Islamic Education in China
Islamic
Education is the religious education of Chinese Muslims. Its main contents
include religious belief, value out1ook, ethics and moral principles, and
Islamic culture and knowledge. Education is an important way to raise
Muslims’ concepts and personalities to a higher level. According to the
historical records, a special form of education originated in the middle of
the 16th century. Over a long period of development, there
appeared two forms of teaching: one form is called Mosque Education,
initiated by the pioneer Mr.Hu Dengzhou(1522-1579);the other fom1is called
Islamic School Education, which appeared in modem times. The former has a
long history, and is a kind of specific religious education, which is taught
by imams in mosques-By this means, Islamic knowledge is spread and religious
personnel are trained. In order to improve their living standards and the
fine traditions of Islam, the pioneer Chinese Muslims always put study and
education in the first position. They used the Arabic, Persian and Chinese
languages to teach, translate and expound the Islamic scriptures. By doing
so, they created the conditions for Islam and Islamic culture to spread in
China. Where there is a Muslim community, there is a mosque, so it is very
convenient for a Muslim to get Mosque Education. Chinese Mosque Education is
the result of Islamic culture adapting to the Chinese traditional cultural
environment, and the combination of the traditional education in Arabic
countries of the Middle Ages and old-style Chinese private school education.
This teaching system suits Chinese social conditions and the Chinese Muslim
situation in China. In addition, Mosque Education is open to all Muslim
students. A Mosque provides free accommodation and tuition for any student
who comes to study. Imams also teach for free-Islamic schools set up in
Mosques are the best choice for Chinese Muslims. Chinese
Mosque Education is Islamic education with Chinese characteristics. From the
Ming Dynasty to the present, Mosque Education has produced several
educational sects and teaching styles. In the early period, there was the
Shanxi Sect, which was represented by Feng Yangwu and Zhang Shao Shan, which
focussed on "Ilm al-kalam"and "Ilm al-Trafsir". There
was the Shandong Sect, which was represented by Chang Zhimei, Li Yanling and
She Qiling, focussing on the 13 scriptures in Arabic and Persian, and on the
study of Suffism. There was theYunan Sect, which reformed mosque education
and taught the scriptures in both Arabic and Chinese. There was the Hezhou
Sect, which originated in Linxia Hezhou in the Northwest of China, and which
concentrated on teaching "kitab Mishkat al-Masabih" and
"Ihya ulum al-Masabih". Religious education in the Xhujiang area
is in the form of small and scattered old-style private schools. Every big
mosque in Xinjiang has an independent Madrassa (Islamic School), at which
the teaching mode, contents and management pattern have the characteristics
of central Asian Muslim education. Chinese Mosque Education has been
constantly improving. When this education mode was first established, there
were not enough scripture books, and few students. So at the beginning,
Imams taught students
in their own homes. Later, the mosque became the teaching place. In modern
Chinese Islamic history, Mosque Education has made great1mprovemenu. It has
a fixed teaching place, as the classroom is in the mosque. Usually, the
north and south teaching halls in the mosque are specially used for
teaching. Teaching both Islamic and ordinary culture, and a step-by-step
teaching pattern were the new contents added to the old-style Mosque
Education in the past two or three hundred years. Mosque Education is
divided into two sections: One is the primary school section, in which
Muslim children get basic Islamic education. Imams teach children Arabic so
that they can read the Qu'ran
in Arabic pronunciation. The students in the primary school section also get
Tauhid education, recite selected readings from the Qu'ran,
read popular religious books and learn various salat (prayers) in a period
of 3-4 years; the other section is the Islamic University section, also
taught by imams. The students receive systematic religious education and
Islamic ethical education. They study for 6-7 years. The courses are of two
kinds-basic courses and professional courses. The basic courses are Arabic,
Persian, rhetoric and logic; the professional courses include "Ilm
a1-Tafsir", Hadith, "Ilm al-kalam", Shariah and Suffi
philosophy. There are 13 kinds of textbooks. After Enisi1ing all these
courses, the students graduate with the approval of the imams who taught
them. The graduate students go to mosques in various places to be imams, by
invitation. There is another form of Islamic education in China, called
School Education, which emerged in the 1920s and 1930s. Influenced by the
new cultural concepts springing from the May 4th Movement of 1919, some
Muslim intellectuals and social activists tried to find a way by which
cultural education could promote the development of the nation. To establish
a system of modem Islamic education, they set up Islamic schools
successively in Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan, Jinan, Yunnan Ningxia and other
places in China. Of these schools, the Beiping Dacheng Normal School,
Shanghai Islamic Normal School, Sichuan Wanxian Islamic Normal School and
Ningxia Wuhong Chinese and Arabic Normal School made great contributions by
fostering qualified personnel who not only possessed scientific and Islamic
knowledge, but were proficient in Arabic. What was more important was that
these educators with modem concepts also sent Chinese Muslim students abroad
from the 1930s. This pioneering work added new contents to modern Chinese
Islamic education. The overseas students played important ro1es in the
fields of Islamic education and academic research after they came back to
the motherland. After
the founding of the People's Republic of China, with the support and care of
the People's Goven1ment,a national Islamic high school---the China Islamic
Institute-was set up in1955.with the aim of fostering qualified Islamic
leaders who love the socialist motherland, uphold socialism, possess higher
Islamic knowledge and high levels of both Arabic and Chinese, and on the
principle of "maintaining the fine traditions and customs of the
religion", the institute practices all modern teaching methods in which
the courses are composed of two kinds--Islamic courses and basic university
ad courses. The institute recruits students from all over the country by
means of a unified examination. To meet the requirements of Muslims at
different levels, besides bachelor's degree courses, the institute also runs
polytechnic degree courses, research classes, overseas student supplementary
classes and imam training classes. Besides history, geography, politics,
Chinese, and other social science subjects, the students also study the
Islamic scriptures. After finishing their studies, the students are required
not only to be proficient in Mosque affairs, foreign affairs and teaching,
but have a certain level of theory and culture, so that they can become
senior religious personnel who meet the needs of socialist construction. In
recent years, as the reform and opening policy deepens in China, policies
concerning religions and minority groups have been fully implemented. In
order to train more qualified religious personnel, nine Islamic institutes
have been set up in Beijing, Urumqui, Shenyang, Xining, Lanzhou, Zhengzhou,
Kunming, Hebei Province and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, respectively. Islamic Education Historical Contribution 10 minority Groups believing in Islam |
最後更新日期:2001年11月23日