to describe the academic profile
and mission of Muslim higher education institutions.
In the Muslim minority context of Europe, largely in an attempt to contain
religious extremism through manufacturing a politically correct version of
‘European Islam’, there are now state sponsored Islamic religious pedagogy
and theology departments. However, a lack of Islamic educational awareness
constitutes one of the main reasons why a professional and scholarly approach
to Islamic Education has not yet emerged in Western Europe. Furthermore,
despite the growth of the sector of Islamic schools and Islamic higher education
institutions, the education of Muslim teachers remains much-needed as this
specialism is extremely under-developed. More significantly, as will be discussed
below, most of the discussions within community and official policy circles
on the training of Muslim faith leaders, for example, are still dominated
by researchers coming from political sciences and generic Islamic Studies.
Specialisms on education or pedagogy, let alone Islamic Education, are rarely
part of these discussions. Naturally, such initiatives, mainly put forward as
quick responses to pressing socio-political issues by policy-makers, rarely came
to fruition.
It must be stressed that using a generic social science framework on its own,
often utilised to explore educational issues in Muslim communities, poses
10 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

similar limitations. Without engaging with the Islamic content and showing
competence in the Islamic Sciences, such a broad study framework will seriously
fail to properly address the complex educational and pedagogic challenges
facing Muslim communities or engage with the traditions of education in
Muslim cultural and religious heritage. By definition, Islamic Education
is an inter-disciplinary field of empirical research, critical scholarship and
professional development where theological/Islamic specialism needs to be
integrated with a competent literacy in the humanities and empirical social
sciences, including educational and pedagogic sciences.
The terms ‘Islamic Education and Islamic Studies’ are often assumed,
erroneously, to be indicating the same meaning. This is not the place for
going into details, suffice to note that the difference is easily grasped when
the meaning of ‘being educated’ is not reduced to a mere cognitive activity of
study, instruction or training. But these are not necessarily mutually-exclusive
conceptions either. Indeed, they can complement one another. However, Islamic
Education is a more comprehensive conception whereby rigorous ‘study’ needs
to be integrated into a deeper sense of ‘being educated Islamically’ within the
foundational spiritual, intellectual and cultural heritage of Muslim tradition
and the cultural plurality of the modern world. In addition, Islamic Education,
as a form of applied Education Studies, implies specialism in developing
interventions aimed at improving activities related to teaching, learning,
assessment, curriculum and management within different levels of formal and
informal Muslim education institutions. Finally, Islamic Education goes beyond
the limitations of a narrowly-defined subject of religious education within the
secular curriculum though, similarly, they can complement each other.
In such an integrated and holistic approach to Islamic Education, research
activity in its empirical, scholarly and applied dimensions aims to generate
new knowledge and insights not only to improve the practice of teaching and
learning but, most significantly, to facilitate the transformation of the human
condition in all its complexity. As I have already argued in more detail in another
study, the critical, holistic and transformative Islamic epistemology shaping
Islamic Education makes it akin to what Habermas identified as ‘critical-
emancipatory’ science in which the knowledge generated serves human freedom
through incorporating the ‘analytical-empirical’ knowledge that facilitates our
understanding of the natural world and the ‘hermeneutic-historical’ knowledge
which helps contextualise the distinctive interpretative traditions shaping our
sense of belonging in a specific historical and cultural landscape. Incidentally,
a piece of Prophetic wisdom in Muslim tradition stresses the need to prioritise
‘learning knowledge that is beneficial to humanity’.
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 11

A few recent studies have attempted to problematize the concept of

‘Islamic Education’ through arguing that it implies a dogmatic Islamisation
process. Expressions like ‘Muslim education’ or ‘Muslims and Education’ are
suggested as broader and better depictions in that they ostensibly remove
the association of direct religious belonging with dogmatic faith. However,
changing the definition of education from ‘Islamic’ to ‘Muslim’ is simply a
semantic ploy, as ‘Muslim’ education implies that the education activity is
interpreted by Muslims, that is those who self-identify with Islam even if this
association can be limited to a broader cultural affiliation rather than religious
observance. By necessity, both of these expressions – ‘Islamic Education’ and
‘Muslim Education’ – require association and engagement with Islam. A similar
distinction was suggested by E. Bucar who prefers ‘Islamic virtue ethics’ as
opposed to ‘Muslim virtue ethics’, as the former category is more inclusive in
that ethics in Islam has been studied by non-Muslims too.
Closely looked at, this sceptical literature, often dressed up as a philosophical
reflection on what makes something ‘Islamic’, actually attempts to demonstrate
the impossibility of a ‘normative’ Islam capable of representing a contingent,
contextual but shared collective Muslim identity. Recently, these views have
been aired in a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education (V.43, 2017.5 –
Muslims, schooling and the limits of religious identity). The main argument purports
that the recent increasing public recognition of Islamic and Muslim identity
in Western Europe is actually a ‘mistaken identity’. It is claimed that Islamic
identity is largely invented and manufactured within the official secular
policy discourse that tries to assign an ‘essentialized religious category’
(Islam) – a process they conceptualise as ‘religification’ – on certain ethnic
communities and actors. Contemporary Islamic identities are nothing but
politicised reactions to what is perceived to be an invading colonial western
secular modernity. The term ‘religification’ appears to have been first used
by A. Ghaffar-Kucher in her ethnographic study on working-class Pakistani
American youth. She noted that after 9/11, the predominant racial identity
categories used to describe Pakistani Americans have been replaced by explicitly
religious descriptions such as Muslim youth. Ghaffar-Kucher appropriates
ideas from cultural anthropologists who suggest the presence of a dual
process in both “self-making and being made” among contemporary minority
communities in the West. Ghaffar-Kucher also suggests that her participants
were seen, and crucially saw themselves, through a religious lens.
The editors of the special issue referred above appear to show a missionary
zeal in warning readers about the fast-spreading myth called ‘Muslim/Islamic
identity’ which, once unpacked, so they argue, has no faith/religion core but,
12 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

rather, a cultural mix of customs, ethnicities and personally-appropriated

syncretic spiritual interpretations. For example, expressions like ‘being a
Muslim student or teacher or a Muslim RE teacher’ are deemed to be reified
depictions enforced by the secular culture, often by researchers, on these
actors who seemingly resist and contest this religious labelling. Furthermore,
they suggest that such assigned religious depictions are not supported by
‘empirical research’. However, the editors appear unaware that the only large-
scale empirical study in the volume (Francis and McKenna, 2017), actually
undermines this assertion. This study, drawing on a larger survey that examined
British adolescents’ attitude towards religious diversity, shows the persistence
of ‘Islam/Muslim’ as the centre of self-identification shaping religiosity and
social values among a large group of UK male adolescents (13–15 years of
age) who come, incidentally, from culturally and ethnically diverse family
backgrounds originating in the Subcontinent: that is, Muslims. The authors of
this recent empirical study appear to be carefully selecting, if not parsing their
words when describing the main outcome of the study, presumably in order
not to upset the editors: ‘…the study participants self-identified as Muslims
encased a distinctive profile in terms both of religiosity and social values…’ (p.
335). Recent ethnographic studies conducted among Muslim RE practitioners
in the UK report that the participants reconciled their Islamic and professional
identities without much difficulty or contestation, although it is expected
that personal faith should not make a difference to RE professionals. After
all, nobody asks about the personal faith of a maths teacher as long as he/
she does the job properly. But, like everything to do with Islam and Muslims,
when it comes to Muslim RE teachers, the issues will be politicised and there
will, no doubt, be even PhD studies problematizing their religious affiliation
rather than exploring how they teach the subject.
The editors appear oblivious to the fact that, since their mass arrival after
the Second World War, communities which originated in the Subcontinent,
where Islam has been a dominant force for centuries, were defined under
the secular categories of race and ethnicity. The faith dynamic shaping their
personal collective identities was deemed irrelevant and dismissed as a relic of
the past. This secular prejudice has persisted in not recognising the faith-based
needs of these migrant communities who come from different parts of Muslim
commonwealth, the ummah. The situation has only changed after watershed
events like the Rushdie Affair in 1988 and the tragic events of 9/11 in New York
and 7/7 in London which have forced secular policy-makers to recognise the
centrality of faith/Islam amongst the young generations of these communities.
The lack of proper knowledge and understanding can lead the Westerners to
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 13

develop monolithic perceptions of Islam and Muslims. Furthermore, secular

European states, which are supposed to be religiously neutral, have suddenly
showed interest in the religious agency of these communities only with the
aim of controlling and manufacturing certain politically correct versions of
Islamic identity.
There is often a deeper motive behind such hair-splitting semantics. Minority
sects, whose syncretic Muslim self-definition came from a significant process
of deconstruction of mainstream traditional Islam are naturally in favour
of such differentiation. It is hard to take the kind of relativism implied by
statements like ‘there are as many Islams as there are Muslims in the world’
to be simply suggesting the undeniable reality of diversity within historical
and contemporary expressions of Islam including non-observant and non-
practising so called ‘cultural Muslims’. The aim seems to be to deny the
possibility of a ‘normative’ Muslim tradition informing a collective Islamic
sense of belonging in the modern world. This short-sighted argumentation
actually obscures the reality of a deeper identity politics at play; that is, by
deconstructing the assumed ‘orthodox’ expressions of Islam, the historically
marginalised sectarian identities are legitimised. It is sometimes claimed that
in the mainstream Religious Education in the UK, for example, Islam is taught
through an essentialist Sunni version ignoring countless other forms of Islam
observed in society. Therefore, RE should simply drop the Islam experienced by
the majority of Muslims and teach the myriad contemporary interpretations
and experiences of Islam without reference to Islamic history, theology and its
mainstream traditional expressions. It appears that the recent report by the
Commission on Religious Education (2018, p. 76) where it identifies inclusion of
the ‘lived experience of individuals and communities’ in RE, actually promotes
such a revisionist deconstruction of faith traditions, thus, unintentionally
further alienating faith communities, including Muslims.
In inclusive democratic polities, the citizens’ race, religion, gender, age
and social class should not affect their legal, civic rights and responsibilities.
However, this does not mean that these identity-categorises should be ignored
or marginalised. We all belong to the same humanity and all of us want to be
seen as human beings first. But as contextual, embodied beings we articulate
our humanity always in particular ways that include gender, faith, culture all
of which need to be acknowledged and recognised. This reveals the inadequacy
and ethically questionable argument, advanced by T. Garton Ash (2017),
insisting that one should be respected as a human being only but this respect
should not necessarily be extended to one’s faith or particular way of life.
In religiously and culturally plural modern western societies, all particular
14 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

instances of being Muslim – such as Shi[i, Isma[ili and Ibadi interpretations

of Islam, including secular cultural Muslim identities which do not wish to be
recognised with a religious label – are all acknowledged. However, it is rather
unsound to expect that secular democratic state education policy should ignore
what the majority of Muslims claim to be their faith defining their everyday
lived experiences, and teach Islam through its sectarian versions, for example,
in publicly funded RE. Plurality in historical and contemporary Islamic self-
understandings needs to be taught in RE along with Islam as a living tradition.
Teaching different sectarian interpretations of Islam should not happen at the
expense of the majority members of the tradition who define themselves, their
basic beliefs and practices. Muslims, due to such misrepresentations of inclusive
RE, have frequently criticised the stereotyping of their faith. Pedagogies of RE
can be enriched by ethnographic studies of faith communities, as brilliantly
illustrated by the pioneering works of R. Jackson and E. Nisbett conducted at
Warwick University. But RE should not be reduced solely to a form of cultural
ethnography. RE makes a unique contribution to children’s education by
helping them understand the religious, theological language of communities
as well as their lived experiences, including communities sharing non-religious
worldviews. RE is most effective when it helps children to connect what they
learn in the classroom with the kind of religious nurturing they receive at home.
On a larger scale, the late S. Ahmed (2017) offered an interesting reflection
on what constitutes something Islamic through examining different, often
conflicting, ‘Islamic’ meaning patterns in Muslim thought. He suggested
that within historic Islam equally plausible, contradictory patterns of Islamic
meanings/readings (or Islams) have existed side by side. Such a paradoxical
incompatibility, which apparently rules out the existence of any normative
Islam, has defined classical, historical expressions of Muslim faith. According
to Ahmed, it appears that the claim that ‘Islam’ as an Abrahamic faith
tradition originated in the distinctive, Prophetic experience of Muhammad
that was formed by the Qur’an and perceived by the early Muslims as shared
normative guidance, becomes a subjective, if not fictitious, belief. As any serious
student of Islam will note, it is true that Islam became a cosmopolitan world
civilization precisely because its core spiritual/ethical values shaped diverse
cultures, and, in turn, Islam itself was creatively interpreted and articulated
within different historical, cultural and geographical landscapes. Scholars have
found it difficult to conceptualise this process, in which both Islam and the
indigenous cultures have been reciprocally reinterpreted to bring about new
‘Islamically meaningful patterns of creative syntheses’ in history. M. Hodgson
(1977) coined the term ‘Islamicate’ to account for the inevitable presence of
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 15

a theological core present in diverse historical expressions of Islam by people

of different races and cultures.
Ahmed, while acknowledging the significance of core ‘Islamic’ religious
ideas in bringing about cosmopolitan Muslim civilization, implausibly
tries to attribute this creativity to certain so-called ‘liberal and enlightened’
historical expressions of Islam (that is, from the Balkans to Bengal in the period
1350–1850), when, apparently, literature and philosophy – for him the core of
Islamic paideia (culture) – reigned supreme and the sense of normative Islam
was rather dim, if it ever existed at all. His account almost totally disregards
the inclusive central narrative of Islam formed around the Divine Word and
its embodied transformative presence in the life of Muhammad. As such, his
book does not go beyond the insights already offered by W. C. Smith (1991), to
account for the dynamics informing the historical emergence of cosmopolitan
Muslim civilization and its subsequent reification and decline. Although the
author is revered for being a polymath, the book contains textual errors and
misunderstandings while engaging with some central classical theological/
legal texts in Turkish and Arabic (pp. 288–289). When trying to illustrate the
contradictory historical perceptions of Islam, he does not always mention
all related facts. For example, the vine cup bearing fourth Mughal Emperor,
Jahangir, who is thought by most historians to be a weak ruler and unsure about
his personal religious belief, lived in an empire that deliberately experimented
with religious syncretism between Islam and Hinduism. His father’s short-lived
syncretic religious project – the infamous ‘Din-i-Ilahi’ project – is well-known.
It is difficult to reconcile this as solid scholarship when this exceptional episode
is argued to be proto-typical of historical Islam. It is sufficient to stress that
Islamic civilisation and the core of its educational culture (paideia) was a synthetic
not a syncretic achievement.
Western scholars of Islam, who are not necessarily sympathetic to Islam,
often acknowledge that knowledge-generation defined the core of classical
Islamic civilisation. Researchers in Islamic Studies have been exploring the
historical, cultural and religious dynamics informing this epistemological
creativity in medieval Muslim societies. A mainly descriptive historical, textual
study approach has widely been used to explore the formation, transmission
and reception patterns of diverse genres of knowledge, including the classical
Islamic sciences. Some of these studies, using a critical, comparative, historical
analysis method, explored the impact of external factors such as the science
and wisdom traditions of ancient Greece, India and Persia that Muslims
have inherited. The great majority of these studies are conducted within a
history of ideas or social history frameworks engaging with the excavation of
16 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

textual, archival materials embodying intellectual, spiritual, theological, and

philosophical aspects of Muslim tradition and its educational institutions and
personalities. The concept of knowledge obviously highlights an educational
significance, one therefore expects this research to use educational sciences to
analyse this process of knowledge production. But there are only few studies
which are good examples of the ‘history of education’ genre. Even fewer
studies actually utilise an educational or pedagogic interpretative framework
(educational hermeneutics) in exploring Muslim educational thought and
pedagogic practice. There are, of course, always exceptions. The research project
led by S. Günther at the University of Göttingen has produced an exceptional
work. Günther focuses on Islamic Education as part of his wider interest in the
intellectual heritage of the Arabic Islamic world. The project explores classic
Islamic pedagogies (from 8th to 15th centuries), which will be published soon
in a two-volume set entitled, Knowledge and Education in Classical Islam (Brill,
2019 forthcoming).
In a lucidly written new monograph, A. Ghiloni (2019) offers an interesting
educational reading of Muslim tradition. His educational theory is mainly
shaped by J. Dewey, on whose educational philosophy Ghiloni is considered to
be an expert. The book is divided into two sections, ‘paideia’ and ‘pedagogies’
respectively, and has seven short chapters organised around certain overarching
functions of knowledge in Muslim culture – loving, civilising, and preserving –
as well as pedagogic activities like knowledge as seeking (pilgrimage), defending
(jihad) and so on. Interestingly, the knowledge of prophecy is associated with
‘limitation’, perhaps signifying the boundary-making nature of revelation. The
author does not consider that the sacred knowledge codified in the Qur’an
sees itself as a human-focused transformative pedagogy as revealed by the core
terminology such as guide (hidayah), purification, (tazkiyah) and reform Islah)
which constitutes the nature of Prophetic education in Islam. Similarly, he
does not quite explain the logic behind observing such a division and does
not explore Greek ‘paideia’ and the elitism implied by the Greek ideas of an
ideal life or culture (Jaeger, 1986). Therefore, its early Muslim appropriation as
adab in the classical Islamic literature, similarly refers to it as a form of moral
education and training, refining of the sensibilities of the elite courtly classes.
Here, the author, rather uncritically, seems to adopt the above-mentioned
interpretation of Islamic paideia by S. Ahmed. As such, he does not see that adab
has limitations in capturing the egalitarian spirit of the Prophetic education
in Islam. After all the Qur’an and Prophetic traditions aim at helping ordinary
people to form personal values as well as achieve justice and dignity as part
of a balanced, faithful polity. The author does not appear to identify a more
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 17

indigenous alternative Islamic concept of education, for example tarbiyyah –

which embodies developmental, transformative and justice-focused meanings.
However, the book’s originality lies in applying a cross-disciplinary educational
hermeneutics, mentioned at the outset of this review, to reveal the presence
of a humanising pedagogic imagination at the heart of Muslim faith shaping
its past civilizational expressions and which is, most significantly, capable of
engaging with modern Western educational thought.
As mentioned above, western scholars of Islam have not failed to notice
the distinctive educational features of Islamic civilisation. F. Rosenthal (2002)
summarises the historical achievement of Islam as simply the ‘triumph of
knowledge’ thus forming a rich tapestry of intellectual tradition around
religious, psychosocial, spiritual, and scientific genres. Religious knowledge,
due to embodying authority, has a direct ideological function and medieval
Muslims societies were not exempted from this socio-political reality, as
noted by previous studies (Safi, 2006). However, as the study by S.C Judd
(2014) shows, early Muslim scholars in politically challenging times, such
as during the Umayyad period, managed to maintain their integrity and
independence. Western scholars appear less willing to acknowledge that most
of this educational inspiration originated in the Qur’an’s distinctive reflective/
critical educational discourse on the human condition and its potential
transformation. For example, the Qur’an develops a metacritique of knowledge,
including religious/spiritual and charismatic knowledge and the deceptive
language of false piety when used as an ideological means of legitimising the
exploitation of others. This critical pedagogic feature of the Qur’an is almost
never noted by the Orientalists some of whom spent their entire life studying
it. Within the transformative pedagogic vision of the Qur’an, knowledge
becomes a means of facilitating a deeper awareness, empowerment and
inspiration for positive change. Angelica Neuwirth (2019), arguably a leading
western authority on the Qur’an, exceptionally notes the significant and
distinctive educational vocabulary and pedagogic vision discernible within
the literary/aesthetic composition style of the Qur’an. This, she suggests, has
helped transform the epistemic boundaries of the late antique world which
accumulated in the formation of a new world civilisation. Neuwirth has been
among a few western voices calling for a creative dialogue between the Islamic
and western scholarly approaches, a collaboration aimed at creating a better
understanding and appreciation of the Qur’an.
It must be noted that although Islam was revealed in an oral culture, it has
quickly developed an impressive ‘textual’ legacy. This demonstrates the early
formation of scholarly communities, specialisms indicating rapid formation of
18 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

a literate Islamic culture upon its well-established orally-based epistemological

foundations. This further indicates the presence of a hermeneutical as well as
pedagogical shift in the educational culture of early Islam. The orally-based
practices and power relations involved in authoritative knowledge-production,
transmission, were gradually replaced by a new form of literacy, i.e. a written/
textual teaching and learning culture. The relatively late emergence of written
textual sources, such as authored books that can be supported by documentary
evidence, have made western scholars of Islam suspicious of such an early
scholarly formation as claimed by Muslim historiographical accounts. This
scepticism has led some to argue that the Qur’an, the first book to appear in
the oral culture of 7th century Arabia, must have been originated in a literate
milieu such as in late antique religious communities of Syria. Most western
scholarship on Islam is still consumed with the questions of origins, desperately
trying to deconstruct Islamic accounts to solve the persisting mystery over how
Islam emerged in history. Studies exploring the nature of Islamic scholarship,
the emergence of authoritative knowledge genres and personalities embodying
the formation of Muslim spiritual, religious, intellectual and legal heritage,
reflect, by and large, the same motive.
Considering that the Qur’an was revealed in a predominately oral culture,
one must admit that it has a well-developed literate educational and pedagogic
vocabulary. The concepts of study, teach, learn, knowledge, writing and scholars
are all often used. Why would an orally composed revelation, addressing
an audience embedded in an oral/aural culture, evoke such an educational
imagery formed around textual, written religious literacy? Is it possible that
this Qur’anic emphasis on authoritative knowledge and study organically led
to the formation of a new community of scholars, [alims, specialising in the
study of the Qur’an and Prophetic traditions as Muslim tradition suggests?
Can this account stand up to the scrutiny of modern source-criticism and
historical textual inquiry? How did ‘textual authority’ gradually come to define
Islamic scholarship?
The fascinating study by J. E. Brockopp, Muhammad’s Heirs: The rise of Muslim
Scholarly Communities, 622–950 (2017), perhaps more than any other study, tried to
engage with these interesting questions. The study attempts to reconstruct the
history of Muslim scholarship by using documentary source analysis methods
and examine the formation of legal authority during the formative period of
Islam. Brockopp studies the so far uncatalogued Islamic legal manuscripts,
the famous Kairouan collection in North Africa, that contain some of the
oldest legal manuscripts in Arabic, including fragments datable to the early
ninth century CE. His inquiry shows that only by this time (early 9th century)
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 19

had the traditional scholars developed a highly sophisticated book culture,

including both hypomnēnata and syngrammata, the two pedagogic concepts he
borrows from the pioneering work of G. Schoeler.
Schoeler (2006, 2009) extensively studied the transition from the aural/
oral mode of literature to a written/read textual literacy in classical Islamic
scholarship. According to Schoeler, the early Islamic pedagogy – that is, teaching
learning practices – was overwhelmingly oral. However, the written records,
draft notes, were also used only as aids supporting memory and learning
by heart. These mnemonic aids used during lectures and discussions were
described using the Greek term, hypomnēma. This should be distinguished from
written materials that were produced according to the canons of stylistics –
that is, syngramma – which were intended for circulation among the public.
Schoeler rightly suggests that most of the written notes by early transmitters
and scholars of religious knowledge such as Hadith fell under the first category,
hypomnēma, even if some of them bore titles such as Kitab or Risalah indicating
completed written textual artefacts (authored books).
In an attempt to disqualify the Muslim accounts of how Islamic scholarship
originally emerged, Brockopp points to the seemingly anachronistic statements
made by classical Muslim scholars. He suggests, for example, Qadi [Iyad b.
Musa’s (d. 1149) interpretation that Qur’anic yatafaqqahu (9: 122) referring to the
fuqaha’, legal scholars, and the Qur’anic statement ‘ask people of knowledge/
memory’, ahl al-dhikr (16.43) referring to Muslim scholars are examples of such
anachronistic back projections. He points out that the latter statement refers
to Jewish/Christian community and there was no science called fiqh or fuqaha’,
in the technical sense, during the time of the Prophet. However, as the author
had to admit, the majority of classical Muslim scholars who understood that
the former quotation refers to ‘understanding of religion’ and the latter to the
‘previous religious communities charged with preserving a shared religious
memory and knowledge’. In fact, Qadi [Iyad himself seems aware of these
common interpretations but makes his statements in the context of signifying
the religiously sanctioned origins and, hence, importance of the science of
‘jurisprudence’ (fiqh) of which he was an expert practitioner. Qadi [Iyad might
be considered a rather ultra conservative figure but rigour and critical evidence-
based thinking are a hallmark of his scholarship.
Brockopp (pp. 59–67) fails to contextualize Qadi [Iyad’s discussion at the
introduction of his Tartib al-Madarik, a monumental collection of about 1,600
biographies of jurists of the Maliki school of law. In his introductory remarks,
Qadi [Iyad appears to stress the distinguishing features of the Maliki school
of law as it embodies the ‘Madinan tradition’ and therefore it needs to be
20 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

considered as the most authoritative source of law in Islam, which deserves

to be emulated above all other legal schools of law. He is making a case based
on what he takes to be the best evidence available. He first describes the skills
and knowledge genres that a scholar needs to master in order to be able to
understand and discern laws from the Qur’an. But not everyone can gain this
status and therefore the general public needs to follow and emulate the views
of scholars on these rather technical aspects of law and trust them as the
bearers of authentic knowledge who are deserve to be emulated. In order to
justify the legality of emulation (taqlid), Qadi [Iyad refers to the verse urging
those who do not know to consult those who know and possess knowledge and
remembrance. He adopts the literal meaning of the verse in order to justify his
opinion on the permissibility of taqlid in legal matters. It does not necessarily
follow from this that he is ignoring the commentary tradition suggesting that
the verse was originally revealed with the people of the Book in mind. After all,
both the commentary tradition and legal scholars agree that ‘verses should
not be limited to their specific occasions of revelation and considered to have
a border application and meaning universe’. The way in which Qadi [Iyad
invokes the verse upon his discussion makes perfect sense as he is making a
point about the need for the ignorant to learn from those who bear knowledge,
thus legitimising emulation in legal matters. In this context, not mentioning
the original occasion of revelation does not necessarily mean its denial.
There is an overwhelming body of evidence in Muslim sources that
acknowledges the presence of divinely-inspired knowledge among the Jewish
and Christian communities to the point, as Brockopp notes, that the Prophet
did even encourage his Companions, such as Zayd b. Thabit, to learn Hebrew
and study the Hebrew Bible in Madinah where there was a Jewish study Centre
(bayt al-midras). It appears that even western scholarship can suffer from a
lack of proper contextualization of an argument. The strength of the book,
however, lies in its rigorous textual analysis, tracing the evolution of legal
authority around the emergence of formal study circles and specialisms in
Muslim education. As such, it offers a nuanced reading of the central texts
such as Sahnun’s al-Mudawwanah (d. 854) dealing with the legal opinions
of the school of Madinah as stated by Imam Malik which, he rightly notes,
‘contains a pious devotion and reflection on the study of law itself. The
systematisation of the legal content for the purposes of study and the use
by the state bureaucracy comes later.’
The main shortcoming of the book lies in its disappointing overall
conclusion that is based on an unsubstantiated generalisation which was not
identified as the key problematic of the inquiry in the first place. The author
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 21

purports that the explicit vocabulary of religious study in the Qur’an suggests
that Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) saw himself as heir of
the prophets and tried to gain and share the ‘Divine knowledge and memory’
preserved by Jewish and Christian communities in his time. Muhammad’s
followers who, over time, advanced this intense scholarly activity and gradually
emphasised being exclusively Muhammad’s heirs, continued his work and,
in turn, established what we now recognise as Islam! The author might be
a good historian but appears to be an incompetent exegete. He offers one of
the least tenable interpretations of the Prophetic report (Hadith) suggesting
that ‘true scholars are indeed heirs of the prophets’ as his evidence. Muslim
tradition understands this piece of Prophetic wisdom as an invitation to be
part of a lifelong, inclusive educational activity: that is engaging in learning,
understanding, observing, embodying and disseminating Divine knowledge
that God shared with countless nations.
A lack of pedagogic awareness appears to have also caused the author to
make errors even in his textual readings. For example, in order to prove that
the Qur’an emulates the Jewish notion of scriptural study, he mistranslates
the Qur’anic phrase kunu rabbaniyyin (3: 79) as ‘be masters in the teaching of
the scripture and the study’ (p. 39). Here, the author appears to be uncritically
following the mistranslation and misinterpretation contained in the
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an. The author seems unaware that here the Qur’an
actually offers a piece of critical pedagogy. It criticizes the act of a mindless
study of the sacred scripture and invites the devout scholars, Rabbaniyyun, not
to simply compete in committing to memory sacred knowledge or misusing
it as a means of power to exploit others but to be transformed by the Divine
knowledge through embodying its values and teachings in their lives. Muslim
classical commentaries link this verse with other similar verses (62: 5) where
simple retention of knowledge rather than its observance in life is heavily
criticized. In order to avoid falling in to the same mistake, Muslim education
developed a strong pedagogic ethics vis-à-vis the study of sacred knowledge.
Expressions like ‘hamalat al-Qur’an or Hadith’, indicating that one has to
feel the moral responsibility of bearing sacred knowledge, became part of
classical Islamic pedagogy. Meanwhile, the Qur’an uses the words Ribbiyyun
and Rabbaniyyun which have semantically very close meanings in both Arabic
and Hebrew, with a pedagogic intention. ‘Ribbi/Rabbi’ in Hebrew has an
etymological meaning of plenty and refers to someone who literally possesses
a lot of knowledge. The Qur’an, it appears, offers a subtle critique through
employing a literary technique that today we recognize as pun – a form of
word play that exploits a word’s multiple meanings – or of similar-sounding
22 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

words, for an intended rhetorical effect. The bearing of profuse knowledge

(i.e. becoming a Rabbi, a scriptural scholar) is useless unless the person tries
to live by the knowledge and wisdom gained through embodying it in one’s
life leading to a devout, divine life (becoming Rabbani). A unique miraculous
feature of the Qur’anic composition style is the employment of a myriad of
literary techniques to achieve a specific pedagogic impact and outcome; i.e.
to facilitate insight, reflection and awareness leading to the transformation
of its audience. These significant pedagogic aspects of the Qur’an have rarely
been properly understood.
The recent study by Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of
Empires (2018), who has taken upon himself – sometimes at his own peril –
to enable westerners to understand and appreciate Islam, shows a similar
ambiguity. Cole is among a breed of rare western scholars who understand
the complex challenges facing the Muslim world and is deeply familiar with
its vulnerabilities which have significant consequences for world peace that he
cares about. Understanding Islam/Muslims, as he argues, remains a big part
of achieving world peace today.
Cole offers an impressive historical, critical and holistic reading of the
Qur’an in order to discern the core of its Prophetic message. While Brockopp
complains that there is not much material about the Prophet’s life in the
Qur’an, Cole almost exclusively reconstructs the Prophet’s life through the
Qur’anic narrative. The result is something that has been rarely achieved in
previous books on Muhammad and, indeed, on the Qur’an in English. Cole
gets very close to properly ‘humanising’ the story of the Prophet Muhammad
and contextualising the Qur’an. In this, he is simply following the scholarly
framework created over decades by Angelika Neuwirth (2019), mentioned
above, who argued for the need to contextualise the Qur’an in the world of
late antiquity which Islam both had inherited and radically transformed.
The central finding of this book is that, when read properly, achieving a
peaceful humanity defines the core of the Prophetic message in Islam. In this
book is presented a vivid picture of the Prophet in pursuit of bringing peace
to a world plagued with sectarian divisions, tribal disputes and centuries-old
wars between the Sassanian and Roman Empires. But here lies a caveat: by
embedding the Qur’an in the world of late antiquity, Cole inevitably implies
that Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) was well-educated
and well-versed in the scriptural languages of his time, as a widely-travelled
merchant who was almost acting like an agent of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), a gifted socially-conscious
reflective individual, presumably conceived – if not composed – the Qur’an
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 23

during his long journeys to the north of Arabia, while conducting business
on behalf of his wife, where he encountered diverse religious people and
traditions. Perhaps, on his way back to Makkah, when the caravan stopped
for the night break, sitting around the campfire under a beautiful, star-filled
desert sky, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) was inspired to
reflect on his experiences and what he had learned during his trips. Cole does
not offer much evidence to substantiate this picture apart from occasionally
drawing parallels between the Qur’anic text and the wider heritage of sacred
and literary texts of late antiquity. But one must remember that Cole is
admittedly a revisionist historian and he often cherry-picks evidence and does
not pay too much consideration to alternative narratives or the consequences
of his interpretation.
Different aspects of Islamic Education in Muslim-minority communities
continue to attract the attention of researchers. The study by S. Khan and S
Siddiqui (2017) focuses on Islamic Education in the United States with specific
reference to non-profit Muslim educational institutions such as Islamic-ethos
schools in the USA. The study adopts a mixture of historical analysis and
ethnographic method to investigate the motivations behind civic institution
building among American Islamic communities with particular emphasis on
discussing the rapidly growing Muslim school sector. The interest in promoting
Islamic values among future generations of young American Muslims, parental
fears about the bullying of their children, and increasing Islamophobia in
mainstream schools are among the reasons why Islamic schools have been
established. Due to different migration patterns, however, there are significant
demographic differences between Muslims in the UK and the US. Muslim
schools in the US seem to serve primarily middle class suburban educated
Muslims. This ethnographic study is based on a case study of full-time Muslim
schools (K12) though the authors appear unfamiliar with the nuances of Islamic
Educational concepts as well as some key fundamental vocabulary. For example,
the supplementary mosque schools which the majority of Muslim children
attend in order to gain basic Islamic literacy are referred to as ‘hifz classes’ in
which students are introduced to ‘Qur’anic memorisation and interpretation’
(p. 2). Not all children attending madrasah engage in memorising the whole
Qur’an let alone introduced to Qur’anic interpretation. The authors note
tensions regarding Islamic schools as the wider society can see them practising
a form of indoctrination while, for Muslims, integration of traditional and
modern knowledge appears to be a major challenge.
Although sections of the book are based on one of the authors’ previous
doctoral thesis, the book on the whole can be categorised as an example of
24 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

inspirational literature and confidence-building among American Muslim

communities. It offers a very sympathetic reading of the Islamic Society of
North America (ISNA, established 1990) as a successful non-profit American
religious organisation which supports Islamic schools. ISNA came about
because the funders wanted to establish educational institutions, theologically-
grounded to preserve what they perceived to be authentic Islam. It has promoted
plurality and democratic values. As such, it is claimed that it helped overcome
‘Middle Eastern foreign values’ where most of the early funders originated from,
and recontextualized Islam within the context of modern America. Yet, they
do draw attention to tensions between Muslim groups representing different
ethnic and religious revival networks that are classified as conservative, liberal,
socioeconomic migrants and indigenous Muslims. Promoting a politically
correct idea of a progressive American Muslim appears to be the central
message of the book. The study tries to utilise ‘Islam as a discursive tradition’
suggested by anthropologist Talal Asad but without much clarity as to how
this relates to the analysis of the main topic of the study. Interestingly, this
study does not even engage with waqf, the key Islamic philanthropic institution
shaping much of classical Islamic learning institutions and civil society. Again,
some fundamental vocabulary seems misunderstood. For example, zakat is
confused with sadaqah as it is assumed to be a voluntary act of charitable alms-
giving whereas, in fact, Zakat is an obligatory religious duty for all Muslims who
have a certain level of income to share a specific percentage of it with specific
categories of needy people mentioned in the Qur’an. The book provides some
useful statistics such as the number of full-time Muslim schools (230) with
only 4% of American Muslim children attending these schools. This empirical
study is mainly based on interviews with those who are in the management/
leadership position of the sector rather than on exploring the perspectives of
parents, teachers and students. It is also disappointing that challenges facing
Islamic-ethos schools are left unexplored.
IIIT can be seen as a form of Muslim higher education in the sense that it
was set up to engage with a specific set of educational issues such as how to
facilitate intellectual, socio-cultural revival and reform within contemporary
Muslim societies. Inspired by the work of pioneering figures like Al Faruqi,
the institute has offered a model for intellectual revival that has resulted in
a large international impact. It is unfortunate that the project came to be
identified with a narrow epistemological focus symbolised with the catchphrase
‘Islamisation of knowledge’. This phrase was taken to be indicating that the
task was a simple top-to-bottom process of indoctrination. It was, however,
primarily focused on developing a legal hermeneutics-centred revival model.
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 25

It has attracted criticisms over decades and with the change of the political
climate after 9/11, the expression was finally dropped.
Recently, a much more appealing concept, ‘integration of knowledge’, has
been advanced by IIIT. This reintegration idea seems to have been launched
through an international conference held in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2015. The
key proceedings of this conference were recently published under the title,
Rethinking Reform in Higher Education: From Islamization to Integration of Knowledge’
(2017), by Z. Sardar and Jeremy Henzell-Thomas. J. Henzell-Thomas is an
educationist who has been influenced by the work of Al-Attas who is the pioneer
of a rival version of the Islamisation of knowledge project based in Malaysia.
Z. Sardar, a broadcaster, journalist, activist turned futurist, was among key
critics of the Islamisation of Knowledge project when it was first introduced.
Recently, he apparently had a sudden change of heart and now generates new
ideas for IIIT by helping them to figure out how to shape future reform in
higher education in the Muslim world and beyond.
The contributions of authors are separately presented as distinctive
chapters. The book revisits the familiar ‘crisis in education’ discourse and
contains some interesting points and observations about generic issues related
to education reform and reflections are shared on how the Islamisation of
knowledge can now move on to its second ‘integrative’ phase of development.
It is curious that the authors seem less interested in considering that such a
task might first require developing a fresh perspective on Islamic educational
philosophy.
The role of Muslim higher education institutions in the formation of new
Islamic religious and spiritual leadership within the fast-changing social and
political conditions of Muslim communities has emerged as another area of
new research. Similarly, the participation of female Muslims in the broader
Islamic higher education networks, often run by women for women, have also
attracted the attention of researchers interested in female Muslim leadership
and its promotion in traditional Muslim education. These studies tended to
be mostly empirical and conducted by researchers in the social sciences and
cultural anthropology. The edited volume by M. Bano and H. Kalmbach,
Women, Leadership, and Mosques (2012), is one of the first serious works on the
topic. Religious authority is linked to Islamic knowledge, specifically teaching,
preaching, interpreting (or reinterpreting) texts, leading worship, and providing
guidance on religious matters, including communal leadership, pastoral care
positions led by Muslim women.
M. Bano has recently published several works on the topic mainly based on
a large research project that she has been leading at the University of Oxford.
26 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

The project, ‘Changing Structures of Islamic Authority and Consequences

for Social Change: A Transnational Review’, is funded by the European
Research Council (ERC). The project focuses on identifying selected patterns
of theological debates/perspectives spearheaded by certain influential scholars,
their institutions and followers, in order to illustrate changing Islamic
authority structures in the modern world. The aim is to further understand
the emergence and growth of the ‘new Islamic intellectual reform movements’
in the Western Muslim diaspora and wider Muslim world.
The research adopts an ethnographic methodology and in terms of theory
appears to be using perspectives developed to understand the formation and
impact of ‘informal institutions’ such as religious beliefs, social values and
cultural norms, and their relationship with the processes of development. This
body of work is mostly associated with the late American historian of economic
thought, D.C North. M. Bano is based at the department of International
Development rather than Islamic Studies as one would expect. During the
course of the last five years she has published and edited two volumes and a
single authored work out of this project.
The first volume in the edited set, Evolving Debates in the Muslim-Majority
Countries , focuses on several case institutions and networks; Egypt (Al-Azhar),
Saudi Arabi (Salafi networks), Indian Subcontinent (Deobandi networks) and
Turkey (Diyanet, the official centre of religious authority). Presumably, the
team prioritised these regions because they have direct links with, and impact
on, European Muslim diaspora, a context covered in the second volume. One
of the most significant regions, the so-called Islamic periphery – South East
Asia – has been left out. Indonesia, for example, houses the largest number of
Islamic higher education institutions in the world and has been experimenting
with developing an integrated Islamic university model rarely attempted in
the rest of the Muslim world. The second volume examines some related
issues by exclusively focusing on what is thought to be three new major trends
representing developments in Muslim intellectual thought in the Muslim-
minority context of Europe. A threefold typology of ‘neo-traditionalist’,
‘legalist’ and ‘conservative’ is used as a prism through which the formation of
new European Muslim religious, spiritual authority is examined. No convincing
criteria are put forward to justify such an arbitrary typology. All three cases,
in their types of religiosity, are rather similar to one another. It appears that
figures and institutions that gained popularity during the post-9/11 world have
been prioritised for inclusion in the study.
The volumes contain some interesting ethnographic data which reveal
information already in the public domain on these institutions, leading figures
The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019 27

and their particular patterns of thought and approaches to the old debates
around Islamic revival, renewal and reform. Some case studies, such as the
section on Diyanet, the official religious authority centre in Turkey, are poorly
discussed and often contain inaccuracies.
Perhaps the most significant weakness in this literature in general and
in these two volumes in particular is the lack of proper educational and
theological thinking. After all, these are institutions of higher Islamic education
and their faith leadership training models need to be subjected to a rigorous
theological and pedagogic analysis using both Islamic as well as modern
educational theory. The lead researcher, apparently in an effort to summarise
the entire project, comes up with a rather confusing twofold typology which,
it is argued, is followed by the institutions and lead personalities under study:
‘Islam as a civilization and Islam as a theology’.
Bano argues that the civilizational approach to Islam requires that Islam
should not simply be equated with its theological texts but must be reconnected
with the creative spirit (revelation) which led to the birth of a dynamic Islamic
civilization. This is an admirable thought but it reveals the author’s lack of
familiarity with what theological activity is all about. The hermeneutical act of
reconnecting with the revelation requires the presence of a creative theological
imagination in the first place. The entire project is riddled with confusion over
the fundamental concepts it uses. For example, differences between Islamic
Education, Islamic Studies, Islamic Theology as well as the nature of Islamic
scholarship are used in an arbitrary manner throughout the volumes. Theology
does not even appear in the institutions’ model depicting the nature of Islamic
higher education as if they are not theological centres training faith leaders
in the first place (p. 37).
The project team seems unaware that it has been studying the diverse forms
of Islamic theological education in its traditional and hybrid expressions as
no team member appears to come from specialisms in the classical Islamic
sciences. Theologies could be literalist and inward-looking as they could
be progressive and forward-looking. No serious Islamic reform or renewal
attempt could bracket out a tradition in its plural expressions, including
radical reform suggested by the so-called Islamic modernists. Articulating
and rethinking Islam in the modern world, trying to come up with a
mature expression of being Muslim and producing Islamically meaningful
interpretations of the modern world all require the presence of a theological
reflection of engaging with the religious content. Theological interpretations
will reveal different modes of being Muslim in the modern world. What
would be interesting is to develop criteria by which to understand the kind of
28 The Muslim World Book Review, 40:1, 2019

Islamic religiosities and faith leadership styles nurtured in these institutions

of theological education. Sadly, this is something that this type of literature
remains silent about.
Bano’s other recent book, Female Islamic Education Movements: The Re-
Democratisation of Islamic Knowledge (2017), engages with the same set of issues
though, this time, within the context of female Islamic education platforms
selected in three Muslim-majority societies (Pakistan, Northern Nigeria and
Syria). The book explores why such female Islamic education movements
emerged and how professional and culturally progressive educated Muslim
women can also shape future Islamic interpretations of its central texts and
contribute Islamic scholarship in the modern world. Such platforms, she
argues, contribute to the revival of democratic knowledge production and
facilitate the formation of an Islamic civilizational identity, a theme which
also reappears in the above-mentioned two volumes. Muslim women join these
educational networks, she claims, not for reasons of piety but to maximise
their worldly interest while maintaining religious virtue.
The author is at pains to paint a positive picture, echoing largely D.F
Eickelman’s views, a veteran researcher of traditional Islamic education practices,
who argued that, with mass and modern education, Muslims take Islam seriously
and this, in turn, leads them to creatively reinterpret their faith tradition in
the modern world. The impact of modern education in shaping religious
imagination in a way that is democratising educational and religious authority
in Islam seems a plausible development. Both scholars, however, appear to fail to
explain why so many young Muslims well-educated in the modern sciences and
technology study Islam in private circles in their spare-time, and also develop
rather rigid, sometime even violent, religiosities (Gambetta and Hertog 2016).
The quality of Islamic specialism and competent Islamic scholarship offered
in an integrated model of contemporary Islamic higher education institutions
might be a better way of ensuring that Islam authoritatively guides Muslim
men and women in the modern world. This might even rekindle the spirit of
a new transformative Islamic culture of learning, a central catalyst behind the
formation of historical Islamic civilisation.

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University of Warwick, UK Abdullah Sahin