Reflecting the diversity of the Muslim world, this chapter addresses the fundamental views of Muslim scholars on embodiment and education. From the starting point of the Qurʾān, this chapter explores theories of embodiment inspired by the Islamic functionalism of al-Farabi, Avicenna’s Peripatetic and psychological philosophy of education, Ibn Arabi’s Sufi views on embodiment and knowledge acquisition, al-Ghāzali’s hybrid Sufi-kalāmī approach to embodiment, and embodiment in the Ibn Tufail’s Islamic didactics. Corporeal practices in Islamic education are informed by the view that body is an artefact constructed as a vessel to carry the soul. Such a view has resulted in certain corporeal practices within education based on the premise that perfecting the body upholds the soul, in an endeavour towards attaining sa‘ādah.

Criminalization of sexual relations outside the institution of marriage in Iran fosters – among other means – concealment as one of the safest methods to undermine social and legal impediments. In a context where any alternative practices of sexualities are subject to persecution, sexual concealments are applied as tactics for survival. The female body in such a normative-laden society is conditioned by its “openness” which makes it a subject of honor for family and kin and core for the management of desire and regulating the intimate for the theocratic state. Based on life stories of young women who have had pre-marital sexual relations in Tehran, this article addresses sexual concealment as the main method used by those women. Findings of the study suggest a three-fold model of concealment practiced in various social settings. Body concealment which was encouraged by the families and authorities to reduce the visibility of the female body during adolescence, engenders other types of concealment. Lesbian-like practices were utilized by women in homosocial settings to undermine the heteronormative social structure. Concealment of sexual orientations, desires and practices was applied to “keep the order of things in place” and to undermine the repressive policies and practices based on the socio-religious normative.

A distinct feature of Muslim cities is demarcated separation between zones of public economic and private domestic activities. Such spatial distinction has been the organic extension of a social structure with limited presence of women in public zones. However, separation of spaces in the Muslim city and the way it is utilized, shaped and reproduced by men and women is not a simple case of dividing public-­private geographies and assigning them to males and females, respectively, and has been subject to appropriations and adaptations. The Shiite traditional Muharram procession is one of the instances of such appropriation which produces a semi-­private or tertiary (social and spatial) realm, where gendered behaviours are more fluid, the loyalties of the kin stretch beyond the dominant normative, and both men and women move with greater ease. Such spatial fluidity exacerbated during the rituals of Muharram, where presence of women in public space is promoted and invigorated. Among other means, the ephemeral space sanctification is utilized to create a space where the social sanctions are temporarily lifted, and gender spatial boundaries are suspended. As an ethnographical piece of research using methods informed by urban planning and urban sociology and based on a cross-­disciplinary study of gendered spatial divisions (socially and architecturally), this article endeavours to investigate the notion of ephemeral space sanctification in a Muslim city among the Guilani population in Lahijan, in northern Iran.

This Handbook traces and presents the fundamentals of Islam and their history and background, and provides a global and holistic, yet, detailed picture of Islamic education around the world. It introduces the reader to the roots and foundations of Islamic education; the responses of Islamic educational institutions to different changes from precolonial times, through the colonial era up to the contemporary situation. It discusses interactions between the state, state-run education and Islamic education, and explores the Islamic educational arrangements existing around the world. The book provides in-depth descriptions and analyses, as well as country case studies representing some 25 countries.The work reflects the recent series of changes and events with respect to Islam and Muslims that have occurred during the past decades. The globalization of Islam as a religion and an ideology, the migration of Muslims into new areas of the globe, and the increasing contacts between Muslims and non-Muslims reinforce the need for mutual understanding. By presenting Islamic education around the world in a comprehensive work, this Handbook contributes to a deeper international understanding of its varieties.

Ijāzah, meaning permission, license, or authorization, refers to several distinct types of academic certificates within Islamic education. Given the primacy of oral traditions and importance of reliability of ḥadīth, the license of audition (ijāzah al-sama‘) was established in order to guarantee the credibility of the transmission. Ijāzah al-riwāyah served as written records of the direct audition of a text on the part of the recipient from the transmitting authority, whether a single ḥadīth report, a work by the transmitting teacher himself, or a work by a third party. Accordingly, ijāzah al-iftā’ or ijāzah al-ijtihād was developed within fiqh as a method of authorization of the qualified ‘ulamā’ to respond to the changes within Muslim societies throughout fatwās. Through ijāzah li-al-tadrīs, a scholar was entitled to teach parts of a book or an entire subject. Independent from any social and political institutions, ijāzah was executed within a disciple-master relationship and developed into a literacy genre within Islamic education.

Whereas the concept of ‘ilm (knowledge) includes both religious as well as mundane knowledge, the traditional Islamic thought tends to identify the totality of and specify knowledge as religious knowledge. The typology of knowledge in Islam divides the entire human knowledge into two all-embracing categories: al-‘ulūm al-‘aqlīyah(rational/argumentative knowledge) and ‘al-ulūm al-naqlīyah (knowledge by transmission). This division conceptualizes the foundations of the Islamic epistemology and forms the educational arrangements in Islam. Four major approaches to education and knowledge acquisition include: (1) Constructive approach, which is using rules of logics and qiyās(analogical deductive reasoning) aims to attain human knowledge; (2) Theological approach which is based on kalām (dialectical theology) aims to decipher the divine knowledge as well as mundane one; (3) Philosophical approach which is inspired and informed by the Neo-Platonist movement and Peripatetic Islamic philosophy in which knowledge is attained through the process of wham (estimation) and using the active intelligence to achieve the unknowns through the known premises; and (4) Mystical/theosophical approach which argues on the notion of knowledge by presence. The mystical approach rests on the argument on the divine knowledge as the source of all knowledge and intuition as an instrument to achieve it. Such an epistemological principal has informed not only various approaches to the acquisition of knowledge but also institutions of education and learning. Although the social and political climate and the local cultures have significantly affected the development of the educational institutions across the Muslim world, a trifold model of the educational institutions prevail across the Muslim world. Madrasah as the final product of this development, however, is challenged by the waves of modernization and domination of western values across the Muslim world.

Islamic education in the modern era has been at the crossroad of globalization, rapid economic development, social changes, and resurgence of rival religious ideologies. Islam as a global force has affected other forces and has affected by them, and along the way the Islamic education has changed to adapt to the realities of the modern world. Such adaptation is the reflection of the diversity across the Muslim world and heavily influenced by the domestic factors and on the other hand by the nature and extent of the linkage to other global forces. Despite the contextual variations and diversity changes within the Islamic education in the modern era have certain features in common: (a) affected by the new socioeconomic development and changes within the civil society; (b) affected by the realities of the modern state and governance; (c) influenced by the cultural (traditional/religious) factors and political climate; and (d) affected by the international factors. Despite the variations, Islamic education reform across the Muslim world has one thing in common: all have lost the grandeur and glory of the past, they are struggling to meet the demands of a competing world, and they exist in the margin of a strong formal education system.

There are endavors to synchrone traditional approaches and contents of the Islamic education with those of the formal education to inhibit or enhance the chance for the accreditation of the religious education across the Muslim world. This has partially resulted in internationalization of the institutions of Islamic education and tailoring the curricula to add new subjects such as foreign languages and natural sciences to accommodate the global discourse and attract new groups of students internationally.

This chapter seeks to explore the relationship between education and democracy in Muslim educational settings. The chapter will examine existing scholarship on Islam, democracy, and education with first, an overview of concepts and definitions and second, a review of educational systems regarding democracy and religion in selected Muslim-majority nations.

There are different types of globalization, and hence this chapter uses the plural form of the term. Two principal types of globalization relevant to this chapter are Islamic globalization and Western globalization each with its variety of forces. The Islamic globalization includes features such as the extension of ummah, the spread of Islamic messages via ICT and migration. The Western globalization carries various forces such as market principles and neo-liberalism, human rights, and universal educational models.

Today, Muslims are in a majority or form important minorities of the population in some forty countries; conversion to Islam takes place in many places in the world. In fact, Islam and certain branches within Protestantism have been the most expansive – in terms of new adherents – during the past two decades. At least nonformal Islamic educational institutions exist practically everywhere on the globe. Where minorities of Muslims have settled as immigrants, there also tends to be Qur’ānic educational activities.

Among Muslims, there are different views of what globalizations are, and one may distinguish the followings: (a) Islam as threatened by globalization; (b) Islam as marginalized from globalization; (c) Islam itself as a globalizing force; and (d) Islam as a potential globalizing force. Muslim educational perspectives tend to correspond to one or several of these four views.

From the Western perspective, globalization has resulted in intensive encounters between and mutal penetration of world religions, such as Islam and Christianity, that more than ever before compete and challenge one another. The relativization implicit in or resulting from globalization threatens the Muslim way of life and makes Muslims defend their values and belief systems.

Educational world models are propagated by international organizations such as the World Bank, UNESCO, OECD, and others and tend to make it necessary for Islamic educational arrangements to adapt or go through revitalization.

This chapter makes an overview of the different globalizing forces as a context to the changes that take place in Western type as well as Islamic education.

Islamic education in Egypt thrived during the seventh to tenth centuries when Islamic schools established both as primary kuttāb and subsequently advanced to al-Azhar system. Kuttāb as educational institutions emerged as natural, spontaneous at grassroots level, often connected with a mosque, but also created by the community in a home, a shop, a tent, or under a palm tree. Islamic education was built around an individual rather than an institution, and this helped the spread of education in the Muslim world. While al-Azhar built by Ismā’ilī Shī’ite Fāṭimīds in Egypt to confront the hostile 'Abbāsīds of Baghdad, it ultimately held strong religious and political directions based on Sunnī Islam. Al-Azhar with its vast endowed residential facilities fostered training of generations of learned class of 'ulamā'. Female students had access to education where a series of facilities and classes were devoted to them.

Driven from Islamic dogma, the al-Azhar developed the curriculum based on theology, grammar, and rhetoric through memorization, with the intention to foster a sense of religious obedience among students and to reinforce teachings of Sunnī Islam. The educational target is to achieve independent judgment on various issues concerning the Muslim society.