From the signboard to the paradigm: the historical course of the idea of an Islamic University

In the previous column we placed the founding of the Türkiye International University of Islam, Science and Technology within the broader intellectual quest that has developed since the First World Conference on Muslim Education held in Mecca in 1977.

The basic question raised by the Mecca Conference was this: while producing modern science and technology, how would Muslims preserve their own understandings of being, the human being, morality and knowledge?

Nearly half a century has passed. During this time, different "Islamic university" models emerged in Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uganda and Niger. Türkiye, although it took part in the conference with a strong six-person delegation, was for a long time unable to carry this idea onto an institutional footing. However, Ismail Raji al-Faruqi's thesis of the "Islamization of Knowledge," which had come onto the agenda in Muslim intellectual circles as an answer to the basic question at that conference, was debated intensely. Perhaps it was not brought to an institutional outcome, but it created a strong consciousness and awareness regarding Islamic and scientific knowledge. TİBU, which is today reaching the stage of becoming operational in Istanbul, is the new and perhaps most ambitious link of this belated quest.

The university was legally established in fact in 2015. The law envisaged that it would consist of faculties of social and human sciences, law, political science, Islamic sciences, medicine, engineering and architecture, and computer and informatics, along with institutes of social, natural and health sciences. However, the actual structuring of the institution was delayed for a long time. With the appointment of Prof. Dr. Mehmet Görmez as rector in December 2025, it can be said that the university entered its real founding process.

This delay can perhaps be turned into an opportunity. Because Türkiye is setting out having seen both the successes and the shortcomings of universities founded before it.

THE MALAYSIAN EXAMPLE: THE MOST SUCCESSFUL EXPERIENCE?

Among the institutions that emerged after the Mecca Conference, the most prominent is the International Islamic University Malaysia, founded in 1983. This university became one of the most comprehensive implementations of the goal of bringing Islamic sciences and modern disciplines under one roof.

The aim here was not to add a few religion courses for the engineering student or to teach the theology student modern science to a limited extent. A more fundamental integration was targeted. Law, economics, political science, medicine, engineering and the human sciences were to be related to Islamic principles about the human being, society, justice and responsibility.

An important success of the Malaysian experience was bringing together students and academics from different parts of the world. In this way the university became one of the common institutions not only of Malaysia but of the Islamic world. The rectorship of Abdulhamid AbuSulayman, one of the key figures of the idea of the Islamization of Knowledge, between 1989 and 1999 was particularly effective in transferring the theoretical quest into institutional practice.

But the Malaysian example is not a flawless model that has solved all problems. Over time, criticisms have also been made that the ideal of "integration" remained limited in some faculties to a few Islamic contents added to the curriculum, and turned into the re-presentation of existing knowledge in a religious language rather than original knowledge production.

WHAT THE ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE IS NOT

Ever since Faruqi's book came onto the agenda in the eighties, translated into Turkish (trans. Fehmi Koru, Risale Yayınları, 1985), it has been debated quite a lot. The sensitivity in its background is very valuable, but it has always seemed to me that the criticisms directed at it squandered this good intention very cruelly by ignoring it.

Of course the Islamization of Knowledge is not adorning scientific results with verses and hadiths. Nor is it adding a religious introduction at the beginning of every physics, biology or sociology course. It is certainly not forcing scientific research toward predetermined conclusions. Such an approach does not strengthen the university; on the contrary, it turns science into an ideological mechanism of approval.

The real matter is to question what conception of the human being and the universe knowledge is built upon. Modern sciences are not merely data. Behind every discipline there are assumptions that are often not explicitly stated: What is the human being? Is nature merely a raw material to be used? Is the aim of economics unlimited growth? Is everything that is technologically possible also morally permissible? What is the limit of the state's power? Where does the human being's unique value begin in the face of artificial intelligence?

The modern university often leaves these questions outside the disciplines. Yet the difference of an Islamic university is not to halt scientific research but to be able to discuss the consequences of science and technology within a broader moral and ontological framework.

For this reason the most important task of the university is not to hand out "ready-made Islamic answers" but to create the intellectual environment that will produce new and authentic answers to the hardest questions of our age.

NOT A NEW AND BIG FACULTY OF THEOLOGY, BUT A NEW UNIVERSITY

I said this in my previous column too. Two of the three names in the new university's title are redundant, and therefore, in my view, unnecessary. An Islamic University already encompasses within itself both knowledge of science and technology and research.

There are two extremes that Türkiye must avoid in founding this university. The first extreme is to turn the institution merely into a more developed faculty of theology. Türkiye already has a strong accumulation of theological scholarship. The aim of the new university is not to repeat this structure but to provide a real epistemological encounter among different disciplines.

The second extreme is to produce an ordinary technical university with "Islamic" added to its name. If the university will translate and implement existing Western curricula as they are, and then give its students a few compulsory religion courses, it will have fallen behind a half-century-old intellectual quest.

The new institution should be neither an enlarged version of the classical madrasa nor a copy of the ordinary university adorned with religious symbols. The real goal should be a new model that brings together the madrasa's heritage of wisdom and morality with the modern university's research capacity.

TÜRKİYE'S ADVANTAGE

Türkiye has in this project important possibilities that many Islamic countries do not have.

First, it has a very strong historical accumulation. Ottoman madrasas, foundations, hospitals (darüşşifa), observatories and classical scientific institutions are not merely a nostalgic past but important institutional experiences that need to be studied.

Second, Türkiye also has an important infrastructure in terms of modern university and scientific tradition. The new university does not have to train scientific staff from scratch; it can bring together competent academics in the country and in the world.

Third, Türkiye is in a unique position geographically and culturally among the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Africa, South Asia and the Arab world. The law's giving special importance to international students is also connected to this vision. For the university to be truly international depends not only on admitting students from different countries but also on its administration and academic staff acquiring a pluralistic structure.

Fourth, Türkiye has a strong foundation (waqf) tradition. In the work developed after the Mecca Conference, attention had also been drawn to the importance of the foundation model for the sustainability of Islamic universities.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

For the university to succeed, first of all a strong founding academic staff is needed. Academics should be chosen whose names stand out not through political or bureaucratic closeness but through scientific output, intellectual depth and international reputation, and the names first announced give optimistic news in this regard.

In addition, real interdisciplinary research centers should be established. For instance, centers with a voice in the world in fields such as "artificial intelligence and ethics," "Islamic economics and global justice," "biotechnology and human dignity," "city, architecture and civilization," "the law of war and new weapons technologies."

Of course, something easy to say but not at all as easy to do: the university should be open to the different intellectual traditions of the Islamic world, and, as a complementary attitude, an environment open to criticism should be provided.

For instance, even the idea of the Islamization of Knowledge was debated and criticized quite a lot. Even these criticisms must be taken into account and allowed to enter through the university's door; otherwise the institution turns not into a center of thought but into a closed structure repeating its own truths.