The Educational System in Islam

Introduction

The intellectual renaissances all over history have been the inevitable result of the development, prosperity, and progress of education and the reciprocal response to the social and individual lives. People that are supplied with the elements of conscious education will indisputably attain their goals in the fields of society, policy, and economy. On the other hand, people lacking such disciplines will surely retard and be unable to catch the procession of the civilization and the coinciding with the developed nations.

Without the availability of the conscious education, -that aims at achieving a true composition and development of the cognizance, and constructing the personalities- man will definitely be too short to attain scientific maturity and social evolution. Education should not be considered as a luxurious mark or an extra deluxe phenomenon. It is, in consequence, a life necessity and a humane original affair that plays the greatest role in the individuals’ general, as well as the private, lives. With all of its schemes and issues, education is responsible for training the individuals for associating in societies altogether with their rules, regulations, principals, and traditions. Moreover, it enables to socialize with others in the frame of such rules. Some characterize the education as the mirror on which philosophy, expectations, and goals of the societies are reflected. Human civilization had never been a heritage that is received easily. It was indeed a social tradition that took the greatest share of man’s endeavors for acquiring and saving it for thousands of years. Education has been the only course through which such an effort-exerting heritage was conveyed to the other generations. This education carried, trustfully, the intellectual fortunes, noble values, and esteemed habits to the next generations. An educationist expresses that the reason beyond the essentiality of education is the fact that babies are not born as humans, but they become so through education.[1]

The educational processes, without which the individual and social lives would extinct, propose sound plans of the growth and durability of the social movements.  

[1] Refer to Educational cognizance and future of the Arab countries; 19.

John Dewey’s says that existence, as well as the continuation of societies, depend exclusively upon the process of the cultural conveyance which occurs only via the transference of the customs of working, thinking, and feeling from the adults to the infants. Life cannot continue unless the fine patterns, expectations, ambitions, criteria, and opinions are delivered to the new comers.[1]

The source of the acquired psychological and social composites is, simply, education. On that account, the necessity of education for individuals, as well as societies, is substantiated.[2] “Supposing people leave this earth without their children, and return twenty years later, they will find them as same as cattle.”[3] This saying is accurate to a great extent.

In the western north territories of India, it happened frequently that wolves kidnapped some children and slain most of them. They, however, pitied some and kept in safe. As some men could identify the places of those children, they went there and could overcome the wolves and save the children. Later, they named them the wolves’ kids or wild kids since they followed the very same natures and habits of wolves. They also imitated the wolves’ cries, and ate like them, and torn their clothes, and confined themselves in isolated dark places, and behaved as if they were real wolves. Nonsuccess was the result of every attempt of civilizing, educating, or teaching those children how to talk.

In his ‘Life in Indian Jungles,’ Valentine Paul describes one of those wild children whom was put in an orphanage in February, 4, 1867:

“That boy showed signs of idiocy; such as the lowness of the forehead, anxiety, and disorder. He often opened his mouth just like a wild animal. He used smelling, rather than tasting, for identifying things. It was impossible to leave him without supervision. He used to use his legs and hands in moving. Few months later, he could use his legs only. He used to pause suddenly and walk unsoundly. He used to move his head swiftly to the right and left, and gaze on things as if he was waylaid. Until his demise, he could not change his way of life.”

Accordingly, education is an acquired matter. This is tendered in God’s saying:

And Allah has brought you forth from the wombs of your mothers, you did not know anything, and He gave you the hearing and the sight and the hearts that you may give thanks.*

Evidently, the Quranic text emphasizes that knowledge and the intellectual growth are obtained through acquaintance and received by the hearing, sight, and intellectuality. In this regard, the holy Quran has preceded the modern educationists.

Anyhow, education can be a principal base of developing humankind, especially in the fields of intelligence, when it aims at achieving the general boom of personalities, and cares for sowing the virtual tendencies of spirits. Otherwise, man will certainly lose originality and character.

[1] Refer to Democracy and Education; 3.
[2] Refer to Social principals of education; 4-5.
[3] Refer to Educational cognizance; 19.

The religious education is the most considerable since it focuses on the spiritual progression, self-discipline, and the development of performance in addition to the regard of the virtuous conventions, the honorable ethics, and the dignified patterns.

Psychoanalysts focus a considerable light on this topic as they affirm that religion supports individuals with powers of faith, intellectuality, and acuteness. These powers form the spiritual vitalities resulting in depositing virtues in minds. This is indeed the most favorable and decent human goal.[1]

Religion is the one and only restraint against irregularity and aberrance. It controls the tendencies, manages the desires, cleans and saves the soul from ruination, and protects against collapse and the pollution of sins and impulses. Religion, when finds a shelter in souls, props up a huge power that prevents from crimes and forbids aberrance, and inspires the doing of good and the competition in the fields of virtue.

Education that is formed on religious criteria achieves the most victorious success of societies. It eradicates the causes of tenseness and rebel, and authorizes the individuals to live naturally in their environments.

Failure is the inescapable fate of any education that ignores the religion. Such education will surely cause a great amount of disorder and nonsuccess for those living under its shades.

Spiritual powers leave a rich influence on man’s behavior, and direct to mental and intellectual balance. Faith, if based upon an ideology and creed, influences the interior and exterior organs and, consequently, calls to charitable deeds and behaviors.

Like many others, psychoanalysts have agreed unanimously that the religion plays the greatest role in the general composition of life, and the construction of security and settlement. They also affirmed that it is impossible to have a respectful life of amiability, geniality, and settlement without the existence of the spiritual education, which creates self-improvement, governs the habits, and takes away pride and whims.

The weakness of people’s religious conscience was the main reason beyond the spread of crimes, immoralities, unethical principals, and the consequent crises. This weakness caused the most terrible calamities that overcame the societies and traveled over the intellects. It also composed the horror and dismay that the modern man has had to face. Involuntarily, peoples of this world have been misguided into a dead end. Meanwhile, the great powers have been chasing each other in the outer space and the deep oceans, using weapons of termination, such as the atomic and nuclear bombs, for extending their supremacy and colonialism over the powerless peoples who possessed nothing for defending their homelands.

The prevalence of the modern culture and the increase of the scientific renaissance could provide no help in the fields of saving man from wars and the other arduous problems. Some people presuppose that the promotion of sciences and cultures, as a substitute for the religious and moral disciplines, may guarantee peace and luxury. This presupposition is too degraded to be discussed. Science is a two-edged weapon. Like being used for construction and reformation, it may be used for demolishing and  

[1] Refer to Fields in Psychology: 45.

deformation. It has been turned into a crisis and an essential origin of the international horror and fear only when politicians and rulers neglected the religious restraint. Robert Milkan says, “The most important matter in this life is the faith in the actuality of minds, and the value of ethics. The decline of this belief has been the direct reason beyond the public war. We must now exert efforts for acquiring or bracing this faith, lest science will be worthless, and this world will be disastrous for mankind.”[1]

Robert Hushance affirms, “As the material science has attained its climax in the fields of knowledge, technology and nature, it has attained the deepest point in the circle of policy and morality.”

In consequence, people have been recording their outstanding triumphs in the fields of biological and geological sciences. We are living in the competition of inventions, and there has been a magnificent progress in the outer space and the other planets. Humanity had never even dreamt of reaching the surface of the moon. Moreover, there are serious endeavors to reach the other planets.

We should ask whether such explorations and inventions have achieved good for humanity in the fields of cooperation, association, and luxury, or not. The answer is that the contrary has occurred. Such scientific progress has taken humanity lower and lower into the savage fighting and the enormous disputation that carried permanent horror to mankind. It has also taken man to the bottom of ethical worsening and sexual confusion.

The trends of modern sciences pushed men to degrade each other. This is clear in the United States where a racial discrimination has been the characteristic of the legislative regulations. This discrimination is mainly noticed in schools and universities. The authorities there ruled that the white should possess lodging higher than that of the black. There has been a difference in penalties, too. Al-Ahram, the Egyptian journal, mentions in the issue dated on 30/8/1958, that the international body of antiradicalism called for protesting against the death sentence issued to Jimmy Wilson, the black American man, for the accusation of larceny of $1.95 from a white mistress. This sentence would be executed in September 6.

The scientific progression of the United States could not eradicate such a wrong and transgression.

The material sciences have lacked the ability of being fair and creating amiability and cooperation among individuals. Majority of philosophers refuted the idea that the salvation of humanity from combats and disasters lies mainly in the scientific progression. In addition, they declared the falsity of this supposition. Mr. Leman says, “During the First World War, it was believable that the salvation of humanity lied in the scientific progression. Today, this illusion has been unveiled.”[2]

Iqbal warns people firmly against such sciences. He declares, “Beware of the studies you are receiving. They have the capability of killing the spirit of an entire  

[1] Refer to Islamic philosophical thinking; 174.
[2] Refer to Education for perplexed world: 52.

nation.”[1] As he exposes teaching, Iqbal says, “Modern teaching is as same as the acid that works for melting humans’ personalities and recomposes them as it likes. Acid is more influential than any other chemical material since it can change a high mountain into rubbish.”

At any rate, modern sciences have not been interested in developing human behavior or leading the new generations to the accurate entrance to the social lives and the participation in founding sound societies of amiability and teamwork.

The material sciences have neglected the spiritualities and disdained the mental disciplines. This has been the most serious disadvantage that resulted in the pervasiveness of the moral defects. The gravest defects have been the commonness of crimes, the absence of human ties, and the release of family links and ethical rules. All the above caused the modern man to live in a dreadful nightmare.

Neglecting any objective treatment of the educational affairs, Christianity dedicated the activities to the invitation to the other life, the negligence of this world, and the lessening of the value of the earthly desires. It called for confining in temples and churches. The Christian education, as an educationist emphasizes, dedicated its mission to the preparation for the other life. Meanwhile, it neglected the discussion of any worldly affair, including those aiming for developing the acceptable tastes and intellectuals. From this cause, we can rule that the Christian education antagonized the liberal individual education of the Greeks, and the scientific one of the Romans.[2]

Priests devoted all efforts to the affairs of the other life. Willula confirms, “The essential purpose of education is reforming what our forefathers had ruined, by deciding on the best recognition of God and opting for the best way of cherishing Him and committing to His path through acquiring virtues.”[3]

The church stopped in the face of the intellectuals and any invitation to progression and reformation. In the same way, it was recruited for serving the benefits and the ill deeds of the imperialism. Merrill Kurthy says, “The alliance of the church and the ruling authorities reached its climax in the occupied territories, especially the states of New England. The various religious sects exploited education, which is surely a strategic weapon purposed for supporting the political powers of the ruling authorities and protecting them against the competition of principals and anti habits.[4]

Such states gave the missions of teaching to the churchmen exclusively. Hence, it depended upon churchmen’s recognition.[5]

Churchmen courted three hundred thousand scientists, among whom thirty two thousand were sentenced to burning penalty. Churchmen also punished Borneo the naturalist for his opinion of the plurality of worlds. He was burnt alive. By the same token, Galileo was sentenced to death penalty for claiming the movement of the earth around the sun.

[1] Refer to Towards Islamic education: 35-6.
[2] Refer to Development of educational hypothesis: 186-7.
[3] Refer to Development of educational hypothesis: 25-6.
[4] Refer to Education and social struggle: 12.
[5]  Refer to Education and social struggle: 14*.*

As a result of such struggle, the revolutionary naturalists decided that science and religion should never come to an understanding.[1]

This caused the other scientific and reformist organizations to declare war against churchmen for eradicating their fables and intolerable regulations that antagonized the scientific and the logic rules. This intellectual uprising brought about the French revolution that produced the Chart of Human Rights. The most remarkable articles of this chart were the declaration of equality, freedom, and justice among people apart from their different nationalities and races.

In any event, the church could not issue any article referring to the scientific or professional education. Generally, the Christian education was subject to fables, myths, and parables of the churchmen.

Thanks to God, Islam has been using and equipping positively all powers for finding the sound education aiming at developing the human conscience and expanding the social and intellectual levels in the boundaries of a single educational process upon the base of which the individuals are formed in one mode. This formation tends to pursue the right and justice and compete in the fields of virtue and goodness. Unlike Christianity and Jewism, the feature of the Islamic education has not been a sort of utter religion or utter worldly regulations, like that of the Romans. It has been a harmonious structure of religion and worldly customs since it aims at achieving a comprehensive renovation of the two.

The Islamic education has taken in consideration all of the social classes to which it has dedicated the most excellent courses based upon the most modern means of civilization, development, progression, and maturity of mankind. It is the only source of Muslims’ civilization and glory all over their golden ages. An Islamic educationist says, “It is impossible for any educationist or historian to deny the fact that the Islamic education has been the firm ground of Muslims’ civilization. The eminent idealities of this education comply with the modern trends. Islam has sanctified knowledge and scholars, and elevated science to attain the rank of worship. It has cared greatly for all types of education in general, and the spiritual, religious, and moral in specific. Islam has called for liberty, equality, and equal opportunities of learning, disregarding the social classes. Moreover, it has eradicated the classification of societies and imposed learning upon every Muslim -male and female- after it provided every attainable means of studying.

The portals of mosques, institutes, schools, and libraries in addition to the scientific and literary sessions were widely open before students. The Islamic states provided the students and scholars with whatever they needed, including lodgings, free medical care, and financial supports for guaranteeing good living and sparing enough time for studying. The principals of modern education -that came forth in the twentieth century but have not been applied yet- had been conceived and applied by the Islamic education in its golden ages tens of years before the modern formulation.[2]

[1] Refer to Perfection in Islam –Takamul Fil Islam-: 5/115.
[2] Refer to Islamic Education: 3-4.

Islam has presented for all peoples on this globe the intellectual booms that included the bases of renaissance, progress, and comprehensive rectification involving all of the courses of life.

Generally, Islam has made knowledge the essential element of the social composition and Muslims’ collective revival. It has encouraged the receiving of knowledge and made it one of the doctrinal precepts.

The imperialistic powers, initially, manipulated the Islamic homeland and divided it into small weak humble states that lack the capability of self-defense. These small states wanted the potential of independence since the imperialists bounded them to their wheel, and controlled them thoroughly. The next step of imperialism was terminating Muslims’ powers and genuineness by contending with the Islamic conscience and opposing the doctrine and morality.

They recognized the reason that made Muslims achieve the triumphant conquests- it was the genuine doctrine that rejects humiliation, dishonor, and slavery. Hence, they equipped all their powers and intelligences for opposing the Islamic conscience along with its illumination in minds. They exercised the intellectual conflict, which has been the fatal weapon of mentality. They also brought into play the most modern technical means for controlling such conflicts.

The following are the most significant means of the intellectual conflicts.

Creating new courses of studying:

The imperialists took sure steps for changing all of the study courses that are applied in the Islamic countries, by taking away the religious contents. They also distorted the Islamic history, invented fabrications, and forged lies against Muslims’ moralities and beliefs.

The British Government committed Dunlop with the mission of instituting the teaching courses in Egypt. He showed no blemish as he founded an exclusive policy of teaching when he banished the whole bases of the Islamic education, and substituted with poor systems resulted in the intellectual infertility and reversed the religious concepts.

Dunlop’s policy of teaching was grounded upon two pillars:

First, it concentrated on filling as much as possible, the students’ minds with information, and neglecting the other principals of education. Thus, schools were required to engage the students in surface, aimless, and profitless information.

-It applied the synchronization system. This barren system aimed at uniting the methods, courses, and plans of education. Hence, Schools became quite similar to each other, and their characters were destroyed. In fact, there are environmental and social circumstances that play a considerable role in the entity of each school.[1]

Such modest educational programs would certainly cancel the genuine conscience in the minds of the new generations to turn them into instruments that the imperialists control.

[1] Refer to Factors of education: 17-9.

In Iraq, the ruling authorities of the British occupancy looked deeply upon the institution of the teaching courses that served their goals and interests. They attempted to kill the religious and national spirits. Taha al-Hashimi mentions the following incident:

Miss Bill demanded with mobilizing the retired officers, who had been recruited in the Ottoman army. “How can such nationalists and sincere officers be mobilized in the new Iraqi army?” a British senior official working in the British Embassy in Baghdad exclaimed, “They will bring forth sincere nationalist generations.” “You should never worry,” said Miss Bill with wicked smile, “As long as Mr. () is holding the Ministry of Education, he will be responsible for teaching the new generations!”[1]

Unfortunately, the imperialists’ educational proposals succeeded, to great extent, in taking away the religious doctrines from the Muslim generations’ minds. St. Samuel Zoimer said, “Scholastic teaching and the Western moral education yielded great results and beneficial effects on the children and the youth. Once, I could persuade the Muslim pupils that the precept of fasting in the month of Ramadhan had not been God’s, since it was impossible to perform such a precept. I raised a ball before them as representing the earth and focused a bright light on it.”[2]

Jape also expresses proudly and arrogantly the triumph of the imperialistic education that played the biggest role in shaking the Islamic faith. He says, “By means of modern schools and media, cultural and educational activities could stamp a great influence on the unconscious Muslims. Thus, they appeared, as a general extrinsic view, as faithless. This was surely the best fruit of the endeavors of the West that caused Muslims to desert their civilization and Islam, as a belief, lost some of its significance and power, but as a social prevalent power, it lost its proper situation.”

The Imperialistic education established a great dam between Muslims and their religion. They stopped those genuine spirits that destroyed tyranny.

As soon as the imperialistic powers found a place in the Muslims’ body, they killed the values, idealities, and genuineness, and made Muslims, as exactly as they intended, follow their capricious desires and neglect the right and justice.

The imperialistic great influence on Muslims can be obviously noticed through the new generations that took off the moralities and became the soldiers whose mission is achieving the expectations of the imperialism.

Imam Sharafuddin -the master scholar of Islamic ideology- presents the catastrophic inconveniences of the imperialistic educational systems in our schools. He says, “The imperialists could prevail on us through the schools they established in our countries. They cheated and caused us to send our dearest sons to their schools, which were surrounded by the imperialistic hands. We realized that our loss had been greater than the benefits only when the first generation was graduated. Only then, we  

[1] Refer to Al-Manawiyat; an essay of Mahmud Shith published in Al-Aqlam magazine, second part, fourth year
[2] Refer to Invasion on the Islamic world.

realized that our sons had been taught without guidance, or with misleading one. Hence, our education complied totally with the imperialistic courses that invaded the spirits of our sons with weapons that are deadlier than those they had used in invading our territories. We committed suicide when we sent our sons to such poisonous institutes. Our nation attempted to regain the past glory by educating the individuals. Unfortunately, it was only the deceptive misapprehension that cheated us and caused to throw those individuals in schools that were founded in the east only for dominating on people’s religion and fortunes. The result was the unbearable damage that the new generations suffered, and a new loss of glory called ‘arts.’ The biggest misfortune was that those individuals were signed up as soldiers and given the mission of destroying our sacred principals and essences. Neither Islam nor have the East encountered such a disaster before.”[1]

The wording of Sharafuddin is completely true. Neither Islam nor have the East encountered such a calamitous educational invasion that ruined our beliefs and ethics.

The Missionary Campaigns

Unfortunately, the imperialists employed the missionary campaigns -that should have conveyed the Christ’s spiritual guidance, characteristics, asceticism, and rectitude- for threatening people and subjecting them to impartiality and persecution. They also employed those campaigns for deviating and straying Muslims.

The missionary campaigns were the leading instruments of the imperialists’ predominance. The British minister of foreign affairs said in Edinburgh Conference, “The missionaries have aided the government in all of its tasks. Without them many obstacles would not have been passed. On that base, the government is in need for a permanent committee for managing the missionaries’ affairs.”[2]

In a report stated by the chairman of the Commerce Chamber in Hamburg, it was said, “The growth of the imperialists’ wealth is dependent upon those men who have visited the occupied territories. The most significant method of achieving this expectation lies in taking the churchmen to these territories. This is surely the first condition for achieving such a growth, from an economic viewpoint.”

The imperialists used the missionaries for seizing peoples’ treasures and confiscating their earnings. They worked painstakingly for antagonizing Islam because it opposed imperialism and stood against their illegal purposes. The following decision, issued in the German Conference, assured this fact:

“The growth of Islam threatens a serious danger to the occupied territories. From this cause, the Imperialistic Conference recommends the governments to increase the supervision on this movement –Islam-, and confesses of the necessity of keeping up the plan of complete neutrality in the religious affairs. The Conference also counsels those managing the occupied territories to resist any activity that may lead to the expansion of Islam, and handles the missionaries’ actions that spread out the  

[1] Refer to A beam of light on the path of the Imamite ideology: 134.
[2] Refer to A beam of light on the path of the Imamite ideology: 134.

principals of civility, especially in the fields of disciplinary and clinical services. Because of the Islamic threat, it is necessary to work on advancing the German Christianity for taking the required reasonable steps in all of the countries that have not received Islam so far”

The imperialists have used all of their powers and systems for opposing Islam and Christianizing Muslims or taking them away from their religion. To some extent, the missionary campaigns achieved these goals. A good number of Muslims converted to Christianity. In Indonesia, for instance, 250 thousand Muslims converted to Christianity. The same occurred in other Islamic states. This was natural because Muslims had ignored the reality of their religion; therefore, the misleading propaganda cheated them.

At any rate, the committees of missionary campaigns have been waylaying Muslims. The usurpation of the Islamic faith has been the job of such committees. Monsieur Chattily -one of the major personalities in the committee of missionary- says, “Various opinions have been said about the results of the plan of destruction, which is the second part of the Missionaries’ duties. The uprooting of the Islamic faith has been permanently coinciding with the efforts that have been exerted in the field of the Christian education. The new political map of Muslims will surely pave the way to the application of the European civility. Politically, such a map will vanish, but still we do not need lengthy time to see Islam surrounded by European wires.”

The plans of missionaries have carried the signs of death and devastation to Muslims. They have been the most dangerous means of the eradication of Muslims’ genuineness and the submission to the imperialistic predominance.

Christian Schools

The third pillar of the imperialistic combat against the Islamic conscience has been the Christian schools. Those schools have been mainly purposed for paralyzing the Islamic movements and Christianizing or, at least, dragging Muslims to Christianity. One of the missionaries asserted this fact. He said, “Schools are the most favorable means of publicizing the goals of the missionary campaigns. In Tehran, for example, the students in a Christian school attained 115 while they were 40 only two years ago. All those students are receiving the Christian education.”

The imperialists paid more attention to the Christian schools of girls since they have been the only gap through which the social decline would be more effective. In this regard, Jape says, “Christian schools of girls are the pupils of my eyes. I had always the feeling that the future of Syria depended upon teaching girls and women. Our school in Beirut has just begun. Yet, a great deal of care has been arisen in the missionaries’ media regarding this topic. The French Government paid good attention for supervising the teaching courses.”

Christian schools are generally imperialistic headquarters that have been founded for opposing Islam and Christianizing Muslims. In a thesis about the Protestant Missionary Campaign, Chattily records, “France is required to depend upon the

rulings of the intellectual education in the schools of the East. I hope such a sort of education will be soon applied so that it will distribute the teachings of the French faculty among Muslims.”

As some honorable Muslims intended to establish an Islamic university, horror covered the imperialists’ media so completely that they held a conference in Lingo. In this conference, St. R. Simon presented this report: “Thanks to the missionary schools, the Christian education has already poisoned the Muslims’ blood. The Government of the Netherlands applied the courses that are earned from the principals of Christianity for quaking the Muslims’ false expectations.”

The Christian schools have poisoned the young Muslims for pulling out the Islamic conscience and planting bad manners and lethargy instead.

Clinical Employment

The imperialists employed medicine as a means of invading Islam intellectually and distributing the Christian ideas in the Islamic homeland.

In the issue 6687, Al-Mueyyad, the Egyptian journal, affirms that the publicity of the Bible and the missionary campaigns via the medical care were the main means of accomplishing the missionary tasks. Medicine was chosen because it would be far away from any governmental supervision, and Muslims would push themselves to the hospitals and clinics of the missionaries.

In the same issue, St. Klirlsral reports, “Missionaries acquired people’s love due to the clinical activities that made the enemies confess that Christianity has been the source of virtues. Missionaries’ means in this regard were the clinical distributions including journeys and activities of men and women. The German missionaries approached Muslims through schools and clinical journeys. Muslims’ chiefs received these matters like thistles in their bodies.”

In the same issue, another report of St. Silstine regarding the clinical activities was publicized. He reported, “In Khubi Mardan, there was a clinical Danish missionary of women whose job was publicizing Christianity among Muslim females. Not before a long time, they would land to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Women who came for treatment were received hospitably since Muslims were not interested in the activities of the she-missionaries.”

St. Lipsos asserted that the Armenian Aid Association changed its interests into a missionary campaign. He also reported, “Interesting in securing the Oriental Church is insufficient for achieving total changes in the East. It is obligatory to antagonize and oppose Islam, the enemy of the ancient Oriental Christians. Consequently, the Armenian Aid Association was changed into the German Association of Missionary.”

Because he was the wickedest enemy of Islam, Lobos was given the management of this association. He addressed his famous word, “It is unsatisfactory to fight and antagonize Muslims. In fact, weapons must be opened in their faces.”

The imperialists’ intellectual invasion has mainly aimed at usurping the Islamic faith from Muslims’ minds, and eradicating their genuineness and glory, which is simply the Islamic conscience. In Palestine, Roomier spoke in a conference of

missionaries. After he had expressed the malice they had had against Muslims, he said, “Our main concern should not be converting Muslims to Christianity. The most important goal is taking them out of Islam and leaving them faithless. Thereafter, you will be the first leading group of the imperialistic convoy. May Lord bless you.”[1]

That was the trend of the Western imperialists. Their malice, enmity, and revenge caused them to address missionaries to the Arab world for removing any religious basis, and distributing immorality and depravity. This would surely lead to the worst fate in this life. The mental powers and the intellectual boundaries of any society will be definitely weak if religion is disdained. Moreover, such societies will absolutely be late and will rapidly fall in retardation and extinction.

The imperialistic powers’ dreams and plans came true when Muslims were banished, humiliated, and deprived of their fortunes on their own lands. The imperialists seized the Muslims’ treasures and economic potentials to use them in constructing their peculiar scientific and economic entities. Meanwhile, the Islamic world has lived in poverty and scarcity, as well as ignorance. This brought about retardation in industrial, economic, and military domains.

Israel has been the most serious menace that the imperialists left in the Islamic world. They brought and protected Israel after they had been rejected all over this earth. They donated weapons and uncountable capitals, and asked them to protect their interests and strike any Islamic or national movement.

Israel is indeed the mother homeland of imperialism, and the chief rule of aggression. It is headquarter of the imperialists’ campaigns. They also have used Israel for seizing peoples’ fortunes. This is quite clear through the imperialists’ supporting, directing, and excusing the Israeli aggressions. They have also stipulated the Israelites on capturing more lands and combating the Arabs for dragging them to accept objectionable matters. The Israeli politicians confirmed, “Israel has chosen hostility as policy.” It has depended on America’s capitals for massacring the Arabs and confiscating their lands to substitute the Israeli Homeland with the Arab homeland. Besides, the Israeli officials stated that the Arabs should settle in other lands since these would be the Israelites’ lands. They claimed that the prophets had promised of so.

The Israelis have worked for eradicating the Arabs in Palestine in such an unprecedented savage way. Meanwhile the United States has been cheering on such crude procedures that persecuted man’s dignity. America has been supporting them with Phantom jets and electronic means. The Sixth Squadron is ready for protecting Israel. In the United Nations also, the US authorities have been there for justifying the  

[1] Refer to the following references: Invasion on the Islamic world. Missionary and imperialism in the Arab world. Al-Mueyyad Egyptian journal. Secrets beyond the decay of the Arab nation. Al-Arabi Magazine.  

Israeli aggressions and encouraging more expansion and “new triumphs” while they have profited the Arab petroleum from which they gain, annually, more than thirty million dollars. As a reward, the US authorities have put the Arabs under the hammers of the most uncivilized and irregular people of this world. The roles of those peoples have been massacring, fatiguing, and startling the Arabs away from their lands. A more catastrophic matter is the progression of the diplomatic relations with Israel in more than one Islamic capital. The officials of such countries have permitted the foundation of monopolist corporations whose missions have been mainly spying and assuming the Muslims’ fortunes.

The Prophet (s), whose source was the unseen, determined that the Jews had been an element of destroying and devastation. He also foretold that they would waylay Muslims. Hence, he gave the orders of banishing them from the Arab Peninsula. In the final hours of his honorable life, the Prophet (s) assured this order determinedly. Had Muslims carried out their Prophet’s orders, they would not have encountered such a disaster that terrorized their entity and threatened a coming catastrophe.

Owing to its malicious intendments and wicked schemes against Islam, Israel forms the most threatening danger against the Islamic and the Arab worlds. The Israelis have spared no effort for eliminating the features of Islam and extinguishing its illumination. This is clear through their activities, such as burning the Mosque of Jerusalem, and removing any Islamic feature there. The West has defended such aggressions by providing them with arms because they have been the guard of their interests. The ruling authorities in the Islamic and Arab homeland are required to unite their word and settle their discrepancies for saving Islam against such a gang.

The Arab countries must take initiative steps for using any means for protecting their lands against the Israeli invasion. They should always keep in mind the fact that Israel has been expanding in occupation, and summoning all of the Jews on this earth to join and reside in the Arab lands. They have been planning for founding the Israeli homeland of which they have permanently dreamt. They are employing their diplomatic potencies and the American aid and relief. Consequently, there should be a united decisive situation, and the most modern arms should be available. The Arab countries are demanded with establishing manufactures of heavy arms on their lands so that they will not need the foreign countries, especially those aiming for predominating on the Arab countries.

The educational conscience should be highly esteemed in this regard. It is also essential to nourish the new generations, in schools and faculties, with the danger of Israel and the international Zionism. All of the mass media -TV and radio stations and journalism- should be taken up for this procedure. The armed forces that are the skeleton of this nation should be given a special attention. They should receive a full cognizance of the situation. Triumph will be theirs if they have full acquaintance, as well as belief, with the real situation.

The Islamic world is passing through a decisive and exact stage. As the imperialists acted so badly to Muslims, they –Muslims- were unable to achieve any

success or progression. They were also left on crossroads where internal and external aspects of disintegration had challenged.

It is the educationists’ role to exert all endeavors for recomposing the Islamic belief in the minds of the new generations, and developing the feeling of the waylaying danger of Zionism and imperialism. Ministers of education should manage private systems that should be given the charge of every matter relating to the operations of planning in the fields of education and teaching. The missions of such systems should be presenting the Islamic studies as teaching courses in all of the academies so that the religious behavior will spread out among the generations.

The malicious imperialistic educational systems have been the origin of the crisis of the traditional educational systems all over the Islamic countries. For composing young generations that believe in their country and strive for releasing it from the imposed economic, political, and cultural imperialism, it is obligatory to eradicate and confiscate any feature of the Western education.

The governments of the Islamic countries should also reevaluate the educational policies carefully and honestly, and discuss them comprehensively. They must take in consideration that the educational philosophy in the previous ages aimed at creating generations that are unable to develop their countries at all. In other words, the purpose beyond the previous philosophies of education was providing barren governmental officials, who lack any purposeful or social attitude. On that account, it is indispensable to examine the educational plans, courses, and styles so that it will be possible to produce generations that are fit enough for taking the responsibility of constructing the society. In addition, it is binding to check all of the textbooks, for taking out any doctrinal or ideological aberrance. It is also necessary to eradicate all the principals and opinions that antagonize Islam. Finally, it is obligatory to apply a firm supervision on the teaching staff in favor of throwing away the solicitors of destructive ideas and unworkable beliefs- such as existentialism.

Islam has presented a complete educational course that create virtuous individuals competing in the fields of social services, and seeking to achieve completion in their environments and societies. It has been a distinctive course containing full aspects of vitalization, growth, and unification. This course made Muslims, in the earliest ages, such an unparalleled united power that conquered, dominated, constructed, and founded the noble values that relied upon the bonds of humanity, amiability, and cooperation.

The Islamic fascinating education could produce the choice and grand men of humanity, such as Ammar bin Yasir, Abu Therr, Selman, and others who built the Islamic history as they riled and denied the wrong. They promoted the right and enlivened the spirits of sacrifice and struggle for bracing justice and precluding unfairness and tyranny.

In the current crucial stage, Islam has been suffering a suffocating crisis in the educational entity. Unmanliness, disrespect, and disintegration have spread out in our society, and the notions that provoked the right have predominated. It has become impossible to notice any shade of the Islamic education since its elements and bases

disappeared. Hence, loyalty has vanished, and amiability and association –on bases of God’s favor- have been lost. The social hypocrisy has become a general phenomenon. Greed and struggle for worldly affairs have become normal behaviors. Any boundary for earnings has been off course, and sincerity in labor has become a myth. The doctrinal rules, such as the precaution in treatment (Ihtiyat), suspension of the doubted matters, God-fearing- all these and the like have become out of line. There has been no compassion, no kind, and no social relations. Accordingly, societies collapsed, and numerous social epidemics and illnesses prevailed.

The unfortunate calamities reached the climax when some of the young left their families to live alone. In consequence, they have given in the total social bounds and traditions. They have not cared for the emotional sensations that their fathers felt, and paid no attention to their duties to their fathers, when they would become too old. Such fathers suffered too much of the behaviors of their young sons as they lacked custody and sympathy.

Fathers’ crisis has been seriously cruel, especially from their sons who had received their studies in the Western capitals, and, in consequence, acquired the Western habits and natures of leaving their families and disesteeming their affairs or any social tradition. When young men and women are out of their parents’ hands, -especially when they lack any social centrality- they will surely disregard their parents increasingly and reward them with humiliation and disrespect.

Majority of the youth, nowadays, pursues their lusts and sexual desires since they could find the way to the cinemas and nightclubs and directed towards filthy entertainment and the vulgar TV shows. Hence, they lost seriousness. That was because they lost the conscious education that protects them and supplies with the noble habits and the virtuous ethics.

This book studies comprehensively and objectively the factors of the imperfection and disintegration of modern education. Through this work, a comprehensive exposition of the Islamic education and its goals that develop the conscience and improve the intellective levels will be exposed. An exhibition of the Islamic plans aiming at publicizing the knowledge that depends upon believing in God and self-discipline will be provided. The author hopes this work will contribute in developing the Islamic conscience and serving Islam by putting on views some of the educational magnificent ideas. Finally, this work is offered to God the Exalted.
 

Baqir Sharif Al-Qireshi
Najaf
Safar, 27, 1391 A.H.