High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
The European Legacy, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 453–470, 2001
Notes on the Isocratic Legacy and Islamic PoliticalThought: The Example of Education
1
,,
J
AMES
M
UIR
,,
I
NTRODUCTION
An unfortunate feature of human history is the tendency for religious differencesand conicts to nourish themselves with the poisonous brew of ignorance andprejudice. While much can sometimes be done to reduce prejudice, it seems to me thatscholars and educators ought to be primarily concerned with the more fundamental andenduring goal of reducing ignorance. One’s success in reducing ignorance—includingone’s own—will depend upon one’s motives.The study of Islamic educational philosophy may be motivated by current practicalconcerns: the desire of British Muslims to have Islamic schools, whether fundedprivately or by the state, is one topical example. From the perspective of educationalphilosophy, however, such a motive is exceedingly narrow, circumscribed by theconcepts and categories of the local political disputes of the moment. For thosemotivated by a desire for knowledge and understanding of a tradition outside their own,it is most doubtful that any study of Islamic philosophy restricted by current practicalconcerns can be at all productive. There is no simple correspondence betweenknowledge and “relevance.”There must, however, be some connection between two traditions of thought andpractice if there is to be a point of departure, and a point of entry, which allows thescholar to step from one tradition to another. The legacy of Isocrates may constitute onesuch point of departure, which will help us to understand the relation between twotraditions, the classical Greek and the Islamic. The dominance of the Isocratic legacy inWestern education is well established and widely known among historians, classicistsand political philosophers, although awareness of it has only just begun to surface amongeducationists.
2
Similarly, the Isocratic legacy to education (and the rich tradition of Arabic Platonism in philosophy) has inuenced Islamic thought, though in ways that arestill not yet well understood. The intention of this paper is to suggest that a modiedform of the Isocratic educational tradition is a fundamental component of Islamicpolitical thought, namely, Islamic educational thought.This general wording of the intention of this paper in terms of Islamic politicalthought may give rise to a misunderstanding. Islam, of course, is regarded by itsadherents as a unied and universal system of belief and behaviour, founded on
,
Department of Philosophy, University of Winnipeg, 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, MB, Canada R3B 2E9. E-mail: jmuir1@uwinnipeg.caISSN 1084-8770print/ISSN 1470-1316online/01/040453-18
Ó
2001 InternationalSociety for the Study ofEuropean IdeasDOI: 10.1080/10848770120069205
454
,
J
AMES
M
UIR
Revelation and encompassing law, morality, religious observance, private belief andpublic behaviour. Similarly, the Prophet, Muhammad, is thought to be a model to beemulated in every part of one’s life. It may therefore seem at rst glance that theintention of this paper is based on a failure to understand this unity and universality of Islam: to focus on Islamic political thought specically, including the Prophet’s role asa legislator and educator, may seem to be to articially separate parts of Islamic thoughtand the life of Muhammad from the greater whole of which they are a part. This is areasonable concern, and needs to be dealt with here.The argument I present here neither rests on nor assumes a failure to recognize theunity of Islamic thought and practice. On the contrary, although I will focus onparticular parts of Islamic thought and life, I will do so partly with the intention of recovering a clearer sense of the enduring Islamic understanding of the necessary unityof those parts within the greater system of Islam. Anyone familiar with Islam (or indeedwith monotheism generally) will know that politics and education are closely related toone another, as well as integral parts of its system of belief as a whole. The argumentof this paper will concentrate on the relationship between the political and educationalcomponents of Islam, and leave their relation to the greater part of Islam to another occasion. It is my view that the specic relation between theologico-political thoughtand education, and the historical legacy of that relationship, are much misunderstood incontemporary thought.A second objection that might arise concerns the necessity, if any, of using thethought of Isocrates to understand the relation between education and political thoughtin Islam. One might plausibly raise two questions here. First, it might be suggested thatwithin Islamic thought there is a clear (and clearly articulated) understanding of theneed to ensure that education is closely related to the political and theological principlesthat dene the community of believers. If this is so, then it could seem that there is noneed to articulate the relation from the perspective of Isocrates’ educational thought.Secondly, it might be observed that all civilizations assume that there is and ought tobe a close relation between their political principles and their educational aims, and thatit is not clear why I am emphasizing this in the case of Islam specically. I wouldrespond to these questions by pointing out that the present paper is only a part of alarger project on which I am engaged, which is an attempt to recover a clearer andmore complete understanding of the importance and inuence of Isocrates in thehistory of political and educational thought generally, including pagan, Jewish, Chris-tian, Islamic and secular traditions. It is my view that each of these traditions adheresto somewhat different conceptions of political and educational value, but that all havein common an Isocratic conception of the specic
logical structure
of relation betweenpolitics and education.
T
HREE
O
BSTACLES TO THE
S
TUDY OF
P
OLITICS AND
E
DUCATION IN
I
SLAM
Anyone in Europe or North America intending to study Islamic political andeducational thought must confront three obstacles to such study. First, there is littleprevious work on these subjects by Western scholars, who have largely ignored Islamiceducational thought. The English-language
Encyclopaedia of Islam
, for example, does notcontain an article on education.
3
Curtis and Boultwood’s
A Short History of Educational
Isocratic Legacy and Islamic Political Thought
,
455
Ideas
makes no mention of Islamic educational ideas. Similarly, in a widely used text,Boyd observes only that in late classical antiquity,
the works of Aristotle passed into the hands of Mohammedan scholars, there to betreasured, till they returned again to Europe in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Cen-turies.
4
To say nothing of the ignorance of Islam revealed by Boyd’s use of “Mohammedan,” it goes without saying that scholars no longer accept the Europe-centred view of the history of ideas implied by Boyd’s notion that Aristotelianphilosophy was temporarily stored with Muslim scholars until it could “return” toEurope. Boyd makes no mention of the Islamic tradition of Aristotelian and Platonicscholarship which, in fact, predates the corresponding European tradition by nearly athousand years, and which continues to this day.
5
Boyd ignores even the Islamicphilosophical thought that so profoundly inuenced medieval and Renaissance Eu-ropean higher learning.
6
Islamic educational philosophy is not a detour taken by theWestern tradition, but a corpus of educational thought of the highest philosophicalorder in its own right.The second obstacle to the study of the Islamic Isocratic idea of education is aconsequence of the sparsity of political thought within the Islamic tradition itself, andthe still sparser awareness of it in the West. As a number of prominent Arabic scholarshave observed, political science has been largely neglected within Islam until well intoour century.
7
As Shaykh Ali’Abd al-Razik suggested, the neglect of political science wasa consequence of
the tyranny of the rulers who were afraid that any such investigation would bedangerous. Men in power would naturally like to maintain their position, and thusMuslim rulers endeavoured to limit free inquiry into any subject that might reect onthe legitimacy of their authority. Their most effective weapon was the patronage of the institutions of learning.
8
Early Muslim rulers discouraged political science indirectly, by supporting onlythose educational endeavours that were derived from, and supportive of, the theo-logico-political doctrine that legitimized their rule. Critical, or even explicit, discussionsof political and educational doctrine were, not surprisingly, uncommon.The third obstacle is directly related to the second. Rulers were able to use boththeir patronage of learning and their comparative inaccessibility to limit any scienticinvestigation into the conduct of government. Fortunately, however, Islamic politicalphilosophy was the concern of small groups of men not dependent on patronage, suchas the Brethren of Purity, who were therefore better able to conduct political enquiries.The political philosophers nevertheless sought to protect themselves from persecutionby developing a very obscure art of philosophical writing that demands wide learningand acute interpretive skills if it is to be understood.
9
As Najjar observes
many modern thinkers, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, are hardly aware of thistradition (not to say, convinced of its validity).
10
An exploration of the relationship between education and Islam leads us intoterritory that is obscure and unfamiliar, even to Muslims.
Add a Comment