Designing an Islamic integrated university curriculum : a case study of the undergraduate Political Science Program, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract

The political science curriculum of the University of Dhaka was firstly designed by Hindu scholars from Calcutta University during the British colonial period. The present curriculum is inherited from that colonial legacy which lacks Islamic philosophical foundation because of its secular-western origin. The main objective of this study was to examine the extent to which the present political science curriculum of University of Dhaka is consistent with the Islamic worldview and philosophical foundations of educational and political thoughts, and whether it is able to counter contemporary challenges. The study employed the historical and philosophical methods with curriculum analysis and interviews to achieve the said objective. The cursory historical study discovered that the philosophical foundation of the present political science curriculum of the University of Dhaka lies on Greek philosophy that upholds the segregation between the knowledge of the Supreme being and that of the physical world, western theory of knowledge that emerged from the metaphysical speculation on the evolutionary view of life and the psychoanalytical account of human nature. However, the study was an attempt to look for the alternative curriculum that would be based on Islamic integration in epistemology, methodology and curriculum. Subsequently the study examined the various ideas and models of Islamic integrated curriculum, including the model of the American Liberal Arts University curriculum. It was able to provide an outline of an alternative model of Islamic Integrated University Curriculum (IIUC) with four outcomes as characteristics of its graduate, which are, the good man, general employability, knowledge of discipline and as a social being. Consequently, the researcher established a framework for the Integrated Political Science Curriculum (IPSC) for Higher Education Programme consisting of its mission and vision (goals), its curriculum structure and the necessary skills. With the IPSC framework, students are expected to be equipped with revealed and acquired knowledge, generic skills and ethical values that will form the basis of the political science curriculum for the University of Dhaka and the Muslim world at large. Based on the IPSC framework, the undergraduate political science curriculum University of Dhaka was analyzed. The study also found that it was not consistent with the Islamic worldview, Islamic philosophy of Knowledge and education as it ignores the key principles of Islamic political theories, namely, Tawhid, Shariah, ‘Adalah, Hurriyah, Muhasabah, Ummah, Khilafa, Shura, and Wasatiyyah as manifested in the Qur’an, the Sunnah and the Islamic legacy. It also found that there was an absence of Islamic vision of higher education, program goals and objectives, it lacks an appropriate curriculum structure and Islamic relevance in the course references. Finally, some implications of IPSC were discussed in terms of organization, objectives, content and mode of evaluation. The study ended with several recommendations to improve the political science curriculum of the University of Dhaka to enable it to be integrated, Islamic and relevant for contemporary challenges.