Conflicting WorldViews: Western & Islamic

(bit.ly/AZCWWI) UPDATE: with reference to this topic, see also: Islamic WorldView: Central to Islamic Education

Based on experience from the first week of my online course on Real Statistics: An Islamic Approach, I have re-designed the course to make it self-paced, and split it into self-contained modules.  I recommend the first module, on Islamic Principles of Education, to all teachers and students, because it sets out the striking differences between Western and Islamic approach to education. (To register for this module, fill out form Registration: PIE.) In particular, there is very little awareness among Muslims that Western educational methods teach us to look at the World in a way that is not compatible with Islamic teachings. The first lesson of the first module is provided below. After completion of all lessons in a module, a quiz will be available for self-testing, and passing the quiz will provide access to materials in module 2. ::: Module 1: Islamic Principles of Education :::

Lesson 1.1: Recognizing the Conflict

This lesson is addressed to a Muslim audience. The goal of this lesson is to create awareness of a deep conflict that exists in the minds of nearly all Muslims, often without conscious awareness that there is such a conflict. Educated Muslims learn two sets of lessons about the world we live in, one which comes from our heritage and the Islamic traditions, and another one which we learn from our Western education. These two create WorldViews which are dramatically opposed to each other in many ways. Using IWV for Islamic WorldView, and WWV for the Western worldview, both IWV and WWV make strong competing claims:

[IWV] The world was in darkness until the sun rose in the Arabian desert with the advent of Islam. The teachings of Islam transformed the course of history and launched a civilization which enlightened the world for a thousand years. For various reasons, there have been temporary setbacks leading to decline and degeneration among Muslims over the past few centuries. But Islam contains complete and perfect guidance for all times to come, and implementing the teachings of Islam today would once again lead the Muslims to world leadership, as it did for a thousand years in the past.

[WWV] The world was enveloped in darkness and ignorance, until the sun of reason rose in Europe in the sixteenth century. Mankind learned to think for themselves, reject superstition, discover science and technology, and make tremendous advances in all fields of knowledge, for the first time in human history. They created civilization, literature, philosophy, and everything good known to mankind today.  Their accomplishments have shaped the world as we know it, and far outshine those of any other civilization.

It should be obvious that these two worldviews are in direct conflict with each other. Islam teaches us IWV while our Western education is based entirely on WWV. Nearly all of the education we receive teaches us about the accomplishments of the West over the past few centuries. All of the subjects we study – mathematics, chemistry, biology, physics, statistics, economics, politics – even business and medical ethics – are based on textbooks written by Western authors based on the Western intellectual tradition. There is no reference to the Quran and Hadeeth, and we search the teachings of Islam in vain for any guidance about these modern subjects. The evidence for the truth of the claims of WWV seems strong and almost impossible to deny.  But acceptance of WWV leads to an impossible dilemma for Muslims. The standard interpretation of Qur’an, 5:3 “This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed my favor on you and chosen for you Islam as a religion” is that the Quran offers us complete and perfect guidance for all times to come. Yet, it seems that success in the World today depends almost entirely on acquiring the Western knowledge which they have gathered over the past three centuries, and which is not present anywhere in the Quran and the Hadeeth.

The first module of the course will be devoted to resolving this apparent contradiction, and explaining why, despite appearances to the contrary, the teachings of Islam do contain complete and perfect guidance for today. Our goal will be to establish that Islamic teachings are just as revolutionary today as they were 1440 years ago – time has not made them obsolete. Rather, the prophecies made about the decline of Islam have come true:

1. Islam came as a stranger, and will become a stranger.
2. Muslims will follow the ways of the Jews and Christians, even crawling into snake-holes after them.
3. Nothing will remain of Islam except its name, and nothing will remain of the Quran except its writing.
4. Enemies will gather over Muslims like diners gather for a feast. Although Muslims will be large in numbers, they will be weakened by the disease of love of this world and the fear of death.

The goal of the first module is to remove this apparent contradiction by explaining how to make sense of an IWV, in face of the apparent dominance of the West. Some clues about how to make sense of the world in light of IWV, which necessarily involves rejecting WWV, are furnished by the Quran. The Quran (3:192) tells us not to deceived by the apparent power and luxury enjoyed by the unbelievers in this temporary world. The Quran (43:33) tells us that God would have made the houses of the unbelievers out of silver. He did not do so out of His Mercy, because this would have made the temptation to leave Islam too great for the Muslims. The point is that the apparent worldly success of the West is not the criteria by which we should judge the value of Western knowledge.

This post (1.1) is meant to create awareness of a conflict which exists in our minds, perhaps without our conscious awareness of it. In later posts, we will go over how this conflict can be resolved. Some hints in this direction have already been provided. But it is important to note that we have absorbed the Western WorldView (WWV) over many, many, years of training in a Western system of education. Dislodging it from our minds is not at all easy or simple. Many different kinds of questions and perplexities arise in the process. There are hundreds of myths that we have absorbed, and learned to think of as truth. The best way to approach the process of unlearning is to simple hold our current beliefs which support the WWV in suspension – put them aside while we learn a different way of looking at world created by an IWV. After this new way of looking at the world becomes clearer and stronger, then we will be in a position to compare the two.

ADDITIONAL READINGS (Optional): For some more discussion of the issues raised in this post see:

1. Islamic Knowledge: Still Revolutionary after 1440 Years!
2. The Quran: Complete and Perfect Guidance.
3. The Power of the Quran: Urdu Graduation speech at Hira Islamic School System for Huffaz.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER – I would like to ask readers to provide answers in comments on this post. We will take up these questions for further discussion later.

Q1: How do YOU resolve this conflict in your own mind, between the two worldviews?

Q2: Why is there so little awareness of this conflict? Muslims teachers happily adopt Western educational methods, without any recognition that the textbooks they teach form create a Western WorldView in the minds of readers, alienating them from Islam.

POSTSCRIPT: See also, related post “From Light to Darkness” which is how the Quran describes the condition of the unbelievers. But our eyes show the opposite: they have the light of knowledge, while Muslims are in darkness of ignorance. Again, this is mystery and a puzzle. Finally – the second lesson will be: L1.2 What the World Lost Due to the Decline of the Islamic Civilization. This spells out the Islamic WorldView (IWV), described briefly above, which is strongly opposed to the WWV that we learn from our Western education.

An e-book which provides a lot of details and a collection of various articles on different aspect of the Islamic WorldView is available from: An Islamic Worldview: Essays on the Conflict between Islam and Modernity.