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Presented at a workshop for Indonesian resource persons held at the Grand Chempaka Hotel on 23rd July 2010 by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule MB ChB (MUK), MPH (Harvard), DrPH (Harvard) Professor of Epidemiology and Bioethics Faculty of Medicine King Fahad Medical City Riyadh
1.0 OVERVIEW
This paper sets out the main concepts and steps of epistemological and curriculum reform taking place at various universities to conform curricula to the Islamic world view. The ideas presented have been tried out over the past three years with positive results.
2.0 THE PROBLEM: CONTRADICTION and DUALITY IN EDUCATION
The knowledge and educational crisis, manifesting as a duality of traditional Islamic versus imported Western education systems and world views, is a major contributor to the ummatic malaise in religious, social, political, economic, technological, and military dimensions. The failure of Muslim intellectuals to integrate or harmonize the two contradictory systems of education in which they were brought up leaves them confused with no clear-cut world view for analyzing and solving ummatic problems. The crisis of knowledge can be resolved by reforming the education systems and curricula of all disciplines to reflect Islamic epistemology based on the paradigms of tauhid, and objectivity, istiqamat. Such a reform will both resolve intellectual confusion and contradiction, while at the same acting as a motivator for research, ijtihad, and acquisition of knowledge, talab al ílm, in the knowledge that these are part of íbadat.
3.0 INTRODUCING THE PROJECT TO UNIVERSITIES
The epistemology and curriculum reform project will be introduced and disseminated through universities initially through intellectual seminars that are of two types. General one-day seminars will introduce the duality problem, analyze its causes and manifestations, describe Islamic epistemology, review previous attempts at epistemological and curricular reform, and motivate participants to be part of the project. Fully written papers will be presented at more specialized one-day seminars by one to two speakers from a roster of discipline or sub-discipline specialists, trained in epistemological and curricular reform. The papers analyze basic epistemological and methodological issues in their respective disciplines, and show how course curriculum reforms can be carried out in conformity with the Islamic world view. After thorough discussion, the papers will be revised for online publication alongside the questions and thoughts arising from the discussions. Seminar participants will be directed to a number of online resources, including www.i-epistemology.net, as well as encouraged to subscribe to the i-epistemology electronic newsletter for further information. A measure of success of this phase will be the number of seminars held and the total number of online publications produced.
3.0 CURRICULUM REFORM: TRANSITIONAL and IMMEDIATE APPROACHES
The process of curriculum reform requires a large amount of intellectual and logistic effort, which will take time. However, universities keen to start immediately can adopt a transitional approach while they get the permanent structures in place. The transitional approach consists of asking students to take one of three options: a double major in Islamic sciences and human sciences; a major in Islamic sciences and a minor in human sciences; or a major in human sciences and a minor in Islamic sciences. Another transitional approach would be to take an existing course and add an Islamic input to it. It should be understood that transitional approaches are not a full solution to the problem of duality and dichotomy in the education system, but they pave the way to a final solution.
4.0 CURRICULUM REFORM: PRACTICAL STEPS and TASKS OF A PERMANENT APPROACH
Each university will be advised to set up an Epistemology Reform Unit (ERU), either at a university-wide level or at a faculty level. The ERU will undertake two activities: coordinating the process of producing an Islamic epistemological introduction, al muqaddimat al islamiyyat, for each discipline; and the reform of specific taught courses.
Producing an Islamic epistemological introduction for each discipline has various phases:
1. The first step is developing a good grounding in Islamic methodological sciences (usul al fiqh, ulum al Qur’an, ulum al hadith), which can be acquired through a short course offered by the Faculty of Islamic Studies for all lecturers, with emphasis on the methodological aspects of those disciplines rather than the substantive content.
2. The second step is the clarification of basic epistemological issues that are relevant to all disciplines: sources of knowledge and interrelations among them, classification of knowledge, and limitations of human knowledge; an Islamic critique of the empirical methodology: its strengths and weaknesses; and the development of a tauhidi universal, objective and unbiased methodology.
3. The third step is discipline-specific and involves reading the Qur’an and sunnat with an understanding of changing time-space dimensions, as well as a critique of basic paradigms, assumptions, and concepts of each discipline using the criteria of Islamic methodology and epistemology.
The result from the three stages above will be an Islamic introduction to each discipline, al muqaddimat al islamiyyat li al ílm, which sets out basic Islamic principles and paradigms that determine and regulate the methodology, content, and teaching of disciplines. This parallels Ibn Khaldun’s Introduction to History, al muqaddimat, which presented general and methodological concepts of historical events.
The next step is the reform of specific course outlines, descriptions and contents. It starts by reviewing existing courses, text-books and teaching materials to identify areas of deviation from the tauhidi episteme and Islamic methodology, so that they can be replaced by Islamic alternatives. In some cases, the content is empirical with no bias, but is presented in cultural and philosophical contexts that are incongruous with the Islamic tauhidi world view. It may be necessary to make additions from the Qurán, sunnat,and fiqh to make the material more relevant to Muslim society. Material from Islamic sources should be added to existing reading lists. The aim is not to discard what is available, but to teach it alongside the Islamic view, so that the student gets a complete, unbiased view of reality.
Availability of teaching material and text books reflecting the Islamic paradigm is a pre-condition for the success of the curriculum reform process. It is a long process that starts with class teachers preparing manuscripts reflecting what they teach. These are then field-tested and eventually published.
Developing applied knowledge in science and technology from basic knowledge will be the last stage of the reform process. This is because, ultimately, it is science and technology that actually lead to changes in society.
4.0 IMPLEMENTATION ASPECTS
4.1 Regions and coordinators
For efficiency, a part-time coordinator has been appointed for each of the following regions: Sumatra, West and Central Java, East Java and Sulawesi, Mindanao, Borneo (Sarawak , Brunei , and Sabah), Peninsular Malaysia, Dhakka, Chittagong , Bihar, Delhi , and Islamabad
4.2 Guiding philosophy of the program
The guiding philosophy is to have each of the universities concerned own and run the project. The Institute plays the role of initiation and providing material (website, CDs and books) as well as that of human resources (tickets, hotels), whether local or international. The Institute has no plan of setting up an office in each region or running an administration. The Institute will pay an expenses allowance to the coordinators to cover their travel expenses (pre-approved air ticket and hotel costs), and the travel expenses of resource persons (pre-approved air ticket and hotel costs).
4.3 Functions of the regional coordinator
In view of the guiding philosophy in 4.2 above, the role of the coordinator therefore becomes simple and straightforward:
1. identifying privately-owned, Muslim-based educational institutions (universities and colleges) in the region;
2. contacting educational institutions, preferably by phone or through personal visits (with pre-approved tickets and hotel costs), to introduce the project, inform them about the project's website and e-newsletter, and advise them to set up an ERU and start running the program;
3. set up a roster of resource persons selected from the university’s lecturers in the region, who are then approved and trained in epistemology by the Institute headquarters;
4. arranging mutually agreeable dates with the institution and the resource person for general seminars, specialist seminars and course-writing workshops. Resource persons can be from within or outside the region.