33%
THE INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITIES AND THE ‘ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE’ PROJECT
In contrast, the International Islamic Universities would represent a third variety of Islamic schools that could be called ‘modernist’. They would be modernist in a sense where they teach modern arts and sciences in a religious context. They would aim at creating conditions for students where ideally they would successfully compete with secular and Western students and still keep a much-regulated religious life-style. In addition, they would allow the students to acquire and apply religious knowledge. All this is meant as a service to the local and transnational Muslim community which is seen in need of uplift.
When these universities emerged their understanding of ‘modernization’ was rather different though. They gradually arose out of a project for the ‘Islamization of knowledge’ that did not recognize the validity of secular or Western knowledge per se. Its proponents saw the need for Muslims to close the perceived knowledge gap to the West by searching for a ‘third’ way into modernity, or an ‘Islamic middle path’ (Abaza, 2002, 144) . This road would lead along the path of reinterpretation of Western and secular knowledge in line with the theological tenets of Islam. Almost 30 years down the road, the various discursive and research projects venturing into the Islamization of social sciences and philosophy, but also of economics, and some technical sciences, have produced little results.
The project of the ‘Islamization of knowledge’ was more clearly articulated by the International Institutes of Islamic Thought (IIIT) forming the nucleus of the International Islamic University (IIU) movement and binding them together conceptually since 1980 (cf. Table 7.3). During this period, these institutions have passed through different phases which could be conditionally identified as (1) ideological, (2) political, and (3) developmental. When the major ones such as the IIUs and IIITs in Islamabad (1982), Kuala Lumpur (1982) and Herndon, Virginia, (1981) came into being the Islamist initiators were still driven by pro-Western sentiments of finding their own but largely compatible road to modernity. At the time, they pursued projects of cooperation with many departments of Islamic studies in Western universities. Sunni Islamists were the allies of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan and against Iran whom the West hoped to solely direct against communism and left-leaning populism. During this first phase, the Islamic Universities established themselves as an extension of the IIIT philosophy with an ideological orientation towards Islamism.
After the end of the cold war and the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, they entered a second, more political phase of ‘internationalism’. They witnessed rapid growth attracting students from many Muslim countries and minority communities. Their political ambitions and ideological concerns grew tremendously with wars raging in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Students from these universities started organizing in support of the new jih¯ad causes. By the end of the nineties, but more so after 9/11, this trend ran out of steam and a third phase of development concerns set in. New students now expected to gain more from their studies than religious knowledge. They wanted a degree in worldly sciences which would guarantee them viable career options. The universities became tools to promote the formation of national elites that remained firmly embedded in Muslim culture. Foreign, mainly Middle Eastern and Saudi, funding was drying up and gradually replaced by national governments involved.
Yet, the ideological, political and developmental aspects have practically always coexisted, albeit with varying emphasis. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which had strongly promoted the idea of separate Islamic schools, had stressed the development aspect from the very beginning. The Islamic universities in Uganda and Niger in particular were created at the decision of the 1974 Lahore summit of the OIC (see Table 7.3). The seventh OIC Foreign Ministers meeting in Istanbul decreed in 1976:
53. The Conference, recognizing the need for the establishment of Arab Islamic schools all over the world to provide education for Muslim children whose parents might be working in foreign countries, decided to give moral and educational assistance to the Federation of International Arab Islamic Schools established recently in Saudi Arabia and to any other organizations that may be undertaking similar projects. It also called on Member States to consider the desirability of introducing Arabic as one of the compulsory languages in the curricula of their schools and other educational institutions. 16
The religious dimension of these schools developed with reference to the ‘Islamization of knowledge’ project in public interventions by scholars like Muhammad Naguib Syed al-Attas (b. 1931). In his lecture of 1976 and his later book of 1978 on Islam and Secularism he took the line that the (Western) secular sciences need to be Islamized in order for Muslims to regain their identity (al-Attas, 1976, 1998):
Hence those integral components whose historical and cultural effect in the West pertain to the dimensions of secularization, and which are not necessarily the monopoly of Western culture and civilization because they also play an important historical and cultural role in the impact of Islam in human history and culture, should simply be interpreted in their proper Islamic perspective as the integral components in the dimensions of islamization. (al-Attas 1998: 44)
From this perspective, Islamization was a continuation of Westernization, was enlightenment without distancing man from God.
While the argument continues today, the emphasis has shifted towards a more political connotation. Rashid Moten calls the ‘Islamization of knowledge … a process of developing or generating human knowledge in harmony with the revealed will of Allah’. He contends that ‘its aim is to critique, analyze and reformulate Western academic disciplines in such a manner that revelation is reinstated in man’s intellectual life and in fact becomes a basic source of knowledge’. It seeks ‘to provide to the Muslim ummah a vision as well as a methodology to confront the contemporary challenges and to reclaim Islam’s lost civilizational glory’ (Moten, 2004: 248).
While Islamic universities today see their Islamic teaching rather as a means of providing the moral values as bedrock to studies of secular sciences, the dissemination and teaching of Islam still plays a key role at these universities. All students, including those from nonreligious course programs, have to pass the University minimum course in Islamic studies during which they also need to learn Arabic. In addition, more importantly, the modern Islamic universities see themselves fulfilling the task of a missionary organization, of da’wa.17 Their da’wa is comparable to the reformist schools discussed earlier in that it follows the same literalist guidelines of Qur’anic and Hadith studies. On one level, they direct their da’wa at the modern national intelligentsia which normally would not attend the traditional and orthodox schools. On another lever, the universities also aim at bringing a more ‘upgraded’ and ‘sophisticated’ da’wa to the orthodox and traditional sectors. They organize qualification courses for madrasas and other traditionalinstitutions, study and defend the orthodox and traditional Islamic school system against secular and Western criticism; and serve as an access point for madrasa graduates to enter the mainstream educational system because of their mastery of Arabic. This ambiguity of purpose and the concomitant process of redefining Islamization can be clearly illustrated on the example of the International Islamic University in Islamabad (IIUI).