The Islamization of Social Sciences in Nigeria

Abstract

Introduction The Islamization of social sciences is part and parcel of developing and promoting knowledge that conforms to the norms of Islam. This can be attained by motivating scholars to develop scholarship using an Islamic perspective through the introduction of new social science courses based on Islam, Islamizing (i.e., rearticulating along Islamic lines) existing conventional social science disciplines, and promoting the movement of Islamic attitude to knowledge. The Islamization of Knowledge undertaking in Nigeria can be traced to the period of the Sokoto Jihad leaders, whose scholarly writings covered such aspects of life as politics, economics, and medicine. However, with the passage of time and, more especially, with the coming of the British colonialists and the concomitant infiltration of western scholarship, the Islamization of Knowledge pioneered by the Jihad leaders gradually began to fade. At first, the North opposed vehemently the spread of the western system of education, because it was linked with Christian missionary propaganda (Fapohunda 1982). As such, the emirs of the North and their subjects stood fmly against this alien system, a stance that accounts for the disparity in western education between the South, that had welcomed it, and the North. Unfortunately, like most other Muslim countries, Nigeria continues to suffer from the colonial legacy of the West. In particular, its elites are the worst victims of colonization of mind by the West’s so-called secular ideology. Its education and other systems of life continue to be based largely on the structure of that secular ideology. Education is the single most important instrument for grooming and channelling a society in the desired direction. To rescue Muslim societies from the yoke of western secular civilization and to reestablish Islamic civilization requires the decolonization of the secularized minds and spirits of the elites as well as of Muslim intellectuals (the ulama), professionals, and political leaders, on the one hand, and the training of young people in Islamic knowledge and education, on the other. In order to return the society to the Islamic system of life, the first task is the Islamization of the educational system (both formal and informal) for the Muslims and the Islamization of the country’s ulama ...