The Science of Adab

A few weeks ago, we featured an article that introduced the concept of Adab as a science and we received positive feedback as well as interest in further exploration of this topic. So in this issue, we discuss why we believe that Adab is in fact a science and a very significant one in the dialogue of education. But in order to arrive at that point, we have to share some background that clarifies the need for this revived model first. Hence, we will briefly discuss the break of primary educational systems from religion (in North America), and explore some of the symptoms and underlying causes facing these educational institutions post-religious separation. We will also discuss why the religious and parochial schools may be falling short despite the name and presence of faith attached to them. And finally, propose how the science of adab can be one possible solution to addressing many of the current issues in the primary educational arena.   

Understanding the Problem

Education plays a pivotal role in the healthy development and well-being of communities. In fact, it can be argued that the very purpose of education is to produce human beings who can positively contribute to the wellbeing and betterment of society as a whole. So the question then becomes, are educational institutions set up to meet this objective? Produce human beings who can positively contribute to the wellbeing and betterment of society as a whole. 

In an ideal world, where all things were equal and there was no discrepancy between access to high-quality curriculum, good schools, and plenty of resources, would the educational institutions produce such a human being? We do not live in an ideal world where all children have access to this type of education but many do. In fact, millions of children in the US do have access to such standards yet the institutions that educate them do not always meet this objective. Why? Many of our educational institutions (including the ones in wealthy and “safe” neighborhoods) are getting crippled by gun violence, mental health crisis, drug abuse, identity crisis, virtual bullying, addiction to gaming, unhealthy usage and attachment to social media, anxiety, depression, and suicide just to name a few. Despite having access to rigorous educational institutions, accessibility to state-of-the-art furnishings, and plenty of resources at their disposal, why are our institutions still failing? Perhaps a more appropriate question could be, why are WE (who design, run, and operate those very institutions) falling short? What is plaguing our youth and claiming their lives and well-being even more adversely than an actual global pandemic?(*Note: The entire blame of failure certainly can’t be shouldered by educational institutions alone. Socio-economic, political, cultural, and familial paradigms play an important role contributing to the overall negative impact. The purpose of this article is to focus on educational institutions and by extension their role in improving and inhibiting positive prospects.) 

Looking at the Underlying Cause

It behooves us as a society to deliberate and think about this question deeply. It is even a greater responsibility to not ignore the symptoms, which are the underlying cause of these very problems. Having worked with children from KG to 12th grade over the past decade, I can confidently tell you that it’s not all about the resources and furnishings. It’s certainly not all about the wealth and accessibility to elite education, either. There is so much more happening in the hearts and minds of our children than just interaction with an advanced curriculum or high academic standards of learning. What if I said that the solution is not in more but in less. It takes less than fancy science and technology labs. It takes less than bright open windows, large classrooms, and top-notch STEM, Arts, Music, Debate, and Drama clubs. Just to be clear, by stating this, I’m not advocating the removal of these privileges from our children. No, absolutely not. All of these things are very important in the process of education. But once they are in place, they actually become secondary to the process of education. They can provide the tools that can create a catalyst in the process of education but they are not the primary driver and function of education. So what does it take then, if not all of these things? Let me tell you about a dinner party I attended a few days ago that impacted me deeply. 

My husband and I drove (he did the driving:) for an hour to Parkland, Florida to attend a party organized by some esteemed community members on behalf of TCF (The Citizens Foundation). Their mission is to provide access to high-quality education to impoverished children in Pakistan. The cause is noble, TCF’s reputation impeccable and their impact significant. In full disclosure, I am a supporter of their work. As I sat through the deeply moving stories shared by board members and previous executives, I could not help but think about our own mission at Sanad Trust Foundation. And I felt that there were a lot of similarities between their work and ours. Allow me to explain why. TCF is providing access to children whose barrier to education is primarily poverty (not enough money and resources to pay for a good education) among others. TCF addresses that by giving free access to high-quality education to these children. And most of the children thrive, as we saw and heard story after story describing their successes. The rest of the evening is spent eating, networking, and socializing with the wonderful and generous individuals at the dinner but my heart is captivated by the connection between TCF and the work of STF, which is different but shared nevertheless. I realized what is shared through thinking about a very famous model in psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.     

Now attributed to the western scholar Maslow but originally discussed and explained by a 10th-century scholar Ibn Sina (also called Avicenna in the western spheres) the hierarchy of needs.1 The model is well known and is a timeless representation that can shed light on uncovering this mystery. At the bottom of the triangle sits the physiological needs (food, clothing, shelter, safety, and security). When these needs are unmet, they become the focus and attention of our lives. There is just not enough time or space to address the higher needs on the hierarchy. For the children being served by TCF in Pakistan, these children sit at the bottom of the pyramid and they use education as a way to climb out of the bottom pit. They are almost instantaneously transformed by the possibility and hope of having a better life, which actually becomes their driving force and purpose. Not only that, they do not struggle to understand the urgency of making an effort on their part to make this work. But what happens when these needs are met for children? Do the children automatically move up the ladder to self-actualization? Do the children at the middle of the pyramid automatically find purpose, motivation, and meaning through their education? What are the needs of OUR CHILDREN who are already living a life of privilege at the second stage of the hierarchy? How are their social, emotional, spiritual, and psychological needs being met? Are they getting fulfilled by a source that may be in conflict with our own value and belief system? Are we and our existing institutions designed to help meet those needs adequately?  

The middle of the pyramid outlines the psychological needs of a person, those of belongingness, love, and esteem. These needs are met through the environment, the influence of the social construct surrounding our children, the relationships (especially those with friends) they build, the emotional attachments they develop, the things they place value and meaning in, and the people and sources they trust. This part of the pyramid gets heavy and gets complicated. There is an implicit expectation by parents that since we are the source of helping fulfill the basic (physiological) needs of our children, their psychological needs for belongingness, love, and esteem are also being fulfilled automatically by us as parents. This is not always the case and certainly not true for helping our children define their purpose, meaning, and value in life. Moreover, as the hierarchy points out at this stage, a sense of esteem, love, belongingness, and companionship are top of mind and top of priority for an individual. This is when priorities are rearranged, values challenged and faith tested. I believe that without the science of adab (and highly trained Coaches of this science that can help students acquire, apply and transmit that knowledge 2), our children will not gain access to the tools they need to navigate the unexpected and often emotionally and spiritually precarious terrain they will tread at this stage.  This is where the forgotten science of Adab comes in.    

The Unpropitious Consequence

Most educational institutions in the current US system are not set up to address the faculties of the heart and soul ( emotional, spiritual, and psychological well being of a child). This was one direct impact of the deliberate decision to separate Church from State but one without thinking through the adverse consequences of such a drastic change on the children. Religion began to be labeled as a hindrance, limitation, roadblock, personal matter and choice, a threat to innovation and progress, and a lot more… It became the scapegoat which could be blamed for the problems and challenges that were facing the society at that moment in time so removing it altogether from the public arena seemed like the most obvious solution. I know I’m generalizing here as it was much more complex. Nevertheless, this was a part of the overall historical context. Slowly but surely, faith was stripped away from all spheres of primary education and was replaced by the ideals of secularization, capitalism, consumerism, democracy, and modernity. If you are thinking that the change instituted went from a rigid prescription of one dominant interpretation of faith to absolutely no faith, you would be wrong. Faith was still palpable and real, it was just replaced and redirected towards concepts mentioned above, secularization, capitalism, consumerisms, democracy, and modernity. When faith is hijacked by political ambitions, bad things result. When faith is altogether removed from the public discourse, nothing good can result. Both represented in some form a polarity of extremes. The cost of this negligence is just starting to surface in the forms of many of the challenges listed above.  

Are Religious and Parochial Schools Meeting The Objective Of Education?

A fair question at this point can be raised: Aren’t religious and parochial schools meeting this objective already? Although religious schools emerged with the intention to keep faith front and center for the children, they ended by duplicating the public and private school models and adding a religious class to fill the gap for “faith”. This duplication is problematic at many levels, which cannot be explored here but the primary reason is what I call “sectarianism of sciences”. Instead of creating a holistic model that met the noble objective of education, a model was simply duplicated with an addendum for faith-based instruction. What resulted was many similar issues and challenges emerging in the religious schools just like public and private schools, except the students, were now surrounded by each other sharing the same faith, or lack thereof. 

A Possible Solution

The advent of secularization and divorce of religion from state in the western world has led to many unintended adverse consequences, especially in the field of education. One such unpropitious result has been the negligence of addressing the human heart, soul, and spirit which works in conjunction with the intellect and the mind. The Islamic worldview does not divorce the mind and the heart, nor the intellect from the soul as separate faculties. It views them as congruent, interconnected, and inter-relational. Each faculty actively interacts together to form a complete reality of the human being and the human experience. Islamic worldview addresses mankind as a whole, speaking to all of its faculties; rationale (of reason), intellectual (of cognition and mind), emotional (of the heart), spiritual (of the soul), and psychological (of the psyche or conscientiousness). Inclusive and comprehensive to all of these faculties is the concept of Adab. Adab as I was taught and am still learning to this day is so much more than just respect, manners or “obedience”. Adab is a science that helps us see the place of things (of the material and non-material in their essence and true form of reality). My thoughts have been deeply influenced by many traditional and contemporary scholars and poets but the foremost on this subject has been the contemporary scholar Naqib Al Attas who explains the concept of Adab similarly. In particular, the framework for the Science of Adab below is directly influenced by his work “The concept of education in Islam”3. Al Attas discusses adab, and many other concepts extensively in his dialogue, while explaining the purpose and goal of education. What I have extrapolated here is 3 primary points of discussion from his writing and have proposed a framework around those key ideas.  

I certainly do not have all of the answers or solutions to these difficult questions. But I have witnessed and experienced a positive and transformational change in the lives of many children and families through a solution over the past decade. The solution, however, requires time, hard work, patience, deliberation, and commitment from the beneficiary as well as the service provider. What is being proposed here is not simply a theory. It is an actual effort that has worked for a decade and is supported by data exhibiting the model’s effectiveness, reliability, and credibility. It takes adab to give our children the best chance to be inspired, to be motivated, and to work towards their full human potential. Applying the science of adab as an integral framework of an educational model can help us achieve the noble objective of education, to produce human beings who can positively contribute to the wellbeing and betterment of society as a whole. Below, I am sharing a very basic framework, which outlines the skeleton for the science of Adab. In a future issue, the framework will be explored in more detail, including the explanation and implications of each section and its inner workings with concrete examples and potential case studies.  

I have divided the framework of the Science of Adab into three main sections as inspired by Al Attas’s writings on the concept of education in Islam. The demarcation of these points as a consideration to define the science of adab is mine, thus any limitations in this initial stage are attributed to me alone as well and not to Al Attas. The trivium I’m proposing that encapsulates the science of adab includes 1. Qudra (Faculty), 2. Ma’na (Meaning), and 3. Tahqiq (Actualization).What is being shared here in the form of a 3 point model is after a lot of deliberation, thought and conglomeration of a myriad of concepts through the academic, religious and experiential knowledge and training of a decade. Each section is organized the same way by posing a question, stating a response and finding a direct connection of the two to an Islamic principle or explanation.  

  1. What faculty gives us the ability and capacity to understand, recognize and acknowledge something? The faculties of reason, intellect, mind, heart, and soul
    1. Souls took a covenant with God: “Allastu bi rabbikum” & “bala”
  2. What formulates the shape and form of reality as we experience it as human beings?  Knowledge is made manifest and taught by virtue of its relative place and meaning 
    1. Adam learned the name of things: “And He taught Adam the names – all of them. Then He showed them to the angels and said, “Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful.” (Quran 2:31)
  3. What makes it possible to achieve the objective of education? Adab actualized is Education realized
    1. Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said: “My Lord educated me and made my education most excellent”. اَدﱠﺑَﻧِﻲ رَﺑِّﻲ ﻓَﺎَﺣْﺳَنَ ﺗَﺎْدِﯾﺑِﻲ
References
  1. Yaqeen Institute & Stanford Muslim Mental Health Lab. “Therapy a Millennia Before Modern Psychology | Holistic Healing Series.” yaqeeninstitute.org. 15 December, 2020, https://yaqeeninstitute.org/rania-awaad/therapy-a-millennia-before-modern-psychology-holistic-healing-series.
  2. Rehan Mirza’s conception for implementing Habib Omar’s trivium of Ilm, tazkiya and dawah.
  3. Al Attas, Muhammad Naquib Syed. The Concept of Education in Islam: A framework for an Islamic philosophy of Education. Kuala Lumpur, Ta’dib international, 2018 (first published in 1980).
EndNotes:
  1. For a more detailed study and exploration, see further Dr. Rania Awad’s research on Islamic psychology and the Muslim scholars and their contributions to the field of psychology pre-western era available through Stanford Muslim Mental Health Lab.  
  2. Rehan Mirza’s conception for a model of Education at Sanad Prep is inspired by Habib Omar Bin Hafizdh’s trivium of ilm, tazkiyah, and dawah. Rehan Mirza developed the Sanad Prep model informed by the understanding of the trivium as the acquisition of knowledge, application of knowledge, and transmission of knowledge. He is the Founding Executive director of Sanad Trust Foundation and regularly publishes articles through the Sanad Trust blog at www.sanadtrust.org. 
  3. Amongst the foremost traditional scholars behind the inspiration of my thoughts and ideas include the works of Imam Ghazali, Imam Abdullah bin Alawi Al Haddaad, Imam Nawawi, and Ibn Arab amongst many others. Some poets whose work has inspired me deeply include Maulana Rumi, Allama Iqbal, and Khalil Gibran. Contemporary scholars whose writing, works and contributions have helped me understand the place of my own thoughts include Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad, Imam Zaid Shakir, Habib Omar bin Hafidh, Habib Kadhim, Shayk Ibrahim Osi efa, Shaykh Hamza Yousef, Dr. Rania Awad and others.   
Sanad Prep Education
Wellness Programs
Community Programs