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Journal of Moral Education

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Islamic values: a distinctive framework

for moral education?
a
J. Mark Halstead
a
University of Huddersfield , UK
Published online: 21 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: J. Mark Halstead (2007) Islamic values: a distinctive framework for moral
education?, Journal of Moral Education, 36:3, 283-296, DOI: 10.1080/03057240701643056

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 Journal of Moral Education
Vol. 36, No. 3, September 2007, pp. 283–296

EDITORIAL

Islamic values: a distinctive framework

for moral education?
J. Mark Halstead*
University of Huddersfield, UK
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The first half of this Editorial examines the implications of the close link between morality and
religion in Islamic thinking. There is no separate discipline of ethics in Islam, and the comparative
importance of reason and revelation in determining moral values is open to debate. For most
Muslims, what is considered halāl (permitted) and harām (forbidden) in Islam is understood in
terms of what God defines as right and good. There are three main kinds of values: (a) akhlāq,
which refers to the duties and responsibilities set out in the shari‘ah and in Islamic teaching
generally; (b) adab, which refers to the manners associated with good breeding; and (c) the
qualities of character possessed by a good Muslim, following the example of the Prophet
Muhammad. Among the main differences between Islamic and western morality are the emphasis
on timeless religious principles, the role of the law in enforcing morality, the different
understanding of rights, the rejection of moral autonomy as a goal of moral education and the
stress on reward in the Hereafter as a motivator of moral behaviour. The remainder of the Editorial
is concerned with the two main aspects of moral education in Islam: disseminating knowledge of
what people should and should not do, and motivating them to act in accordance with that
knowledge. Ultimately, moral education is about inner change, which is a spiritual matter and
comes about through the internalisation of universal Islamic values.

Religious and moral values in Islam

The inextricable link that exists in Islam between religion and morality is reflected in
the many passages in the Qur’an that refer in the same breath to ‘those who believe’
and ‘those who do good deeds’ (for example, Sura 2, v. 25, Sura 95, v. 6, Sura 103,
v. 2). The implications seem to be that for Muslims faith and moral behaviour are
two sides of the same coin, that moral behaviour presupposes faith and that faith is
genuine only if it results in moral behaviour (Ashraf 1988, p. 76; Khan, 1987, p. 28).

*Department of Community and International Education, School of Education and Professional

Development, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD1
3DH, UK. Email: j.m.halstead@hud.ac.uk
ISSN 0305-7240 (print)/ISSN 1465-3877 (online)/07/030283-14
# 2007 Journal of Moral Education Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/03057240701643056
 284 Editorial

It is not surprising therefore that in the minds of many Muslims little attempt is
made to distinguish between the concept of moral duty and the concept of religious
duty. In fact, the latter is a broad category that encompasses both one’s duty to God
and one’s duty to one’s fellow human beings. Questions like ‘What should I do?’ or
‘How should I behave?’ may receive both moral and religious answers, but the moral
answers are themselves couched in religious language because they are equally
considered to be part of the eternal truth revealed by God through his messengers.
Muslims believe that God has disclosed what is halāl (permitted) and harām
(forbidden) and it is up to individuals ultimately to choose whether to follow the
clear guidance that God has provided or to allow themselves to be led astray. Those
who stick to the ‘right path’ (Qur’an, Sura 1, v. 6) are by definition committed to a
moral way of life.
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Although in practice the development of moral values in any society may be a

complex matter linked to custom, family tradition, community leadership, literature
and individual judgment, many Muslims find it difficult to talk about morality
outside the context of religion. In fact, morality in Islam is generally understood as a
list of rules, duties and responsibilities whose authority derives directly from the
Qur’an and the hadı̄th (sayings and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad and his
companions). As Fazlur Rahman points out, ethical conduct in Islam ‘is not
expressed in terms of propositions, but rather in terms of divine dictates and actions’
(1985, p. 18) and the Qur’an is ‘a work of moral admonition through and through’
(ibid., p. 8). He also puts forward two main reasons why all Muslims should accept
the Qur’an as the basis of their ethics: first, they believe it is the word of God, and
second, they believe that it ‘contains, actually or potentially, the answers to all the
questions of everyday life’ (ibid., p 14).
Among the virtues taught in the Qur’an are justice, benevolence, piety, honesty,
integrity, gratitude and chastity. All individuals are required to conform to the ritual
duties and the legal and moral obligations set out in the Qur’an (except in specified
cases of hardship). The Prophet Muhammad is considered the perfect moral exemplar,
as the Qur’an itself makes clear: ‘You have indeed in the Apostle of God a beautiful
pattern of conduct’ (Sura 33, v. 21). Muhammad saw it as his mission ‘to perfect good
character’ (Ibn Anas, 1989, p. 382) by practising and exemplifying all the Islamic
ethical values himself. Thus the record of his words and actions that is contained in the
hadı̄th has become an important supplement to the Qur’anic injunctions in providing
moral guidance and regulation. Walzer and Gibb go so far as to claim that ‘the whole
corpus of hadı̄th constitutes a handbook of Islamic ethics’ (1960, p. 326).

Islamic ethics
Ethics has no place as a separate academic discipline within Islam, at least not in the
sense of a discipline drawing exclusively on human reason or human experience
(Siddiqui, 1997, p. 423). No body of work exists that is comparable to that of
Bentham, Mill, Kant or Rawls in the West in the sense of seeking to provide a
framework for moral decision-making without any necessary link to religion. There
 Editorial 285

is no tradition of subjecting the religious basis of ethics to close critical scrutiny, nor
does moral education in Islam have as its goal the development of personal and
moral autonomy (Halstead, 1986, Ch. 4). What does exist in Islam is a pair of
concepts that correspond roughly to the English term ‘morality’.
The first of these is akhlāq, which is normally translated as ‘ethics’ or ‘moral
values’. Akhlāq has been defined by Ibn Sadr al-Din al-Shirwani (d. 1036 AH, 1626/
7 CE) as ‘the science of virtues and the way to acquire them, of vices and the way to
guard against them. Its subject is the innate dispositions, the acquired virtues and
the rational soul as far as it is affected by them’ (quoted in Walzer, 1960, p. 327).
Yusuf al-Qardawi classifies akhlāq into six categories, demonstrating the range of
moral values expected in the life of the Muslim: akhlāq relating to self, akhlāq
relating to family, akhlāq relating to society, akhlāq relating to the animal world,
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akhlāq relating to the physical environment and akhlāq relating to the Creator (1981,
pp. 106–9). Akhlāq is a plural word, but sometimes it is used in its singular form
(khuluq) to mean character, innate disposition, or ‘a state of the soul which causes it
to perform its actions without thought or deliberation’ (Miskawih, 1968, p. 30; cf.
Omar, 1994, p. 103). Many famous Muslim scholars, including al-Kindi, al-Farabi,
Ibn Sina, Ibn Miskawayh, Nizam al-Mulk, al-Ghazali, al-Razi and al-Tusi, have
studied akhlāq and written about it. ‘Ilm al-akhlāq (knowledge of moral values) is a
major component of Islamic Studies at all levels of education in Islam, alongside
other components such as ‘ilm al-fiqh (knowledge of law).
The second term for morality is adab, which combines two different but related
ways of understanding good behaviour – on the one hand, politeness, courtesy,
etiquette, good upbringing, culture, refinement, good breeding and good manners,
and on the other, morality and values. Adab al-islām means ‘the good manners
adopted by Islam derived from its teachings and instructions’ (al-Kaysi, 2003,
p. 13). But the pre-Islamic origins of this word suggest that some of the customs and
norms of conduct among the early Arab tribes may have been incorporated into the
moral thinking of Arab Muslims. Adab comes from the same root as one of the main
Arabic words for education, ta’dı̄b, which refers primarily to the process of learning a
sound basis for social behaviour within the community and society at large
(Halstead, 2004, p. 522ff).
If the Islamic perspective on moral values that has been presented so far (as
captured in the terms akhlāq and adab) seems over-prescriptive to the western reader
and too dependent on religion, it should not be thought that this represents the only
way of thinking about morality in Islam, or that there is no place for rationality in
Islamic ethics. On the contrary, the superstructure is very rational. This is seen
especially in the use of qiyās (analogy) in the development of sharı̄‘ah (Islamic law).
For example, wine is the only alcoholic beverage mentioned in the Qur’an, but since
its consumption is banned, traditional jurists have by analogy extended the
prohibition to all alcoholic drinks. A similar procedure is used by contemporary
scholars seeking to resolve current debates in medical ethics in line with Islamic
ethical principles. For example, since it is considered a religious duty in Islam to
have children, and since it is commendable to use one’s intellect to pursue scientific
 286 Editorial

knowledge that has positive outcomes, recent medical techniques such as artificial
insemination and in vitro fertilisation are considered ethically acceptable (so long as
the sperm is the husband’s – otherwise the process would be tantamount to adultery)
(Bennett, 1994, pp. 102, 115–6).
An early example of alternative Muslim thinking about ethics can be seen when
Muslim scholars began to pay serious attention to ancient Greek philosophy. As
Umarrudin points out, ‘though the fundamental principles of [ethics] were present in
the Qur’an, ethics as a science did not take shape till the influence of Greek thought
asserted itself on the Muslim mind’ (1962, p. 45). In the golden age (ie the first 500
years) of Islam, Muslim scholars began to engage with questions like ‘Is an action good
because it is commanded by God, or is it commanded by God because it is good?’ and
questions about issues relating to the origin of human knowledge of morality. With
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regard to the latter, Hourani (1985, pp. 2ff) distinguishes three Muslim traditions, all
active in the 9th to 11th centuries CE. The Mu‘tazilite theologians argued that values
have an objective existence and can be known either through revelation or through
independent reason. The Ash‘arite theologians argued that values are effectively
whatever God commands and are learned primarily through revelation. The third
group, the Muslim philosophers such as al-Kindı̄, al-Fārābı̄ and Ibn Sinā, viewed
values as objective and capable of being understood through reason alone, though they
recognised that a prophet might be able to present the values in a more appealing way
than they could themselves to ordinary people. The academic debate between these
three groups was considerable, though in the end (as Hamid Reza Alavi shows in his
article in this Special Issue) al-Ghazali, writing from a broadly Ash‘arite perspective,
decisively overcame the objectivism of the other two parties and set Islamic morality
on a path of ethical voluntarism or subjectivism that it followed consistently for the
next 900 years. Linked to his argument that morality should be defined in terms of
what God commands and forbids, al-Ghazali presented weighty arguments in support
of the self-interestedness of all moral action. Our behaviour, he says, is motivated by
the desire for praise, or the avoidance of harmful consequences, or the desire for a
reward in the Hereafter, and our knowledge of both the promised reward and the
means to that end derives from divine revelation.
Although the ethical thinking of the Muslim philosophers and the Mu‘tazilites had
little direct impact on mainstream Islamic ethics, it may have enriched the
understanding and awareness of Muslim scholars over the centuries, and perhaps
made it easier for a new wave of alternative Muslim thinking about ethics to emerge in
contemporary times. One example of such thinking involves the claim that the eternal
truth of the Qur’an is not to be found in the particular laws and punishments which it
prescribes, but in the underlying principles (cf Anees, Abedin & Sardar, 1992). On this
view, specific expectations and judgments rightly change over time, as circumstances
change, but principles such as ‘adl (justice), salām (peace), imān (faith), ‘ibāda
(worship), khilāfa (human trusteeship), tauhı̄d (unity), jihād (struggle against injustice
and oppression), amal al-sālih (virtuous behaviour) and istislāh (public interest) have a
timeless quality and are believed to apply equally across the whole of humanity,
regardless of colour, wealth, status, ethnicity, power and nationality. This remains a
 Editorial 287

minority view, however, and for many Muslims the thought of adjusting any of the
detailed moral and religious obligations set out in the sharı̄‘ah (Islamic law) to bring
them into line with modern thinking would be heretical (cf. Doi, 1984, p. 39).

Three dimensions of morality in Islam

Abstract concepts rarely carry identical meanings in different cultures. For example,
the understanding of democracy or equality in one culture can be expected to overlap
in broad terms with the way they are understood in other cultures, but not in every
detail. This certainly applies to the way morality is understood in Islam and in the
West. Islamic morality can conveniently be divided into three categories: (a) the
obligations, duties and responsibilities set out in the sharı̄‘ah; (b) the values and
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manners associated with good upbringing; and (c) the personal qualities of character
that a Muslim is expected to demonstrate in everyday life. Each category is broadly
comprehensible to those brought up in a framework of western values, but some
values are included which may not be considered moral values in the West, the values
may be defined and classified differently and they may be prioritised in different ways.
With regard to the obligations set out in the sharı̄‘ah, for example, legal, moral and
religious duties are included without necessarily any clear distinction between them.
The familiar western binary oppositions of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ do
not fully capture the moral distinctions that are fundamental to Islam. In Islam there
is an initial distinction between fard (behaviour that is obligatory), halāl (behaviour
that is permitted) and harām (behaviour that is forbidden). The middle category is
sub-divided into mandūb (strongly recommended), mubāh (neutral) and makrūh
(merely tolerated). Examples of obligatory duties include saying the five daily
prayers, fasting during Ramadan and making the annual zakāt (charitable tax)
payments. These are normally considered religious duties, but Allama Syed Sulaiman
Nadwi points out that they have moral dimensions as well: prayer helps to guard
against evil, fasting develops piety, and alms-giving encourages empathy and
compassion (1999, pp. 27–8). Other obligatory duties include getting married,
having children and providing for the needs of one’s family (including one’s
parents). Working hard, pursuing knowledge and giving to charity are strongly
recommended, while divorce is normally considered the worst of the permitted
things. Prohibited activities include theft, murder, highway robbery, all sexual
activity outside marriage (including homosexuality), dishonesty, eating pork,
drinking alcohol and charging interest. According to Moustafa, ‘the negative
prescriptions are preventive and precautionary measures to safeguard and maintain
the original quality of the human value system and protect it from degeneration,
devaluation, perversion, indecency and temptation’ (1990, p. 120). As Bennett
points out, every action, ‘whether a commercial transaction, eating or reading a
book, has a moral significance in Islam’ (1994, p. 104). This is because any act that
is in accordance with the sharı̄‘ah is an act of worship, so long as it is performed with
nı̄yyah (good intent). All good acts will be rewarded in the Hereafter, just as all bad
acts will be punished. For some prohibited activities (such as murder) a punishment
 288 Editorial

is prescribed in the Qur’an, but in other cases punishment is at the discretion of the
state. Goodness is not merely a matter of individual choice, though the Qur’an
makes clear that everyone is responsible for his or her own actions (Sura 3, v. 115–6;
Sura 35, v. 18; Sura 53, v. 38–9). Society has a right to publicly uphold moral and
religious duties, though there is a widespread tradition that the state does not
intervene in what goes on in the privacy of a family’s home. Nevertheless, the true
believer is conscious that God sees actions that may be hidden from the community,
and God is always a party to moral behaviour.
Manners and etiquette, the second dimension of moral behaviour, clearly extend
the concept of morality beyond what is normally included in western understandings
of the term. Because of the reverence in which the Prophet Muhammad is held in
Islam, every small detail of his personal lifestyle and behaviour becomes a model for
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Muslims, including how he ate food and drank, how he prepared for bed, what side
he slept on, how he washed, how he relieved himself, how he dyed his hair, how he
responded to sneezing and yawning, how he acted in the presence of his wives. This
is the main reason why the collections of hadı̄th are so important, because by
providing a record of what the Prophet did and said, they simultaneously provide a
guide to Muslims about how to behave. It is therefore rare to find any debate about
family values or sexual values in Islam, because these matters are resolved by
reference to the words and actions of the Prophet.
The third dimension of morality, the Islamic virtues, is also linked to the Prophet’s
example (cf. Abu Laylah, 1990). Many of the 99 names of God represent virtues to
which human beings should aspire (for example, the Merciful, the Compassionate). As
Ashraf points out, these virtues ‘are the unchangeable absolutes to be realised in our
contingent circumstances’ (1988, p. 16). Since the Prophet expressed these qualities
in his own life, he becomes the perfect model of righteousness for his followers. There
are many lists of Islamic virtues based on the life of the Prophet. Haneef, for example,
lists the following: sincerity, responsibility, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, keeping of
commitments, fair dealing, discipline, self-control, humility, patience, endurance,
courage, thankfulness, dignity, honour, self-respect, purity, modesty, chastity,
kindness, helpfulness, co-operation, charitableness, generosity, hospitality, considera-
tion, good manners, brotherliness, warmth, lovingness, striving, hard work and love of
knowledge (1996, pp. 90–97). This personal morality for Muslims is rooted in imān
(faith in God or consciousness of God in everything), islām (surrender to the divine
will), taqwa (fear of God and vigilance against going astray) and ihsān (acting out of love
for God and a spiritual awareness of his presence) (Siddiqui, 1997, pp. 424–5).

Comparing Islamic and western moral values

How far is this understanding of morality compatible with western liberal
perspectives? Certainly there is significant overlap both in terms of the concept of
human virtue (as outlined in the previous paragraph) and in terms of fundamental
values (since the Qur’an makes frequent reference to values like freedom, equality
and justice), though it has already been pointed out that there may be differences in
 Editorial 289

detail in the way the values and virtues are understood. What distinguishes the
Islamic perspective, as Khuram Hussain mentions in his article in this Special Issue,
is its recognition of timeless religious principles. Moral development, he argues, is
therefore a personal journey of the spiritual self towards the discovery of these
principles, rather than a commitment to a moral universe derived dialectically
between individual and society.
The concept of rights presents a special case. Many Muslim books have been
written about rights, implying that they are central to Islamic ethics (Husain, 1990;
Mawdudi, 1976; Nadvi, 1992; Sheriff, 1989), but this remains controversial. On the
one hand, as we have seen, Islamic morality consists largely in carrying out the
obligations, duties and responsibilities that are set out in the sharı̄‘ah. It is clear that
if I have a responsibility to perform action x for the benefit of person P, then person
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P has the right to expect me to perform action x. Nadwi (1999, p. 26) uses the term
‘rights’ in this sense when he writes of huqūq Allah (the rights due to God, such as the
right to be worshipped) and huqūq al-‘ibad (the rights due to other human beings,
such as the rights of children to be clothed, cared for and nurtured in the faith). He
clearly has our obligations in mind (cf. Shad, 1987). Rights in the sense of a
legitimate expectation based on the moral duties of others seem to be in harmony
with Islamic teaching, and indeed the term is used in this sense in the Qur’an and the
hadı̄th. On the other hand, Islam is first and foremost the religion of submission (the
literal meaning of islām is ‘submission’), and the slave-master relationship is an
important symbol of the believer’s relationship with God. Rights in the sense of self-
assertion (‘I’ve got a right to do x’) or in the sense of pressing a claim against God (or
against a fellow human being) thus seem to run counter to the spirit of Islam. Saida
Affouneh draws attention in her article in this Special Issue to the inadequacy of
western concepts of human rights (in the sense of self-assertion or pressing a claim)
as a basis for moral education in Palestine. Western conceptions of rights, peace and
forgiveness, she argues, fail to take adequate account of the contingent realities of
Palestinian suffering, and fail to provide the necessary spiritual strength to sustain
hope, to nurture the next generation and to continue to fight injustice. Only values
that are grounded in religion, she claims, can achieve that.
From an Islamic perspective, personal and moral autonomy (whether based on
theories of rights or on Kantian individualism) is a kind of nonsense, for two reasons:
first, it involves usurping God’s own position as the judge of good and evil; and
second, it cuts the individual off from the community of faith. Goodness is not just
an individual matter in Islam, as we have already seen, and society has a duty to
publicly uphold moral behaviour and religious practice. Therefore teaching morality
is itself a moral duty.

Teaching moral values in Islam

The first thing that strikes one about moral education in Islam is that there is a
remarkable consistency of approach across the Muslim world and across the
centuries. Two of the articles in this Special Issue describe key thinkers in the field.
 290 Editorial

Hamid Reza Alavi has written about the 11th century Iranian theologian al-Ghazali,
and Enver Uysal has written about the 16th century Turkish moralist Kınalızade.
The former is a famous and highly influential scholar who lived during the Arab
Empire and who was at the very forefront of the intense academic debates of the
time. The latter lived at the height of the Ottoman Empire and served as a teacher
and judge, but made a much more modest contribution to intellectual thinking. In
spite of these differences in background, however, there is a high level of
commonality in their views of moral education. Both scholars emphasise the role
of parents in the moral upbringing of their own children, both consider the child to
be a tabula rasa on which good habits can be imprinted, both discuss the tendency of
young children to imitate others and hence stress the importance of encouraging
good friendships and setting them a good example. Both discuss the importance of
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learning discipline, self-sufficiency and restraint, as well as generosity, politeness and

humility. Both agree that teachers should genuinely care about their pupils, avoid
excessive harshness, and encourage games as a way of relaxing and unwinding (as
well as a way of familiarising them with the concept of rules).
In the context of Islamic teaching and practice, being a moral educator involves
two tasks: (a) giving children and young people the knowledge of what they should
and should not do (understanding the reasons for the behaviour is in a sense
considered less important than knowing what is right, and may come later); and (b)
giving them the motivation or the will to behave morally. With regard to the
transmission of moral knowledge, the knowledge itself (‘ilm al-akhlāq and ‘ilm al-
adab) is unlikely to vary much from country to country since it is based on the main
Islamic sources of the Qur’an and the hadı̄th, as discussed in the earlier sections of
this editorial. More likely to vary are the structure, the approach and the methods.
There have been many different types of educational institutions in the Muslim
world in the past, including the maktab (writing school), the halgha (circle school),
the masjid (mosque school) and the madrasah (school of public instruction), as well
as the palace schools, the bookshops and the literary salons, and each had its own
structure for teaching and learning moral values along with many other topics
(Shamsavary et al., 1993, p. 147–8). With the inclusion (or imposition) of western
models of schooling in some Muslim countries, there is even more diversity of
educational provision in the present day. In traditional Muslim schools, the main
distinction in the teaching of moral education is between the full integration of the
subject into Islamic Studies and the planning of moral education as a separate
component. Teaching methods vary in terms of learning styles, use of punishment,
dependence on memorisation, use of visual aids, computers and other resources, the
inclusion of discussion of contemporary moral issues, and so on.
Two articles in this Special Issue concentrate on the teaching of moral education.
Ab Halim Tamuri focuses on the teaching of akhlāq in secondary schools in
Malaysia, where it is an important discreet component of Islamic Education. The
subject has strong support from the government, whose official statement of the
national philosophy of education links ‘social responsibility’ and ‘high moral
standards’ to a ‘firm belief in and a devotion to God’. The main purpose of his article
 Editorial 291

is to examine the perceptions of Islamic Education teachers concerning the teaching

of akhlāq in their schools, but the article also provides valuable insights into the
central place occupied by moral education in the government’s education policy,
and into the way moral education relies heavily on activities outside the classroom to
demonstrate its relevance to students. Finally, the article highlights some of the main
obstacles to successful moral education, including the negative influence of peers,
the mass media and entertainment centres. The article by Imran Mogra, on the
other hand, provides a critical review of curriculum materials used to promote both
akhlāq and adab in the supplementary Muslim schools attended by Muslim children
living in the West. Such schools seek to compensate for the absence of Islamic
teaching in mainstream non-religious schools by offering an immersion pro-
gramme in Islamic beliefs and values in the evenings or at weekends. The textbooks
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address basic ethical precepts and provide practical moral guidance for children
and young people between the ages of six and fifteen years. The aims and rationale
of the series of books are expressed in very conservative, authoritarian terms, talking
of the need for humility, uprightness of character and moral behaviour, but the
teachers are expected to find creative ways (such as stories and real life situations) to
engage learners and encourage their commitment to the Islamic values and way of
life.
A third article about the teaching of moral education pays more attention to the
diversity of traditions that can be found in a single country. Huda al-Khaizaran
examines moral education in Iraq as the country emerges from Ottoman rule and
comes under a variety of pressures from different sources, including pressure to
‘modernise’ by conforming to western attitudes and institutions. She identifies three
main strands to moral education in Iraq: state education, which combined
nationalism and sometimes militarism with Sunni Islamic beliefs; the Arab tribal
diwān (literally, a sheikh’s guest room where future tribal leaders received their
training) with its emphasis on tribal virtues, dignity and refinement, negotiating skills
and making alliances that promote peace; and the Shi’a religious hawza education.
Perhaps it is the fragmentation of Iraqi society illustrated by these divisions,
combined with a general breakdown of moral education, that is a major factor in the
current instability in that country. The article by Saida Affouneh focuses on the
breakdown of moral values in Palestine as a result of continuing violence and
oppression. School-based moral education is proving a practical impossibility in the
Palestinian territories because of the closure of many schools and the difficulties
experienced by teachers and students in getting to school because of the large
numbers of checkpoints and road closures. But behind the practical difficulties are
the more theoretical difficulties of finding an appropriate basis for moral education
in the current situation. International aid agencies sometimes insist on the inclusion
of human rights education or peace education in the curriculum before funds are
released, but western conceptions of rights and peace do not sit easily with Islamic
values. Many Muslims believe that only religious education can provide the
framework of values that can sustain hope and contribute to the rebuilding of lives
once a just peace is achieved.
 292 Editorial

Moral motivation in Islam

The issue of moral motivation, which has exercised a number of western
philosophers writing on moral education (e.g. Straughan, 1999; Haydon, 1999), is
not perceived to be such a problem for Muslim educators. As already noted, the
latter put equal stress on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation
includes encouraging children to act out of a desire to please God and to love the
Prophet Muhammad so much that they always want to imitate his behaviour.
Having a good relationship with parents and teachers is also very important, because
children will then want to follow their example, out of love and respect for them.
Extrinsic motivation covers a wide range of points, from the reward stickers
mentioned by Mogra that are given out to young children in mosques for good work
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in Islamic studies, to the belief that economic, social and emotional benefits in this
life will accrue to those who live good lives. But belief in the Hereafter is also a key
factor in providing morality with a strong basis and purpose (Maududi, 1966, p. 36).
The Qur’an makes it clear that everyone is responsible for their own actions (Sura
53, vv. 38–9; Sura 41, v. 46) and that all humans will receive rewards and
punishments from God in the Hereafter based on their actions in this world. These
approaches to motivation would be unlikely to be judged satisfactory by many
western experts. Wilson, for example, totally dismisses the idea that moral education
can encourage young people to act on ‘right answers’ because a certain kind of moral
behaviour ‘pays off’ (Wilson and Cowell, 1987, p. 34). He argues that moral
motivation is a matter of encouraging students to take seriously the entire form of life
or thought that we call morality, to appreciate it for its own sake and to want to
become a part of it (ibid., p. 35).
This and other disagreements between western and Islamic approaches to moral
education come to the fore when Muslim children are brought up and educated in
western countries, because they may receive one kind of moral education in state
schools, based on a framework of western liberal democratic values, and a very
different kind of moral education in mosque schools in the evenings or at
weekends, based on the Islamic values outlined above. Exposing children to
different kinds of moral education and guidance at an early age before they have
internalised a consistent framework of moral values of their own can lead to moral
confusion, to uncertain identity and to other undesirable outcomes. The article in
this Special Issue by Marta Bolagnani draws attention to the high levels of
criminality among the Pakistani Muslims of Bradford in the north of England,
which some of the respondents in her research explain as resulting from
socialisation into non-Islamic values. But the main thrust of her article concerns
community views about the best way to respond to these high levels of crime.
Interestingly, she reports that it simply does not enter into the thinking of the
Muslim community that it is the role of the state school to reinforce moral values.
Some Muslim parents are shocked by the example set by teachers (for example,
openly admitting to taking drugs), and think of state schools as places where
Muslim students are likely to be led astray. More trust is placed in parents,
madrasahs and mosques to provide guidance and direct teaching of moral values,
 Editorial 293

though the shortcomings of each of these is acknowledged. Prison and the

probation service are seen as having a definite role to play, perhaps because they
are predicated on a clear sense of what is permitted and what is forbidden in
terms of behaviour. Above all, however, the community stresses the benefit of
teaching universal Islamic moral values because these encourage inner change in
individuals.

Aims of the Special Issue

As the Journal of Moral Education becomes more self-consciously international in its
coverage (Li et al., 2004; Morgan, 2005), it seems appropriate that a Special Issue
should be devoted to Islamic values and moral education in the Muslim world,
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especially since there are over 50 countries whose population is predominantly

Muslim. The aim of the Special Issue is threefold. The first aim is to raise awareness
in the West of Islamic values and of the impact of these values on the very concept of
education in Islam. The use of the word ‘Islamic’ here is intentional, in preference to
‘Muslim’, because the former implies that the values relate to the religion itself,
whereas the latter refers to the civilisation that grew up around the religion. Thus
Bolognani’s article talks of criminality among Bradford’s Muslims, but some of her
respondents at least see their redemption in terms of the adoption of Islamic moral
values. The second aim is to explore the theory and practice of moral education in
the Muslim world; the articles covering this aim will be of interest equally to Muslim
and non-Muslim scholars. The third aim is to use this better understanding of the
link between Islamic values and moral education in the Muslim world to facilitate
more productive dialogue between western and Islamic specialists in moral
education.
The topic is both innovative and challenging, particularly because of the tendency
for moral education to be subsumed under religious education in most Muslim
countries, as noted above. Consequently there is a shortage of research and
scholarship relating to moral education, except in a few Muslim countries (for
example, a Center for Values Education was established in Istanbul in 2003 to
promote research and publishing activities in spiritual and moral education
throughout Turkey (see www.degerleregitimi.org), and in recent years there has
been a strong tradition of teaching and researching moral education throughout the
schools of Malaysia). It is true that current globalising trends mean that a growing
number of Muslim academics are aware of western approaches to moral education
and are interested in finding out more. However, dialogue is often hampered by the
fact that ideas and practices may not be conceptualised in the same way by different
cultures. This means that a choice has to be made in a publication like the present
one between allowing contributors an authentic voice, even if this sounds awkward,
exotic or obscure to western ears, and re-expressing the concepts in a way that is
more accessible to western readers but may lose the rich connotations (and, in this
case, the religious significance) of the original. All the contributors to this collection
are conscious of the predominantly western readership of the journal, but they differ
 294 Editorial

in terms of the concessions and adaptations they make in response to the cultural
assumptions of that readership.
Language in the context of Islam may also often be controversial. For example,
the word ‘martyr’ may be used for someone who dies defending their country or
fighting in the cause of the faith, or for someone who dies as a result of oppression
and injustice – though such usage may sometimes be considered inappropriate by
non-Muslims. In this Issue, the choice of terminology has been left to the individual
author and should not be taken to imply endorsement by the Journal of Moral
Education of any opinions expressed or implied.
Inevitably, the Special Issue has only been able to take the first steps in describing
Islamic values and encouraging dialogue between western and Muslim experts in
moral education. A number of key issues that have only lightly been touched on here
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merit fuller exploration, including the link between the sharı̄‘ah Islamic law) and
moral education; the role of Muslim parents in moral education; the contribution of
Muslim poetry to moral education; the concepts of moral guidance and the moral
virtues in Islam; the concept of adab (refinement, discipline, culture) as part of moral
education; and civic and moral education in specific Muslim countries, such as
Egypt and Indonesia. No doubt, these will form topics for future articles appearing
in this journal. Also meriting more detailed investigation in the future are the main
differences between western and Islamic approaches to moral education, particularly
the emphasis in Islam on timeless religious principles, the role of the law in enforcing
morality, the different understanding of rights, the rejection of moral autonomy as a
goal of moral education and the stress on reward in the Hereafter as a motivator of
moral behaviour. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the Special Issue will make a signi-
ficant contribution to awareness of Islamic moral values in the West and will provide
a basis for increasing cross-cultural dialogue on moral education in the future.

Note on language in the Special Issue

Eight different mother tongues are represented among the nine contributors to this
Special Issue. One outcome has been the impossibility of achieving complete
consistency in the transliteration of foreign words. For example, the word which is
transliterated as akhlāq in this editorial is in common usage in at least five different
languages in Muslim countries (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu and Malaysian), but
numerous different spellings are found, as well as different rules for transliteration. It
would seem inappropriate to insist, for the sake of internal consistency, on using a
particular spelling that is unfamiliar to the author himself or herself. The rule of
thumb (even if this offends the purist) has been to encourage readability for the
Muslim and non-Muslim reader alike. For this reason, the diacritical marks of
Arabic, Persian and Urdu have been omitted, Anglicised versions of words have
been retained where they are in common usage (such as Mecca, caliph), and hybrid
words have been used (such as hadı̄th to refer to collections of ahādı̄th, and
madrasahs as an Anglicised plural form) where these are recognisable and are used in
common speech in spite of their ungrammatical form.
 Editorial 295

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