Vertical and Horizontal approaches are not some thing new in the academic and professional discourse. The terms " vertical" and "horizontal" analysis has been diferently used by different discourse. This short article intends to start a discussion of an islamic point of view with regard to education and invites comments from the readers.
I like to apply vertical approach to the knowledge revealed by God Almighty and the horizontal knowledge to the knowledge developed by man. In fact the horizontal knowledge is nothing but an out come or extention of the vertical knowledge.
Indeed, Allah is the all knower and we humans will know nothing except what Allah wishes us to know. When Allah created man he has intalled the basic programmes in the man which gives him the intellect and the necessary apparatus to develop knowledge of matters and environment with that back up knowledge. In addition Allah had been sending his prophets time to time in oder to give the fundermental guidelines in policy and practice through the exemplary living of those prophets. This is called vertical knoledge. This chain of vertical knowledge has been sealed with the death of last and final prophet Mohamed Sallallahu Alahi Wasallam.
Allah's wisdom is that man needs to be guided by the devine knowledge which is vertical to succeed in both worlds but in order to aquire the worldly conforts man has to explore the world through study, research, and innovation, added with his own experience accumilated throught human history and passed over to generation to generation horizontally. That's how man gethers the horizontal knowledge.
For altimate success, man needs to have both knowledges integrated. So, Islamic Education does that job of integrating both of the knowledges. But unfortunately many Muslims weho are secular educated lack the vertical approach while the islamic traditional madrasa scholars lack horizontal approach.
There are isolated approcahes to provide an integrated system of education though not very successful.Jamiah Naleemiah in Sri Lanka, International Islamic Unversity of Islamabad and International Islamic University of Malaysia are a few examples.
Another good example is may be the turkish Imam Hatim Institutes which are considered to be vocational education colleges in Turkey introduced by Atarturk, founder of modern Turky . Mr.Recep Tayyip ERDOGAN, the present Turkish Prime Minister, is a graduate of Imam Hatim School. Governments of Pakistan and Afganistan have shown interest to introduce Imam Hatip School system in their countries and sought the support of the turkish government. Turkey has opend an international branch of the institute to train Imaams for Balkan countries. Therefore, it would be interesting to study the system to explore its merits.
These instiutes and many more of the same kind have produced hundreds of scholars who have introduced Islam in a moderate and practical terms and in a language which is communicable with other modern social siences. But, yet these institutes have not been fully successful to present an alternative to the western scholarship. Therefore, much needs to be done in this direction. We need to build on our efforts at these experimental works from Sri Lanka and otehr countries.
In this backdrop, it could be concluded that we Muslims need to learn a lot from the western educatuion, science and technology and develop our education system integrating the best practices of the western system and develop and present an alternative integrated system so that the whole world can benefit.
There will be more inputs from me on the subject and welcome views and comments from the readers.
