On June 10, 2004 USIP senior fellow Mamoun Fandy presented a report on his research project, "The Crisis of Education in the Muslim World." Fandy argued that muslim intellectuals have struggled for decades to institute a pedagogical "software" that would encourage students to engage with the West and take up the challenge of reforming their national cultures from within to make them compatible with modern, global society. For reasons of political expediency however, the governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and other Muslim states have allowed and even encouraged another version of "educational software," one developed by people like Said Qutub and organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. This jihadist software nurtures student resentment and hostility toward the non-Muslim world, as well as toward progressives and intellectuals within Muslim societies. Those secular states now face a crisis within their educational systems as the Islamist ideology has spread throughout their schools and beyond their borders.

Mamoun Fandy is a former professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian politics at the National Defense University and a professor of Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He served as a consultant for CNN during the war in Iraq and a news analyst for Orbit TV, a Pan-Arab Middle Eastern TV network. He is also a member of the United States Commission on Public Diplomacy. He has testified before The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9-11 Commission) and before the House Foreign Relations Committee.

Report Summary

Children walk to school in Saudi Arabia. (Courtesy Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia)

Many Americans and Westerners continue to puzzle over the apparent cultural gulf that separates them from the Muslim world. The oft-posed question, "Why do they hate us?" remains unanswered nearly three years after the events of September 11th. Discussing his research over the past year at the Institute, senior fellow Mamoun Fandy set out better explain the source of that divide between the Muslim world and the Western/American world, while situating the issue in a broad, historical context.

Hardware vs. Software: Examining the Origins of Today's Educational Challenges in the Muslim World

Education, Fandy observed at the opening of his presentation, is at the center of the social problems faced by the Muslim world today. The crisis within the educational system, he said, is a problem of "software," not "hardware." That is, the problem is not a lack of buildings or poor infrastructure, but the curricula and the way those curricula are taught. Reconfiguring or rewriting that software will require a concerted effort, and those who would change that software must understand where the effective point would be to intervene.

To give some historical context to this crisis, Fandy pointed to the influence of the twentieth century liberal intellectual Taha Hussein, considered the "Dean of Letters" in the Arab world. In his 1937 book, The Future of Education in Egypt, Hussein wrote, "We have to prepare our youth for economic jihad, in the same way the Europeans and Americans prepare their young people for this jihad. To reach that level of development we have to build our schools and institutions along the lines of European and American schools." Fandy underscored that the term "jihad," used by Hussein in 1937 as a call to economic development, has today come to imply confrontation with others and attacks on the self inside the Muslim world.

It was in the context of nationbuilding, particularly in Egypt, that Arab/Muslim software became corrupted, Fandy suggested. Key to this development was a three-way debate that emerged in the decades following Abdel Gamel Nasser's ascension to power, especially after 1967. The ideology of the Nasserian state, on the one hand, was both socialist and Arab nationalist. Taha Hussein, in contrast, articulated a liberal vision for Egypt as a nation state, stressing an open and civil society. Said Qutub, who had been an undersecretary of education under Hussein, articulated a third vision-that of the "Muslim Brotherhood." In contrast to Nasser's Arabism, and Hussein's liberal nationalism, Qutub saw Egypt as just one part of the larger Muslim world, the Umma. The conflict between these three visions, Fandy said, has had important consequences for education that continue to be played out today in Egypt and the Muslim world at large.

The Egyptian educational system, Fandy argued, became a site where this three-way ideological civil war was played out. However, the Arab states are in fact little more than city states where the Khala, the hinterland or no-man's land, remain largely beyond the control of the central government. Thus, the Nasserian state required its teachers in the urban centers to indoctrinate their students with an Arabist ideology. But the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups gained control in the outlying areas, and so influenced their students to see Egypt as part of a larger Umma in conflict with non-Muslims. At the same time, the Arab world was also immersed in the global politics of the Cold War during those decades. In an effort to keep the Arab world in the capitalist camp, Saudi Arabia and the conservative monarchies of the region promoted Islam as part of a strategy to defeat Nasser's socialism. Thus, Saudi Arabia, Fandy pointed out, and to some extent the United States, actually further pushed the "Islamic software" in the Egyptian educational system.

Competition and the Geography of Ideas

The competition over the "geography of ideas," Fandy explained, spread out from Egypt as Nasser assumed the leadership of the Arab world. Nasser sent his teachers abroad, not only to teach but to set up the educational systems in the region. The Saudi geography of ideas, however, was also spreading out through the Muslim world, in competition with the Egyptian model. The educational "software" became corrupted in the further reaches of the Arab world, becoming in essence the equivalent of a "pirated" version of the original software. This makes for significant confusion among students today, Fandy noted, as does the fact that students across the Arab world are presented with a bewildering variety of contrasting softwares or ideologies. Algerian students, for example, might have had teachers from Iraq teaching Baathist ideology, from Nasser's Egypt teaching pan-Arab socialism, and from the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, as well as from Belgium and France.

Fandy then considered the broader context of Arab culture in which education is situated. In particular, one part of that context, he noted, is the contradiction between madi al-Iftikhar—memories of glorious Muslim civilization of the past—and waqi'a al-Ihtikar—a humiliating present that results in contempt for self and others. The GNP of the 56 members of the Organization of Muslim States is just $1.1 trillion dollars, less than that of France's $1.5 trillion and only one-fifth that of Japan's, $5.1 trillion GNP. Thus, there is a disconnect between what students are taught—that they are part of a glorious Muslim civilization—and the realities that people experience today. That disjuncture is central to the problem of Muslim education, Fandy stressed.

A Better Tomorrow? Education Challenges Facing the Muslim World on the Road Ahead

The future of Muslim education is not very promising, Fandy warned, due to the pressure of demographic trends. While world population growth averages about 1.2 percent annually, it is nearly 3 percent in the Arab states—the youth demographic in those Arab states alone is predicted to reach some 110 million in 2010. The governments will not be able to meet this demand for education, Fandy asserted, and the majority will be educated with the "counter software" of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Jihadist organizations. We know for sure, he added, that the Arab states will not live up to the challenge of educating their youth in 2010.

Fandy also pointed out that formal education often has little value, at least in Arab society. Students cannot count on their performance or scholastic record to secure a job. Arab society, Fandy observed, is not a society based on merit, but a society built on blood relations and nepotism. A degree has no value in the employment market, so there is little incentive for students to be concerned with their performance.

In conclusion, Fandy offered some thoughts on how the crisis of education might be approached and tackled by policymakers, and what role there might be for the United States. From the 1970s through 1990s, the United States conceptualized the problem of education in the Muslim world as a hardware problem. Therefore most aid money went to building schools. These buildings, modern, even elegant in design, are to be found everywhere. But, as an example of a common occurrence, one school in Upper Egypt was named for a regionally influential fundamentalist preacher. And what is being taught in that particular school is abhorrent. Ironically American funding is being used to promote a Jihadist software including hostility toward the United States. The developmental trend that focused on hardware, must be reversed, Fandy stressed. However, in order to know where and how U.S. policymakers or outsiders might intervene will require a full and subtle understanding of the challenges facing education reform in the Arab world.