Re-rooting Education in Revelation: Reviving al-Mabādīʾ al-ʿAshara
Re-rooting Education in Revelation: Reviving Mabādīʾ al-ʿAshara
Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
This course revives the centuries-old tradition of framing every branch of knowledge within the epistemic frame of al-Mabādiʾ al-ʿAshara—the ten foundational principles that classical Muslim scholars used to define, discipline, and order knowledge. Developed during periods of intense intellectual encounter and epistemic disruption, these principles ensured that new knowledge was neither rejected reflexively nor absorbed uncritically but integrated with clarity and hierarchy; they helped to keep knowledge rooted in revelation.
Today, we live in an age when education fragments disciplines and divorces knowledge from higher principles. By employing al-Mabādiʾ al-ʿAshara we can learn to restore the essential epistemic grammar. Participants will learn how the specific branch of knowledge they are teaching is properly defined, what questions legitimately belong to it, how it relates to other sciences, and what ethical accountability governs its pursuit.
Designed for teachers, scholars, and institutional leaders, this course provides the conceptual foundations necessary to move from Muslim schools to truly Islamic education—where knowledge is ordered, purposeful, and rooted in tawḥīd.