THE PREDICAMENT OF SECULARIST EDUCATION

Historically, education was viewed as a process aiming at both providing students with technical skills and inculcating a set of values and beliefs that are basic and essential for the formation of conscientious citizens and good human beings. Indeed this was the purpose of education in the United States throughout the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century. Gradually, however, the inculcation of moral values was deemphasized, and schools were seen as a place for providing students with technical know-how. Many educationists thought that value inculcation amounted to indoctrination, and hence was inappropriate for secular schools. A secular school's mission, they insisted, should be limited to teaching students how to think and make decisions, and hence allow them to adopt their own values and beliefs. Others thought that since moral values are rooted in the religious experience of the people, a secular school operating in a multi-religious society should better leave the task of moral orientation to parents and the churches. In many cases, however, neither the could children come to grips with moral issues on their own, being denied guidance by school authorities, nor could families provide proper moral orientation in a rapidly changing and exceedingly complex modern world, as they were lacking the professional training or the time needed to handle this strenuous task, or both.

Evidently, to provide logical and methodical knowledge and then expect in-experienced and fragile souls to make right choices and correct decisions is to expect too much. For one thing, making choices and decisions is never merely a procedural matter, but presupposes the presence of a set of principles and criteria that form the basis of one’s decision. But for another, it is quite unreasonable to expect a child who lacks moral fortitude to begin with, to forego immediate pleasure and gratification for personal and societal interests that seem distant or elusive. This is more so when youngsters are bombarded with media programs which constantly glorify violence and thrive on erotic stimulation. Most vulnerable and susceptive to the effects of the sex-and-violence content of media programs are the children who come from poor and broken families, and who lack parental guidance and supervision.

It is quite appropriate before we turn to examine the role of Islamic education in counter-acting moral laxity to pause a bit to understand the social and cultural conditions which contributed to the moral "neutrality" of the education system in America. The current neutralistic posture of the American education system signifies an advanced stage of the project of secularism which has successfully undermined the authority of religion as
an essential source of moral and ontological knowledge. The process of secularization started as an effort aiming at liberating science and scholarship from the authority of the church. Early advocates of the separation of state and church, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, had no intention to undermine religion, or faith in the divine, but rather predicated their reformist ideas on the notion of God and civil religion. Descartes, hence, argued "that the certainty and truth of all knowledge depends uniquely on my awareness of the true God, to such an extent that I was incapable of perfect knowledge about anything else until I became aware of him". Similarly, Rousseau, while critical of the way religion was traditionally taught and practiced, recognized the need, even the necessity, of religious commitment and faith for the modern state to function properly. He, therefore identified a number of "dogmas", and argued for their inclusion in the "civil religion" he advocated: "The existence of an omnipotent, intelligent, benevolent divinity that foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the punishment of sinners; the sanctity of the social contract and the law – these are the positive dogmas. As for the negative dogmas I would limit them to a single one: no intolerance."

Even Kant, who limited the notion of truth to empirical experience and labored to set morality on rational foundation insisted that "without a God and without a world invisible to us now but hoped for, the glorious ideals of morality are indeed objects of approval and admiration, but not springs of purpose and action". However, by denying the possibility of transcendental truth, and as a result of the relentless attack on the authority of revelation as a source of ethical and ontological knowledge, secularist scholars have been able to successfully marginalize religion and undermine morality. The efforts to ground morality in utility and cost-benefit calculation, rather than truth, proved to be counter intuitive and futile, and gave rise to moral relativism; which continues to undermine efforts to revive ethical teaching in schools.

Overcoming the moral crisis of education requires a solution that restores religious faith while continues to be mindful of the need to avoid any authoritarian imposition of beliefs and values particular to any specific religious group on others.

A MODEL FOR ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION:
TOWARDS INTEGRATION OF KNOWLEDGE

By undermining the authority of divine revaluation as a source of moral values and the overall meaning of life, secularism has contributed in a decisive way to the loss of meaning and transcendental purpose of life, and hence has precipitated the rise of the hedonistic and nihilistic tendencies of modern society. Drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, school violence, collective suicide, rampage killing, and child prostitution, are some of the more visible manifestations of modern-day hedonism and nihilism.

The loss of meaning did not happen immediately as a result of the marginalization of religious knowledge because philosophy replaced religion as the provider of the overall meaning and purpose of life. Indeed, up to the late nineteenth century the various fields of knowledge were seen as branches of the study of philosophy. While the various fields of knowledge were united around a core of religious beliefs and values in medieval times, the unity of knowledge and the interconnectedness of disciplines were ensured later by a core of metaphysical beliefs and values.

However, by the mid-nineteenth century, knowledge began to experience a process of fragmentation or disintegration, as philosophy, religion, and ethics were reduced to disciplines standing on par with other disciplines. The various disciplines of knowledge have become autonomous spheres lacking any uniting core of overarching beliefs and principles. With the fragmentation of knowledge, the concept of universally valid truth and moral principles became problematic, and truth became parochial, as it
became valid only to a specific discipline or community.

The new concept of truth did not only take away the total meaning of human existence, but led to the fragmentation of human consciousness and knowledge. For in the absence of a set of absolute values universally valid, the various branches of modern knowledge (i.e. sociology, economics, psychology, political science, etc.), which emerged out of the demise of modern philosophy, developed their own idiosyncratic standards. With the development of modern social sciences the unity and interdependence of the various fields of knowledge were lost. Henceforth ethics and religion were reduced into two of the various spheres of knowledge, independent of economics, politics, psychology and all other fields of social sciences. Thus morality does not figure in economic studies and is not a legitimate concern of the specialist in the field. Economic transactions are valued or devalued only in relation to the concern of utility maximization; justice, fidelity, and fairness are not legitimate concerns of the modern economist.

Because modern knowledge lacks a central core and overarching principle to keep the totality of social experience in unity, the consciousness of the modern man has been disintegrated, and modern social sciences have been fragmented. The mission of Islamic education is to reintegrate the fragmented consciousness of modern man by once again repositioning divine revelation at the core of human consciousness, the binding and nurturing core which the secular project has managed to destroy.

Methodologically speaking, restoring the divine core to the spheres of knowledge means that revelation has to be reinstated as a source of knowledge. This has to be done without bouncing to the other extreme one finds in traditional knowledge, whereby notions found in the divine text are dogmatically interpreted, without regard to the knowledge acquired through worldly experience. Both revelation and the experienced reality should form the foundation for producing a body of knowledge dealing with modern socio-temporal challenges while remaining true to the spirit, purposes, and aspiration of transcendental truth. This body of knowledge has to emerge out of a vigorous and methodical application of reasoning on the two main sources of knowledge: divine revelation and the observable world.

The above conclusion has far reaching implications for the ongoing effort to develop an Islamic education capable of producing well-balanced personalities that combine efficacy and vigor with profound religious commitment and faith. The complete secularization of the autonomous spheres of knowledge simply means that the Islamic school curriculum that haphazardly combines subjects produced by secularist schools with Islamic subjects does not go far enough towards producing a balanced Islamic personality. For such a curriculum fails to reconcile the internal contradictions between the secularist worldview embedded in the subjects adopted from the public school system and the Islamic worldview reflected in the Islamic study subjects.

If the Islamic school project is to succeed in achieving the goal of graduating well-rounded human beings, creative energy and financial resources must be channeled to produce an alternative school curriculum capable of bringing about integration of knowledge and consciousness, so ultimately students graduate from Islamic school with (1) clear awareness of their purposes in life and responsibilities to their family, community, and
humanity at large; (2) sharp vision as to what has to be accomplished for the betterment of human life; and (3) methodical thinking and substantive knowledge of the social and natural environments.

While some schools and individuals have already started moving in this direction, the resources required for achieving these goals are beyond any individual person or school. The task requires concerted action on the part of the entire Muslim community. The few educational councils concerned with advancing the agenda of Islamic education, and effecting better coordination among Islamic schools and educationists, such as the Council on Islamic Education (CIE) and the Council of Islamic Schools of North America (CISNA), have not received the type of community support required for the arduous task they face. The lack of substantial support is due partially to the lack of awareness of the need for an alternative school curriculum based on the notion of integration of knowledge. The meager support given to educational councils is also due to the fragmentation of communities and organizations alluded to earlier, and the absence of strong and well-organized cooperation on the national level.

The above conclusion underscores the interconnectedness between the development of educational system and the political maturation of the Muslim community, and hence leads us directly to raise the question of political action. This is the focus of the following section.

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