Education of the Khilafah

On Monday, 23 September 2019, mainstream media reported the news of the collapse of Precious Talent School in Dagoretti Constituency in Nairobi County, the capital city that is the economic hub of East and Central Africa region! In the event eight pupils died and numerous injured. What followed was accusations and counter accusations stemming from the education stakeholders! Just a few months ago, Kenyan media reported confusions in relation to the implementation of the famously known Competency Based Curriculum. CBC aimed at doing away with the 8-4-4 system and bringing the 2-6-3-3-3 with education stakeholders pulling from different directions, others calling for the fully implementation and others calling for piloting of the curriculum amongst other thorny issues!

Chaos is ever the order of the day in any secular capitalist regime irrespective of its location on the global map! Since the creed of secularism separates religion from the state; and hence gives precedence to the intellect in managing peoples affairs. Furthermore, the capitalist ideology takes benefit and interest as the criterions of peoples’ actions and their success lies in their material accumulation! With such an evil creed and ideology, reigning the world then man is ever doomed to sufferings in this temporary life and the worst awaits him in the hereafter! The education system in any secular capitalist regime is founded upon the sole objective of safeguarding the status-quo i.e. continuation of secular capitalist ideology and its stinking systems such as democracy, social liberal system, usury based economy, colonial foreign policy amongst other systems. To realize the objective, the education system strives to build a secular capitalist personality (intellect/aqliyyah and disposition/nafsiyyah) by implanting the secular capitalist culture (creed, thoughts and behavior) into the pupils/students intellects and disposition. The following are some of the Outcome of the Execution of Capitalist Education System:

1. Produce masses of politically passive, compliant, docile, uncritical ‘citizens’ largely by devoting almost none of the standard 15+ years of ‘education’ to serious examination of their societies’ fundamental faults. After that, much schooling in intensive authoritarian conditions hence they leave the management of their society to status-quo leadership and expertise. They show no inclination to take control over their collective fate and do not question let alone protest the political and social-economic injustices inflicted upon them!
2. Produce workers. They train the skills and more importantly, the disposition required to staff the industrial machine with obedient, diligent and skilled workers who will accept hierarchy and authority, turn on time, work hard, do what they are told, consume and not expect to have control over their situation!
3. Legitimize social position and inequality. Those who fail at school learn that they do not have ‘brains’ and therefore do not deserve good jobs and life chances. This helps to make inequality in society inevitable and legitimate!
4. Produce competitors, people who believe in and love competition hence, winner takes-all society. See themselves as deserving their hard-earned privileges. While losers are viewed as deserving their fate. They focus on advancing their own interests without any attention on the collective public good hence, justifying the legitimacy of a system that favors the super-rich to thrive!
5. Produce enthusiastic consumers. People, who are only concerned to get ahead, succeed and get rich, coupled with identifying modernity and progress with affluence with western systems as the objective for life; and who accept the market system and think technical wizardry will solve their problems. Just as they passively consumed the activities, work, and decisions presented by their teachers hence, they passively consume the products, services and decisions presented to them by the government, corporations and elitist-professionals!
6. Shocking unemployment levels due to paper oriented studies, which most of the students are only focusing to attain certificates as a means to justify for employability against skills and value based approach studies that lack in most institutions of learning!

Contrary to the education system in the Khilafah (Caliphate), is founded upon the Islamic Aqeedah and nothing else. (وَمَن يَبْتَغِ غَيْرَ الإِسْلاَمِ دِينًا فَلَن يُقْبَلَ مِنْهُ وَهُوَ فِي الآخِرَةِ مِنَ الْخَاسِرِينَ) “And whoever desires a Deen other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and he will be a loser in the Hereafter.” [Al-e-Imran: 85] Therefore, the education system in the Khilafah State is composed of the totality of the Shari’ah rules and administrative canons related to the education curriculum. The Shari’ah rules related to education emanate from the Islamic ‘aqeedah and they have Shari’ah evidences, such as the subjects of study and separating between male and female students. As for the administrative canons related to education, they are the permitted means and styles, which the Khalifah (ruler) in authority considers beneficial in implementing the system and achieving its goals. They are worldly matters susceptible to development and change according to what appears most suitable to implement the Shari’ah rules related to education and the citizens’ basic needs. Likewise, they can be adopted from the experiments, expertise and permitted research of other nations. Consequently, in the education system of the Khilafah there are three main goals:

1. Building the Islamic Personality:

This is achieved by implanting the Islamic Aqeedah, thoughts and behavior in the students so that they become Muslims who take Islam as the sole basis for all their thoughts, judgements, inclinations and actions and shape their whole lives in accordance to their Deen. This goal will be supported by the Islamic environment of the Khilafah where its media, mosques and all other institutions will promote nothing but the pure Islamic concepts.

2. Teaching Practical Skills and Knowledge for Life:

Students will be taught what they require of skills and knowledge to interact with their environment to prepare them to engage in the realm of practical life, such as mathematics, general sciences and the knowledge and skills to use various tools and inventions, for instance electrical and electronic apparatus, computers, domestic appliances, farming and industrial tools, and so on. They will also be taught beneficial sports such as swimming and archery, and after puberty they will be trained in military skills under the supervision of the army.

3. Preparing Students for University Entrance:

Students will be prepared for university entrance by teaching them the prerequisite primary sciences – whether cultural such as Fiqh, Arabic, or Tafseer of Qur’an, or empirical sciences – such as mathematics, chemistry, biology or physics. The aim is to create distinguished personalities, scholars, scientists, and experts in every field of life to establish the Khilafah as a leading, influential world-power. Teaching methods will be employed which inspire deep thinking. Empirical sciences for instances will be taught in a manner that builds analytical skills, and where topics are applied to solving real-life problems and studied to derive benefit from them to serve the interests of the Ummah and her vital issues

The stages of schooling will be based on the Islamic Aqeedah for they are defined based upon the Shariah evidences related to the different Islamic rules, duties, and punishments applied upon the child at various ages Hence, school teaching stages in the Khilafah State are divided upon the basis of student’s years and not subjects offered by the school. Schools are divided into three types in the following manner: 4-4-4 system, which is 4 years for Primary (between 6yrs – 10yrs of age) level, 4 years for Middle School level (between 10yrs – 14yrs of age and 4 years for Secondary level (between 14yrs – 18yrs).

Furthermore, it is an Islamic obligation upon the Khilafah to provide high quality education to each and every one of its citizens as a basic right – regardless of their religion, race, gender or level of wealth. It obliged to provide sufficient primary and secondary schools and teachers for all citizens of the state and equip them with all they require to achieve the objectives of the education policy free of charge. (Article 178, Hizb ut Tahrir’s Draft Constitution for the Khilafah). Investment in education will be a priority for the Khilafah. As a state that seeks to lead the world and genuinely serve its people and humanity, it will not accept any second-best education system due to lack of funding. Rather, it will seek to build an abundance of well-trained and well-paid teachers and lecturers, as well as fully-equipped, state of the art schools, colleges, universities, research centres, libraries, laboratories, observatories and much more, using the wealth of its Bayt-al-Mal (its Central Treasury), whose wealth will be plentiful due to the sound nature of the Khilafah’s Islamic economic system. The state will support every student to achieve his or her full potential regardless of their wealth and aid them to master the highest level of scholarship and innovation to produce an abundance of outstanding mujtahideen, scientists, and inventors. (Article 179, Hizb ut Tahrir’s Draft Constitution for the Khilafah states)

Comprehensive implementation of the Shari’ah will lead to the repetition of what was witnessed a thousand years ago, distinguished universities existed in Gundishapur, Baghdad, Kufah, Isfahan, Cordoba, Alexandria, Cairo, Damascus, and in several other major cities of Islamic regions. Higher education outside the Islamic State during that era existed only in Constantinople, Kaifeng (China), and Nalanda (India). And even then, the University of Constantinople was emulating universities in Baghdad and Cordoba. In Western Europe, at that time, there was not even a single university. The oldest university in Italy is the University of Bologna established in 1088. The University of Paris and Oxford University were established between the 11th and 12th century, and up until the 16th century only had reference books imported from the Islamic World.

Vast course selections of higher education in the Islamic Khilafah State contributed in elevating the Islamic Civilization. Thousands of years before the era of the Wright brothers, Abbas ibn Firnas had made several experiments to engineer a flying machine. In the year of 852, he leapt off the great mosque of Cordoba’s minaret, wrapped with a loose cloak stiffened with wooden struts. Ibn Ismail Ibn al Razzaz Al-Jazari, was a scientist and engineer who succeeded to develop the first robot in the world during the 12^th century. He lived in Mesopotamia and worked for 25 years in the palace of Sultan Nasir Al-din Mahmoud. Apart from succeeding to develop robotic technology, he also developed tools that simplify human activities, by developing them to operate automatically with very limited human interference. Besides this, there were many more researches and inventions in the era of the Khilafah which have changed the face of the world.

Ali Nassoro Ali

Member of Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Kenya

Article No.63: Friday, 28 Muharram 1441 | 2019/09/27