By CRISTINA (MARYAM) IGNAT

DURING the early days of Islam – and when Islam started being strong, or “the Golden days of Islam” – the education system of the child was “complete” – right from the beginning.

The role of the Masjid was to introduce the kids to Qur’an and Hadith (which is still being maintained in the madrasahs nowadays) – but also to provide necessary education to the potential students (children and adults) with the “dunia education (Math, Arabic, science, medicine, etc.) – therefore, the kids would have strong education in basic Islamic concepts, but could also learn “dunia” material all at the same time. Thus the education was complete and there was no need for “public school” or any other kind of school (dunia school) to complement madrasah education.
When the masjid functioned as a school, the kids would automatically pray the daily prayers and learn everything while developing taqwa(awareness of Allah’s greatness and the fact that our role in life is to worship Allah alone and without any partners). Thus, many of the great and well-known Muslim scientists at the time actually were first and foremost Alims (Muslim scholars), who clearly understood the purpose of life as a Muslim. Such examples are Ibn Battuta (great Muslim traveller), Avicenna(Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīn- doctore, mathematician, etc), Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi (ibn Tufail – mathematician, scientist) – etc. Many of the alims had great roles in different fields of study- such as Math, science, geography, astronomy, etc. – all at the same time.

In present day – we have two “schools” for our children – the madrasah and the dunia school – this is in fact a result of secularism (separation of religion and state); it is in fact one school based on tawheed (For Allah’s sake) and one school for dunia, practicaly based on kufr (worshipping other than Allah) –especially in countries with non-Islamic governments.

Therefore, we have confused children – as to what is right and wrong – since the Islamic values and the “public school”/kufr values are in obvious contradiction. Therefore, we see the “ills” of such public education, especially by the time a child reaches high-school – where it is usually all the evils of the “freedom culture” are well-known to all members of society up to the point that even non-Muslims do not like the effects such “education” on their own kids ( drugs being sold in almost any high-school in North America, no respect for parents, sexual freedom outside of marriage, overall lack of morals and manner, etc.)

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