Tahir Abbas

In this paper, I reflect on my experiences of teaching sociology of Islam at an elite British university: the University of Birmingham. As a trained economist with postgraduate degrees in social science and sociology and as a former Whitehall civil servant, my foray into the world of Islamic studies has only been recent. Indeed, it was the events relating to British Muslim minorities between 1999 and 2001 (namely, the arrests, trial, and sentencing in relation to the mostly Birmingham-born “Seven in Yemen” in 1999; the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC; and the urban disturbances in northern England 2001) that propelled me to interact with this vast and rich field of learning and scholarship. These three events compounded matters in relation to identity politics, Islamism, and international political economy. Having already researched and written on matters related to education and class,1 entrepreneurship and culture,2 and Islamophobia and the print news,3 my new focus on Muslim minority issues stemmed precisely from my existing interests in ethnicity, culture, and multiculturalism.4

Noor Aisha Abdul Rahman and Lai Ah Eng, eds., Singapore: Institute of Policy Studies & Marshall Cavendish Academic, 2006. 191 pages.

This compilation provides a systematic overview of the development and challenges of Islamic education in Singapore. After the introduction by Noor Aishah and Lai Ah Eng, Chee Min Fui focuses on the historical evolution of madrasah education (chapter 1) and Mukhlis Abu Bakar highlights the tension between the state’s interest and the citizens’ right to an Islamic education (chapter 2). In chapter 3, Noor Aishah elaborates on the fundamental problem of the madrasah’s attempt to lay the educational foundation of both traditional and rational sciences. Azhar Ibrahim surveys madrasah reforms in Indonesia, Egypt, India, and Pakistan in chapter 4, while Afiza Hashim and Lai Ah Eng narrate a case study of Madrasah Ma`arif in chapter 5. Tan Tay Keong (chapter 6) examines the debate on the national policy of compulsory education in the context of the madrasah, and Syed Farid Alatas (chapter 7) clarifies the concept of knowledge and Islam’s philosophy of education, which can be used to assess contemporary madrasah education.

Rosnani Hashim

The number of faculties and universities offering Islamic traditional sciences or studies has slowly increased over the past decades. However, the Islamic community has not felt their graduates’ impact other than as teachers or religious personnel. In fact, if the criteria used to assess Islamic education is the growth of a genuine, original, and adequate Islamic thought or intellectualism, then most of these institutions have failed to provide such an education. I examine the goals and curriculum of higher Islamic education and the conditions conducive for the growth of intellectualism. I argue that poor pedagogy, which does not offer teaching methods that encourage critical and ethical thinking, contributed to the state of affairs. Further, I argue that the basic problem is the inadequate conceptualization of knowledge as regards Islamic epistemology in the curriculum and the lack of academic freedom. I assert that the issue of what knowledge is most valuable for today’s intellectual and ethical Muslims has not been resolved and that this affects the curriculum structure and, inevitably, the programs of Islamic traditional sciences. The need to reintroduce Islamic philosophy into the curriculum is one of this article’s major arguments.

Khosrow Bagheri and Zohreh Khosravi