Abnormalizing education: The case of Muslim countries getting rid of the Qur’an in their curricula.

Ifeoluwa Siddiq Oyelami

The censorship of Islamic education has more often than ever become a common debate topic among Muslims. From China to France, from India to Sri Lanka, the media is overwhelmed with a series of clampdowns on Islamic education. Closing Islamic schools, limiting what to be taught about Islam and similar shenanigans have become habitual in non-Muslim countries. However, similar manifestations in Muslim countries are worrisome, to say the least.

While examining the effects of the Israeli-Arab normalization on the Arab countries, I saw that a faster-than-expected change is occurring in these countries. Morocco was quick to integrate Jewish history into the curriculum, the UAE launched a Jewish school, Student exchange programmes were kick-started, among others. These developments were interesting and might be easily written off as just a manifestation of the countries new foreign policies.

But then, the most interesting development would be coming from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has ordered the education ministry to restrict verses from the Quran to Islamic religion textbooks. Stating this to be a means of “curbing terrorism.” The later and the supposed “land of Tawheed” has also scrubbed its school curriculum of punishment for homosexualism, a fight with the Jews as a sign of end time, as well as the virtues of martyrdom. A development that is in line with the country’s reform and change in regional politics.

But why are these so important?

The prophet said, “Indeed, Islam began as something strange, and it will return to being strange just as it began, so glad tidings of paradise be for the strangers.”It is amazing to see the so-called Muslim nations today, shying away from their Muslim identity by placing a limit to what their citizens can know about the religion.

For starters, this is not the time Sisi’s Egypt is pushing an anti-Islam curriculum reform. At its onset, the government ordered the removal of certain Islamic icons including Salahuddin Ayyubi from the history curriculum. Now, the predominantly Muslim country is limiting the use of the Quran to Islamic studies. Even though the Egyptian government may like to package this as a cool and progressive development, it appears it is either a naïve step or an actual wicked decision to ruin the religion, culture and value of the people.

This is so because the country speaks Arabic, and its population is predominantly Muslim.  The grammar, semantic and pragmatics of the Arabic language is enshrined in the Qur’an.  It is unthinkable that the language can be thought of without verses from the Qur’an. Even the great Arabic linguist Sibawayh included about 400 verses in his masterpiece “Al Kitab”. So, will Egypt be coming up with new Arabic literature? Something like “Oh no! we gonna take Shakespeare out of English literature”. But then, Shakespeare does not even represent in English, what the Qur’an represents in the Arabic language.

Meanwhile talking about teaching subjects like social studies and civic education without any Quranic verse in a Muslim community. It is like creating a new set of morals and values for the people. This has happened in countries that enrooted their moral understanding in the principles of secularism and humanism.  The apparent consequence of this is the creation of a nihilist generation that has found solace in irreligiosity and moral bankruptcy. 

It saddens that some of the leaders in Muslim countries are buying into the narrative of “Islam is a threat to world peace.”  So much that, they have decided to censor the Qur’an and its verses in the education sector because of this. Interestingly, a century ago similar policies were pushed for by colonial and missional educators for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, the Muslims are the ones pushing for that themselves today, based on the narratives of these same invaders of the past.

To be fair to these policymakers, let’s make a quick analogy between Islamic and the nationalist ideology. It is not exaggerative to conclude that more violence has been committed in the name of nationalism than in the name of Islam. But with this, we never see countries start removing national values from their pedagogy or editing their citizenship studies textbooks? Even when these values are man-induced, and Islam is a divine sanction. Except the “Muslim leaders” do not believe this. Allah says: “O you who believe! Enter into Islam whole-heartedly; and follow not the footsteps of shaytan; for he is to you an open enemy”.

As a matter of fact, now is not a time to discuss the removal of Quranic texts from the curriculum. Rather, it is the best time to talk about the integration of Islamic teachings into conventional studies. The Muslim world is faced with new inventions and social developments and the least the Muslims need is to have an education system that makes them understand the halal and haram of these developments. Through this,students should be made to appreciate the richness of Islam-based education; and grow to be leaders who tackle the problem with it. A generation of Muslim that sees Islamic teachings and Quranic verses as mere catechism or moral texts will only grow to think that Islamic thoughts cannot provide answers to their problems, and thus, look elsewhere.

In the past, some of these countries have championed the Islamization of knowledge, by spending billions of dollars on research. They were anxious to see the vacuum created by the ummah’s backwardness to be filled by great minds whose hearts are connected to the deen. But it seems the table turned around so quickly, they are now seeking progress in the renaissance way and clamouring for anything but the deen! Even though the existence and leadership of these nations owe a lot to Islam, which they claimed to uphold when it paid their local and foreign politics.

This is not to say that Muslims should not learn anything other than the Quran. The main argument in this article is that the education of Muslims should be predicated on the teachings of the Qur’an.   If humanist, nationalist, secularist education is good for those who believe in these ideologies, why take Islam away from Muslims?