Education: The Real Meaning

O ye people! Adore your Guardian-Lord, who created you and those who came before you, that ye may have the chance to learn righteousness (1)

If there is one single factor within our control that can directly determine who we are as an Ummah, it is education. There is only one way to produce wholesome and spiritually healthy adults, people who will lead selfless and meaningful lives, and that is to educate our children.

Education is not just learning the skills to make a living; it is learning to understand life itself. Life is the recognition of Allah (swt) and the mission that Allah (swt) has charged us with - refining ourselves and making our world sacred.

Imparting information is but a small and rather simple component of education. A true education - an education for life - consists of teaching children that they have an uncompromising responsibility to Allah (swt) to live morally and ethically, which will sustain them individually and create a better world for their children and for generations to come.

It was related by Yahya that Abu Bakr ibn Abd ar-Rahman used to say, "Someone who goes to the mosque in the morning or the afternoon with no intention of going anywhere else, either to learn good or teach it, is like someone who does jihad in the way of Allah and returns with booty." (2)


How should we educate?
The question of how to educate is really the same as asking, How should we communicate? How should we do business? How should we live?

Allah! There is no god but He: and on Allah, therefore, let the Believers put their trust. (3)

The answer is always the same: through love and trust. Without love and trust, education is at best incomplete and at worst, destructive. Love and trust means sensitivity - not to your ideas and your standards, but to your student's and, most important, to Allah's (swt). Once young people grow familiar with an existence that is greater than themselves and acquire an aptitude and intellectual taste for the spiritual, they become attuned to their purpose in life. They become children who relate to their parents with respect and affection. Children who will not take property that doesn't belong to them. Children who reach out to help other people, and are generous with their time and love.


How should this generation be educated?
Because a child is impressionable, he will be impressed by whatever is around him. Today, the obstacles are greater than ever - television, crime, the lure of drugs - any of these can prevent a proper education. And after fighting through all these distractions, there is precious little time and energy left to cultivate our children's nafs. It is not enough to pat your daughter and son on the head and send them off to school; education is an around-the-clock duty. We must be as vigilant as when the child was a newborn - always on the alert, always ready to serve the child's spiritual needs.

Is it not a warning to such men to call to mind how many generations before them We destroyed, in whose haunts they now move? Verily, in this are Signs for men endued with understanding. (4)

Without the acceptance that morality is derived from Allah (swt), morality - and, therefore, education - is guided by nothing more than human whim and conscience. History has shown us that a society can be extremely well educated and yet, if not guided by Allah's (swt) precepts, it may be steeped in immorality and evil.

So a system of morally sound education is one of the primary responsibilities of our Ummah. While there must be a certain group of people whose primary responsibility is to implement education, each member of our Ummah must take an active role. For parents of young children especially, the responsibility is clear. Think how disturbed we would be to learn about a parent who had a sick child, but refused to take the child to a doctor. If that is the case for the child's body, shouldn't we feel the same concern for a child's mind, for his nafs?

And that those on whom knowledge has been bestowed may learn that the Qur'an is the Truth from thy Lord, and that they may believe therein, and their hearts may be made humbly open to it: for verily Allah is the Guide of those who believe, to the Straight Way. (5)


Footnotes
1) (2.21)
2) Malik's Muwatta: Book 9, Number 9.18.56
3) (64.13)
4) (20.128)
5) (22.54)