Integration of Knowledge As A Way Forward – 2
Three Examples
For example, the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco, is the oldest existing, continually operating higher educational institution in the world according to UNESCO and Guinness World Records. It was founded by Fatima al-Fihri in 859. For well over twelve hundred years it has been one of the leading spiritual and educational centres of the Muslim World.
However, the university was founded firstly as a mosque. The foundation of the mosque was to provide, in addition to a space for worship, a learning centre for the local community. Like any mosque, al-Qarawiyyin soon developed into a place for religious instruction and political discussion, gradually extending its education to all subjects, particularly the natural sciences.
The mosque of al-Azhar in Cairo, the second oldest continuously run university in the world, after al-Qarawiyyin, was also initially a mosqueschool, subsequently becoming one of the most influential universities in the world. The same goes to the al-Zaytuna University in Tunis.
These three outstanding examples were no different from the majority of principal mosques across the Muslim world. However, they were better taken care of than the others, were better managed and functioned better, and were yet more fortunate than many others insofar as the prevalent local and international social, political and economic circumstances are concerned. That ensured their continuity, longevity, overall operation and appeal.
Besides, the three universities never stopped functioning as mosques. Before the modern times when they became incorporated into their countries’ modern state university systems, their being educational institutions rarely eclipsed their being mosques. For instance, it is still said about al-Zaytuna mosque (University) that it is the oldest mosque in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. “The mosque is known to host one of the first and greatest universities in the history of Islam. Many Muslim scholars were graduated from the al-Zaytuna for over a thousand years”.
The three examples are permanent epitomes of a trend. The trend could be best described in terms of unity of mission and purpose, intellectual dynamism and farsightedness, and integration of form and substance, and means and objectives. Simply put, the trend stands for Islam’s perception of knowledge and education and how the two should be elevated to the level of becoming the methods for changing the world and empowering truth and its infinite ways.
Thus, in Arabic, the word for a settlement’s principal mosque is jami’, and for university jami’ah. The two words are basically the same, except that the latter has ta’ marbutah which gives original words a feminine meaning. The words jami’ and jami’ah are derived from the root word jama’, which means “to assemble, congregate and unify”. Indeed, both mosques (jami’) and universities (jami’ah) in their own ways gather, congregate and unify people for a purpose. However, when they themselves get harmonized and united, then the notions of congregation, grouping and unification take on the imports of alliance and partnership of the highest order. It is then that exemplary societies are created. It is not a surprise, therefore, that society is called mujtama’, which is also a derivative of the same root word, jama’.
In Islam, it follows, mosques are also schools (educational institutions), in the sense that they provide all the needed support and facilities for the purpose; and schools (educational institutions) are also mosques, in the sense that they continue advocating and disseminating the same philosophy, goals and values as those of mosques, albeit on a different plane and with different means and methods.
Undeniably, this is the noblest act of educational, as well as spiritual, integration. It is part of what could be called institutional ideological harmony, as opposed to institutional ideological dichotomy. This institutional integration translates itself into comprehensive integration of curricula, policies, philosophies, values, worldviews and teaching methods.
The Consequences of Disintegration
It is only when such ubiquitous and profound integration is undermined that the total fabric of Islamic culture and civilization is undermined, too, proportionately to the former. It is only when mosques – as inclusive concepts and tangible realities, and everything else their material and spiritual presence entails - lose their inherent position, status and role, that Muslim society loses orientation and starts degenerating. Furthermore, it is only when educational institutions become independent from mosques’ existential disposition, stimulus, guidance and support, and begin to chart their own independent courses, which will be at loggerheads with the former and its protagonists, that the mentioned degeneration is expedited and rendered omnipresent.
Under these conditions, mosques become unappealing, ineffective and barren, while education and knowledge, and their institutions, are turned into agents of alienation, division and misguidance. They become as destructive as ignorance.
This explains why some educational institutions, though great and widely acknowledged, failed to win full support from all segments of society, especially some leaders from the mainstream religious thought. Their patrons yet stood at the centre of the widening rift between the political and religious leaderships in the state.
A case in point is the Abbasid House of Wisdom (bayt al-hikmah) which refers to a major public academy and intellectual centre in Baghdad. It also included a large private library belonging to the Abbasid Caliphs. The House of Wisdom was at once a cause and main feature of what many people call the Islamic Golden Age.
While debates are ongoing about the exact nature, identity, and scope of this intellectual institution, it is worth mentioning that some of its leading patrons and protagonists, like Abbasid Caliphs Harun al-Rashid, al-Ma’mun, al-Mu’tasim and al-Wathiq, failed to secure total and unreserved backing from the pillars of orthodoxy, chiefly from Imams Malik b. Anas and Ahmad b. Hanbal. The two camps were seldom on the same wavelength.
The House of Wisdom was perceived as a platform and channel for the political leadership to nurture and articulate their sometimes highly controversial views and policies, which they then attempted to impose on the rest of society, regarding them as official doctrines. The most conspicuous of those was Caliph al-Ma’mun’s constant wavering between Sunni orthodoxy, Shi’ism and Mu’tazilism. The whole thing morphed into a mihnah (religious persecution or inquisition) that targeted the mainstream traditionalists led by Imam Ahmad b. Hanbal.
The conflicts were becoming increasingly institutionalized, in the sense that they were becoming entrenched and were progressively taking place at the level of institutions and institutional affiliations. While Imam Ahmad b. Hanbal was revered by the majority of people and fellow scholars as a reformer and one of the most illustrious and influential scholars in the history of Islamic scholarship, he at the same time had to spend years in the Abbasid dungeons unjustly imprisoned, humiliated and beaten. His “crimes” were nothing but profound faith, knowledge, courage and willpower.
The gist of those developments is this incident. Once Caliph Harun al-Rashid requested that Imam Malik b. Anas come to his provisional residence in Madinah and give him private lessons. Imam Malik responded: “Knowledge does not come to you, you come to knowledge”. In other words, Imam Malik asked the Caliph to come to the Prophet’s mosque in its capacity as a learning hub, where all true knowledge was acquired and shared. There was no substitute for it.
In the House of Wisdom – and other similarly controversial educational institutions – philosophy (Aristotelianism) was excessively pursued. In it, some of the extreme views, in particular in the sphere of metaphysics as a leading philosophical branch, were disseminated. Some such views were so dangerous that they bordered on outright bid’ah (religious innovation) and even kufr (non-belief).