The centrality of scripture and its study in the Islamic tradition helped to make education a central pillar of the religion in virtually all times and places in the history of Islam. Religion has been an essential pillar in human history and has been instrumental in shaping cultures, education, and civilization. He made it clear that Muslims should “call me the servant of God and His messenger.” He is regarded as a human being and in no way divine. The Islamic Empire, spanning for almost 1,000 years, saw at least 60 major learning centers throughout the Middle East and North Africa, some of the most prominent among these being Baghdad in the East and Cordoba in the West. If you ever get a chance to wander the streets of Dharamshala, India – the residence of the Dalai Lama – or Nepal’s capital city of Kathmandu, then you’ll almost certainly come across at least a few iconic Tibetan prayer flags floating on the breeze.

While it is impossible to calculate literacy rates in pre-modern Islamic societies, it is almost certain that they were relatively high, at least in comparison to their European counterparts. While formal studies in madrasas were open only to men, women of prominent urban families were commonly educated in private settings and many of them received and later issued ijazas in hadith studies, calligraphy and poetry recitation. At a time when women had few legal safeguards compared with men, Willard highlighted how what today is known as alcohol use disorder drained economic resources, while liquor manufacturers made huge profits at the expense of the poor. God is not something that can be defined as it takes more space and is not bound by time. And I think it’s pretty plain that educated, moral, people today who are not religious would say, yes, that’s roughly what I think: if you want to talk about “God’s will”, you can say that living a moral life and doing God’s will come to the same thing.

What’s clear is that college students today have a lot more choices for how they want to spend their spring break. I hope one or more of these quotes and verses on God’s love touched you enough to write it down. The madrasa is one of the relics of the Fatimid caliphate. The importance of learning in the Islamic tradition is reflected in a number of hadiths attributed to Muhammad, including one that instructs the faithful to “seek knowledge, even in China”. This formal education was most readily available to members of the caliphal court including the viziers, administrative officers, and wealthy merchants. From the 8th century to the 12th century, the primary mode of receiving education in the Islamic world was from private tutors for wealthy families who could afford a formal education, not madrasas. The formal attestation of educational attainment, ijaza, was granted by a particular scholar rather than the institution, and it placed its holder within a genealogy of scholars, which was the only recognized hierarchy in the educational system. It also involved a process of socialization of aspiring scholars, who came from virtually all social backgrounds, into the ranks of the ulema. This injunction was seen to apply particularly to scholars, but also to some extent to the wider Muslims public, as exemplified by the dictum of Al-Zarnuji, “learning is prescribed for us all”.

Muslims distinguished disciplines inherited from pre-Islamic civilizations, such as philosophy and medicine, which they called “sciences of the ancients” or “rational sciences”, from Islamic religious sciences. Sciences of the former type flourished for several centuries, and their transmission formed part of the educational framework in classical and medieval Islam. Muslims historically distinguished disciplines inherited from pre-Islamic civilizations, such as philosophy and medicine, which they called “sciences of the ancients” or “rational sciences”, from Islamic religious sciences. World Shia Muslims Population. It was held once every 52 years in order to prevent the world coming to an end. In the wake of these reforms, al-Qarawiyyin was officially renamed “University of Al Quaraouiyine” two years later. The University of al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 AD, is listed in The Guinness Book Of Records as the world’s oldest degree-granting university. The Al-Azhar University was another early university (madrasa). The madrasa complex usually consisted of a mosque, boarding house, and a library.