In
seeking to live successfully in the modern world, in independence and according
to Islamic principles, Muslim countries have been emphasizing a great deal the
significance of the role of education and the importance of mastering Western
science and technology. Already in the 19th century, certain Muslim countries
such as Egypt, Ottoman Turkey and Persia established institutions of higher
learning where the modem sciences and especially medicine were taught.
During
this century educational institutions at all levels have proliferated
throughout the Islamic world. Nearly every science ranging from mathematics to
biology as well as various fields of modern technology are taught in these
institutions and some notable scientists have been produced by the Islamic
world, men and women who have often combined education in these institutions
with training in the West.
In
various parts of the Islamic world there is, however, a sense that educational
institutions must be expanded and also have their standards improved to the
level of the best institutions in the world in various fields of leaming
especially science and technology. At the same time there is an awareness that
the educational system must be based totally on Islamic principles and the
influence of alien cultural and ethical values and norms, to the extent that
they are negative, be diminished.
To remedy this problem a number of
international Islamic educational conferences have been held, the first one in
Makkah in 1977, and the foremost thinkers of the Islamic world have been
brought together to study and ponder over the question of the relation between
Islam and modern science. This is an ongoing process which is at the center of
attention in many parts of the Islamic world and which indicates the
significance of educational questions in the Islamic world today.
The
oldest university in the world which is still functioning is the eleven
hundred-year-old Islamic university of Fez, Morocco, known as the Qarawiyyin.
This old tradition of Islamic learning influenced the West greatly through
Spain. In this land where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived for the most part
peacefully for many centuries, translations began to be made in the 11th
century mostly in Toledo of Islamic works into Latin often through the
intermediary of Jewish scholars most of whom knew Arabic and often wrote in
Arabic. As a result of these translations, Islamic thought and through it much
of Greek thought became known to the West and Western schools of learning began
to flourish.
Even the Islamic educational system was emulated in Europe and to
this day the term chair in a university reflects the Arabic kursi (literally
seat) upon which a teacher would sit to teach his students in the madrasah
(school of higher learning). As European civillization grew and reached the
high Middle Ages, there was hardly a field of learning or form of art, whether
it was literature or architecture, where there was not some influence of Islam
present.
Islamic learning became in this way part and parcel of Western
civilization even if with the advent of the Renaissance, the West not only
turned against its own medieval past but also sought to forget the long
relation it had had with the Islamic world, one which was based on intellectual
respect despite religious opposition.
