1. DECOLONIZATION OF EDUCATION
THROUGH ISLAMIZATION AND
DEWESTERNIZATION
BY
S. MANURUNG
The International Seminar on Decolonization of Education, 10 - 11 Apr 2012
Universitas Muhammadiyah Sumatera Utara (UMSU)
&
Center for Islamic Development Management Studies (ISDEV), Universiti
Sains Malaysia., (International)

2. FRAMEWORK
1. INTODUCTION
2. HISTORY OF DECOLONIZATION
3. THE PHILOSOPHY OF ISLAMIZATION OF
KNOWLEDGE
4. THE WESTERN CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE
5. DECOLONIZATION OF EDUCATION
6. DECOLONIZATION OF EDUCATION WITHIN
THE FRAMEWORK OF
DEWESTERNIZATION AND ISLAMIZATION

3. INTRODUCTION
Knowledge -----Development--------Civilization
Greek /Yunani Era
Islamic Civilization
Dark age (Jahiliyyah) ----- Islam ------- The
Golden age of Islamic Civilization ------decline
Western Civilization
Church Hegemony ----- Dark age ----- Decline of
the Church Hegemony ------ Western Civilization
Era

4. • In understanding of Knowledge/Science:
Worldview -----
Western Islam
Only Hereafter Word and Hereafter
Colonialism
& Decolonization
Imperialism

5. • Colonialism: - Injuctice
Oppresion
Establish, new territory…..
Decline ---
Cultural & Intellectual

6. HISTORY OF DECOLONIZATION
• Colonialism -----destroyed :
, social, cultural, economic, political, religious,
and others
• Economic motif & Missionaries
• Colonialism : Dichotomy education ----
Science to Motif, essence of the welfare of
mankind
• Methodology – reality – paradigm ---- open
window----
• Epistemology --------Knowledge

7. • Second World War
• Decolonization:
– Elemenation
– Returning power to the people
– A subordinated territory becomes a sovereign
and independent state
– Removing the heavy burden of empire
colonization: Culturallly & Naturally.

8. • Decolonization of education -- Authenticate of
knowledge about problem and phenomena
• Decolonization of education ----the first steps
toward the decolonization is to equation the
legitimacy of colonization

9. THE PHILOSOPHY OF
ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE
• Rosenthal : about 750 words “i-l-m” in the
Qur‘an.
• Knowledge as sine qua non of humanity---
Adam --- ―the names of all things‖ by Allah
• Al-Ghazali : Knowledge as ‗acquisition of that
information through which one can
successfully attain the true goal of life
• To fulfill religious and spiritual responsibilities

10. • Islamization of knowledge:
first: expanding, upgrading and modernizing
Islamic disciplines
second: connecting all other disciplines to
Islamic faith and values

11. THE WESTERN CONCEPT OF
KNOWLEDGE
• Plato, knowledge is sensible perception; true
opinion; and true opinion with reasoned
explanation (Fowler: 1929, p. 3). A knowledge of
the nature of the original; a knowledge of the
correctness of the copy; and a knowledge of the
excellence with which the copy is executed?
(Burry: 1926, p. 145). For Plato (ca. 429–347
B.C.) said that knowledge can only be of what is
real. Protagoras said that "man is the measure of
all things".

12. While Heracleitus said that all things are always in
motion. Here Plato distinguishes two kinds of
motion—movement in space and change of quality
and asserts that constant motion of the first kind
must be accompanied by change, because otherwise
the same things would be at the same time both in
motion and at rest. This obvious fallacy Plato
appears to ascribe to Heracleitus and his school. The
result of this discussion is that if nothing is at rest,
every answer on whatever subject is equally correct.
Read more in the book of H. N. Fowler. (tr.). (1929).
Plato: Theaetetus – Sophist. Volume II. London:
William Heinemann.

13. • Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) use common
sensible, Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) see all
knowledge is rooted in experience, the contact
between the soul and the external world. St.
Augustine (354–430) said that all knowledge
involves the individual‘s awareness of God.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) view that
knowledge is something that is empirical—
which can be acquired through experience.
René Descartes (1596–1650) said that the
mind is everything in getting science---with
the famous statement ―cogito ergo sum (I
think, therefore I am)‖

14. • Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) likened the
human mind with the mind of God, the
argument that ―the human mind perceives
ideas that are in the mind of God‖. Benedict
Spinoza (1632–1677) argues that there is only
one substance, God or Nature, of which both
ideas and physical objects, Spinoza concluded
that ideas are true or false only from the
perspective of an individual human mind.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) said that
individual substances each of which reflects
the entire cosmos from its own point of view

15. John Locke(1632–1704) argues that all our
knowledge rests ultimately on simple ideas of
sense. He says, consists in one‘s recognition of
relationships of agreement or disagreement
among ideas. George Berkeley (1685–
1753), argues that physical objects are
preserved, but only as clusters of ideas in
minds. He declaring that only minds and ideas
in the mind existed

16. David Hume (1711–1776) built concept
knowledge that began with the skeptical
theory. He argued, there is no sure thing from
the experience of our senses, whether visible
or not visible. Nothing in our experience
justifies our confidence in the uniformity of
nature; it may be that unobserved instances are
quite unlike the observed ones. Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) uses a priori synthetic
propositions in explaining that we know that
for any two events, either they occur
simultaneously or one occurs before the other.

17. DECOLONIZATION OF EDUCATION
When science is built by western scholars with
philosophical speculation is based on the idea
of ​secular life, and focuses on human rationality.
Islamic scholars as well as anti-colonialists trying
to fight through the decolonization of knowledge
or education, such as: Jalal Al-e Ahmad, in The
Occidentosis: Plague from the West (1952) and The
School Principles (1978); Muhammad Naquib Al-
attas, in Islam and Secularism (1993); Wan Mohd.
Nor Wan Daud, in

18. • Dewesternisation and Islamisation: Their Epistemic
Framework and Final Purpose (2010); Chinua
Achebe, in No Longer at Ease (1960) and Things
Fall Apart (1958); Frantz Fanon, in Black Skins
White Mask (1952) and A Dying Colonialism (1959);
Julius Nyerere, in Freedom and unity: Uhuru na
Umoja (1966); Aimé Cesaire, in Discours sur le
colonialisme (1955); Edward Said, in Orientalism
(1977) and A Legacy of Emancipation and
Representation (2010); Ngugi wa Thiongo, in
Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of language in
Africa Literature (1986), Albert Memmi, in The
Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)

19. DECOLONIZATION OF EDUCATION
WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF
DEWESTERNIZATION AND
ISLAMIZATION
• Dichotomy
• Tawhid
• Adab
• historical split

20. CONCLUSION
• Decolonization of education refers to the
process education use to authenticate the
knowledge about problem and phenomena that
occur within the framework of the
decolonization of education
• religious and cultural approaches
• to clear the mind and soul of the elements of
colonization