221124P - HISTORY and ROLE OF THE ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE (IOK) DISCOURSE FROM A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE

Presented at a PhD class at the International Islamic University Malaysia on 24th November 2022 by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. Secretary General of IIIT 

(DEFINITION)

1.0 DEFINITION OF ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE (IOK) – 1:

• Different definitions but the grand vision is the same.
• Pioneers were Ismail Faruqi and Attas and we need not resolve the question of who used the term Islamization first.
• If the intellectual definition of IOK is complicated the practical one is not.
• In practice parents take their children to 2 schools madrasat and the public school but they prefer a school or university that combines the 2: hundreds of Islamic schools and universities.

2.0 DEFINITION OF ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE (IOK) – 2:

• My previous personal definition 1980s-2010s was: IOK is the transformation of the corpus of human knowledge to conform to tauhid.
• My current personal preference is: integration of ilm naqli and ilm aqli with ilm naqli providing values, concepts and paradigms.
• The three main Islamic concepts are: objectivity (استقامة), balance (توازن), and purposiveness (غائية). These are universal and not only for Muslims so IOK is not in any way parochializing knowledge.
• The term Islamization of Knowledge (IOK) was replaced by Integration of Knowledge (IOK) after 9/11 because of the sensitivity of the term Islam. The circumstances now favor a return to the word Islamization because integration is no longer specific enough to be used a lot in Europe and America to refer to discipline integration.

3.0 ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE (IRK) IN EAST AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES – 1:

• East Africa had one university established on 29 June 1963 when it ceased to be an external college of the University of London.
• The East African University had branch campuses in each of the 3 constituent countries.
• In 1970, the East African University split into three independent universities for each of the three countries of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

4.0 ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE (IRK) IN EAST AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES – 2:

• The East African University and its successors had departments of religion where Islam called ‘Islamics’ was taught to those who wanted to specialize in it.
• The curriculum was followed by the London University School of Oriental and African Studies with emphasis on marginal issues in Islam like the philosophical controversies involving the Mutazilah and other Muslim philosophers.
• The curriculum eschewed the basics of Islam as aqidat and shariat.

5.0 ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE (IRK) IN EAST AFRICAN SCHOOLS in the 1970s and 1980s – 1:

• Starting in the mid-1970s I and colleagues started agitating for the inclusion of Islam as a subject in elementary and secondary schools in East Africa.
• A series of meetings was held in Nairobi and a curriculum was drawn up. The three East African governments accepted the curriculum easily as they had done for Christian churches.
• IRK in schools faced two challenges: teachers trained in teaching IRK and books.
• Funds were collected to sponsor Muslim students to enter the teaching profession and teach IRK. A whole college built by the United Arab Emirates in Mombasa for producing IRK teachers failed because Muslim students lacked interest.

6.0 ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE (IRK) IN EAST AFRICAN SCHOOLS in the 1970s and 1980s – 2:

• More progress was made in producing teaching materials. I left East Africa for the US in 1981 but left behind colleagues who continued the effort and produced several books. I had set up an Islamic Bureau for Translation and Publication to spearhead book production, but the effort was abandoned in the early 1980s because of the hostile political environment towards Muslims and my departure from the scene.

7.0 THE CRISIS OF DUALITY IN KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION: traditional Muslim vs Western Secular in the 1980s and 1990s – 1:

• Our efforts in East Africa in the 1970s were towards teaching Islam as a subject in the schools but did not address the main worldwide problem which was the duality with which a Muslim student was faced with 2 sources of knowledge that are contradictory and have different world views.
• The First World Muslim Education Conference held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Makkah identified duality as the main problem of Muslim education. It was followed by 4 conferences (Islamabad, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Dacca, Cairo) to elaborate the idea of Islamizing education to include revelation in disciplines of knowledge.

8.0 THE CRISIS OF DUALITY IN KNOWLEDGE AND EDUCATION: traditional Muslim vs Western Secular in the 1980s and 1990s – 2:

• The final conference of the series was held in Cape Town in 1996 and IO guided it towards producing integrated teaching materials to actualize the ideals of the conferences.
• The world Muslim education conferences gave impetus to establishment of public international Islamic universities sponsored by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Islamabad, Kuala Lumpur, Dhakka, Uganda, and Niger. Many private Islamic universities and schools followed in the 1990s and 2000s.
• Islamic universities and schools did not solve the basic problem of duality they like the East African schools taught Islamic subjects based on Quran and sunnat alongside the Western disciplines of knowledge.

9.0 IOK IN NORTH AMERICA in 1987-1995 – 1:

• A conference of leading Muslim scholars meeting in Lausanne Switzerland in 1979 emphasized the crucial problem of duality of education and knowledge.
• The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) was established in 1981 in Philadelphia by Dr Ismail Alfaruqi to spearhead the idea of Islamization of Knowledge. It later moved its headquarters to Herndon Virginia.
• An attempt was made to set up a college at which IOK would be taught but this was not successful.
• A network of representative and collaborative organizations was set up worldwide.
• Many books on IOK have been published by IIIT and are available at www.iiiit.org.

10.0 IOK IN NORTH AMERICA in 1987-1995 – 2:

• I joined IIIT from its beginning because I knew some of the founders but most important because it represented the aspirations I had from my earlier work in East Africa to bring together revealed knowledge and disciplines of human knowledge.
• I became the executive director of IIIT in 1987 and essentially steered the path of Islamization started in East Africa.
• I was not pleased with a lot of intellectual debate at this time about the term Islamization and I felt that most arguments were about semantics. I decided to follow the route of doing Islamization instead of talking about it.
• Doing Islamization was easy because Ismail Alfaruqi had developed a practical 13-step procedure. I simplified this further and applied it to producing integrated teaching materials.

11.0 IOK IN NORTH AMERICA in 1987-1995 – 3:

• After 1990, I opened an Education Projects office within IIIT through which I worked with Muslim schools and University students throughout the US.
• In the period 1990-1995, I organized workshops on IOK and other aspects of school management for Muslim schools in all 4 corners of the US and the Caribbean.
• I started a project of writing teaching materials that produced 13 books for teaching social sciences from an Islamic perspective for each school year from K to G12. It also produced 10 story books that featured moral lessons.
• In the same period, I organized and spoke at workshops on IOK for Muslim students at university campuses in the US and Canada. Records of these were lost in 2021 in the Faculty of Medicine building in Kuantan.

12.0 ISLAMISED MEDICINE:

• In July 1995, a definition of Islamic Medicine was presented at a seminar in Kuala Lumpur as medicine whose paradigms and procedures conformed to tauhid and shariat and not specific medications or medical procedures.
• Shariat-compliant hospitals were set up all over the world.

(ISLAMIZED MEDICINE)

13. Islamic Hospital Amman, Jordan:

14. Islamic Specialist Hospital Kuala Lumpur:

15. Islamic Hospital Bandung:

16. Saidina Abubakar Islamic Hospital Uganda:

17.0 ISLAMISDED MEDICINE IN MALAYSIA 1995-2005:

• I moved to Malaysia in 1995 and joined the Faculty of Medicine. For a period of 10 years, I worked to Islamize the medical curriculum. The teaching of the integrated curriculum started in 1997 and has continued to date. An Islamic hospital has been set up in Kuantan to practice according to the ideals taught in the Kulliyah of Medicine.
• The idea of Islamic Medicine (or Islamized medicine) spread rapidly in Malaysia because of presentations at seminars and conferences.
• Other universities such as Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia adopted the Islamized Medicine curriculum. Nursing schools also followed. The idea spread to other Kulliyahs such as the Kulliyah of Science, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Applied Sciences etc.
• Islamic hospitals were set up such as the Specialist Islamic Hospital in Kuala Lumpur.
• Malaysian government approved SOP for shariat compliant hospitals.

18. IIUM Medical Centre:

19. Kulliyah of Medicine at the International Islamic University Kuantan Malaysia

20.0 IOK BEYOND MALAYSIA 2005-2022:

• During this period, I traveled almost every weekend to lead workshops on IOK at universities in Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, East Africa, Central Africa, West Africa, and the Balkans.
• By 2010 the concept had become well accepted that writing integrated teaching material projects started in Bangladesh, Malaysia, and later East and West Africa. Pakistan and the Balkans are getting ready to start. Indonesia already started but each individual university publishes its books.
• We write teaching materials for actual courses taught in the university. Starting with the course outline we identify where an Islamic input can be used.
• Peer review is very strict. Authors benefit from many articles available on the internet about the Islamic perspective of many disciplines.

(MY1 MALAYSIAN BOOKS)

Analytical Study on Quranic Discourse

Introduction to Modern Islamic Literature

Fundamentals of Islamic Aqidah

The Linguistic Issues between Ancient and Modern

Halal Pharmaceuticals and Cosmetics

Essentials of Management Science: An Islamic Perspective

Ethics and Toyyiban Concept in Halal Products and Services

The Quest for Spirituality: Contribution of Tasawwuf to Humanity

Standards and Governance in Halal Industry

International Economics and Muslim Countries

(MY2 MALAYSIAN BOOKS)

Accounting, Auditing & Governance of Islamic Financial Institutions

Islam the Spirit of Creativity

Enriching the Islamic Tradition in Research Inquiry: Some Practical Guidelines in Using Qualitative Data Collection Techniques

Principles of Marketing: An Islamic Perspective

Introduction to the Critical Readings of Western Paradigm on Social Stratification and Gender Inequality of Women and Career

Sociolinguistic for University Postgraduate Studies Approach

History of Arabic Literature

(MY3 MALAYSIAN BOOKS)

الخطاب القرآ ني خصائصه ومقاصده:

مقدمة في الأدب الإسلامي الحديث:

Fundamentals of Islamic Aqidah

القضايا اللغوية بين القديم والحديث:

Halal Pharmaceuticals and Cosmetics

Essentials of Management Science: An Islamic Perspective

Ethics and Toyyiban Concept in Halal Products and Services

The Quest for Spirituality: Contribution of Tasawwuf to Humanity

Standards and Governance in Halal Industry

International Economics and Muslim Countries :

(BANGLADESH)

(EAST AFRICAN BOOKS)

Standards and Governance in Halal Industry

(WEST AFRICAN BOOKS)

Standards and Governance in Halal Industry

(SOUTH AFRICAN BOOKS)

نماذج من جنوب افريقيا