The Humble I

Knowing, Doing, Becoming

Educating the Heart

When we see terrible or wicked things happen in the world, we moderns are often reluctant to ask ourselves why such bad things happen? The answer, if we’re honest and objective enough, will come back to us in no uncertain terms: they stem from dark, diseased or sinful hearts. In this latest episode of The Red Umbrella podcast, we explore Islam’s teaching on the spiritual heart, and the priority we must give to its sound education and health – purging from it such spiritual vices like greed, jealousy, malice, spite, hate, and an overly love for material stuff.

Knowing Tawhid in Ten Minutes Or Ten Years?

By the late eighties, or maybe the early nineties, ‘‘Aqidah comes first’ started to become something of a slogan in certain Muslim quarters here in Britain. It can’t be dismissed that ‘aqidah, ‘creed’ or ‘belief’ (from ‘aqada: to tie, bind, fasten securely – out of which comes the idea of tying certain beliefs to the heart in utter conviction of them), is the single most important aspect of the religion. One is not a Muslim until a small, core set of beliefs, or ‘aqidah, is tied to the heart. It’s as simple as that. In Islam, acts of piety follow on from sound intentions, which stem from a core set of sound beliefs.

Again, there’s no doubt that ‘aqidah transforms and defines the believer’s outlook on life. In the Quranic estimation of matters, if someone’s beliefs are sound and the conviction (yaqin) firm, deeds will be morally good and virtuous. Which is why ‘aqidah comes first; so that we may know ultimate truths, and that outlooks and actions can then give concrete expression to these truths. 

As for the basis of the Muslim creed or ‘aqidah, it comes in the following hadith in which the Prophet ﷺ said, when asked about what faith, or iman, entailed: ‘That you believe in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day, and to believe in divine destiny, both the good and the evil thereof.’1

LEARNING IMAN BEFORE THE QUR’AN

The hadith corpus details an interesting encounter. Yusuf b. Mahak relates that he was once in the presence of the lady ‘A’ishah, when a person came and asked that she show him her copy of the Qur’an, so that he may learn its chapter arrangements. But before doing so, she explained to him that: ‘The first of what was revealed were the shorter chapters (al-mufassal) that mentioned Paradise and Hell. When the people had turned and settled in Islam, the verses about the lawful and prohibited were revealed. Had the first thing to be revealed been: “Don’t drink alcohol,” they would have said: “We will never quit drinking alcohol!” Or if at the very outset adultery was forbidden, they would have said: “We will not stop having illicit sex!” There was revealed at Makkah to Muhammad ﷺ whilst I was still a young girl of playing age: No, but the Hour is their appointed time, and the Hour shall be more calamitous and bitter. [Q. 54:46] The chapters of Baqarah and Nisa’ were not revealed until I was with him [as wife].’ She then brought out her copy and dictated to him the order of the chapters.2

Ibn Hajr al-‘Asqalani makes the following observation, having quoted this report: ‘This points to the divine wisdom in the gradualness of Revelation and that the first thing the Qur’an calls to is to tawhid, to glad-tidings for believers, the delights of Paradise [for them], and to dire news of Hell for sinners and unbelievers. When souls had firmly settled upon this, religious laws were then sent down.’3

The same point – that only when people had begun to warm to the Quranic ‘aqidah regarding God, Prophethood and the Afterlife, and the hope, fear, trust, love and yearning it nurtures in hearts, were Islam’s laws and rulings sent down – was made by the Companion, Jundub b. ‘Abd Allah. He said of the method of education in the prophetic age: ‘We learnt iman before we learnt the Qur’an, then we learnt the Qur’an and it increased us in iman.’4 Here, iman in this context refers to the cardinal beliefs of Islam and to the spiritual states of the heart that such beliefs inspire or necessitate, while Qur’an refers to the religious laws and injunctions.

About this, Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah said, in discussing the spiritual virtues hearts should be adorned with, and the vices they must eschew or be emptied of: ‘However, the emptying and adorning that the Messenger came with is for the heart to be emptied of whatever Allah doesn’t love and filled with what Allah does love, emptied of worshipping other than Allah and filled with worshipping Allah, emptied of loving for other than Allah and filled with loving for Allah, and likewise expelling from it fear of other than Allah and putting in it fear of Allah; exalted is He, and ridding from it reliance upon other than Allah and rooting in it reliance on Allah. This is the Islam that incorporates the iman which aids and strengthens the Qur’an and doesn’t contradict or contravene it; as Jundub and Ibn ‘Umar have said: “We learnt iman before the Qur’an, then we learnt the Qur’an and it increased us in iman.”’5

ISLAM ESSENTIALISED

Yet to infer from this that no outward injunction was instated in the early Makkan years, or that Revelation was occupied solely with ‘aqidah, would be to misread Islam’s sacred history. Yes, the sha‘a’ir of Islam – those acts emblematic of the religion; like prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, or zakat – were made obligatory at a much later date. Nonetheless, there were some duties the Makkan Revelations constantly exhorted believers to; and these were what might be termed societal duties and ethical imperatives.

Thus the Qur’an enjoined on the fledgling community of believers to feed the poor, look after the orphans, attend to the weak and needy, be just in commercial dealings, shun fraud, offer neighbourly assistance, honour and serve parents, maintain the bonds of kith and kin, and to stop the murder of infant girls for fear of economic hardship or a supposed humiliation they may later bring on their family or clan. It also enjoined speaking truthfully, observing justice, acting compassionately, and tending to matters of the Spirit more than worldly things.

That societal obligations and ethics constitute cornerstones of the religion can also be seen in Ja‘far’s reply to the Negus, when the latter asked about the sum and substance of the new Islamic faith. The response of Ja’far to the Abyssinian Negus essentialises the Quranic message and enshrines its core teachings:

‘O King, we were a people steeped in ignorance, worshipping idols, eating carrion, committing indecencies, cutting-off kinship ties, mistreating our neighbours, and the strong would devour the weak. Thus we were, till God sent us a Messenger from among our own midst, one whose lineage, truth, trustworthiness and clemency we knew. He called us to God’s oneness and worship, and to renounce the stones and the idols that we and our fathers worshipped. He commanded us to speak the truth, to fulfil our promises, respect kinship ties and the rights of neighbours, and refrain from crimes and bloodshed. He forbade us from acting indecently, lying, devouring the wealth of orphans, and slandering chaste women. He ordered us to worship God alone and not ascribe partners to Him. He commanded us to pray, give charity and fast (and he enumerated other acts of Islam). So we confessed his truth, believed in him, and followed him in what he brought … For such reasons have our people turned on us and persecuted us, to make us revert to the worship of idols instead of the worship of God alone.’6

Thus there’s a certain core humanity which may be said to accompany, or even precede, religiosity, which the Qur’an includes in the overall concept of religion and faith.

CAN TAWHID BE LEARNT IN FIVE MINUTES?

So where are we heading with this? Well no doubt ‘aqidah does come first. Without assenting to the core six beliefs listed at the start of the chapter, one cannot said to have ‘submitted’; i.e. one isn’t as yet a Muslim. But those who confine Islam to little more than dogma or ‘aqidah, usually accompanied by an obsessions with a handful of external acts, do themselves and those they imprudently confront with their offbeat view, much disservice. The alleged justification for the focus is that the Prophet ﷺ spent ten years (thirteen, if we include the first three secretive years) in Makkah calling to tawhid – to God’s oneness. But to assume from this that ‘aqidah is all that was called to, or to downplay the spiritual and ethical dimensions of the Makkan Revelations has become quite the badge of a false Salafism in our times. Devoid of its spiritual or social concerns, ‘aqidah comes first tends to foster a cold, puritanical Islam stripped of its compassion, beauty and depth; as has been plain for all to see over these past three or four decades.

In this flawed sense, ‘aqidah comes first – its tone of smug superiority often unmistakable, and its small-minded assumption that it alone possesses the truth of tawhid that all others lack – has become more than a belief. It has become an unquestionable mantra where the act of believing is now more important than the content itself. It’s so dogmatically held that to disagree with it not only undermines the distorted truth, but is seen as an attack on the salaf themselves. This is no mere playground squabble of ‘I’m right and you’re wrong.’ Instead, it’s a case of ‘I’m right and you’re wrong, and your wrongness threatens my identity and my group affiliation.’ To suggest we need to be nuanced in this, or that there’s a broad way and a more focused way of looking at the issue, is to invite scorn, contempt and rejection.

In trying to redress the balance, some have tried to point out that people in the prophetic era learned tawhid in the space of five or ten minutes. This attempt at a corrective has, however, met with fierce backlash. Yet it can’t be denied that people did meet or hear the Prophet ﷺ for a short time, then accepted Islam there and then. There was no one month’s course on tawhid or a ten year diploma after which you graduate and have a right to be seen as a true muwahhid. Conversion to Islam, and to the acceptance of tawhid, often happened on the spot. Such was its blazing simplicity and brilliance, and such was the sheer magnetic power of the Qur’an, and the Prophet ﷺ, to attract hearts. Take the case of the lady Khadijah, for instance. As soon as the Prophet ﷺ had received the first revelation and had descended the slopes of the mountain, still trembling with fear; and no sooner did he tell his wife what had happened, she comforted him, reassured him and then believed in him on Day One. Ibn Hisham wrote:

‘Khadijah b. Khuwaylid believed in him, accepted as true what he brought from Allah and helped him in his affair. She was the first to believe in Allah and His Messenger and the truth of what he came with. Through her, Allah relieved the burdens of his Prophet ﷺ. Nor did he hear anything that hurt him of rejection or charges of falsehood which saddened him, except that Allah consoled him through her when he returned to her – reassuring him, comforting him, affirming his truth and down-playing peoples’ opposition. May Allah, exalted is He, have mercy upon her.’7

Another example is that of a young sayyiduna ‘Ali. The sirah records: The next day ‘Ali b. Abi Talib came as the two of them were praying and asked: ‘What is this, O Muhammad?’ He replied: ‘It is Allah’s religion that he has chosen for Himself and sent His Messengers with. I call you unto Allah, the One without any partner, and to worship Him, and that you reject al-Lat and al-‘Uzza.’ ‘Ali said: ‘This is a matter I have never heard of before today. I cannot decide a matter until I discuss it with Abu Talib.’ The Messenger of Allah ﷺ didn’t want his secret revealed before he announced the matter publicly, so he said: ‘O ‘Ali, if you do not accept Islam, then conceal this matter.’ ‘Ali tarried that night till Allah cast Islam into his heart. Early next morning he went to Allah’s Messenger ﷺ and asked him what he should do. He replied: ‘Bear witness that there is no god but Allah, alone without associate, and reject al-Lat and al-‘Uzza, and disavow any partners.’ ‘Ali did so and became a Muslim.8

TRUE TAWHID, BLINKERED TAWHID & THE REALITIES OF FAITH

The point in the above two accounts is that Islam was accepted without a lengthy discussion on tawhid; and examples like these abound in the sirah. The reason being is that the essence of tawhid is crystal clear: give up all forms of idolatry or ways of setting-up a partner with Allah, and worship God alone. Although the Qur’an uses various terms related to the practice of idolatry (e.g., taghut, jibt, asnam, and awthan), the principal theological term to designate the broader concept of worshipping deities other than God, or alongside God, is shirk (the root sh-r-k: to ‘set-up a partner’ with someone else in a sale or some other matter).

So is tawhid a ten minute thing or a ten year one? Well it is probably only ten minutes if one is calling a person to the bare bones of tawhid and to the six articles or pillars of iman; outlining for them what it essentially entails to become a Muslim. And quite often that’s more than enough for someone to get started on their journey. But ten years or more if we’re talking about actualising a rooted and transformative grasp of tawhid and avoiding, not just overt idolatry, but the subtle idolatry where the human will becomes divided between the Divine and between created things – be they worldly means (asbab), forces of nature, an over-veneration of holy men, or making gods out of our desire or whims. For idolatry, as presented in the Qur’an, is not only about images or stone idols, but with any contamination of God’s oneness, via an unwarranted association of created things as partners with God’s divinity, uniqueness, or sovereignty and lordship. That is, the Qur’an doesn’t employ shirk as a label for one specific act or belief system, but as a broader term representing any and every human folly to deify without just cause; to wrongfully idolise the things around us, or within us, and hence veil a direct encounter with al-Haqq, the Ultimate Reality.

Again, a lifetime or more if by it we mean deepening tawhid from rejecting overt partners, rivals, compares, or equals with Allah, to an intensification of perception that all acts emanate from Him alone, grasping this through spiritual witnessing (mushahadah) – as the Prophet ﷺ clarified when asked concerning spiritual excellence (ihsan): ‘That you worship Allah as though seeing Him.’9 While the first level of tawhid opens the door of salvation, this degree enriches the heart such that the fruits of this witnessing are a complete and unwavering surrender to Allah, a wholehearted love for and in Him, complete reliance of Him, and a turning away from all creation so that the heart neither hopes in, nor fears, nor seeks ultimate intimacy or reassurance, save in Him. It is for the human will never to be at odds with the Divine Will, but to be in harmony with it. Such is the loving surrender of Islam; such is true tawhid. All this comes under the sought-after rubric of haqa’iq al-iman – cultivating the deeper ‘realities of faith’.

And herein lies the tragedy of a very reductionist, blinkered view of tawhid. To cling to an Islam which offers so very little guidance on how to nurture the heart upon true tawhid, upon the haqa’iq al-iman, due to suffering from delusions of grandeur as already being ‘the vanguards of tawhid’, is to stand with one’s face to the wall. 

Shaykh Ahmad b. Ibrahim al-Wasiti: ‘Many of those who have been veiled from the realities of the science of tawhid, even if they be learned in the Sunnah and its details, are veiled because they only sought to acquire the legal rulings from the Sunnah. Their resolves fell well short in seeking from the Sunnah the haqa’iq al-iman. Had they sought it with sound intent, they would have reached it. But instead they directed themselves to love of this world.’10

O Allah! Grant our hearts openings to know You,
the sincerity to draw closer to You,
the will to seek only You,
and the patience
to tread the
path to
You

1. Muslim, no.8.

2. Al-Bukhari, no.4993.

3. Al-‘Asqalani, Fath al-Bari (Cairo: Dar al-‘Alamiyyah, 2013), 11:178.

4. Ibn Majah, no.62. It was graded as sahih in al-Albani, Sahih Sunan Ibn Majah (Riyadh: Maktabah al-Ma‘arif, 1997), 1:37-38.

5. Majmu‘ Fatawa (Riyadh: Dar ‘Alam al-Kutub, 1991), 10:401.

6. Ibn Hisham, al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, 1:270-71; Ahmad, no.1740. Its chain was graded as sahih in al-Albani, Fiqh al-Sirah (Dar al-Hadithah, 1965), 121.

7. Ibn Hisham al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah (Damietta: Dar Ibn Rajab, 2013), 1:198.

8. Ibn Kathir, al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah (Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘rifah, 1976), 1:428.

9. Muslim, no.8.

10. Al-Wasiti, Madkhal Ahl al-Fiqh wa’l-Lisan ila Maydan al-Mahabbah wa’l-‘Irfan (Beirut: Dar al-Basha’ir al-Islami, 2002), 50.

Is Today’s Islam a Failure or Success Story?

This is one of the shorter essays in my forthcoming book, God-willing, entitled: Modernity & Muslimness: Sixty Short Essays that Should Matter. As part of the introduction to the book, I wrote: In his travelogue on Islam in late nineteenth century England, Asmay started by saying: ‘Eight years ago, a faint sound began to come from the West to the East. Realising that the sound was significant, the Muslim umma sat up and took notice, cupping their hands to their ears. Giving all their attention to the sound, they could only make out this sentence, “Islam has started to appear in England.”’1 This book and its essays are a continuation of that sound, that faint murmur, which has only grown louder and more significant with the passage of time.

ONE COULD ARGUE that Islam, despite what we are being led to believe, is actually a modern success story. Now this might sound strange to some, perhaps to many. So let me explain:

No doubt, media portrayals are negative, dark and gloomy. And of course, events around the world involving Muslims, or at least the ones we tend to hear about and that get most media exposure, don’t lend themselves to much joy or cheer. So perhaps we as Muslims could be forgiven for feeling somewhat overwhelmed; feeling like little corks bobbing up and down in a raging sea of Western liberal, modernity. Yet despite this, if we look at it more broadly, Islam is actually the unsung success story of modernity. 

How is that?

Well let’s ask ourselves what religion is for? That will indicate how well or not Islam is doing. Here, there’s much to give thanks for, much to admire about our current situation; and there’s much more to look forward to in the coming future too – God willing.

Islam, as religion, must be judged in terms of: Does it still offer authentic, practical guidance for salvation? The answer to that is a resounding, Yes! It certainly does.

In fact, Islam continues to be relevant and practical to a growing number of people, and accessible to them too. And one significant reason for this is that Islam is universal. The Prophet ﷺ said: bu’ithtu li’l-nasi kaffah – ‘I have been sent to the whole of humanity.’2 This echoes what we read in the Holy Qur’an: Say [O Muhammad]: ‘O mankind! Truly I am the Messenger of Allah to you all.’ [Q.7:158]

Islam, therefore, has the inbuilt capacity to be native to any soil. And we Muslims must remember this, and not practice Islam in a way which blurs this universality, or makes it appear that it is an Asian or an Arab thing. It ought to be remembered that one of Islam’s great founding stories is of a gentile, Egyptian mother; Hagar, along with her Hebrew Canaanite young child; Ishmael, and their inculturation into the native Arabian landscape, language and cultural life. That’s to say that Islam has the socio-spiritual technology to become native to any soil.

Another reason it’s a success story has to do with numbers. What the data shows is that the number of Muslims is increasing here in Europe, and that by 2030, there will be more Muslims than Christians in Britain.

Related to this is the number of people who continue to convert to Islam, despite media negativity and Islamophobia; and inspite of us born Muslims being asleep to our higher vocation of living and spreading the truths of tawhid. Islam’s message of tawhid, healing and hope, with its universality, still has a powerful appeal to people.

Yet another proof of its success is that its mosques are overflowing. Part of the reason for this, in fact a significant part, is because Islam remains practical and liveable today, even in the modern West, when other religions are capitulating to the juggernaut of modernity, or simply being stamped out by it.

All in all, then – and all praise is for God – Islam as a religion is doing what it says on the tin. It is still offering practical, liveable ways of connecting with God and living godly lives, even amidst today’s turbulence.

1. In Yusuf Samih Asmay: Islam in Victorian Liverpool: An Ottoman Account of Britain’s First Mosque Community (Swansea: Claritas Books, 2021), 49.

2. Al-Bukhari, no.438; Muslim, no.521.

 

 

Modernity & Compulsory Schooling: the Theft of Children’s Minds?

‘We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the class room
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teachers leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.’
[Pink Floyd, Brick in the Wall]

IN 1800 ONLY five percent of Britain had any formal primary education. By 1900, that figure was ninety percent. Across Britain and Europe, children between the ages of five and ten were summoned to sit in classrooms to learn basic reading, writing and arithmetic. The reason why children were being sent to school was the same as why, for thousands of years, they had been kept at home: work and productivity.1

In pre-modern societies it was a given that, at the earliest possible time or opportunity, children would best help their family by going out to work in the fields, markets, workshops or factories. Modern societies, equally as interested in children’s earning power, legislated that compulsory state schooling would be the best guarantor of that power of productivity in the long run. Modern state education’s focus would be on functional literacy: teaching students just enough to make them economically productive; no more, and no less. ‘So much,’ as the educationalist John Taylor Gatto says, ‘for making boys and girls their personal best.’2

This explains why children in schools are so often bored, unconcerned and unfocused. They wonder why on earth are they being taught most of these subjects? What is it for? Most of what our children learn is school will not equip them for life in the actual world. ‘Given the extent on the emphasis on utility in the education system, it remains surprising for many modern citizens to reach middle age (or earlier) to discover that rather a lot appears to have been missed out in the curriculum. Despite the years of dedication and examination, the modern citizen is apt to look back and wonder with a mixture of irritation and sorrow why so much of what they needed to know was never taught to them at school.’3

And yet: ‘In all advanced nations, until a human is twenty-one or so, there is little else to do other than study. In sensible households, homework has a close to holy status. An army of teachers and educators, colleges and pedagogical bureaucrats is set us to feed industrial quanities of the young through the school machine.’4

When there are debates about education, and there are a lot of them, the usual focus is on how best to deliver an education to children, not what it is they should be educated in. School curricula aren’t reversed engineered  from the actual challenges and dilemmas of life. What children are taught in no way reflect the trials of life: issues of relationships, the sorrows of a meaningless job, coping with the tension of family, dealing with damaged but well intended parents, existential anxiety, the trauma of mortality, or the meaning of life and its struggles. Instead, we educate our children as if the greatest requirement of adulthood is a set of vocational or technical skills to help them earn money. To suggest that we ought to help educate them in their emotional dimensions – learning to understand themselves, empathise with others, nurture a self-confidence that isn’t narcissistic or self-damaging, or to get a handle on calm and self-compassion – would be to suggest an educational blasphemy of sorts. Yet it’s this kind of omission or failure that ensures the repeated betrayal of children’s education, and what some see as the theft of children’s minds.

RESTORE MEANING INTO EDUCATION

While modernity is interested in ‘useful’ learning, in the pre-modern world, those who were educated at a school or college were taught two things in particular: a holy text, and learning of high culture and dignity. Here in the West it meant the Bible and the classics, and in the Muslim East and West it meant the Qur’an and comportment (adab). Pre-modern education was about pursuing truth and wisdom, not money. Meaning and a sense of the sacred where at the centre of pre-modern education.

Modern education, by contrast, has no overarching educational philosophy behind it any more. Meaning is wholly absent.5 We as Muslims believe, as do other traditionally-minded religious people, that true education must be rooted in the sacred. The very first revelation of the Qur’an was in fact: Read in the name of your Lord who created! [Q.96:1] When education is cut-off from the sacred, it is corrupted or destroyed. It becomes meaningless. Children and teenagers throughout the educational establishments across the country know – they intuit it, even if they cannot articulate it – that so much of it is meaningless. ‘Why am I even studying this?’ ‘I’m being taught stuff that doesn’t have any meaning.’ ‘It can’t be all about getting a job so as to make money, when many billionaires like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others, dropped out of college.’

But when an educational system is designed chiefly for functionality, not imparting wisdom and meaning, its pretty much flawed from the ground up. For the modern world demanded that children learn the skills needed to keep the economy and productivity expanding. Kids had to be prepared to keep the machinery of modernity ticking over. That is what mattered the most; not learning for learning’s sake, or for deeper wisdom, or to become cultured and a cultivated human being. So when children in the twentieth century were encouraged in school to make things out of clay, or play with coloured bricks, or to put on plays – it may all have seemed progressive to the parents, but these move were only responses to demands by employers for new sets of skills required by new types of commerce and industry. And the same is the case today. Without imparting practical wisdom, or rooting education in meaning, our children’s learning will continue to be exploited by economic and corporate agendas where: ‘wealth takes precedence over family, image over substance, acquisition of apparent goods over real goods, gall over shame, and pleasure over happiness.’6

‘Sadly,’ said Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, ‘the tragic victims of this state of affairs are our children. They come into this world capable of greatness and instead are fed to the false god of appetite, resentment, and amusement. They suffer from obesity, sexual laxity, and a loss of family and community that en-genders anger towards their parents and society. They are indoctrinated into the false belief that life is for amusement and the best things in life come easily. Few are allowed to discover life’s greatest pleasure, which is self-knowledge and mastery of the soul that leads to an ethical life for the sake of God. For many, it’s not until they reach “maturity” that they realize they have been cheated out of nothing less than a life of meaning.’7

ROOT ISLAMIC EDUCATION & MUSLIM SCHOOLS

In the traditional Muslim world, education was always about learning how to carry ourselves; of how to dispose our souls to God, and to others. It was about comportment – or what in the Islamic world is called adab.

‘Pious character, refined manners and moderation constitute a twenty-fifth parts of prophethood,’ said the Prophet, peace be upon him.8 The idea of beautiful conduct or cultivated behaviour – in contrast to that seen as crass, vulgar or ugly – is gathered in that genre of knowledge termed adab. The Arabs say: adaba ila ta‘amihi – ‘He invited [others] to his banqueting feast.’ From it comes the idea of adab being an ‘invitation’ to partake of what is praiseworthy and virtuous. In its religious sense, adab is a call to acquire virtuous qualities. Adab carries with it the sense of civility, courtesy, refined manners, and cultured breeding or upbringing. Throughout the ages of Islam, adab was that type of learning acquired for the sake of living beautifully. For adab relates to what a person should know, should be, and should do – so as to perfect the art of living.

Again, in the Islamic tradition, the two words for education are: tarbiyah and ta‘lim. Tarbiyah is from the word, raba – to ‘grow’, ‘increase’, ‘flourish’. For education is about imparting learning to a student allowing him or her to grow and flourish as a human being. 

The other word, ta‘lim, is from the root word, ‘alamah, which means ‘sign’ or ‘imprint’. In other words, to make an impression or a mark. The earliest form of writing, Cuneiform, first used about five and a half thousand years ago, was done by pushing a wedge into soft clay to create an impression or sign. That is what ta‘lim is about. It’s about creating a beautuful, cultured mark or impression on the student’s heart, mind and character.

So all in all, Islamic education – at its root – is about growing in beauty as a person; as a believer; as a worshipper of God. At its heart is the imparting of meaning. Both Muslim parents, and Muslim teachers in Muslim schools, must understand that if home-schooling or Muslims schools are to be real  alternatives to state schools, they cannot follow the very same paradigm of schooling chiefly in terms of job prospects. It can’t be mainly about tests, grades, targets, and schooling for the sake of functional literacy. Children are an amanah; a trust. They deserve much better. So while no responsible parent can ignore the fact that the schooling children recieve is important in determining their employment prospects, it’s the right of all children to recieve more. It’s their right to recieve an education which balances order and routine with freedom and creativity; which equips them with tools to flourish in the wider world: physically, emotionally and intellectually; and which points them to adab, to meaning, to the sacred.

1. Cf. How to Survive the Modern World (London: School of Life, 2021), 213-14.

2. ‘A Short Angry History of Compulsory Schooling,’ in Gatto, Hanson & Sayers, Educating Your Child in Modern Times (California: Alhambra Productions, 2003), 16.

3. How to Survive the Modern World, 214.

4. The School of Life, What They Forgot to Teach You at School (London: The School of Life, 2021), 7.

5. This, and what follows, is based upon Shaykh Hamza Yusuf’s lecture: The School System.

6. Hamza Yusuf, ‘New Lamps for Old’, in Educating Your Child in Modern Times, 48.

7. ibid., 48.

8. Abu Dawud, no.4776. It was graded hasan in al-Albani, Sahih Sunan Abu Dawud (Riyadh: Maktabah al-Ma‘arif, 1998), 3:174.

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