Justice is inextricably related to knowledge, and knowledge to education. So, when we see gross injustice in every aspect of life, the ultimate question would be about knowledge and education. There must be something wrong with the way we have educated the society so that the products are more likely to become unjust. It means our education is in crisis, and unless it is quickly realized and effectively addressed the future of the country is in danger.
The Muslim world today is enmeshed in a growing and deepening crisis. Yet they don’t seem to be interested in education, as much as they do with regard to law and politics. They don’t seem to realize, after all, the difference between the real problem and the symptoms of the problem.
It is true that the Muslims today do not have capable and effective leaders. But that is not the real problem. The real problem is their inability to recognize and differentiate a true leader from a false one. As a result, nothing positive is going to happen with every regime change. A new leader brought into power will only be as corrupt and inefficient as the previous one if not worse.
The only solution is in education, that is unfortunately in the state of crisis. Nevertheless that is the only viable way forward. Political crisis, rising crime rate, poverty, moral and environmental pollution are caused by injustice, and as such, justice is the only remedy, and proper education is the only way the remedy is going to be administered.
When we say that Muslim education today is in the state of crisis, we mean the kind of Muslims produced by that education are generally not good Muslims. They are confused as far as their understanding of Islam and its worldview is concerned, and because of that erroneous practices and unethical behaviours become prevalent.
Education is supposed to produce a human being with moral purpose. In Islamic intellectual tradition, man is defined as the rational animal. His rationality means ability to formulate meaning as well as to articulate words in a meaningful pattern. So he is both a thinking and a speaking being.
Because of reason he can relate objects of knowledge with words representing them. Islam acknowledges this important fact, and because of that the worldview of Islam is projected by words, derived mainly from the Qur’an and the Tradition of the Prophet. So Islamic education pertains mainly to the intellectual and spiritual aspect of man and not simply to his body and animal aspect.
The intellect is crucial to our conception of justice because the intellect is that which recognizes places of things and understands the relation between them. The notion of proper place, according to Islam, refers to the proper place as shown by religion. So religion consists in knowledge that shows man the right place of everything. A man who is truly endowed with religious knowledge knows his place in the order of creation, and that knowledge leads him ultimately to the recognition of the proper place of God in the order of being and existence.
What follows the recognition of the proper place is the acknowledgement in the form of proper action. When that is accomplished by an individual he is called a just person, and when there are significant number of individuals with that quality a just order will prevail in the society.
This is what Islamic education is supposed to bring about. But it wont happen unless the Muslims recognize first of all the fact that the root of their crisis is their misunderstanding of the basic ideas underlying education itself, in particular their understanding of the concepts of man and of justice. Because of the predominance of western education, what they understand by man now is a secular man, and by justice secular justice. Hence, their preoccupation with power and politics far outweights their concern with religion and ethics.