Muslim and its education
Islam is system of believe and system of knowledge. Islamic knowledge derived from Islamic faith in which God as center of action and devotion. There is no other source beside god, all knowledge come from god. it means human did not produce of knowledge, but reproduce knowledge which comes trough revelation process.
Qur’an and prophet said have important role in education. Those are source of knowledge and legitimization of truth. As like other religious education, doctrinization cannot be diminished from it, but it not means all contents of Islamic teaching are doctrine. It is common problem which also happens in Christianity. Student will be placed as follower of teacher in process of learning in which learning seem running in one cycle process. Doctrine, because it content is truth, presented as something higher than human. Truth many figured as God, because it come from God. As long as knowledge come from god, everything come from human is not truly truth if there is no correlation or correspondence to the religious text.
Superiority of doctrine in religion sometimes leads us to diminishing reason as other faculty to get truth. Whereas, god creates and placed reason in human being is not just for fun without any purposes. Human is co-creator, thus in the sense of knowledge human also create new knowledge. If god source of knowledge for all beings in the universe, minimally human can produce knowledge for human race.
In this ways Islam support development of logic, social and natural science as we saw in medieval eras. Farid Alatas (Islamic education and multiculturalism: 10) said, “In islam all knowledge comes from god. Muslim had never recognized the division of knowledge into religious and secular. All knowledge comes from god, but such knowledge is either about god (as in theology, for example) or about God’s creation (as studied by the various rational sciences).” All knowledge should be integrated as human knowledge which refers to human understanding of religious knowledge and science knowledge.
In my mind, basically all knowledge is good, not truth. If god is source of good, all human knowledge also should come from Him. Knowledge is good for establishing human capacity and awareness of being human. Trough knowledge, civilization, technology, and social harmony can be produced. Truth of god is the ultimate, but truth in perspective of human as receiver of that truth is always various. It is difficult to determine that the truth will be the good, or vice versa. Religion give clear role of what is truth, but it not means without human interpretation. Good is always good for people who belief that good is truth.
Islam emphasize character building in education appropriates with the social and religious condition. Building good character in social life means establish “akhlaq” in term of islam, where human should respect to other human being as they respect to God. Farid Alatas states: “..Knowledge and education is not merely as the acquisition of information or the capacity for explanation and analysis but also connect this process to the nature of god and reality and a human ethic of responsibility.” Benevolence character is first requisite in Muhammad prophet teaching.
Insistence to human and ethic responsibility should be underlined for some reason. First, many formal education in the time did not emphasis to the character building of human being, but to fulfill such market demand. Second, Good character and responsibility is prerequisite in building better understanding and harmony for people. If knowledge just learns for knowledge there is no other benefit except development of that knowledge. Whereas, if knowledge developed for such higher aims it will give others benefit socially and religiously, eg. More religious and wiser in doing social action.[]
