Transcript The Concept of Man

GROUP 8
•Fatimah Amirah Omar
•Noor Zilawati Md. Uris
•Sabrina Haani Salamun
•Siti Norbaya Mohd. Radzuan
•Suhamira Nordin
QUESTION
• Discuss, compare and contrast the
concept of man, knowledge and
education from Islamic and
Western perspectives.
Islamic
• Have ‘aql & nafs
• As God’s
vicegerent
(khalifah).
• Made from clay /
soil.
• Believe in the
unseen (God,
heaven, hell etc.)
• Amr ma’ruf nahi
mungkar
Western
• Man (homo
sapiens) evolved
from apes.
• Seeing is
believing.
• Based on rational
& majority.
• Do not believe in
the day of
judgement /
hereafter.
Islamic
Western
• Responsibility –
• Responsibility –
original goodness.
original sin.
• Love – for God is
• Love – to
the highest &
something else that
strongest love he
can be seen.
(man) has.
• Soul – as the “
• Soul – mankind
source of thought
created from single
activity” (The
soul
Catholic
Encyclopedia)
$$$$$$
Soul
“ Every soul will be (held) in pledge for its deeds”
(Quran, 74:38)
“(To the righteous soul will be said) "0 (thou) soul,
in (complete) rest and satisfaction! Come back
thou to thy Lord - well pleased (thyself) and well
pleasing unto Him Enter thou, then among My
devotees! Yea enter thou My Heaven '. "
(Quran, 89:27-30)
$$$$$$
Love
“ Yet there are some people who adopt
rivals instead of God, whom they
love just as they (should) love God.
Those who believe are firmer in
their love of God ...”
(Quran,
2:165)
$$$$$$
The Noble Prophet(s) has said the following in one of his moving sermons thus:
“I swear by Allah that all of you will certainly die, just as
you go to sleep at night. Then surely you will all be
raised again as you wake up in the morning. Then you
will definitely be judged for the deeds you had been
doing. You will get rewards for good deeds and
punishment for the evil ones; it will either be the
everlasting life of Paradise or the endless torment of
Hell-fire.”
(Cf.Sermons of the Holy Prophet, reproduced in Nahajul Balagha)
$$$$$$
"We created you from earth and return
you to earth and then bring you forth
once more."
(Quran,20:55)
$$$$$$
"The unbelievers say: Is this not strange that we
should be brought back after dying and turning
to dust? Such a return is impossible. But We
are fully aware of what the earth takes from
them and it is We Who possess the Preserved
Tablet."
(Quran, 50:2-4)
$$$$$$
"I did not create the jinn and men for aught
but they should worship Me."
(Qur'an, 51:56)
$$$$$$
Western’s perspectives
• Plato emphasized that the soul
achieves a pure state only after
release from its prison house in the
body.
• Soul – immortal
- breath / life
- self / mind
$$$$$$
Muslims’ definitions of knowledge
• A process of knowing that is identical with
the known and the knower.
• A form of cognition (marifah).
• Synonymous with comprehension (ihatah)
• A process of mental perception.
• A means for clarification, assertion and
decision
• A concept or percept subject to
apperception.
• An attribute (sifah)
•
•
•
•
•
A agent of memory or imagination.
Motion
A relative term.
Defined in relation to action
A product of introspection
(Tanzeem-e-Islami, internet resources)
Westerners’ definition of knowledge
• What someone knows about a
particular subject
• The fact that someone knows about
something
ISLAMIC
PERSPECTIVES
•Knowledge comes from
Allah. It can be gained
through al-Quran, alhadith, other than what we
discover in the world
•Al-Quran is a guidance
for mankind (hudan-lilnas) – 2:1-3
WESTERN
PERSPECTIVES
•“…that intense
limitations (our)
investigations have
revealed…” (Descartes)
•Believe that knowledge
should be somehow
guaranteed by the
structure of reality
definition
•“Read in the name of thy
Lord who createth..”
(96:1) – stresses on the
importance of reading, i.e
seeking for knowledge
•The term used for
knowledge in Arabic is
“ilm” which has a much
wider connotation
(embracing terms
covering theory, action
and education)
•“seeing is believing” –
believe on knowledge
with concrete evidence
only
•Falls short of expressing
all aspects of information
about something divine
or corporeal e.g:god,
angels, human creation
•Danto’s model of knowledge
believes
SUBJECT
PROPOSITION
true
causation
FACT
•
•
Islam recognizes several
sources of knowledge,
i.e revelation, intuition,
reason or rational
thinking, and sense
experience or empirical
observation
Believes that there is a
close relationship
between knowledge
(ilm) and belief (iman)
•Recognizes
experimenting,
researching, and
exploring as the sources
of knowledge
•Basically, western
classification of
knowledge focuses
mainly on the concrete or
actual knowledge.
Acquired knowledge
-knowledge that man acquires
or finds on his own (‘ilm al-aqliyah)
THE CLASSIFICATION
OF KNOWLEDGE
-2nd world conference on
Muslim education, 1980-
Perennial knowledge
-revealed, God-given knowledge
(‘ilm al-naqliyah)
Other Islamic classification of knowledge:
1. Proposed by al-Ghazali:
- theoretical and practical sciences
- huduri (presential) and husuli (intellectual)
- ilm al-shari’ah (religious) and ilm al-aqliyah
(intellectual) sciences
- fard ‘ain (obligatory on every individual) and
fard kifayah (obligatory on community) sciences
2. Proposed by Muhammad Al-Naquib Al-Attas:
- the religious sciences
- the rational, intellectual, and philosophical
sciences
ISLAM STRESSES ON
KNOWLEDGE
• “Read in the name of thy Lord who
createth..” (96:1)
• “Our lord is He who gave into
everything its nature and constitution,
and then guided it aright” (20:50)
• In the Qur´an the word ‘alim has
occurred in 140 places, while al-’ilm in 27.
The total number of verses in which ‘ilm
or its derivatives and associated words
are used is 704. The aids of knowledge
(book, pen, ink) amount to almost the
same number. Qalam occurs in two places,
al-kitab in 230 verses, among which alkitab for al-Qur´an occurs in 81 verses.
Other words associated with writing
occur in 319 verses. The Islamic
revelation started with the word iqra´
(‘read!´ or ‘recite!´).
‘Read: And thy lord is the most
Bounteous, Who teach by the pen,
Teach man that which he knew not’
(96:3-5; Al ‘Alaq)
‘A drop of sweat of the brow of a
thinker is better than the thousand
blood drops of the martyr’
(famous Hadith)
ISLAMIC VS WESTERN
ISLAMIC
Believes in the mastery
of matter & mind.(Al-Jathiya)
Introduced the
inductive method, which
is analytical & scientific.
Is a scientific enquiry
& research, which are
obligatory.
Islam is a scientific
religion emphasizing on
the need of scientific
inquiry’
WESTERN
Emphasize on
abstractions.
Method of inquiry was
deductive.
Scientific research is
opposed by the church
(religion).
Goal is for selfimprovement.
Concept of secular
development.
ISLAMIC
Pedagogy method
found in the Quran
which is the empirical
approach.
WESTERN
Giving false sense
of objectivity when
dealing with human
behaviours.
• In summary, the Islamic and contemporary
western philosophies of edu. Bare some
resemblance to each other in their social
and individual aims
• However, there are poles apart with
respect to their philosophical
bases.(western-lack of divine principles &
values) (Islamic-imbued with divine
principles & natural laws)
• More importantly it gave raise to 2 diff.
sets of individuals having variant attitudes
and believes towards God and His creation.
‘For you (God) subjected all
that is in the heavens and on
the earth, all from Him.
Behold! In that are signs for
people who reflect’
back
‘The way one of the prophet
Adam’s (PBUH) son learn how
to bury his dead brother by
watching the similar
demonstration from a bird’
(E.g. in 5:27; Al-Ma’idah)
back
‘Al Faruqi asserts that the
humanistic studies of
western man & the social
analysis of western society
by a western scientist are
necessarily ‘WESTERN’ and
cannot serve as a model of
studies of Muslim and their
back
society’