Department of Islamic and Comparative Education
Historical Background:
The Department of Islamic and Comparative Education was founded in 1385/1386 A.H. in an integrated practical unity with the specialization in psychology in order to prepare specialized learners in various educational sciences. It undertook to teach educational and psychological courses at the BA stage in the specialization of education and psychology besides the educational preparation courses for students in other colleges such as the College of Shari'ah and Education in the academic year 1394/1395 A.H. The college of education expanded and hence the Department of Education was separated from the Department of Psychology. Furthermore, the Department of Curricula and Teaching Methods separated from the Department of Education in 1395/1396 A.H.
Admission into the specialization in education and psychology at the BA stage was stopped in 1395/1396 A.H.
In the same year, the department of education put its syllabus for the postgraduate studies into effect. Therefore, the MA students who seek to be specialized in Islamic education and educational administration were admitted in the same year; 1395/1396 A.H. Moreover, the department continued to teach educational preparation courses for the various other specializations in the BA stage.
In the academic year 1406/1407 A.H. the department of education was again divided into to subclasses:
1- Department of Islamic and Comparative Education.
2- Department of Educational Administration and Planning.
Tasks of the Department of Islamic and Comparative Education:
Teaching Islamic education is an outcome of the importance of education in all the countries of the world in forming the personality of the Muslim person in order to be in harmony with the society. The Saudi citizen holds on to the characteristic features of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as specified by its educational policy which states that:
((The characteristic features of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are distinctive for guarding the holy places, preserving the land where the revelation started and taking up Islam as a creed and law for life. The country is aware of its great responsibility of calling humanity to Islam and to goodness)) (Article 23).
The education policy has harmonized the personality of the citizen with that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in articles: 12 and 14 and has asserted this in Article 16 which reads:
...Conscious interaction with the global civilizational advances in the fields of science, culture and arts by following, participating and leading them to serve the interests of the society and humanity.
This conscious interaction requires comparing the various education methods with the Islamic one so that the Saudi character acquires the characteristics mentioned in the education policy in Article 17, which reads:
Full confidence in the constituents of the nation of Islam and in the fact that it is the best nation ever, believing in its unity despite the difference in race, color and locations.
Allah has stated in the Qur'an that "Truly, this, your Ummah [Shari'ah or religion (Islâmic Monotheism)] is one religion, and I am your Lord, therefore worship Me (Alone)." (Surah Al-Anbiyaa' 21: verse 92)
Comparison, therefore, is simply a conscious interaction that looks upon the global achievements and judges them in the light of Islam so that the belief in the laws that God has granted the nation becomes greater in comparison with the rules that Man put.
The department of Islamic and comparative education has a leading role among the other educational departments as it is consolidates the major conceptions in education, the theory of ethics, values, knowledge, the meaning of human existence, the role of man, his position and the objectives of education. Hence, the department pays attention to the cornerstone of Islamic foundation of education. Its role is to teach those conceptions to other departments so that the educational sciences are deeply founded.
To achieve this aim, the department of Islamic and comparative education contributes to providing the following academic tasks to students:
- Educational preparation to all students as well as students from other universities during the vacation.
- Special diploma students in psychological direction and guidance.
- Private diploma students in education.
- Scholars from the Ministry of Education to the center of training courses in educational supervision courses, activity supervisors and others.
- The learners who joined the course of elementary and upper elementary public education headmasters.
In addition, the department awards the following academic degrees:
- MA in Islamic and comparative education
- MA in comparative education
- PhD in Islamic fundamentals in education, other tasks of the department include:
- Participating in educational seminars, global and local intellectual conferences.
- The contribution of teaching staff as well as supervising academic educational theses that is usually published in periodicals of the Educational and Psychological Research Center in the University.
The Objectives of the Department:
The department of Islamic and comparative education aims at achieving the following objectives:
1. Clarifying the standard theory of education - how education should be in the Muslim community and this requires the educational conceptions to be outcomes of the basic beliefs such as the Islamic views on The Creator, the world, people, life and the nature of the relation between them. This also calls for founding the educational knowledge on Islamic fundamentals, revising the western educational thoughts and critiquing them from an Islamic perspective.
2. Founding the educational process by knowing the historical roots of this nation and other nations to stress on the Islamic identity on the one hand and knowing the extent of privacy and generality of the educational thought of other nations on the other. The department seeks to know how close or how far the educational thought and practices have been from the standard theory throughout the ages in the history of the Islamic nation.
3. Clarifying and explaining the dialectic relation around the educational process and the social circumstances, social, economic, modern cultural conditions and this requires studying education and its relation with the problems of development and social and economic change issues that the third world is going through in this historical stage.
4. Getting to know education in its global sense and making use of educational practices in other countries, which requires studying educational systems comparatively, knowing various solutions to the similar educational issues in modern societies and studying the phenomenon of the western cultural, economic and media hegemony...etc on the world and the effect of this hegemony on the intellectual and educational independence of other societies, particularly Islamic ones.