ISLAMIC EDUCATION AND THE PROJECT OF MORAL RETRIEVAL A COMPARISON OF AL-GHAZALI AND DEWEY

ZEHRA VLUG-ÜNVER

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses the challenges of developing an authentic Islamic educational 
philosophy in a Western secular-liberal context. It argues that for various reasons 
Islamic educational institutions in the West often lack the theoretical underpinnings 
that are grounded in the Islamic intellectual tradition. A shortage of well-trained Islamic 
educational practitioners and teachers and a lack of insight into islamic educational theory 
has resulted in educational practices that could arguably be said to be more “islamicate” 
than Islamic as such. Through the framework of a “project of moral retrieval” we 
might productively explore Islamic moral resources to ground a contemporary Islamic 
educational philosophy. The author makes an integral and contrastive comparison of 
key concepts in educational philosophy between the paradigmatic educational thinkers 
al-Ghazālī and John Dewey, subsequently analyzing Islamic and western conceptions 
of human nature, child and learning, the goals and aims of education, the role of the 
teacher and teacher-students relations. Through this analyses the author evaluates how 
educational thought in Islam and the West overlaps and diverges in an attempt to explore 
a more authentic expression of Islamic educational philosophy that might fruitfully 
function in the Western context.