3 The State of Higher Education in 1994 and Prospects for the Future
     
    The motivations that have led King Hussein to establish such an institution at this time seem quite clearly stated in the documents we have received; there is a concern not to leave either the presentation of Islam ' or the personal and religious formation of students to exclusively religious or secular institutions; and to combine as far as possible "reason and science" with "belief and spiritual values".
     
    The Universiti Islam Antarbangan (international Islamic University), Selangor, West Malaysia.
     
    This university was established in 1983 and was described briefly in the Harvard Report (pp.43-44) following on a visit by Mr. Sutton. The Commission has been informed on the nature and present state of this International Islamic University by Sharom Ahmat, who has contributed a memorandum on the subject.
     
    This university was originally established by the Malaysian government in an effort of collaboration with the governments of several Islamic countries, notably Saudi Arabia, which are represented on its Board of Governors. The university is thus by constitution and intention international. It is more emphatically Islamic than the new Jordanian university though the original project proposal declared it was to be "NOT a university merely about Islam or a university teaching merely Islamic theology. It attempts to recreate and revitalise the ancient Islamic tradition of learning where to seek knowledge is an act of prayer, and the spirit of science emanates from the Holy Qur'an". It is a university embracing in principle all fields of knowledge; in 1994 it had faculties of : economics and management; laws; Islamic revealed knowledge and human sciences; and education; it had a Centre for Languages and was planning a faculty of engineering to open in 1994 and of medicine to open in 1996. The constitution emphasises that these subjects are to be approached so as "to re-establish the primacy of Islam in all fields ... to revitalise the Islamic concept which considers the pursuit of scientific enquiry as inspired by the teachings of the Holy Qur'an". There has been a strong emphasis on education that would develop "morally and spiritually strong, mentally rational, physically fit, and professionally equipped individuals to develop the Ummah and achieve progress that is in harmony with Islam ...... The university, by its constitution, is "to propagate knowledge in the spirit of submission to Allah in order to develop professionals committed to Islamic teachings and who are also conscious of their responsibilities as obedient servants of Allah and His Trustees on earth".
     
    The university is in principle open to both Muslims and non-Muslims and is intended "to widen the choices open to the Muslim Ummah". But only Muslims are to be recruited as staff "in almost all departments". Each faculty is to approach its subjects in accordance with Islamic principles and modes of thinking. The latest edition of The World of Learning (1993) credits this university with 472 teachers, 4,977 students and a library of 115,000 volumes. The principal focus is at the undergraduate level but there is an International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisations engaged in post-graduate research and teaching in Islamic thought and civilisations and on Western and Oriental thought and civilisations. Sharom Ahmat's memorandum describes a gradual process by which the university is becoming more Malaysian and less international. The expected support by the Saudi government fell away when the Saudis wished this university to be a branch of the University of Medina. Now that it is more dependent on Malaysian resources, Ahmat remarks that "the Malaysian bureaucracy treats the university like the other national institutions", and the numbers of non-Malaysian students and faculty have decreased.
     
    These examples may serve to suggest the wide range of possibilities for Muslim universities at this time. We have not made a systematic survey of universities in the Muslim world but are aware of the situation in several countries. In Saudi Arabia there has been a clear distinction between universities that follow Western models, teaching secular subjects, like the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah or the University of Petroleum and Mining in Dhahran; and the Islamic universities of Riyadh and Medina devoted to Sharia, religion, and Koranic studies. We note that the Islamic University in Medina was called, at the period when the Malaysian Islamic University was being established, an International Islamic Foundation; in the 1980s, it had many more international than Saudi students. In Egypt until al Azhar was forced by Nasser to change, there was a similar separation of secular universities and Islamic universities. In other countries the division has been less sharp, with faculties of Arabic, Islamic studies, or Sharia incorporated in Western model universities. Both the Jordanian and the Malaysian examples seek a type of university combining features of the Western secular university with Islamic religious education. In this sense both seek to be innovative; the Malaysian aim is explicitly "to widen the choices open to the Muslim Ummah in higher education". The purposes show a movement away from the earlier emphases on the uses of universities for national development. The builders of these Islamic universities are, like Cardinal Newman, as concerned with the making of good human beings as with providing manpower and technical knowledge for a growing society. The newer emphasis is more individual and cultural, and as such perhaps in keeping with trends that have appeared more widely throughout the world in recent years.
     
   

As with the trend to privatisation, the evolution of universities in the Muslim world may be following more widely prevalent patterns of change in the world. We will need to reflect on these changes and how they affect what universities need to do, but only after considering what has been happening since the early 1980s to research and scholarship in the Third World.

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