Islam et modernité : comment être musulman au XXIème siècle.
The educational programs and textbooks in the majority of Muslim countries reproduce classical schemes and archaic rules and visions lacking a critical spirit and hardly adapted to modern times. Corporal punishment, the prohibition of usury, the regime of the Caliphate — all are taught as religious obligation, as if we were still in the Middle Ages when these rules were applied. After having received such instruction, a child, once an adult, discovers an economy founded on an international banking system, a new penal code, modern state structures — in brief, a society that has only a distant resemblance to the ideal society that was described to him in school. Now you see why the youth are disoriented!
For the majority of Islamist countries, a profound reform of their educational systems is in order to satisfy the following imperatives:
- A sufficient opening on foreign states and cultures to give students an idea of the modern world and the different currents of international thought.
- Religious instruction should above all be confined to the strictly religious domain. When professors of religious education teach the history of religion, they generally indulge in the tendency to embellish artificially and to present historic facts in a Manichaean fashion. The sacralization of historic facts and their triumphalist presentation harm children. The history of religion should be left to historians. The instruction of Islam should not be in contradiction to positive modern law. Finally, scholastic textbooks should embrace modern Muslim thinkers.
- Civic education should take importance. The formation of a future citizen is one of the essential imperatives of secondary school. Students should be taught the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which is the fundamental basis of modernity, the triumph of democratic movements in Europe and the United States, the recent democratization of many other regions. The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man and the progress achieved by humanity in this realm in recent decades should be acknowledged and explained.
In conclusion, it is time that the educational systems evolve to such an extent that the fanatical spirit — authoritarian, paternalistic, and hostile to other civilizations — is banished, and that the principles of individual freedom, perfect equality of the sexes, democracy, human rights, and universal peace are inculcated to our youth.
It is in this spirit that I instituted important educational reforms in Tunisia during my tenure as Minister of Education from 1989 — 1994.
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U.S.–Muslim Engagement Project Report Published: “Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World” September 24, 2008, at the National Press Club, Washington D.C.
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