Islamic knowledge and education in the modern age

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521844437.021

20 - Islamic knowledge and education in the modern age

from PART IV - CULTURES, ARTS AND LEARNING

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011

Robert Hefner

Edited by

Robert W. Hefner

Show author details

Robert W. Hefner: Affiliation:
Boston University

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The transmission of religious knowledge (ʿilm) has always been at the heart of Islamic tradition. The Qurʾān and Ḥadīth abound with general references to the importance of learning, as well as the specific injunction that believers study and follow the ethical path God has provided. Since earliest times, the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student has also had a vital social function, creating scholarly networks which, in the absence of a clerical hierarchy or an established church, came to exercise authority in the religious community. Muslim notables also regarded religious education as critical to the formation of the shared ethical sensibilities that underlay the public good. In these and other ways, religious learning lay at the heart of Muslim societies, and its promotion was incumbent on all who aspired to social or political prominence.

Because of the centrality of religious knowledge in Muslim societies, constructing institutions for its transmission has also been considered socially imperative. During the Muslim world’s Middle Ages (1000–1500 CE), the madrasa emerged as the dominant institution for the transmission of intermediate and advanced religious knowledge. A residential college for the study of the religious sciences, the madrasa played a key role in the great recentring of religious knowledge and authority that took place in the Middle Ages, bringing popular religious culture into closer alignment with scholarly knowledge.

Type: Chapter
Information: The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 495 - 520

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521844437.021 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ahmed, Leila, Women and gender in Islam: Historical roots of a modern debate, New Haven, 1992.Google Scholar

Arberry, A. J., The Koran interpreted (New York, 1955)Google Scholar

Arjomand, Said Amir, ‘The law, agency, and policy in medieval Islamic society: Development of the institutions of learning from the tenth to the fifteenth century’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 41, 2 (1999).Google Scholar

Arjomand, Said Amir, The turban for the crown: The Islamic revolution in Iran, New York, 1988.Google Scholar

Azra, Azyumardi, Afrianty, Dina and Hefner, Robert W., ‘Pesantren and madrasa: Muslim schools and national ideals in Indonesia’, in Hefner, Robert W. and Zaman, Muhammad Qasim (eds.), Schooling Islam: The culture and politics of modern Muslim education, Princeton 2007, pp. 172–98.Google Scholar

Berkey, Jonathan, The transmission of knowledge in medieval Cairo: A social history of Islamic education, Princeton, 1992.CrossRef Google Scholar

Berkey, Jonathan, The formation of Islam: Religion and society in the Near East, 600–1800, Cambridge, 2003.Google Scholar

Brenner, Louis, Controlling knowledge: Religion, power and schooling in a West African Muslim society, Bloomington, 2001.Google Scholar

Brown, L. Carl, Religion and state: The Muslim approach to politics, New York, 2000.Google Scholar

Bulliet, Richard W., Islam: The view from the edge, New York, 1994.Google Scholar

Burhanudin, Jajat, and Afrianty, Dina (eds.), Mencetak Muslim modern: Peta pendidikan Islam Indonesia, Jakarta, 2006.Google Scholar

Chamberlain, Michael, Knowledge and social practice in medieval Damascus, 1190–1350, Cambridge, 1994.Google Scholar

Delanoue, Gilbert, ‘L’enseignement religieux Musulman en Égypte du XIXe au XXe siècle: Orientations générales’, in Grandin, Nicole and Gaborieau, Marc (eds.), Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman, Paris, 1997, pp. 93–108.Google Scholar

Dhofier, Zamakhsari, The pesantren tradition: The role of the kyai in the maintenance of traditional Islam in Java, Tempe, 1999.Google Scholar

Eickelman, Dale F., Knowledge and power in Morocco: The education of a twentieth-century notable, Princeton, 1985.Google Scholar

Eickelman, Dale F., ‘Mass higher education and the religious imagination in contemporary Arab societies’, American Ethnologist, 19, 4 (1992).CrossRef Google Scholar

Esposito, John L., and Mogahed, Dalia, Who speaks for Islam? What a billion Muslims really think, New York, 2007.Google Scholar

Fattah, Moataz A., Democratic values in the Muslim world, Boulder, 2006.Google Scholar

Findley, Carter Vaughn, ‘Knowledge and education in the modern Middle East: A comparative view’, in Sabagh, Georges (ed.), The modern economic and social history of the Middle East in its world context, Cambridge, 1989.Google Scholar

Fortna, Benjamin C., Imperial classroom: Islam, the state, and education in the late Ottoman Empire, Oxford, 2000.Google Scholar

Gade, Anna M., Perfection makes practice: Learning, emotion, and the recited Qur’ân in Indonesia, Honolulu, 2004.Google Scholar

Grandin, Nicole, and Gaborieau, Marc (eds.), Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman, Paris, 1997.Google Scholar

Grandin, Nicole, ‘Politique d’enseignement religieux et culture arabo-islamique au Soudan’, in Grandin, Nicole and Gaborieau, Marc (eds.), Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman, Paris, 1997.Google Scholar

Hefner, Robert W., and Qasim Zaman, Muhammad (eds.), Schooling Islam: The culture and politics of modern Muslim education, Princeton, 2007.Google Scholar

Huff, Toby, The rise of early modern science: Islam, China, and the West, 2nd edn, Cambridge, 2003.Google Scholar

,International Crisis Group, ‘Jemaah Islamiyah in South East Asia: Damaged but still dangerous’, Asia Report, Jakarta and Brussels, 26 August 2003, no. 63.

,International Crisis Group, ‘Pakistan: Madrasas, extremism and the military’, Asia Report, 36, Islamabad and Brussels, 2002 3.

Jacob, Xavier, ‘L’enseignement religieux en Turquie de la fin de l’empire ottoman à nos jours’, in Grandin, Nicole and Gaborieau, Marc (eds.), Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman, Paris, 1997.Google Scholar

Kaplan, Sam, The pedagogical state: Education and the politics of national culture in post-1980 Turkey, Stanford, 2006.Google Scholar

Lindberg, David C., The beginnings of Western science: The European scientific tradition in philosophical, religious, and institutional context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450, Chicago, 1992.CrossRef Google Scholar

Makdisi, George N., The rise of colleges: Institutions of learning in Islam and the West, Edinburgh, 1981.Google Scholar

Menashri, David, Education and the making of modern Iran, Ithaca and London, 1992.Google Scholar

Metcalf, Barbara Daly, Islamic revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900, Princeton, 1982.CrossRef Google Scholar

Mottahedeh, Roy, The mantle of the Prophet: Religion and politics in Iran, Oxford, 2000, orig. 1985.Google Scholar

Mottahedeh, Roy, ‘The transmission of learning: The role of the Islamic northeast’, in Grandin, Nicole and Gaborieau, Marc (eds.), Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman, Paris, 1997.Google Scholar

Norris, Pippa, and Inglehart, Ronald, Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide, Cambridge, 2004.CrossRef Google Scholar

Ringer, Monica M., Education, religion, and the discourse of cultural reform in Qajar Iran, Costa Mesa, CA, 2001.Google Scholar

Robinson, Francis, The ʿulamāʾ of Farangi Mahall and Islamic culture in South Asia, London, 2001.Google Scholar

Sabra, A. I., ‘The appropriation and subsequent naturalization of Greek science in medieval Islam’, History of Science, 25 (1987).CrossRef Google Scholar

Sikand, Yoginder, Bastions of the believers: Madrasas and Islamic education in India, New Delhi, 2005.Google Scholar

Tarrow, Sidney, Power in movement: Social movements and contentious politics, 2nd edn, Cambridge, 1998.CrossRef Google Scholar

Taylor, Christopher S., In the vicinity of the righteous: Ziyāra and the veneration of Muslim saints in late medieval Egypt, Leiden, 1999.Google Scholar

,United Nations Development Programme and Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, Arab human development report 2003: Building a knowledge society, New York, 2003.

Bruinessen, Martin, ‘Shari`a court, tarekat and pesantren: Religious institutions in the Banten Sultanate’, Archipel, 50 (1995).Google Scholar

Veinstein, Gilles, ‘Le modèle ottoman’, in Grandin, Nicole and Gaborieau, Marc (eds.), Madrasa: La transmission du savoir dans le monde Musulman, Paris, 1997.Google Scholar

Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky, Mobilizing Islam: Religion, activism, and political change in Egypt, New York, 2002.Google Scholar

Wiktorowicz, Quintan, Islamic activism: A social movement approach, Bloomington, 2004.Google Scholar

Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, The ulama in contemporary Islam: Custodians of change, Princeton, 2002.Google Scholar

Zeghal, Malika, Gardiens de l’Islam: Les oulémas d’Al Azhar dans l’Égypte contemporaine, Paris, 1996.Google Scholar