Classification and Integration of Knowledge: The Qur’ānic Educational Model

Many Muslim scholars have been concerned by the educational crisis in which the contemporary Muslim Ummah finds itself, a crisis they attribute to the schism between Revealed and non-Revealed knowledge and to the neglect of the Qur’ān as the basis of educational policy and curriculum. In the early 1970s, a significant number of scholars recommended that the Muslim educational system be based on the Islamic philosophy of education, with emphasis on the Qur’ānic paradigm and the unification of religious sciences (Ilm naqlī) and non-religious sciences (Ilm aqlī). Since then, there have been various scholarly studies of the classification and integration of religious and non-religious knowledge. However, most of them are based on the classical works of past scholars, not on the Qur’ānic model and the tawhīdic paradigm. This paper examines the classification and integration of knowledge through the lens of the Qur’ānic model. The study, which is based on extensive and intensive analysis of both primary and secondary sources – inparticular Chapters 62:2 and 96:1-5 of the Qur’an – identifies three divisions of knowledge; namely, religious, pure and natural sciences. These divisions relate to the signs (ayātu manzūr and ayātu mantūq), which form the epistemological foundation of the Qur’ānic and tawhīdic paradigms for the integration of knowledge. The study thus includes an explicit explanation of the epistemological and philosophical issues underlying the classification and integration of knowledge in Islam.