Islamic Studies in Lebanese Shia Higher Education
Laying out a Specialization and Reflecting on the Social Sciences
p. 184-213
Texte intégral
1Alongside Egypt, Lebanon is often presented as the country with the “longest history of modern higher education” in the Arab world (Kriener 2011) where “modern” can be understood as referring to the Westernized educational model.1 With around forty-nine officially accredited institutions of higher learning and a population of around five million, the landscape of higher education in the small ex-colony is both kaleidoscopic and intricate. Within this complex scenery, there exists a number of self-fashioned “Islamic universities”,2 with both Sunni (five) and Shia (two) theological and institutional affiliations. As formal institutions of higher education, they offer a wide range of specializations: from theoretical mathematics to engineering and the health sciences. While these institutions are worthy of ample research and study, this chapter will focus on one of their defining features: offering a specialization and degrees in “Islamic studies”.
2In pursuing a delineation of this specialization, this chapter will attempt to contribute to the understanding of Islamic studies as an academic specialization at Shia Islamic universities in Lebanon.3 In doing so, I will offer some reflection on the field of Islamic studies, its nature in these institutions and the specificities setting it apart from the (previously existing, established and indigenous) nonacademic forms of Islamic studies such as those provided in the classical hawza-s.4 Finding that the social sciences figure prominently as a distinctive curricular feature, this chapter will take this as its main focus in its attempt to identify the signifier of Islamic studies. Further, in elaborating on the topics, intellectuals, and works the institutions, faculty members, and students classify as social sciences the chapter will attempt to explore how such definitions are (re)negotiated within, and by, these institutions/actors for a better understanding of these Islamic universities and of the social sciences within them.
3In terms of methodology, this chapter is based on a triangulation of participant observation with content analysis and in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted during the academic year 2015–2016 at both the Islamic University of Lebanon (IUL) and al-Maaref University. Interviews covered members of administration, professors and students, reached through snowball sampling, at both institutions. Overall, nine students from al-Maaref University and eleven students from the IUL were formally interviewed with another sixteen students across both institutions informally interviewed. Additionally, fifteen professors and four administration members across both institutions participated in the project (a number of professors teach across both institutions).5
Table 1: Overview of Shia Islamic Universities in Lebanon in 2016
Islamic University of Lebanon (IUL) | Al-Maaref University | |
Main campus location | Khalde | Bir Hassan |
Number of campuses | 5 | 1 |
Year of establishment | 1996 | 2014 |
Faculties | (9) Engineering; Humanities; Tourism; Islamic Studies; Arts and Sciences; Economy and Business; Law; Nursing; Political Science | (6) Mass Communication and Fine Arts; Business Administration; Religions and Humanities (comprising an “Islamic studies” program); Engineering; Sciences; Business Administration |
Total number of students | ~5000 | ~350 |
Student body in Islamic studies | 200 | 40 |
Faculty members in Islamic studies | 20 | 7 |
Total number of students | ~5000 | ~350 |
Student body in Islamic studies | 200 | 40 |
Faculty members in Islamic studies | 20 | 7 |
Delineating (Shia, Academic) “Islamic Studies” in Lebanon
4With the start of the academic year 2015–2016, I enrolled at al-Rasul al-Akram Hawza (the country’s largest and most prestigious) in Beirut’s southern suburb as part of a project investigating the relationship between the social sciences and Islamic sciences.6 A few weeks later, I began attending and participating in Islamic studies classes at both the IUL and al-Maaref University in pursuit of the same project. Early on, a number of issues emerged as distinctive: from larger classroom sizes to a different ordering of the space and to significantly dissimilar norms of student-student and student-teacher interaction. An exploration of these differences would take me beyond my scope here but an issue of particular relevance is worth noting: that of textbooks in the educational process. In the classical hawza model, textbooks, I found, are perceived as the cornerstone of the educational process, and a close reading, analysis and critique of a number of established texts, often written multiple decades ago as works of scholarship rather than as teaching material, is considered as defining for a student’s educational progress. Complementing these books with other written materials that the students themselves are expected to collect and explore is also considered pivotal. In Islamic universities, on the other hand, the scenery is much more fragmented. While some courses adopt a similar approach –albeit packaged into semesters, given less time and presented in a classroom setting (rather than that of a study circle) with no expectation of the students themselves complementing the material offered by the instructor–, most courses rarely engage these classical texts even when the subject matter is identical to the one found in the hawza. The role of a close, and often critical, reading of classical texts in particular sub-fields of the discipline is more absent than not, lost I would say, in the pursuit of an “academic degree” in Islamic studies. Often, the shift is towards the usage of textbooks specifically prepared for teaching purposes, often summarized, sometimes abridged. This (incomplete and continuing) shift from the classical works, considered by many as “yellow books of old” that have outlived their use, is emblematic of this university model and its drive for change and “renewal”, as will hopefully become clear in the coming sections of this work.
5As my fieldwork progressed, it did not take me long to realize that both the university and the hawza were inhabited by similar faces: many students I saw at the hawza could be found at one of the two universities as could many faculty members, especially in undergraduate classes. As my conversations with students and lecturers began, I soon realized that most of them found my observation lackluster: being enrolled at both institutions was, in the words of a student, “basically the same thing, [as] they’re really no different”. Hence, early on in my fieldwork, I realized that the delineation of the specialization, especially on a comparative basis with the hawza, as a starting point for its analysis, would be a cumbersome endeavor. The dearth of research on the topic (particularly Shia strands) seemed to only exacerbate my task. Accordingly, I will here attempt a short elaboration of reflections around this delineation as expressed by my participants, rather than presenting one, to enter, from there, into the core of this chapter.
6In discussing the distinctive defining nature of the specialization, students simultaneously registered at both institutions often claimed that the fundamental difference lays in the fact that Islamic studies offered a university degree while the hawza did not: “In our modern days, without a university degree, no one listens to you. We just do it for the title, to get a Ph.D. later, perhaps, and become doctors.” Of great insight, these answers brought to the fore the question of professionalization and future career paths of graduates where the market economy and the logic of neo-liberalism rule supreme and where coloniality has established a social order whereby non-Western forms of qualification offer significantly less social and symbolic capital. In either case, this must be contextualized with the standard reading of the Lebanese hawza (within it and in the religious community), as that of an institution meant to produce a non-professionalized variety of what might be called a “scholar (public) intellectual” while the university seemed to be aiming at the production of a more academically specific, and more professionalized, strand of scholars, researchers and teachers. In other words, the university aimed at producing scholars in Islamic studies who would first and foremost work at, and engage, the university and, perhaps, the hawza. The hawza, on the other hand, aimed at producing Islamic scholars who would work at the hawza and engage Islamic sciences, the Muslim community and, perhaps, the university. This, in turn, was often related to another major difference many students proclaimed: that of scholastic rigor. From this perspective, if one wanted to become a “real scholar”, to delve into the complexity of knowledge, they would go to the hawza. If one, on the other, wanted surface knowledge, à la culture générale, they would join the university. If one already was at the hawza and sought that added culture, they could join both. Accordingly, it was felt that students saw Islamic studies as a less serious, less scholastic, version of the hawza where the university path was perceived as a “lighter version” complemented with a few introductions to “modern fields of knowledge”.
7Interviewed faculty members present at both institutions, on the other hand, often seemed unclear as to what the real differences were. They all affirmed that the two fields were indeed separate with each one existing in a different institutional model, with a different length of study and a different structure. Most importantly, the fields were seen as distinct in relation to the questions of authenticity and legitimacy where the hawza was depicted (to use my words) as the legitimate indigenous organic institution, while the university was not. Yet, the differences were claimed, particularly by the established hawza scholars, to be deeper and the distinction between a “deep depth offered at the hawza” and a “scratching of the surface” offered at universities recurred, and was strongly argued for, in these interviews. Echoing the feeling present among students, this delving into the world of Islamic knowledge was seen as a characteristic of the hawza inaccessible to those who chose the academic track for reasons as varied as curricular structure, pedagogic approach, and length of study. The university was being delineated by its lack, rather than its contribution.
8Overall, the delineation presented above stood in great contrast with the reading the interviewed faculty members had where the distinction often pivoted around the hawza being a “traditional establishment” which was failing in many regards. Academic Islamic studies were here perceived as an effort to bridge the gap between the contemporary world and that of Shia Islamic knowledge. For these faculty members, the hegemonic discourse among students was a very problematic understanding and the major difference was elsewhere: it was in the knowledge being transmitted and taught, and the perceived value of such knowledge in the “modern world”. This was presented in reference to the added element found in the university but absent in the hawza: the social sciences, in the first instance, and second languages (practically only English) as means of accessing other universes of knowledge (practically only anglophone), in the second instance.
9Indeed, the social sciences did emerge, even with some students and hawza faculty members, as key distinctive features of Islamic studies, presented as elements in rejuvenating Islamic knowledge for the challenges of modern times. Often, the claim was that these fields should be present in the hawza but that, due to a complex scenery of “resistance to change” and skepticism of these sciences, such had not been satisfactorily achieved, leaving them as broadly distinctive of Islamic studies at Islamic universities. Accordingly, for the larger part of the coming sections, I will pursue a deeper investigation of the social science component as a key and distinctive feature of Islamic studies at Shia Islamic universities in Lebanon while, for the limitations of this chapter, language instruction will not be examined. In exploring this distinctive feature, I will attempt to reflect on the state and characteristics of the knowledge presented as social science at these institutions and its significance as I pursue my attempt at understanding Islamic studies at Shia Islamic universities.
10Before beginning this exploration, it must be noted that the category “social science” is used here as an “emic” category. In other words, that which the institutions I research classify as social science is treated, described, and explored as social science to, in the conclusion, reflect on the significance of such an emic classification. This in no way should be understood as a reproduction of strict disciplinary boundaries, or an unproblematized acceptance of such categories. Nor should it be understood as a valuation of the social sciences over other forms, modes and approaches to and of knowledge(s). Rather, this treatment comes out of the data where my participants brought the centrality of the social sciences for Islamic studies as an academic discipline to the fore, and for a speaking back to assumptions made by the Westernized academy.
The Islamic University of Lebanon (IUL)
11The IUL, established in 1996 by the late Sheikh Mohammad Mahdi Shamseddine, is an accredited Lebanese institution of higher education based in Khalde just outside of Beirut. Among its official stated goals (which are six in total) is “paying close attention to Arabic and Islamic studies”. Indeed, the Faculty of Islamic Studies, established in 1996, was one of the university’s first faculties and currently offers BA, MA and PhD degrees in one major only: Islamic studies.
12For over twenty years now, the faculty has had memoranda of understanding with the majority of hawzas in Lebanon, allowing hawza students to pursue a BA in Islamic studies alongside their hawza studies. Consequently, students are required to attend the university for one day per week only, as they attend the hawza on the other four days. Attending this one day entitles them to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Islamic studies after four years provided that they have made parallel progress in their hawza studies. Of great significance, this arrangement offers students pursuing a Shia Islamic scholarly track (i.e., those studying to become sheikhs) easy access to an academic degree. The exploration of such agreements, and their effects, is beyond my scope here but it is worth noting that, as articulated by students and faculty members, they clearly carry into the job market (including that of Hezbollah where, for example, academic degrees automatically mean raised salaries). But the greatest implication, perhaps, lays in the symbolic capital of being university-trained, especially for the younger generations.
13The curricular plan of a BA in Islamic studies at the IUL covers ninety-six credits, distributed over four years of study. The five subjects receiving most weight, in decreasing order, are: fiqh and usûl, philosophy, Islamic culture and civilization, Arabic language and Islamic doctrine.7 While the required credits students must take cover over twenty-five areas of study, fiqh and usûl reigns supreme. Indeed, the subject which is considered the cornerstone of classical hawza studies is given more than fifty-eight credit hours, while philosophy, Islamic culture, Arabic and Islamic doctrine all have less than twenty credit hours each. All other fields have less than this. With fiqh and usûl, philosophy, Arabic language and Islamic doctrine being themselves major fields in the hawza it becomes clear that the students are offered a training which greatly overlaps, in its subjects and topics at least, with that of the hawza. As to the social sciences, there are only four such courses offered to the faculty students. These are, as per the IUL classification: Islamic Civilization, Matters in Islamic Economics, Sociology, and Forms of Governance and Rule in Islam.
14It should be mentioned here that, as fieldwork progressed, I came to know that, hypothetically, there was a number of other social science courses which should have been on offer. Indeed, the students were meant to choose four out of at least eight courses. Yet, only four courses existed, and students had no choice but to take all four to fulfill the requirements for their graduation. Among the courses that were found in the university’s curriculum, but which were not being offered, were courses titled: Islamic Media, Introduction to Psychology, Geography of the Islamic World and Islamic Education, among others. Yet, for as far as my interviewees from the department could remember, these courses had not been offered, and it did not appear that they would be offered any time soon. Why this was so remained ambivalent, but the availability of professors and a sense that the offered courses were “safer” (i.e., less problematic, from an Islamic viewpoint, as more work by Islamic scholars had been produced around them) were mentioned in my interviews. Interestingly, none of the interviewed students knew of the existence of these modules. In the following sections, I will sketchily look at the offered courses.
Islamic Civilization
15The Islamic Civilization class is a one-semester mandatory course given to all IUL students during their first year. Accordingly, it is not specific to the students of the Faculty of Islamic Studies.
16This course, according to the curriculum, seeks to offer students an “introduction and definition of civilization”, knowledge in “Islam and faith” (with a focus on definitions and pillars), an elaboration of “the consequences of faith in terms of action” and the “Islamic values and principles of justice, freedom, equality, brotherhood and peace”. Additionally, it seeks to introduce students to Islamic ethics and the Islamic understanding of the family as “the core of society” as it discusses “the rights of women in Islam” and the “rights of children in Islam”.
17The class textbook (published in 2014) is authored by Sheikh Dr. Akram Barakat, a religious scholar with a PhD in Islamic studies from the IUL itself and an established scholarly reputation in the hawza as a graduate of the seminary in Qom, Iran.8 Titled Islamic Culture the book significantly strays from the course’s objectives as it delves into a medley of questions and topics. Starting with a general introduction on “Culture and Islamic Culture”, the book dedicates seven chapters to a discussion of the Islamic conception of a religious form of life, with the ultimate aim of forming a “perfected self”. In clear echo of mystical interpretations of Shia Islam, the book speaks of stages, imams and “revolution” as one forms oneself in the image of the divine. In the remaining four chapters, the book focuses on “The Other in Islam”, adopting a very inclusive definition and taking a harsh stance against exclusionary interpretations to then turn to “The Ethics of Communicating with People”, “The Manners of Communicating with People” and “Public Order”. Interestingly, this includes sections on the value of the environment and its safekeeping and obedience to “civic law”. Accordingly, the book appears greatly discrepant from the class’s intended objectives as it presents a sort of guidebook into an Islamic way of life, through a heavy usage of Quranic verses, Islamic Hadith and (Khomeinist) Shia scholars. Bringing forth propositions relating to the grand question of the foundation of what makes a good society and a successful community, the book seems to aim at bridging between the spiritual, the personal, the domestic and the public and to anchor a holistic order in an Islamic ontology/cosmology.
18The main instructor of this course is a religious scholar (sheikh), himself a graduate (holding a PhD) from the Islamic studies program at the IUL. He is also a teacher at a number of hawzas in Beirut and the imam of a mosque in a village in Southern Lebanon. Clearly interested in social theory, the sheikh self-identifies as a researcher mainly concerned with education. Explaining that this course is offered by the university to provide students with an Islamic foundation, he described the class as “an introduction to Islam” and affirmed its value to every hawza student (the discussion was about the university students and no mention of hawza students had been made when he made this statement):
As students of the hawza, we all need the deep and thorough hawza content as well as the academic methodology and structure. This will allow us to place the information we learn at the hawza in its proper slot. Without this [academic Islamic studies] one cannot be successful. Academia also gives skills that are much greater than those given by the hawza: it is a much greater factory for the social formation of individuals. Further, the quality of research in academia is very special and the hawza must learn from this.
19When asked about the discrepancy between the book and the course objectives, the course instructor (only) explained that the book was supplemented with the Treatise on Rights, a text authored by the fourth Shia imam, Ali Zayn al-‘Abidin, on the rights held vis-à-vis “God and all creation, including animals and the planet”, he said. Accordingly, the lacking question of “rights” is covered from a primary source. The instructor could not be brought to discuss other differences, and further inquiry revealed that a different book, more in line with the course objectives, had been in use until it was replaced with the one investigated here no more than a year before the time of my fieldwork. The reasons for this change remained unclear.
20Out of 102 references listed by the author, three were non-Islamic sources. The book did not contain any grounded empirical data, any systematic treatment of clearly articulated problematized research questions or an explicitly critical engagement with the material presented. The course instructor lamented this, claiming that the much-needed objective of “exposing and training students in the social sciences was still not being met by the curricula of Islamic studies today,” taking the debate back to the social sciences and affirming that there was a wide range of knowledge produced by social scientists that students should make use of, but were not, as the Islamic studies curriculum remained “loose and unoriented”.
21These positions were echoed by students who were surprised that this course was classified as a social science class by the department and rather expressed that they would classify it as an ethics or “general culture” class. The purpose, according to one student interviewed, was the establishment of “Islam as a life-governing system”. With this, the students affirmed that it would have been agreeable to see the course contain elements which were more grounded. However, they expressed that, as it was, the course was “useful and satisfying”.
Systems of Governance in Islam
22Also classified as a social science course by the department, Systems of Governance in Islam covers issues of governance and governments: their qualities, shapes and functioning. Taken only by students in Islamic studies, the first segment of the course is wholly based on Sheikh Mohammad Mahdi Shamseddine’s The Order of Governance and Management with a second segment based on the instructor’s notes and handouts. Eventually, the course aims to survey the various opinions regarding governance and its forms from the different schools of Islamic thought and theology. Starting with a historical overview of governance during Islam’s foundational moment, the course divides the history of governance into three phases: that of the prophet, that after the prophet and that of the modern state. Having argued for a reading of history highly embedded in Shia theology, the course delves into the question of governance, the governor and the Shia concept of imamate as it then discusses the theology of imamate, from infallibility to application. In the second half of the semester, the course moves on to the question of management to discuss the legitimacy of authority, the history of the prophet’s management of Mecca and Medina and a number of related issues. Discussing the issue of management in the nation-state, the course juxtaposes management in Islam to management as present and argues for the need of an alternative model, without clearly articulating one.
23Based on Sheikh Shamseddine’s book, which was published in 1954 (not for teaching purposes), the course seemed to students to contain too much information about too many different things. As articulated in the book, the work aims at clarifying the fact that Islam has an order for governance and management which is fitting and meticulous. The book is an argument against the claim that Islam lacks theories in governance and management, as it seeks to articulate and develop these theories. The book has 105 references. Out of these, five may be classified as academic (in the sense of being authored by academics). The book does not contain significant case-study references, nor any empirically grounded data and the course did not appear to have made a sustained effort at attending to this. The course seemed to focus on questions of theory without any treatment of empirical political systems.
24According to its instructor, the course “certainly does not limit itself to it [the book]” which is used as a guide while the students are required to refer to multiple other sources. Upon further inquiry, these other sources turned out to be primary texts written by Islamic religious scholars as treatises in Islamic propositions for politics, governance and, to a lesser extent, management. Mainly, these were primary texts by al-Mawardi, Shahrastani, Sayyid Qutb, Mawdudi, Khomeini, Montazari and Mohsen Kadivar. This means that non-Islamic viewpoints on politics and governance (and here I am mainly referring to Western ones) are (made) absent as the course exposes students to competing, radically different and even oppositional Islamic viewpoints and understandings of governance cutting across sectarian, geographic and historical boundaries. The course can be confidently said to be feeding into its students’ understanding of a non-Western political theory, Islamic knowledge and critical aptitude. The instructor stated that students are not offered “answers, rather questions and options”. They are required, for their assessment at the end of the course, to choose a viewpoint on a topic of their choice and argue for it in essay form. In the instructor’s words, “the course is one that plays a major role in developing the critical thinking skills of the students. Critical thinking is automatic in this course since there are so many opinions on everything.”
25A hawza graduate and professor holding a PhD in political science from the Lebanese University, he stated that “the purpose of the course is to introduce students to political thought in Islam, not to political thought” and fill a gap in the hawza curriculum. For him, one cannot simply compare proposed modes of governance as one must go back and “investigate the roots each one stems from”. Consequently, the instructor declared that the course objective did not include engagement with Western academy which, he clarified, is, practically speaking, not an option within the confines of one semester. Rather, the course sought to present “Muslims studying Islam” with knowledge of Islam. A course which would be dedicated to knowledge of other models was absent from the program’s curriculum and the instructor made no mention of his views on such an absence.
26Unlike the Islamic Civilization course, all students interviewed said that the Systems of Governance in Islam course qualified as social sciences. Further, they expressed great satisfaction with the class and saw that it provided them with knowledge and theories they felt they needed. Hence, when discussing this particular class, students appeared to feel that the academic training of the university was offering a valuable addition to their hawza studies. Its main value to them appeared to be its survey of different opinions and approaches to governance within Islam as it “brought differences to the fore for open discussion”, as one student stated. All students said that the course played a role in developing their critical thinking skills, especially through the numerous class discussions. Alongside this, a number of students mentioned, and lamented, the strong element of memorization present in the course.
Sociology
27Designed as an introductory elective class for Islamic studies students, the Sociology class does not make use of any single textbook and no reading material is provided to the students. Rather, these are required to take class notes and use them as their study material. According to the information provided by the faculty administration, the course is divided into two main sections. The first one covers the birth of sociology, “as influenced by the social, economic and political transformations accompanied by the advances of the natural sciences” in Europe. It also contains a historical descriptive overview of the stages through which the discipline has passed, focusing on its main pillars. The second portion of the course covers a wide range of topics including the problem of “subject matter and objectivity in sociology”, the fields of the discipline, the formulation of a research problem in sociology and the development of a research project (research methods, sampling…), social relations in an Islamic society as well as “the Islamic proposal for an Islamic theory in sociology”. These are all developed through the instructor’s lectures, with no references offered. When the professor giving the course during the academic year 2015–2016 was asked, he said that such references were used in the construction of the lectures but not given to students as this was not needed for this class. I could not access these references due to the instructor’s unavailability and my own time constraints and can therefore make no statements around them.
28A sociologist teaching at the Lebanese University, the same institution where he had earned a PhD in sociology, the main instructor of this class understood the course as one with a specific, simple, objective: it aimed at getting students to know what sociology was and who its main thinkers were. Accordingly, what was offered by the instructor usually sketchily covered most of the points outlined as course objectives, with varying weight. Noteworthy was the significant focus on the issue of “objectivity” and accuracy, and its lack, when it came to the results of social research.
29Upon inquiry, the professor said that the course stemmed from a belief that there was much that Western sociologists had said which was incompatible with an Islamic worldview, whereas there were compatible things and students of Islam should know what these were to engage them. While this was argued for throughout, the course did not seek to offer an “Islamic sociology”. Accordingly, the instructor explained that the course gave little emphasis to “the Islamic proposal of a sociological theory” as such an objective was “too ambitious” for such a class. Rather, it sought to present a narrative of sociology as a discipline born and developed in Euro-America. Accordingly, it can be said that this class was an introduction to sociology as an academic discipline which was not aimed at forming (or introducing people with the ultimate aim of their formation as) researchers. Rather, it was a class introducing students, perhaps assumed to be hawza students, to a discipline in the Westernized academy that they should be made aware of.
30As to the students, they generally agreed that the course could be classified as social sciences. Further, most students thought that it increased their exposure and understanding of the Westernized academy. Moreover, when asked about this aspect, they expressed their feeling that it fed into their critical thinking skills. This was despite the fact that many students stated that they did not feel that critical thinking was a priority for the class which (interestingly) they negatively saw as placing too much emphasis on “memorizing Western theories and theorists”. Of note is the fact that multiple students claimed that the course pivoted around Marx and Ibn Khaldun as the two most important theorists in sociology. Despite this characterization, no mention of Ibn Khaldun was made by the instructor in the interview and this question remained unclear as I could not attend this particular class (due to my own time conflict). Despite this, the hegemony of classical Westernized sociology in the class seemed palpable.
Matters in Islamic Economics
31A course for students in the Islamic studies program, based on selections from Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr’s Our Economics, written in 1960, this class was perceived by the administration as a “general introduction to economics and economic systems”. The book is not, originally, meant to be a teaching textbook but to constitute an intellectual response to the leftist (mainly communist) debate in the Arab world in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Throughout the book, one can note a clear call to turn inwards to solve the modern crisis of the Islamic world: Islam is capable of offering an alternative to both capitalism and communism.
32Very much a work of theory, where philosophy is often elaborated on, the book is a clear reflection of Islamic philosophy. It does not use, nor refer to, any type of empirical research. Of note is the fact that the book does not engage the post-1989 developments, particularly in respect to the collapse of the USSR and communism and the global hegemony of neoliberal capitalism. In practice, the course is an introduction into some main classical Western theories of economics, which are then compared to the Islamic theory of economics, as developed by al-Sadr. Particularly, the course focuses on what it terms “the economic problem [of our time]”, the basis of distribution of wealth, labor, “economic need”, private property and exchange. Using selections for each of the above-mentioned topics, the course is organized as a comparative survey focused on capitalism, communism and Islam.
33The instructor, an Islamic scholar (sheikh) with a PhD in economics from the Lebanese University, started the interview with a caveat as he declared the course a one-semester course in which the teacher is asked to offer “a general introduction”. Defining it as a class in what may be loosely termed “economic theory”, it is “hindered by time and resources”, he said. Ideally, the sheikh explained, students should be taking two courses: one in which they are “introduced to capitalism and communism as well as any other possible economic model”, and another in which they are offered a critical engagement and an Islamic theorization. Unfortunately, according to the sheikh, this is not the case and a comparative study begins too soon.
34The course is divided into two sections: in the first one the grand characteristics of Islamic economics, based on the works of Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, are presented. For the instructor, al-Sadr’s work was chosen because it is the “deepest thing written on the topic by Islamic intellectuals, especially on a theoretical level.” In this section of the course, he emphasized, an effort is made to present both capitalism and communism with much objectivity and argumentation to compensate for the lack of a previous course. In the second section, the textbook is put aside and selected contemporary economics issues are taken up as discussion topics to allow students to relate and apply what they have learned to their contemporary lives. Here, specimens of economic matters are offered, discussed and evaluated, advantages and disadvantages are put forth and the students are asked to critically assess. Normally, the three topics being taken up are those of Islamic banking, the global meat industry and copyright issues (including the rights to patents). The sheikh claims that these are chosen due to their controversial nature, and their relevance to the students’ lives.
35Students, on the other hand, labeled the course as “enlightening” and “very relevant to modern life”, as they comfortably classified it as social sciences. Moreover, they said that it heavily helped them develop their critical thinking skills and understand the basics of economics as an academic discipline as well as the Islamic reading of it.
Note on the Scientific Research Class
36In addition to the above, the curriculum includes a course on research methods (which was on offer during the time of my fieldwork). Yet, the research method class was not classified as social sciences by the department. Upon investigation and inquiry with the students, the course revealed itself as being similar to courses on academic writing offered in Westernized universities. In addition to issues such as format and presentation, the course covers topics such as choosing one’s research topic, phrasing a research question and formulating a hypothesis. It will not be pursued beyond this note.
Al-Maaref University
37Al-Maaref University is a private university established in 2014 by the executive council of Hezbollah, a body mostly led by Shia religious scholars, and located in Bir Hassan, Beirut. The university started with three faculties and had expanded to six within two years of its foundation. Of the original three is a Faculty of Religions and Humanities, which includes a program in Islamic studies. Central to the university’s identity, this faculty had established agreements, similar to those at the IUL, with the major hawzas in Lebanon to allow hawza students to pursue a degree in Islamic studies at the university with a reduced fee and reduced requirements.9 According to the university official records, over fifty percent of the students of the Islamic studies program were hawza students at the time of this research.
38Beginning my interview with the associate dean of the faculty, I was met with a word of caution:
The student here is to be open, objective, listening to others while being scientifically critical, without bias. The Faculty of Islamic Studies seeks to study Islam in its various opinions and open up to other religions and civilizations to discuss what they have in a scientific approach … the term Islamic is misleading.
39Clearly, the associate dean was claiming the institution as one of objectivity and intellectual freedom, as contrasted to one of ideological constraints. Further, he was claiming it as one seeking to engage Islam in its different understandings rather than one seeking to engage Islam in the academy. Whether his caveat was a juxtaposition of the university to the hawza or to Westernized universities remained, and remains, unclear to me.
40The Faculty of Religions and Humanities at the university offers five tracks. All students take the same courses for the first four semesters and they then divide into a specialty they choose from either [general] Islamic studies, Quran and Hadith, history and civilization, philosophy and kalâm, and comparative religions. Out of these, [general] Islamic studies and Quran and Hadith are considered as being specialties in Islamic studies while the other three are considered as being the humanities tracks. To graduate with a degree in Islamic studies, the students are required to complete ninety-nine credit hours, in total, covering both general education and specialty courses. While there are differences between the [general] Islamic studies track and the Quran and Hadith track, my analysis has shown that their similarities are significantly greater than their differences. The subjects which are suggestively present throughout the specialties, taking most weight, are those of fiqh and usûl, of Quranic studies and of ethics. As was found at the IUL, both tracks were extremely similar to the hawza model and the main differences were in the presence of the social sciences and language classes.
41Specifically, the Islamic studies track requires five courses which are classified as social sciences while the Quranic studies track requires four, namely Research Methods, General Culture, Sociology and Psychology which are the same courses required for Islamic studies minus a course in political thought. In what follows, I take a closer look at each of these courses.
Research Methods
42This module is a one-semester mandatory course which teaches a book titled Research Methods (1988) authored by Dr. Mahdi Fadlallah. The book puts its emphasis on the technical aspects of writing and presenting a research paper. It discusses the question of finding resources and literature, referencing and writing styles. Extremely similar to an academic writing class, perhaps with an added component on the scientific method and research as inquiry, it does not tackle any form of non-text-based research. This, as well as the focus on text-based research, shows how the hawza model and its practices infuse this academic training in “research methods”.
43The course at the time of this fieldwork was taught by the chair of the department, a philosopher and logician with a PhD in philosophy from the Lebanese University. Explaining that this course began with broad definitions to allow the students to understand what research was, what methods were and what scientific inquiry was, the instructor stated that the course mainly aimed at raising awareness among the students of the existence of various research methods and how these methods may be used to reach “different forms of knowledge”. Further, the course aimed at teaching students how to write a research paper and present it “along the internationally agreed upon criteria”. Stating that the course was addressed to first-year students and given to people “freshly out of high school”, the professor stated that it was only reasonable for the course to have limited objectives. Teaching other things, such as how one goes about doing research and gaining knowledge, he explained, is important and must be given, but is beyond the scope of this class. Why this did not exist in any of the department’s courses remained unanswered.
44For students, the course was described as “bewildering” and “basic”. Personally, I shared this sentiment with the students as, through my participant observation, I found the course beginning with a substantial introduction on ethics and manners between a pupil and their teacher to build on the Islamic notion of tutorship and the form of relationship that must exist for successful learning process to take place. Having established this, the greatest part of the course was then dedicated to an explanation of how one goes about writing an academic research paper. This brought forth questions on the Islamic social order as minor discussions of the scientific method and modes of pursuing research figured into the class.
General Culture
45This mandatory course was offered to first-year students in their first semester with no specified textbook. Weekly, reading material was emailed to students which they were required to read and prepare before coming to class. Interestingly, each class started with a question, followed by a discussion to then close with the lecturer’s presentation.
46Indeed, the entire module may be said to have been structured along a series of questions. Starting with a theoretical analysis of religion and its nature, often building on work done in the Westernized academy in the fields of philosophy of religion and, to a lesser extent, in theology in Westernized universities (the work of Henry Corbin, for example), the course quickly moved to ask fundamental philosophical questions about the “innate in human beings”. Yet, the time/space devoted to the philosophical component was limited to the first few weeks, and questions of culture, civilization, Islamic civilization, Western civilization, secularism and rationality were each (briefly) covered during the larger part of the semester. While presenting work produced in the Westernized academy on each of these issues, a clear construction of a difference between what the “West” had to say and what “Islam” had to say appeared to exist in both the notes and the class discussions. As it did this, the course absented the critical tradition in the Westernized academy, especially when discussing questions of secularism and rationality (the work done in the anthropology of religion and anthropology of Islam, for example, did not figure). Regarding rationality, the course seemed to reproduce the universality of the concept (in its current standard understanding) and presented it as common grounds between Islam and Western civilization, grounds which the instructor insisted could be built upon for a civilizational dialogue.
47Interestingly, while the course built on handouts, these were thoroughly referenced and eloquently written. They included works of Islamic thought (Ibn Khaldun, Motahhari, Tabatabaei, Khomeini, Shirazi, Yazdi, al-Sadr…), the Arabic academy (Omar Farrukh, Muhammad Abd al-Munim Khafaji, Abdul Jabbar al-Rifai, Ahad Karamelky…) as well as the Westernized one (Marx, Heidegger, Gadamer, Giddens, Honderich…).
48The course instructor explained that the course (and the entire faculty) sought to offer students “a sense of belief in their own identity” using all sources to introduce students to the reality that, he said, was out there, objectively. While the instructor of the class was a philosopher, with a focus on Asian mystical philosophy and a PhD in Islamic studies from the IUL, he appeared extremely well versed in Western social sciences with a significant affinity to quantitative sociological studies and expressed, in our meeting which had nothing to do with the hawza, that he believed the hawza had one great fault: “It has not engaged properly with contemporary knowledge and academia.” Speaking of the social sciences, he exclaimed: “What does religion have to do with them? It may only come into play as the background with which one perceives the results.” In parallel, he affirmed that as fields of knowledge the social sciences (and the humanities) were in serious need of “authentication and culturalization”. The discussion around the “Islamization” of the social sciences and the humanities, or their “humanization” and “culturalization” as per many of my participants, is beyond my scope here and I will therefore not linger on this point, as valuable as it is. Speaking of this specific class, the instructor affirmed the centrality of critical thinking and said that this would be clear to me from the discussions I would witness in class.
49Truly, the class was a sphere of critical discussion and, personally, I found the many aspects of the instructor’s approach noteworthy. For example, after forcing a student to argue for their belief in Islam against heavy criticisms, he affirmed that one must not take a strong position against other religions or belief systems as “every philosophy in the world has a segment of truth to it”. For students, the course certainly classified as a social science class and they believed it had significantly contributed to their critical thinking skills. Overall, they expressed satisfaction with the class and found it engaging, “eye opening” and “foundational”.
Sociology
50As the faculty was still in its first year and this course was meant for second-year students, it had still not been on offer at the time of this research. Nevertheless, building on my interviews with the dean and associate dean and on an examination of the course objectives and description, a few things can be said. Of note is that, as a one-semester (de facto mandatory) class, the department head made it clear that no single textbook was to be used since none of the existing ones could “present the full picture”. Rather, a number of different sources would be used to construct “an Islamic understanding of sociology”. With broad objectives, this course aimed at presenting students with ground data on the birth of sociology (definition, subject matter and relationship to the other sciences), founding fathers, and research methods. In Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Weber one finds the founding fathers of the modern discipline, the course clearly claimed. Of great interest was the fact that the course focused on the sociology of religion and, in doing so, presented a number of Islamic scholars/intellectuals as sociologists of religion (Morteza Motahhari, for example). More interesting still, as seen from a critical perspective, was the linear model of historical progression the course seemed to subscribe to as it claimed that the study of society had begun in ancient Greece, moved to the Islamic world and then to the West with development and progress occurring during each stage.
Educational Psychology and Political Thought
51Similarly, both of these courses had not been offered. According to the department, it was still not clear when they would. For the Educational Psychology course, looking at the listed course objectives, its specialized nature with a heavy focus on (mostly Westernized) psychological theories of learning, teaching and education was noteworthy. Why this is so, when there are no other specialized courses in the department, remained unclear. The discussions held pointed to the faculty’s belief that the question of education was one of the most valuable skills its graduates could hold, especially as it saw itself striving to “graduate scholars who [would] guide the coming generations”. At the time of this fieldwork, the Political Thought course was either for second- or third-year students and had not yet been developed beyond a statement of broad objectives. From these, it was clear that it was interested in introducing students to classical theories of governance as well as (Islamic and non-Islamic) contemporary ones, with a potential emphasis on questions of democracy and alternative forms of it. What this meant, and how it was to be done, remained unclear.
Conclusion
52Islamic studies at Lebanon’s Shia Islamic universities do not easily lend themselves to definitions and are difficult to interpolate using standard extant classifications. In practice, the major appears to be a sort of complementarity to the established track of hawza studies, existing in symbiosis, rather than independently, or in competition, with it. The university does not seem to be replacing the hawza, to be erasing the hawza model, but rather seems to be largely servicing it. Indeed, and with the hawza looming large across my fieldwork and structuring Islamic studies as a specialization, it can be claimed that some of Islamic education gatekeepers (such as Sheikh Shamseddine or the scholars in Hezbollah’s executive council) have chosen to supplement perceived deficiencies in the hawza system, “developing” it by offering its students a complementation, from the outside. As academic stakeholders in the field expressed great faith and ambition for the major, those situated more in the hawza (including students) were much less hopeful, approaching the institution much more pragmatically. Nevertheless, the added value of such training appeared clear throughout with a focus on the curricular aim of “deepening” and expanding the hawza’s own fields alongside a presentation of, mainly, “foreign languages” and “social sciences” under a (westernized) academic model.
53As explored in this chapter, the branding of specific material as “social sciences” in Shia Islamic universities in Lebanon, and the absence of such a branding for others, offer several valuable insights. First, the definition of what counts and does not count as “social science” not only tells of a constant (re)negotiation but reveals one where the administration, the instructors and the students are all agents potentially harboring divergent views. Consistently perceiving the social sciences as forms of knowledge born from the West, my participants generally perceived potential in these fields and sought an engagement with them. Perhaps most importantly, this analysis reveals that the signifier “social science” is far from being identical to that found in the Westernized academy as it covers a spectrum ranging from the founding fathers (claimed to be European) of sociology to classical Islamic theories of governance as it fuses mystical principles with the theorization of the social order. Indeed, at these institutions, the social sciences are incorporated into curricula in ways more awkward at times than at others, molded and remolded, to present fragments of knowledge emanating from Islamic traditions alongside the knowledge traveling from Euro-American ones. The branding does not obey the rules of the conversation as they are set by the global Westernized academic institution but rather (re)negotiates it and indigenizes it while not delinking from it as it remains trapped in the grand narratives of European modernity and its emergence, seeking its recognition and obeying its market logic. Consequently, it might be said that at certain times some theories one finds in the westernized academy are provincialized here by the very fact that Islamic theories are presented as equal alternatives, which are themselves taught from Southern resources. Other theoretical positions, and larger structures, nevertheless remain empowered.
54Often taught by people with both hawza and academic training, the ‘social sciences’, altered, are here mobilized to build students’ confidence in the Islamic model and complicate their reading of Islam as a monolithic paradigm. Despite the value of this inclusion in the training of Islamic scholars, and despite the complexity and variety found at these institutions, what makes it into the curricula as social science is generally limited to theory. Frequently focusing on grand narratives, a tendency to homogenize rather than complexify exists. Further, these courses remain largely prescriptive and detached from grounded investigation. The absence of empirical knowledge and the consequent absenteeism of the social sciences as a body of knowledge empirically constructed through a theoretical lens is particularly noteworthy. Additionally, these fields seldom engage non-Islamic Southern works including work from the wider Arab region. The absence of Arab social theorists, for example, might be a reflection of the lack of legitimacy of the social sciences produced in the Arab world where such scholarship is often seen as a pale copy of the “genuine” Western scholarship. Much is lacking as students receive a specifically constructed corpus of knowledge which, in broad terms, does not seem to prepare students for South-South, and cross-identitarian, alliances.
55The social sciences here are, ultimately, significantly different sciences of the social and the specialization exists, ultimately, for the service of the hawza as the (persisting yet changing) established model for the formation of Shia scholars and stakeholders. Certainly, a more elaborate exploration, especially regarding the differences in teaching the same material across hawza and Islamic university, is needed. Yet, eventually, while the weight of the Westernized academy was heavily felt and much remained to be desired, and with the emergence of Islamic studies as a discipline in Lebanon itself raising a number of issues around the traveling of the Westernized academic model and the hegemony of Eurocentric modernity, educational pedagogies and the (current, perceived) legitimacy of various forms of training and specialization, I would argue, specifically as a result of the investigation of the construction of the “social sciences” at these universities, that they fall under what Mignolo (2011) identified as institutions of/at the border: touched by modernity/coloniality but not subsumed by it. Indeed, while one might first think that the presence of Islamic studies in Lebanese Islamic universities, with colonial and imperial entanglements, indicates a blind mimicry and a succumbing to the logic of the Westernized university model, this paper has hopefully greatly complicated such understandings.
Bibliographie
Des DOI sont automatiquement ajoutés aux références bibliographiques par Bilbo, l’outil d’annotation bibliographique d’OpenEdition. Ces références bibliographiques peuvent être téléchargées dans les formats APA, Chicago et MLA.
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Notes de bas de page
1 Westernized education is a concept advanced by a number of post/decolonial theorists and developed by Grosfoguel (2012 and 2013) to refer to those educational institutions of power/knowledge where the “epistemic privilege of Western Man” is established as objective, universal and hegemonic while all other epistemes are claimed and relegated to the traditional, irrational, cultural and subjective (Grosfoguel 2013, p. 74). When geographically present in the Global South, the label is used “in the sense that they are local instantiations of a dominant academic model based on a Eurocentric epistemic canon” and “traditions” (Mbembe 2016, p. 32).
2 This (religious) identitarian demarcation, under-researched, remains unclear. Here, it is used as a form of emic label. Nevertheless, based on the fieldwork, it might be said to be a demarcation to separate these universities from secular Westernized institutions and flag their ethos and founding philosophy as being that of Islam and the Muslim community. Offering various fields of study, from engineering to literary criticism, their commonalities with Westernized universities in Lebanon far outnumber their differences.
3 Azad Islamic University (with a campus in Beirut and one in the southern city of Nabatieh), a branch of the Iran-based Azad Islamic University, is a third “Shia Islamic university” in Lebanon. While not accredited as a university by the Lebanese ministry of higher education, it functions and offers degrees by virtue of its accreditation in Iran. Yet, it does not offer Islamic studies. In an interview with its director, he clarified that this is because there is no demand for academic Islamic studies in Lebanon with those interested students going to the hawza (refer to note 7).
4 The distinction between academic and non-academic Islamic studies is certainly contestable, especially with the (multiple) efforts at transforming the hawza into an academic institution. Yet, for the limitations of this paper, this will not be explored. For further information refer to Kassem (2018), Mervin (2003) and al-Sayyid et al. (2019).
5 It must be noted here that, in comparison with access to the hawzas, the bureaucratic nature of these institutions rendered access and data collection quite tiresome on several occasions and the fieldwork required over 10 months to be completed.
6 The hawza is the institution responsible for the formation of Shia Islamic scholars, mujtahid, marja‘ and intellectuals. It is based on a different pedagogic model where an intimate student-tutor relationship governs an educational trajectory coded by the completion of established books and fields of study in the pursuit of the ability to reach one’s own authoritative rulings (ijtihâd). For details see Mervin (2003), Walbridge (2001) and Kassem (2018).
7 Fiqh and usûl are the fields of study concerned with the extraction of religious rulings from their “legitimate sources” (which are, according to Shia doctrine, reason/logic, the Quran, Hadith and “the consensus of the rational people”).
8 The word sheikh is used here to denote a scholar whose social role is that of a man of religion. This normally means someone who has gone through hawza studies and completed them and is mostly occupied by religious activities (lectures, prayers, religious organizations…). This is usually flagged by the wearing of a turban.
9 Similar to the IUL, these agreements cut across affiliations and cover all the major hawzas.
Auteur
-
Ali Kassem
American University of Beirut

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