Revitalizing the integrated knowledge: Said Nursi’s educational model

Abstract

Today the Muslim world is facing the intellectual crises; the crises in knowledge and education which has put the Muslims on the lowest rung of the ladder of nations. Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries witnessed many Muslim educational reformers who worked very hard to reform the education system prevailing among Muslim nations and in spite of such hard-works, they couldn’t succeed in working out of an effective educational system which could overcome the intellectual crises of Muslims. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, a social and religious reformer in the contemporary times gave an educational model for solving the educational and intellectual crises in the Muslim world. He gave the concept of integration of knowledge in which he suggested that modern sciences should be taught in the Madrasas and religious subjects should be taught in the secular or modern schools. The paper aims at studying the ‘integration of knowledge’ concept given by Said Nursi and aims at finding the possibilities and opportunities of applying the Nursian model of education based on the integration of modern knowledge and religious knowledge in contemporary times. The paper concludes that the contemporary Muslim world needs such an educational system which combines both types of knowledge (modern-western and Islamic), which will help in regaining the Muslim intellectualism.