Ahdaf al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyyah
- Author died
- 1437 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Qalam
Ahdaf al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyyah (The Objectives of Islamic Education) is a work on educational theory by the Jordanian scholar Majid Irsan al-Kilani (d. 1437 AH / 2015–2016 CE), devoted to formulating the foundational aims and systemic goals of Islamic education in contrast to modern pedagogical paradigms .
Background and Scope
The work builds upon al-Kilani's broader project on Islamic pedagogical theory, complementing his earlier treatise Falsafat al-Tarbiyah al-Islamiyyah (Philosophy of Islamic Education) . Al-Kilani frames the necessity of investigating educational goals around three fundamental issues: the central role of objectives in steering the educational process, the crisis facing modern educational thought regarding the definition and fragmentation of goals, and the lack of clarity regarding educational aims within contemporary educational institutions in the Arab and Muslim worlds .
The book categorizes educational goals into two primary tiers:
- Instrumental Objectives (al-ahdaf al-wasa'il): Practical, operational goals and tools designed to facilitate learning .
- Ultimate Purpose Objectives (al-ahdaf al-aghrad): The overarching, ultimate ends that education seeks to realize across individual, social, and global spheres .
Al-Kilani argues that whereas modern educational systems frequently detach means from ultimate ends—falling into ideological disagreements and treating purposes as purely relative—Islamic education connects instrumental stages systematically to a unified ultimate purpose: the worship, gratitude, and devotion of humankind to God .
Structure and Contents
The book is structured into six major parts (abwab) comprising thirty-four chapters, concluding with practical recommendations and bibliographies :
- Part One: The Importance of Research into the Objectives of Islamic Education (Chapters 1–3): Examines the function of goals in education, analyzes the crisis of modern educational thought in defining goals, and discusses the structural need for clear Islamic objectives in contemporary Muslim educational institutions .
- Part Two: Educating the Muslim Individual or the Righteous Human Being (Chapters 4–13): Explores the concept of righteous work (al-'amal al-salih), the faculties required to produce it, intellectual cultivation, devotion to the supreme ideal (al-mathal al-a'la), developing religious, social, and cosmic awareness, cultivating will (tarbiyat al-iradah), harnessable capability (al-qudrah al-taskhiriyyah), and the shortcomings of individual cultivation in modern institutions .
- Part Three: Bringing Forth the Muslim Ummah (Chapters 14–16): Investigates the Qur'anic concept of the Muslim ummah, its historical emergence, and the necessity of its collective realization through education .
- Part Four: Components of the Muslim Ummah (Chapters 17–23): Details the six constituent elements of the collective community—believing individuals, migration (hijrah), struggle and mission (jihad wa-risalah), shelter (i'wa'), mutual support (nusrah), and allegiance (walayah)—and compares these foundational elements with the hierarchy of needs in modern humanistic psychology .
- Part Five: The Health, Illness, and Death of the Ummah (Chapters 24–29): Analyzes civilizational lifecycles, distinguishing between the stage of vitality (orbiting around ideas), the stage of illness (orbiting around persons through tribal, regional, familial, or personal loyalties), and the stage of death (orbiting around material things), while critiquing the tension between individual development and collective formation in modern education .
- Part Six: Cultivating Faith in the Unity of Humanity and Concord Among Humankind (Chapters 30–34): Addresses global human concord as an educational objective, international educational theories, Islamic perspectives on the unity of the human race, regionalist contradictions in the Muslim world, and final recommendations .
Answer updated