Full Description
Addressing the rupture between religious and social sciences in Arab universities, this book provides a critical assessment of the curricula of Shariah and Islamic Studies departments across the Arab World, arguing for increased interdisciplinary dialogue.
Based on over 250 interviews with university students and teachers, this study is the sum of five years of field research observing the curricula and teaching styles of colleges in the Shariah sciences. The author provides critical insight into these curricula by focusing on case studies in Lebanon and Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait and Qatar, and in Malaysia. In doing so, the book aims to answer the following questions:
What is the aim of religious education?
Does it aim to create people who specialize solely in religious affairs, or does it aim to form the student according to a comprehensive human framework?
What is the nature of the relationship between the social sciences and the Shariah sciences?
The book concludes by examining three pioneering institutions which have introduced alternative curricula in teaching Shariah studies.
The book has wide geographic and ideological coverage, and will appeal to university students, academics, and policy analysts working across a range of disciplines, including the philosophy of knowledge, Islamic law and education, and sociology.
Contents
Introduction Part I: Theoretical Approaches and Contexts 1. Shariah Education: Its History, Crisis and Approaches 2. The Arab Religious Field 3. The Islamization of Knowledge: Appraisal and Alternative Part II: Curricula of Shariah Programs in the Arab World 4. Curricula of Shariah Programs in Lebanon: Dominance of the Traditionalist Tendency 5. Shariah Education in Jordan: Traditionalism in a Complicated Religious Field 6. University Shariah Education in Kuwait: Dominance of the Salafi Approach 7. Curricula of Shariah Programs and Islamic Studies in Morocco: Maqasid al-Shariah Approach Part III: Alternative Models 8. Reviving the Ethical in the Shariah Sciences: The Case of the College of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University 9. From Streamlining to Mainstreaming "Islamization of Knowledge": The Case of the International Islamic University of Malaysia Part IV: Reality, Rupture and Alternative 10. Problems Shared by Shariah Colleges 11. Conclusion: Towards Methodological Alternatives in Connecting the Shariah Sciences to the Social Sciences
