Westerners and progressive “Muslims” who have been clamoring for an Islamic reformation can salivate over this recent tidbit from the BBC. I am not going to talk about how a so-called reformation is the surest path to destroying Islam as it has Christianity in Europe. Others have done so and they’ve done it better than I could. Also, it doesn’t take a genius to easily discredit this Turkish government project. Apparently since Islam cannot be obliterated by the Kemalist government, the next best thing is to alter it to fit their desire to “modernize.” Observe:

the Turkish state has come to see the Hadith as having an often negative influence on a society it is in a hurry to modernize, and believes it responsible for obscuring the original values of Islam.

One of the very foundations of Islam is obscuring the original values of Islam. Brilliant. According to astrolabe.com the adviser to the project, Felix Koerner, is a Jesuit priest. Take from that what you will. Aside from the obvious negative implications of such an ideologically transparent program as “editing” classical hadith texts using “Western critical techniques and philosophy” the really dangerous phenomenon is not readily apparent. (more…)

Studying the meaning of the Arabic word for education gives us a linguistic cue as to how we should begin to approach Islamic Education for a more sophisticated understanding. Fortunately, the richness of the Arabic language offers us three different words which are used relatively interchangeably for education, and convey the complexity of the subject.

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“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”
- Henry David Thoreau

The thousand calamities afflicting American Muslim communities continue unabated, unchecked and unchallenged. Rhetoric about solutions is abundant though largely superficial and ineffectual. While we dither in confusion our brothers and sisters are committing the vilest sins while others are becoming apostates, heretics or complete ignoramuses. The sheltered and out of touch must understand that this is by no means an exaggeration. The most daunting challenge facing Muslims is to deal with the infusion of powerful negative values coming from the dominant culture that we live in. It is time to inquire into the source of this influence. We must ask ourselves what is the most powerful medium by which our children and communities are inculcated with negative foreign values. It is without a doubt the modern educational system followed closely by the pervasiveness of television. While the television is a window to every vice, the modern schools are the abode of many of these vices; often it is where they are first discovered and learned. And it is in these rancid pits that children are in effect raised rather than simply educated. Many prattle and claim that the ill-effects of school can be neutralized by a proper Islamic upbringing. They cite as proof anecdotal evidence of this or that person who has “turned out alright.” This issue could be debated but it would be more prudent to preempt it by demonstrating that the education that parents feel is worth the risk of losing their children is in fact not much of an education at all.

The educational quality of public schools varies greatly depending on many factors. However, all public schools have intrinsic structural flaws that inhibit the development of a complete education. It’s not possible to describe them all here but below is a small sampling.

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A few weeks ago I was sitting with an amazing brother who had recently come back from studying Islam in Egypt. He was a Latino convert and was telling me about his amazing experience visiting some villages in the Egyptian hinterlands. He mentioned to me in passing that he met a six year old hafiz of the Quran. To be honest, I had a difficult time believing this. I’ve had a lot of experience with younger children and it was difficult to get these kids to sit down and cut out pictures, let alone trying to have them memorize an entire book by rote. Then he said something that made me understand how this was possible. While the child’s mother was nursing she would constantly recite the Quran. (more…)