Islamic "Education"

Those who speak of resentment from the world of Islam at the place that the West now has in being foremost among world communities in education, science, technology, economic well-being and social stability being one of the identifiable causes of tensions between East and West, point out that Islamic values act as a restraint against educating people in a meaningful manner meant to improve the human condition.

With a focus on the strict parameters of a religion based in the 6th Century, a religion that has never undergone a period of enlightenment, which indeed has gone backward from a much earlier era during which science, mathematics, medicine and astronomy were celebrated, studied and great strides in human knowledge made, Islam has stagnated as far as education is concerned.

If any doubts existed, they were put to rest in 2012 when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] published the results of its education report titled "Program for International Student Assessment [PISA]", viewed by experts in the field of education as representing the globe's most comprehensive such survey.

Its purpose is to assess acquired key knowledge and mathematics skills, reading, science and problem-solving accessed by 15-year-old national students through exposure to each of the 65 OECD member nations' education systems. For the purposes of this report the PISA survey included 510,000 students worldwide. The conclusion was rather less than encouraging for Muslim nations.

Seven predominantly Muslim member nations of the OECD ranked in the lowest portion of the ranking, and they were: the United Arab Emirates at 48th; Malaysia at 52nd place, Tunisia taking 60th place; Jordan distinguishing itself at the 61st place, Qatar even worse, at 63rd, and Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, whose student performance came out 64th place out of 65 countries studied.

Oh yes, Turkish pupils ranked well down on the list as well; 44th out of 65 countries. And nor did Turkish universities perform much better. A higher education surveyor (Quacquarelli Symonds [QS] ranked three Turkish universities within the world's top 500 list of universities. Nine Turkish universities, out of a total of 175 found listing within the world's 800 best universities; the best within the 430 to 450 bracket.


Since a yardstick of future performance in all indices of human potential attainment can logically be held to be recognized through how well the young of the nation absorb education through the quality of the schooling they are exposed to, it becomes clear enough, looking at these statistics and the educational values behind them, why it is that Islamic countries lag so badly behind their Western peers.

And what is a country like Turkey doing to address the issue? Well, forging right along to correct the situation, of course, as would any self-respecting nation wishing to forward its interest in a bright future. And so, last year the government of Turkey, an increasingly Islamist one under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ruled it compulsory for fourth grade students and forward to have "religion" classes.

Such forward-looking progress means that the Turkish curriculum in those religion classes almost exclusively focuses on the values and virtues of Sunni Islam. Non-Muslim students too in Turkey must attend these compulsory classes. Under appeal by a non-Muslim family [non-Muslim Turks are Christians, Jews and other minority-members] The European Court of Human Rights concluded the Turkish education system "still [was] inadequately equipped to ensure respect for parents' convictions", violating the "right to education."

"Turkey has to remedy the situation without delay, in particular by introducing a system whereby pupils could be exempted from religion and ethics classes without their parents having to disclose their own religious or philosophical convictions."


A situation clearly calling for an immediate solution to overturn the deficit in Turkish children's education, and so Turkey's National Education Council met to debate recently how to achieve an improvement in the education system and for that purpose make recommendations to be received by the government. The meeting side-lined discussion over the poor PISA rankings, and no discussion revolved around an improvement in the math and science curricula.

A teachers' union, loyal to the government, proposed that religion be a required pre-school course, that children aged three to six in Turkey be taught Islam. This was not adopted, but Sunni Islam classes were made compulsory for first, second and third grade students (ages six to eight).

Now that's progress! On the other hand, Kemal Ataturk might think otherwise.

Matthew Cassel/Al Jazeera

Like in Turkish schools, a picture of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, hangs over 

classrooms for Syrian refugees.