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logo    American Madrassas


Great progress in human learning has come in fits and spurts. Most educated Americans are familiar with the Greco Golden Age (400-300 BC), the Italian Renaissance (AD 1500-1700), the Age of Reason (AD 1800), and the Age of Enlightenment (AD 1900), but few are familiar with the Arabic Golden Age (AD First Century to 1000); yet civilization owes much to Arab learning.

Although Greek learning was valued and preserved by the Romans, the Romans were themselves not greatly interested in intellectual pursuits. Roman society was militaristic, and the interest of Romans was conquest. When the Roman Empire collapsed, religious ideology enveloped Christian Europe and lasted to the seventeenth century. As the Dark Ages settled over Europe, what learning that was done was done in monasteries where surviving manuscripts and  books were preserved and made available mostly to monks and prominent scholars. Europe was almost illiterate and Charlemagne could hardly write his name.

But during this time great intellectual endeavors were taking place in the Arab world. The learning which had originated in Egypt, Babylonia, Phoenicia and had been assimilated and vastly augmented by the Greeks had spread to the Arab world. Translations of ancient texts into Arabic from Greek and Syriac was vigorously pursued.

Just one of Islam's intellectual legacies was the preservation of Greek philosophy, mathematics, and science. The Arabs advanced the fields of mathematics, medicine, and physics. They developed trigonometry and defined sine, cosine, and cotangent functions. They further developed algebra. The world's first university, Al-Azhar, was founded in 969 AD in Cairo. Its founding preceded the founding of European universities by two centuries and become the model for several early European universities. By the 1100s, translations of Arabic texts made their way from Muslim Spain into these European universities. These Arab texts stimulated the growth of Western science, and we should never lose sight of the fact that our own science today rests squarely on the accomplishments of Muslim science.

De-urbanization after the collapse of the Roman Empire reduced the scope of education and by the sixth century, teaching and learning moved to monastic and cathedral schools which emphasized the study of the Bible. The leading scholars of the time were clergyman. The study of nature was pursued more for practical rather than intellectual reasons. Not much intellectual progress occurred in the early Middle Ages. Although the religious domination of learning did not suppress learning entirely, it, along with the conditions of the time, surely retarded it immensely. So although historians often take exception, there is no question that an association exists between the decline of learning during the Christian Dark Ages and the era's theological domination.

But Arab learning also began to decline after 1000 AD. Arab civilization became afflicted by problems of internal decay that triggered two waves of invasions which were such a shock to the Arabs that Muslim culture became much more resistant to new ideas and foreign influences, making it more conservative and inward looking. This resulted in a religious reaction against putting too much emphasis on science and reason and too little emphasis on faith. Arab science and learning were always largely supported by religious institutions and subject to their conservative influences and with the arrival of Sufism, which discredited learning and reason, Arab learning began to decline. So the decline of Arab learning is also associated with a cultural domination by a religious ideology.

The Arabic word for any type of school, secular or religious, is madrasah, madarasaa, medresa, madrassa, madraza, and madarsa, and three kinds of madrassa are distinguishable:  Madrassa Islamia (Islamic school), Madrassa deeneya (religious school), and Madrassa khasa (private school). A typical madrassa offers two courses of study: a hifz course, which consists of the memorization of the Koran and an 'alim course whose graduates become accepted scholars. But for the purposes of this essay, the only relevant kind of madrassa is the Madrasa deeneya which offers only a hifz course.

Americans are familiar with madrassas of this kind; they exist in the form of Sunday schools which are nothing but Christian madrassas. But Sunday schools have not had an ostensible influence on American learning and culture. Typically our schools, colleges, and universities have been free of religious ideological influences even though some of the most prestigious ones were founded to train people for the clergy, and various denominations have founded sectarian schools. Hidden influences, however, date back to Colonial times and have resulted in a large amount of anti-intellectualism in America. (See Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter .) This influence, however, has been increasing. If I have not miscounted, at present there are about 150 fundamentalist colleges in America.

Calls for the posting of the Decalogue, the teaching of Creationism, and the Bible in our public schools are continual. And recently the Texas Education Board has authorized the teaching of the Bible as an elective in all public schools. All of these attempts appear to be an unacknowledged admission of the failure of America's churches and their Sunday schools, for if these had been successful, the introduction of these religious elements into the public schools would be unnecessary. Given this failure of the churches, the religious proponents of these efforts are now trying to get the government to do what the churches have not been able to.

But a deeper question exists. If, as the beginning portions of this essay suggest, the religious domination of a culture is associated with a decline in learning, do these efforts portend a further decline in American education? I suggest that the answer is yes.

The problem with ideological domination of education is this: True believers in any ideology, religious or not, lose their curiosity and their inclination to question, but both of these are essential to the development of knowledge. After all, if someone already knows THE TRUTH, there is no reason to foray into the unknown. In effect, learning ceases and the culture decays. A new dark age emerges.

But religious domination of learning is not the only kind of ideological domination of it. Some departments within well-established secular institutions engage in it too, and the result is the same. This kind of non religious ideological domination is also prevalent in many American universities. It exists in schools and departments of education where one teaching method is taught as orthodox. This orthodoxy has led to teachers who "know how to teach" without knowing any subjects. It exists in schools of business where the orthodoxy that corporations only owe their allegiance to stockholders holds sway and has resulted in the progressive impoverishment of workers and consumers. And, perhaps, more important of all, it exists in economics departments that have adopted classical/neo-classical orthodoxy. The students and professors in these schools and departments are never challenged to question the orthodoxies. The result is that learning never improves, business practices never improve, and the economy continues to stumble from one crisis to another, destroying gigantic amounts of wealth, and causing incalculable suffering and deprivation. Studies by Robert A. Burton suggest that we cant afford to continue with the outdated claims of a perfectly rational unconscious or knowing when we can trust gut feelings, but people who hold orthodoxies continue to hold outdated claims and trust their gut feelings. If this tendency continues to spread, no amount of energy will enlighten the coming dark age. (7/24/2008)