الجمعة، 24 فيفري 2012

The Notion of Murabbi in Islam: an Islamic Critique of Trends in Contemporary Education 2/2

The Function of Murabbi

       As it was mentioned, the Murabbi does exactly what parents do, but with further focus on teaching sophisticated information and skills. Murabbi’s work doesn’t stop in personalizing the theoretical knowledge but in trying to respond to the question: How knowledge will make from a student Muslim now? How to benefit from that knowledge now?
       We cannot teach and personalize knowledge if we did never live it, Murabbi is a person who experienced knowledge and this became a matter for him. It’s unimaginable that a person worries, interests, and works full heartedly in some task while he considers it as being abstract, mechanical or out of his own personal life and essence. The ultimate proof of truth is in living it, Murabbi has no distance between theory and practice, knowing and acting.

        The distance that we impose nowadays between theory and practice can be explained with the death that knowledge we learn suffers. In class, students are formed in a way that permits them to occupy high beneficial future posts that generate tremendous fortune and unlimited pleasure in life. For such reason, todays leaders try to generalize business systems on education through various procedures such us: compressing entire specializations in restricted time to spend less effort and time and earn a lot of incomes, better the consumer (student) pays better and more up to date education he receives, and all other sorts of agendas that deprive knowledge from its essence and create detached concepts that will produce strange dualistichuman generations.
          Muslims, nowadays, are confused in the way how to transform theory into practice while the two bodies are by definition a unique entity. In the eyes of the prophet, the knowing and acting are identical. Many prophets are accompanied with divine books; the Messenger doesn’t say only what is in the book but most importantly says what he is. He provides the configuration of meaning that makes the understanding of the book possible. Furthermore, Quran was always against the harsh separation between Ilm (knowing) and Amal (acting), and more importantly threatens people whose deeds are contradictory to their sayings:
                “O ye who believe! Why say ye that which ye do not? It is most hateful in the sight of Allah that ye say that which ye do not.” 2-3. As-saf
          For such reason and others, we don’t find any difference between Quran which can be perceived as a theory and the deeds and sayings of the prophet which can be considered as practice.
         This unification between knowing and acting is in the core of knowledge. Quran is a written book that reflects the universe or the seen world, the human reasoning cannot imagine contradictions between the two Worlds, in other words, we can never say that there is a contradiction between a machine mechanism and its catalogue because they are invented by one engineer, the unification between knowing and acting guides no doubt to the supreme unification:” La’ Illaha’ Illa’ Allah”, which is the core of knowledge and the ultimate task of Murabbi.

Commodification of knowledge
      Schultz criticized the concepts that existed in his time (1960s), people considered labor as a capital which can be increased only if it is mixed with great amounts of money, whereas, education was perceived as consumption.
      Schultz suggested that education be an investment which has for objective productivity and only productivity, for instance, university specializations that best bring benefit to the economy are motivated and invested in. On the other hand, specializations that do not represent high marketability such as philosophy or literature are put aside and taught to the poor citizens’ siblings. Following this policy of education, knowledge lost its intrinsic value and acquired instead an exchange value so that it can be bought and sold in the market.
         As a result of all this commodification of knowledge, and generalization of market rules on all the aspects of life including education, as a result of this, teaching becomes impersonal, and personal needs are no more served by education because, in the point of view of businessmen, more you serve personal values less money you earn and whatever effort is spent should generate a material income.
          These days, students are put in a restrained and systemized atmosphere, from the day they knock the door of school to their graduation, they follow restricted rules and think in a way that serves the market and, lastly, benefits a minority of leaders in the World. Students don’t learn to serve their humanity or instill justice in their societies, they learn for unique sake; survive. However, the logic and clear principal that we always repeat and recite is that people are created by Allah to exclusively worship him and their Rizk (livelihood) is guaranteed:
         “I created the jinn and humankind only that they might worship Me. I seek no livelihood from them, nor do I ask that they should feed Me.Lo! Allah! He it is that giveth livelihood, the Lord of unbreakable might” 56-57-58 Athariat.
         it can be said after this analyze that nowadays, education reverse the concepts top to down and people are walking the feet up and the head down. The question which imposes itself right now is what is the Salvation?

Do we still need Murabbi?
            Since the human is in a sense no more human, and machines and capitals are put on the same line with the most dignified creature on the globe, the answer is yes we need Murabbi to render knowledge personal through a unification between knowing and acting, Quran and Universe and at the core of all this sphere a unification of Allah: ”La’ Illaha’ Illa’ Allah”. But the logical question after confirming the need to Murabbi: how should be this Murabbi?
        Murabbi is a person who teaches from the text that is embodied in him by interpreting what he witnessed to generations. Murabbi doesn’t live two lives at the same time; one inside the class and another one outside of it.
         Murabbi acquires all the attributes of harmony, he copes artistically between theory and practice, sophisticated thinking skills and personal values because to him it’s easy to teach abstract information, but teaching to think and live is the tough prerequisite that every Muslim is waiting.


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