Education in Islamic countries

Being an educationist myself, I have often been puzzled by the fact that Muslims today are far behind any other nation in terms of education and research. This state of the Muslims is in sharp contrast to the Quran, which is full of knowledge and research, and invites people to think and ponder again and again. Why, then are the Muslims so reluctant to ponder and think?

The Muslim countries of the world are at the bottom of the list when it comes to education and development. Many people have tried to blame the West for the backward Muslim attitude. However, this problem is not an external problem, but an internal one. There are other countries in the world, which are poorer than most Muslim countries, but when it comes to education they are far ahead of all Muslim nations. India is one example. They were also under colonial rule like Pakistan and are among one of the poorest countries in the world. However, their education system is better than any Muslim country in the world. They produce more world class scientists and researchers than all the Muslims countries combined together. You go to any major university or research institute in the world, you are bound to find Indian Professors in the faculty.

What is their secret?

This question had been on my mind several years ago and I did some research on that. I noticed several differences in attitude and no major differences in the content of what was being taught at their universities compared to Muslim Universities. The main difference was that the Indian education system encourages questioning old masters, whereas, the Muslim countries' education system discourages asking new questions and it encourages following what people in the past did. This attitude is not limited to universities but is also prevalent in other social aspects of their society also.

Questioning oneself and others is the first and the most important aspect of intellectual and spiritual growth. The growth of a person and a nation depends on how much self-criticism can she take. This aspect has been totally missing from the Muslim attitude of late. In fact, the Muslims get upset and angry at the very suggestion of self-criticism. They are happy to blame "those others" for their own shortcomings.

The problem is not new. It started a long time ago with the death of the Prophet's grandson, Hussain. His life and death has been buried under the mythological stories created by Shias and Sunnis. No, his death was not some pre-determined miracle. And no, he was not after the throne. His struggle was against intellectual slavery. He knew that the authoritarian monarchy system is death for free thinkers and hence a slow spiritual death for the Muslims. Since the only people who prosper under a monarch are the people who live to please that monarch. These are the people who do not possess a free-thinking mind and who do not question authority. Those who seek not to please the monarch but are free thinkers soon parish either through persecution or through hiding their realities. This is actually a very slow death for the nation, for it deprives the nation of new ideas and philosophies, which are necessary for people to evolve. Under such circumstances, with time all the free thinkers are either in exile or dead. The invitation to open thinking was strong enough in the Quran that the defeat of Imam Hussain (the biggest defeat Islam has ever faced in terms of its long lasting effects), did not immediately show its consequences. However, now after about 1500 years it is quite clear that the Muslim intellect is behind the rest of the world; the freethinkers are very few. Only those people are visible who follow authority and do not question (both at an academic level as well as a spiritual level). This should not be a surprise – it is pure natural selection. If you please a monarch, you live, if you don’t, you die – or in other words, if you think freely and question authority, you die, but if you subjugate and enslave your mind to please authority, you live.

We look at history, and learn from it. It has always been very important to be able to look at previous ideas and question them. If those ideas/theories were TRUE than questioning them would not change anything as the Truth can stand any questions. Galileo came up with the truth because he questioned the ideas of authority. Newton was such a great scientist, but Einstein questioned Newton's ideas and came up with new ideas, which if not entirely true, are definitely closer to the truth than Newton's ideas were. All the Prophets questioned authority. The Quran is full of these examples. Here is an example of Prophet Ibrahim(pbuh)

When the night covered him over, He saw a star: He said: 'This is my Lord.' But when it set, He said: 'I love not those that set.’ When he saw the moon rising in splendor, he said: 'This is my Lord.' But when the moon set, He said: 'unless my Lord guide me, I shall surely be among those who go astray.’ When he saw the sun rising in splendor, he said: 'This is my Lord; this is the greatest (of all).' But when the sun set, he said: 'O my people! I am indeed free from your (guilt) of giving partners to Allah. For me, I have set my face, firmly and truly, towards Him Who created the heavens and the earth, and never shall I give partners to Allah.'(Qur’an 6:76-79)

This example of Prophet Ibrahim(pbuh) is very important as it sheds light on several things.

1. He was willing to consider the belief of the "ulemas" of his nation. This shows his open minded questioning.

2. He only sought Allah's Guidance.

3. Since what his people believed was not the Truth, it could not stand his questioning, and thus he was able to, with the Guidance of Allah, arrive at the Truth.

What do Muslims believe in? Is it the truth? If it is the truth, then it should be able to stand any test and any questioning. If they have any fear from any questions, then that means that they are not standing by the truth and it is time for them to re-examine their belief. Since the Quran is the Truth, Allah has openly invited all human beings to ponder/think/question its content. In addition to that Allah has strongly discourage blind following of authority.

We have sent it down as an Arabic Quran in order that you may learn to use your aqal (brains). (Quran 12:2).

Here one of the purposes of the Quranic revelations is stated, i.e. so that human beings can learn how to use the gift of Allah called "aqal".

Do they not ponder on the Quran? Had it been from any other than Allah, they would certainly have found therein much discrepancy. (Quran 4:82).

Here again invitation is made to ponder and question the Quran. Allah is inviting people to look at this Book and ask your questions. You will not find any discrepancy in this book as it is the Truth and it is also not afraid of being questioned.

And We have indeed made the Quran easy to understand and remember: Then is there any that will receive admonition? (Quran 54:17, 22, 32, 40).

Again notice that the Quran is not asking people to follow blindly, but the invitation is being made to use understanding...aqal.

And they shall say: O our Lord! surely we obeyed our leaders and our great men, so they led us astray from the path;(Quran 33:67)

Here is the state of people who followed human authority without questioning it.

Or do you think that most of them do hear or use their reasoning? They are nothing but as cattle; nay, they are straying farther off from the path. (Quran 25:44)

And here is what Allah says about people who instead of questioning and using their reason follow authority and rely on the blind faith that somehow the majority will be guided to the truth.

Unfortunately this aspect of questioning and testing the truth is almost extinct in the Muslim world. Even when Muslims debate about religion, they quote human authority more often than the Quran. You will hear, "Shaykh A said this", and "Hadith Y says that". The Quran is quoted rarely – and most of the time it is misquoted to misdirect people to human authority. Reading books of Muslim ulema of today, one finds that they quote the Quran mostly to point to other sources. For example, many of the arguments developed in the fiqh books quote the Quranic verses “obey Allah and obey the Messenger”, then they assume that obeying the messenger is to obey the books of hadith, and then they develop the rest of the argument from the books of hadith.

It is this attitude that has overshadowed the entire Muslim world – not only in the field of religion but in every other field that requires thought and research. I will recount one personal example here. As a teenager, when I started my college career back in Pakistan, I attended the Government College Lahore – considered to be the top college in Pakistan, producing intellectuals like Dr. Muhammad Iqbal and Dr. Patris Bukhari. During one of the physics courses that I attended there, I had a disagreement with the professor who was teaching the class. I will not go into details, but he said something about the nature of light particles during one of his lectures. I stood up and disagreed with his statement . We went back and forth with arguments and counter arguments. Finally, when he ran out or arguments he pointed “authority” to me – he pointed to the textbook we were using in class and said “look at the book – it says the same thing”. I opened the page of the book that had its published date and showed that to him and said “sir, this book was published in 1964, four years before I was even born”.

The point of this example is that a professor at an illustrious college in Pakistan is still going by a book that was written years ago – he is happy to quote the authority of the textbook even when it is wrong. It simply was a reflection of the prevalent attitude all around him.