116 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 11 : 1 Book Review Islamic Versus Modern Western Education: Prospect for the Future By Tetsuya Kitaji. Niigata-ken, Japan: Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, International University of Japan, 1990, 127 pp. The Islamization of education, which is part of the more overarching discussion of Islamizing knowledge, has activated Muslim social and na­ tural scientists as well as scholars in the humanities. The wide extension of scholarly fields involved has colored the discussion and multiplied its views. For a reader in the subject of Islamic education, this multiplex picture can be confusing and make it hard to distinguish petween the dif­ ferent components. In his research, Kitaji has attempted to compare the modem western and Islamic educational systems. He has divided his research into four main parts. First he gives an outline of national education. In this part, he departs from the problems faced by the Japanese educational system, where the drop-out rates have nearly doubled in the last ten years. In the case of Japan, he finds that the curriculum is rigid and does not take into account individual differences in the ability to absorb information. He Book Reviews 117 further argues that the psychological atmosphere discourages pupils, for the system tries to control them by regulating their attitudes and psychical appearance (i.e., hair-style and clothes). From the particularity of Japanese schooling, he turns to a description of the western educational system in general. What Kitaji does is to gen- eralize the western educational system in terms of Japanese actual experi- ences, western educational philosophy (mostly French), and western domestic critics. This results in a generalization that is far too broad, and I, who live in Sweden, tecognize only a few of the author’s characteris- tics of the western educational system. However, Kitaji makes an impor- tant point, which I assume pertains nearly to all western countries’ national educational system: neglecting the pupils’ identity formation, par- ticularly the spiritual part. He also emphasizes the fact that national education is based upon the state’s demands rather than the pupils’ indi- vidual needs. Although Kitaji stresses the state’s role in the development of structure and of curriculum, his recurrent emphasis of the state’s role in curriculum development makes it difficult to grasp whose conscious or unconscious forces are actually working. The research would maybe be more substantial if some comments had been made on this subject. In the second part, Kitaji provides some basic features of Islamic education. However, the generalization here is also too broad. In contrast to his description of the western educational system, which began with how it functions in praxis, Islamic education is treated purely from an idealistic point of view. Kitaji tends to deal with Islam as a totally un- problematic concept and makes no distinction between Sunni and Shi‘i or between different understandings of how to interpret the Islamic sour- ces. He also does not distinguish between traditional Islamic education and Islamic education within the discussion of Islamization of education. This might be because the literature he refers to is written mainly by Islamists with a humanistic or Islamic educational background (i.e., S. M. a1 Naguib a1 Attas and Sayyid ‘Ali Ashraf) and with few references to literature on Islamic education by Islamist social scientists (ie., ‘Abd a1 RabmIin Silib ‘Abd All& and a1 Majid KilEnii. In addition, he has relied mainly on English-language sources and those translated from Eng- lish into Japanese, thereby depriving himself of all relevant Arabic-lan- guage literature. Moreover, he has given a primarily theoretical picture of Islamic education and few indications of how it could actually be applied. However, this is not so much a criticism of the author as it is of the dis- cussants in general, who have kept their work overwhelmingly theoretical. In the third part, Kitaji compares the educational systems. He depicts the objective of Islamic education as ”to bring up an Islamic man through a process of encouraging him to obtain knowledge” and of modem west- 118 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 1 1:l em education as "building up membets of the nation-state and in the pro- cess cultivating the concept of national identity into them" @. 60). He W e r distinguishes between the concept of knowledge in Islamic educa- tion (i.e., "the essentials of God, the universe, the community and man himself, and the relationship between them" [p. 601) and in modem west- ern education (i.e., "knowledge itself is basically practical because the aim is to bring about profit and practical progress" [pp. 60-11). Although his latter statement is probably true, it is also true that western education, idealistically, focusses upon pupils' personal growth. This third part is perhaps the best part, as the author has kept the two systems on the same level: ideology. He gives an outline of the develop- ment of the concept of knowledge in the western world in view of the Islamic concept of knowledge. Kitaji opines that Islamic education could be a remedy for the western world. However, in this matter he speaks strictly in terms of education and explicitly leaves out Islamic ideology. The author makes an important point about modem education: They [the &g class and the newly generated industrial bour- geoisie] felt that it was dangerous to leave the masses ignorant but, in their view, it was equally dangerous to educate them too much because educated labor would sooner or later become a problem to the industrial bourgeoisie as workers sought improve- ment of labor conditions. Therefore, there was an emphasis on moral and religious education. It was felt that kind of education would be effective in cultivating a spirit of obedience and sub- mission to the rulers of the state and church in pupils. (p.76) Although he places this in a western context, it is highly relevant in an historical and contemporary Islamic context. In particular, it is a potential danger for a state-controlled Islamic educational system, as it deals with who should interpret and in whose interest the interpretation should be. In the fourth part, Kitaji analyses western influence on Islamic educa- tion He says that "in most Islamic countries, them exist two educational systems: Islamic education and Western education' (p. 84, my italics). This statement indicates the confusion of terms used in the research. Fitst he speaks of Islamic countries, thus equating Islam with Muslims. Another point is the lack of distinction between Islamic education and Islamic teaching. In the educational system of most Muslim states, there is no integration of curriculum to bring about a teaching of academic dis- ciplines from an Islamic view. Adding Islamic lessons to the academic curriculum does not ""Islamize" teaching. One must be aware of this dis- tinction in order to avoid a confusion of concepts. Book Reviews 119 In this last part, Kitaji actually operates with the two terms ”Islamic education” and ‘‘tlXtditi0Ml Islamic education.” He uses them inter- changeably to denote Islamic teaching, the traditional mudrassah system, and Islamic education in the sense of an Islamic integrated system. This becomes obvious when he cites contempomry Saudi Arabia and Egypt in his investigation of western influences on Islamic education. There, he gives an account of how many hours a week Islamic subjects are taught in comparison with academic subjects. It should be apparent that this has little to do with what Islamist social scientists depict as Islamic education. The overall view of Kitaji’s research of Islamic versus modem western education is that he has been too ambitious in his aims. To de- scribe modem westem education in only twenty-nine pages of course leads to overgeneralization. His description of Islamic education also suf- fers from a lack of references to Islamist social scientists and thus makes this description too broad. Kitaji’s mearch gives an idea of Japanese educational problems, and it would have been valuable if this aspect had been more emphasized, rather than westem education in general. The confusion of concepts also creates a problem for the reader, as it makes it difficult to separate be- tween Kitaji’s levels of research. Although he seems aware of the differ- ence between Islam and Muslim, as he speaks in terms of “the idealized community of Umma” (p. 58), he does not clarify this position ekewhere. In my view, in some parts of his book Kitaji tends to make comparisons that are unfair, for he compares the ideal of the Islamic educational sys- tem with the actual application of modem western systems. Generally speaking, as it is difficult to bring about a harmonization between theory and practice in all systems and institutional works, one should observe this conflict also in one’s own ideological sphere. The comparison be- tween one’s own ideology and another culture’s or ideology’s actual prac- tice is actually what has happened in much westem research on foreign cultures in general and on Islam and Muslims in particular. As political, sociological, and anthropological investigations of Muslim phenomena have tended to generalize them and put them into an Islamic rather than a Muslim frame, much of what is only Muslim practice has been depicted as Islamic in an ideological sense of the word. Islamist researchers should not fall in the same trap, but should view structures realistically rather than idealistically, as practical outcomes depend upon realistic research. Anne Sofie Roald Department of Theology History of Religion University of Lund, Sweden