Defining the core identity of a 21st-century Islamic university

Bakar, Osman (2025) Defining the core identity of a 21st-century Islamic university. In: The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims 2025. The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, Amman, Jordan, pp. 248-252. ISBN 978-9957-635-82-4

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Abstract

In the post-colonial Muslim world, especially since the 1980s following the historic First World Conference on Muslim Education in 1978 held in Mecca, universities and colleges carrying the label “Muslim” or “Islamic” in their names have rapidly increased in number. These institutions are either public or private and are either national or international in character. These universities and colleges may be described as new institutional creatures in the modern world of education, since they are experimenters on the hybridization of traditional Islamic and modern Western educational curricula. The rapid growth of this category of educational institutions is phenomenal. In one sense, this is a positive development that we can only welcome and be proud of. It shows that many Muslims are fully aware of the importance of higher education to the future of the ummah. This awareness is all the more significant when viewed in the context of our time when the ummah is still a witness to rampant illiteracy and semi-literacy, a glaring social phenomenon that is contrary to the essential characteristics of Islam as a religion, a community, and a civilization of knowledge. The rapid growth of these educational institutions also shows that many Muslims are sensitive to the ummah’s needs to preserve the traditional Islamic curriculum and at the same time to provide an adequate curriculum in modern knowledge. In other words, they are sensitive to the challenge of how to achieve a hybridization of the two curricula that would best serve the interests of their respective national Muslim communities and of the global Muslim ummah at large. Some Muslims refer to their form of hybridization as “integration”. Some others call it “Islamization”. No matter what term is used, the whole hybridization exercise is conveying the common message that what the ummah needs is not higher education of just any kind, but rather one that would help give shape and meaning to the identity of Muslim educational institutions. The search for this institutional identity is ongoing. But in another sense, the springing up of all kinds of universities and colleges in the Muslim world, which is partly inspired by rapid changes in the Western higher education landscape itself, raises problematic issues to which their founders and builders, educationists and scholars, and local educational authorities, need to pay heed. It appears that, as a result of the rapid physical expansion of Muslim higher education institutions, the stakeholders, especially curriculum providers and their scholarly critics, hardly have time for a reasonable pause for reflection to examine if they are creating the right kind of universities—notwithstanding their wearing of the “Muslim” or “Islamic” label, and producing the right kind of university graduates needed by the 21st-century ummah. Based on preliminary investigations it appears that we have simply been moving forward in the educational sector during the last several decades by “producing more of the same” in terms of “types” and “identities” of higher Islamic educational institutions and, by inference, as well as in terms of academic and professional qualifications of “Islamic studies” graduates.

Item Type:	Book Chapter
Additional Information:	8757/122587
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Muslim higher education; Islamic epistemology; Tawhidic epistemology; Curriculum integration; Identity of a Muslim university; Role of a Muslim university.
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BP Islam. Bahaism. Theosophy, etc > BP190.5 Islamization of Knowledge BPL Islamic education L Education > L Education (General) L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2300 Higher Education L Education > LC Special aspects of education > LC8 Forms of education
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC)
Depositing User:	Prof Dr Osman Bakar
Date Deposited:	14 Aug 2025 15:19
Last Modified:	14 Aug 2025 15:29
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/122587

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