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The mysterious origins of Islamic education: How did ancient Muslims value learning?
Education has played a key role since the founding of Islam, centered on the study of scriptures and their importance in Islamic tradition. Before modern times, education usually began at a young age and included the study of Arabic and the Quran. In the early centuries of Islam, the educational environment was informal, but from the 11th and 12th centuries onwards, the ruling elites began to establish institutions of higher religious learning, known as madrasas, with the aim of gaining and maintaining knowledge of Islam. Support and cooperation with scholars. These madrasa quickly expanded throughout the Islamic world, promoting the spread of Islamic learning and uniting diverse Islamic communities into a shared cultural project.
"Seeking knowledge is necessary even in China." Such teachings are common in many hadiths of Muhammad, showing the importance of learning for Muslims.
Throughout Islamic history, the emphasis on learning has found various manifestations. Learning usually begins at home or in a primary school connected to a mosque. Students first learn Arabic and the Quran, and some then go on to receive further education in Quranic interpretation and Islamic jurisprudence, which is considered particularly important. The content of the education focused on memorization, but also involved more advanced students in the tradition of textual criticism, thereby socializing scholars from a variety of social backgrounds into the ulama.
During its nearly thousand-year history, the Islamic Empire had at least 60 major centers of learning, with Baghdad and Cordoba being the two most famous in the East and the West. Although the initial educational setting was informal, a formal education system gradually emerged from the 11th to 12th centuries, marked by the establishment of medras. These institutions focus on the study of Islamic jurisprudence, but also cover other subjects such as theology, medicine and mathematics.
"Learning is the responsibility of all of us." This reflects the universality of Islamic education.
As for the theoretical aspects of Islamic education, the famous Islamic scholar Abu Hamid Ghazali stressed that the main purpose of education is to enable individuals to participate more faithfully in the teachings of Islam, emphasizing the close connection between religion and scholarship. Today's education system strives to strike a balance between modernization and traditional religious education in order to meet the challenges brought about by globalization. Furthermore, current teacher training programs in many Muslim countries are dedicated to the comprehensive development of teaching skills and religious knowledge, with the goal of producing teachers who have both moral values and are able to guide students.
"Knowledge is the core of Islamic teachings. Whether it is the spiritual field or the secular discipline, education expects the harmonious coexistence of both."
However, the role of women in Islamic education is also extremely important. While formal Madrassa education was mostly open to men, many women from prominent families were educated in private settings and earned degrees teaching subjects such as Hadith. These female scholars made important contributions to Islamic education, such as Khadija, Muhammad's wife, who taught the Quranic tradition in her home and had a profound influence.
Although Muslim women today face many restrictions on their access to education, this does not mean that such restrictions are institutionalized. Women in many places also hold an important position in the Islamic education system, especially in the dissemination and teaching of Hadith. Some academics have pointed out that despite limited educational opportunities for women in some cultural environments, women of all religious backgrounds have achieved greater educational success in modern times than in the past.
As global education trends have shown, the education gap between Muslims and other religious groups is narrowing, but structural educational inequalities still exist in some regions. This phenomenon also shows many overlapping economic and religious factors in the field of women's education. Therefore, how to balance the tradition and modern needs of Islamic education to meet the challenges of contemporary society may be a topic worthy of further exploration. Does this also reflect the general trend of current global education?
