Indigenous Knowledge, Muslim Education, and Cosmopolitanism: In Pursuit of Knowledge without Borders

Abstract

Notwithstanding the flurry of pronouncements about Muslim education in recent years, in surveying some of the major philosophical ideas that constitute the concept, it appears as if three discernable epistemological and ethical practices frame a plausible understanding of Muslim education, namely tarbiyyah (socialization), ta’līm (critical engagement), and ta’dīb (social activism). These three practices have application in multiple areas of Muslim educational life for the purposes of both lifelong learning and social organization, thus contributing to its status as an indigenous knowledge system. Collectively, these three meanings serve not only to teach Muslims about the tenets of their faith, but offer the actual processes through which to socialize Muslims into an inherited knowledge system and how to flexibly use that knowledge in relation to, and in service of, humanity. It is our contention that these interrelated genres of Muslim education have as their morally worthwhile achievements the enhancement of people’s sense of rational judgment, criticality, and deliberative engagement—all optimal pursuits in pedagogical settings that can engender moral and social responsibility toward others in humane modes of being and living. But, if the moral worth of Muslim education, as we contend, resides in the moral and social responsibility toward others in society and is not confined to its contribution to a community of Muslims, then what separates and defines the indigenous Muslim community (from which an indigenous knowledge system emerges) from the community or society, as constituted by others of non-Muslim descent in a society?