Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2017

highlights a number of contemporary Islamic educationalists debating the ontology and epistemology of Islamic education who still draw on the early Islamic philosophers, especially al-Farabi and al-Ghazali, as authoritative references for their positions. 97 Alkanderi points to al-Ghazali's educational thinking reflected in a number of modem Muslim educationalists. 98 It seems that, at a minimum, interpretations of al-Ghazali continue to be widely influential in Islamic education. A key consideration remains concerning the nature of al-Ghazali’s influence on education. Nakosteen argues that the balanced curriculum characteristic of early Islamic education was lost after al-Ghazali, stating, ‘Curriculum became formal, fixed, traditional, religious, dogmatic, backward-looking. It encouraged static minds and conformity. It became authoritarian and essentialist.’ 99 Both Stone and Hilgendorf reflect this perspective, pointing to the closing of ijtihad (independent reasoning) and the apparent blind acceptance of taqlid (tradition) that followed al- Ghazali. 100 Hilgendorf recognises that this seems to be a misunderstanding by these later Islamic educationalists of al-Ghazali's progressive stages of development in education. Where al-Ghazali held memorisation and habituation as only the first steps of educational growth, those who followed have often understood these as the primary methods of education. 101 In the encounter with modernity, a diversity of educational approaches within Islam developed. 102 Sadaalah demonstrates that, in contrast to traditionalism, the fundamentalist orientation in Islamic education rejects al-Ghazali. Yet fundamentalism does so, drawing on Ibn Taymiyyah's use of Avicennian rationality, 103 and with the intent to liberate Muslims to interpret without the need for consulting centuries of scholarly tradition following al-Ghazali. 104 Even still, as Nofal notes, al-Ghazali was named as the primary resource for a major curriculum revision at al-Azhar in the nineteenth century. 105 96 Tibawi, Islamic Education, p. 41, emphasis added. 97 Shah, Education, [Kindle locations 423-429]. 98 Alkanderi (p. 7) lists the following: Al-Barjis, 1983; Al- Sawi, 1999; Al-Zabidi, n.d.; Shafshaq, 1980; Dakhil Allah, 1996; Durant, 1950; Tibawi, 1972; and others. 99 Nakosteen, p. 57. 100 Hilgendorf, p. 69; Stone, p. 319. 101 Hilgendorf, p. 69. 102 Sherin Sadaalah, ‘Islamic Orientations and Education’, in Educational Strategies among Muslims in the Context of Globalization: Some National Case Studies, ed. by Holger Daun and Geoffrey R. Walford, v. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 103 That is, the approach of Ibn Sina, who wrote the infamous refutation to al-Ghazali’s Tahafut, entitled Tahafut al-tahafut (The Incoherence of Incoherence). 104 Jonathan A. C. Brown, ‘Is Islam Easy to Understand or Not?: Salafis, the Democratization of Interpretation and the Need for the Ulema’, Journal of Islamic Studies,