Muslim Scholars’ Views on Education

Introduction

Throughout history all over the world, there have usually been thinkers in humanities, and particularly in education, whose theories and writings have been based on the Original nature, and therefore these have received acceptance of most people in all times and places.

Since the religion is based on nature:

Then set your face upright for religion in the right state- the nature made by God in which He has made men (the Qur’an, Surah ar- Rum, 30:30).

Thus their natures have had the color of God, and since man’s nature is unchangeable:

There is no altering of God’s creation (the Qur’an, Surah ar- Rum, 30:30).

Their sayings and writings have always been useable and good for citation. But the presence of such scholars in quite different parts of this great world and in different periods of history has caused many people of the world to be unaware of their opinions or understand them incorrectly.

Undoubtedly, this will increase disagreements and discords among different people of the world, the very thing those thinkers wished to omit it. Therefore, it appears evident that under such conditions in the world that different factors intend to fun such disagreements and discords and the bad results of such discords is evident all over the world, the duty and task of researchers and writers will be greater.

First, they should discover and identify such scholars, second, identification, analysis and interpretation of their theories, and third, comparative study of different scholars’ theories in different religions.

This not only will cause on one hand familiarity of the inhabitants of the word with their views and so using those viewpoint, but also it will, on the other hand, cause designing a systematic model based on religious education for all inhabitants of the world through clarification of the shared core of those views.

Such a model can be applied by all peoples and humans of the word in the direction of a world-wide unity and creating peace among all human beings.

There were in Iran, throughout history, some great Muslim scholars who represented educational and philosophical theories which had a world-Wile influence. These opinions and theories that were written in hundreds of books and papers were mostly based on Islam, and included all branches of a philosophical- educational school: ontology (and anthropology as its subset), epistemology, axiology; and their educational effects which consisted of definition and description of education, goals, methods, principles, foundations, factors, kinds of education, teaching, curriculum and educational contents, etc.

There have been many of such authorities and figures in Iran, but in this research, the educational opinions and theories (the effect of the philosophy on education) of ten of the most important of them, i.e. Farabi, Avicenna, Ghazali, Khajeh Naseer Tusi, Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, Hafez, Sa’di, Ibn Khaldūn, Tabataba’i and Mutahhari.

Investigation of educational theories of such scholars as Avicenna, Ghazali and Khajeh Naseer Tusi indicate that our great educators, even in the past, were aware of the principles of education and have always tried to found their teachings on given and definite principles (Shariatmadari; cited in Attaran, 1992).

These three scholars’ writings and speeches are in many cases well-supported by the Qur’an and Islamic traditions or influenced by them and they were from outstanding personalities of Islamic thought, and were effective in a deep thinking transformation in their era (Attaran, 1992).