The Blight Of Religious Education In Malaysia

 The Blight On Religious Education In Malaysia

M. Bakri Musa

 

Updated excerpt #31 from my book:  Qur’an, Hadith, and Hikayat:  Exercises In Critical Thinking.

Dec 22, 2025

 

Muslims (more so those in the Third World) view critical thinking as a Western construct, the concoction of secular minds and societies, thus not applicable to them. That is the penumbra of the “Islamization of Knowledge” fad. If there were to be any critical thinking, it first must be “Islamized,” whatever that term means. Today even the most Bedouin-minded Islamists have given up on Islamization of Knowledge. That is no improvement as they are now consumed with the equally futile fad of “Integration of Knowledge.” 

 

         The crux of the problem is how the faith is being taught. More indoctrination, less education, serving not to open minds but to unquestioningly accept officially-sanctioned dogmas. Islamic education at all levels is consumed with rituals rather than the humanistic values of the faith; more with speculations on our fate in the Hereafter rather than our pressing problems in this temporal world. This was also true of many orthodox faiths of yore. 

 

         Consider the typical religious classroom “discussion” in Malaysia.

 

Teacher: What proof is there of God?

Pupils (in scripted fashion): There is earth, fire, air, and water!

 

         End of discussion. Both teacher and students would be satisfied, with the answer regurgitated at test time. Ask why those would be proof of God, they would be baffled. Extend the query on whether their absence on the moon would mean that there is no God up there, that would be blasphemy! Pressed further whether God could be “proven” as per the scientific method, both students and teachers would be lost.

 

         Munshi Abdullah, 19^th Century Malay Man of Letters, likened the process of educating young minds to the sharpening of a parang (machete, the de rigueur tool of rural Malays), not the filling of dustbins with dogmas, ala Paulo Freire’s banking model. With the dustbin model, you could retrieve only what you had thrown in, minus what’s stuck at the bottom. With Freire’s banking model, attrition would be through fees and loss of value through inflation.

 

         With a sharp parang you could hack yourself out of a jungle. Meanwhile to a surgeon, a knife (a parang derivative) is an instrument to cure cancer; a sculptor, creating exquisite works of art. To a thug, a killing tool; hence the importance of ethics and morals in education.

 

         Socrates likened education to the kindling of flames, not the filling of a vessel. A kindling could start a fire on grandma’s stove to cook her favorite curry. However, during a dry hot California summer, a kindling could trigger an inferno. Hence the moral component. That should be the role of religious education, not endless rituals and regurgitations. 

 

         Critical thinking is anathema to Malaysian educators. Malaysia may be modern but Malays are still feudal. The royalty and bangsawan (aristocratic) class are beyond criticism, and we blindly accept that. Note the fate and the call by the masses to censure satirist Fahmi Reza for daring to criticize a meddling Johor prince. 

 

         As Prime Minister Anwar noted in his recent book, Rethinking Ourselves, slavery was very much part of Malay culture. If not for the British, my grandparents would have remained an orang hamba at the palace in Sri Menanti. Anwar’s book was widely discussed during the recent Festival of Ideas sponsored by the Ministry of Higher Education, as well as at the International Islamic University. However, not one local reviewer or commentator noted this sharp observation (as well as others) of Anwar. Most reviewers, as typified by more than a few of his ministers, were engaged in the usual bodek or sucking-up gestures. Anwar should eradicate this odious cultural trait; it is but a variant of slavery. 

 

         Lack of critical thinking in Malay society is compounded by the accompanying de-emphasis of mathematics and science. Mathematics is precise, quantitative thinking, demanding free and rational enquiries, as well as logical rigorous thinking. 

 

         The suffocating presence of the Islamists on the national curriculum (and elsewhere) inhibits free inquiry and breeds outright anti-intellectualism. That is the biggest unacknowledged barrier to critical thinking. That is a blight on the nation’s education system. It is unacknowledged and thus unrecognized. If unrecognized one cannot even begin to rectify it.

 

Next:  Suspension Of Critical (Or Any Thinking) In Islamic Education