Islamic Pedagogy: An Interview (2012)

ITEP is a teacher training program which is trying to define an pedagogy. You have written a lot on and what it is. For sake of our students, give us a short definition of what you mean by the tradition and help us understand how an education system might be based on that tradition. Bismi' Llah al-Rahman al-Rahim. The way I use term Islamic tradition is as follows: First, you have Qur'anic revelation. Then there is conveying of revelation by Prophet, 'alayhi as-salatu wa'l-salam, and his Sunna and Hadith and establishment of earliest community. And from those sources issues a whole world, you might say: world of civilization. Everything within that civilization is related to those principles which are revealed in Qur'an, embodied and taught by Prophet throughout his life and reflected in his Hadith and more generally Sunna, transmitted through saints and scholars following him, and elaborated upon century after century by various authorities. The whole of this reality is what we call tradition. The for us is like a tree whose roots are in Divine revelation, descent of God's Word, but whose trunk and branches have grown over centuries. In different climes, through different seasons, tree has grown in different directions, and sometimes quite slowly. But all of this reality is still evident in remarkable continuity and inner unity of civilization and tradition. The reason I and others use this term, Islamic tradition, whereas concept would not have been necessary three hundred years ago, is presence of modernist onslaught that negates fundamental tenets of worldview. modernists tried to dilute by simply adopting what was coming from West and then putting a little veneer of something onto it. The initial reaction in Muslim world against this shallow appraisal of Islam and also modernism itself was either to adopt it wholeheartedly or to use sentimental sloganeering against it, but not answering or addressing it in a serious manner, logically and critically. That more deliberate response did not come until second half of twentieth century. It began with people like myself who had received a deep education as well as a thorough Western education, who knew what modern West was like when viewed from perspective of tradition. And so we began to revive idea of Islamic tradition, as a concept pitted against modern worldviews that seek to negate it. does not mean a reality that is dead today and belongs only to past. On contrary, it remains alive and over centuries, as I said using symbol of tree, has given and still gives forth each spring new leaves and flowers. Tradition is heart of an authentic civilization. civilization is one of greatest among world's civilizations, and has given rise to education, art, ethics, family and social structures, laws, philosophy, sciences ... you name it! When fully healthy, it was a complete civilization, some of which has been destroyed and eroded since eighteenth century, but much of it still survives in a weakened state. All of these intellectual and artistic disciplines and activities carried out within civilization thrived and reverberated within and were based upon its principles. That is, if you were as great a scientist as Abu Rayhan al-Biruni, you were a Muslim thinker; you were not a secularist; your science was based on view of cosmic reality. If you were a great painter such as Bihzad, you were a Muslim artist. If you were a great poet, a Mutanabbi, you were a Muslim poet ... and so on, and so on. Islam produced an extremely rich intellectual and artistic civilization, in which everything was based on and remained related to principles. …