Islamic Education Challenge

The First World Conference on Muslim Education at Mecca, 1977 concluded that the purpose of Islamic Education is “to create a good and pious human being, who devotes Allah, builds their personal structure compatibly with Islamic Sharia and gets all of their daily life as the manifestation of their obedience to Allah”.  The key word for this conclusion is that the purpose of Islamic education tends to build a good character of human beings. Is that true? Yes! Everybody will agree that our Islamic education is about making a perfect human from all sides, here and hereafter. However, what factor that has been missed from that statement?

The first, we can see that the ideal purpose is about human beings. How to make good and pious human beings is the central issue for Islamic education. In this sense, we have forgotten the other factor in every education; it is the structure of education itself. Why is the structure important? The answer is that there is no education system without building the structure before.

How can you educate your student without using some curriculum, some programs, some educational degree, teachers and environment? If the key issue of Islamic education is about human beings, thus we have very big problem we should deal with every situation that can support that purpose. For instance, we should deal with the lack of professionalism from our teachers in every institution that claims as the representation of Islamic education. Not only are from teachers, the people that hold our Islamic governmental policy such as DEPAG (Religious Affair Department) still have huge problem from corruption, capability and professionalism also.

The second, this structure’s problems drive the next problem of Islamic education today. Talking about Islamic education, we usually consider the structure of Islamic education only in the name of Islam itself, such as Pesantren, Madrasah Aliyah, Madrasah Tsanawiyah, Madrasah Ibtidaiyah and so on. Don’t you think that this is the manifestation of the difference of knowledge itself? How can we make a good human being from such perspective when we believe that Islamic teaching is universal? This is an ironical situation that becomes our bitter reality.

Islam claims itself universal so that can become umbrella for everything. It means that Islam never separates and differs itself from every knowledge, situation or problem in this world. It proclaims that everything is colored by Islam. Ismail Al-Faruqi, the founder of International Institute of Islamic Thought, United States in the book “Toward Islamic Anhtropology: Definition, Dogma and Directions”, page 7 says that:

“Islamization does not mean subordination of any body of knowledge to dogmatic principles or arbitrary objectives, but liberation from such shackles. Islam regards all knowledge as critical; i.e., as universal, necessary and rational. It wants to see every claims pass through the tests of internal coherence correspondence with reality, and enhancement of human life and morality. Consequently, the Islamized discipline which we hope to reach in the future will turn a new page in the history of the human spirit, and bring it clear to the truth.”

Do you see it? Islamic knowledge does not recognize any separation whether it is Islamic or secular. Everything joins as the reality that should bring us into the consciousness that actually, the separation of Islamic and secular education is a sociological matter. This is the problem we have today. We separate our educational system into two radical systems based on the sociological view, not from a unitary perspective from the root of Islamic knowledge perspective.

Shall we accuse that a doctor who has graduated from secular university such as Gadjah Mada University is not a product of Islamic education? Shall we only consider them who have graduated from Muhammadiyah University or Al Azhar University or Darussalam Institute as the product of Islamic education? I would argue that as long as the process of those educations includes the liberation as being stated by Al Faruq, it means that they are the product of Islamic education also.