The Islamization of Social Sciences in Nigeria Problems and Prospects

Abstract

Introduction
The Islamization of social sciences is part and parcel of developing
and promoting knowledge that conforms to the norms of Islam. This can
be attained by motivating scholars to develop scholarship using an Islamic
perspective through the introduction of new social science courses based
on Islam, Islamizing (i.e., rearticulating along Islamic lines) existing conventional
social science disciplines, and promoting the movement of
Islamic attitude to knowledge.
The Islamization of Knowledge undertaking in Nigeria can be traced
to the period of the Sokoto Jihad leaders, whose scholarly writings covered
such aspects of life as politics, economics, and medicine. However, with
the passage of time and, more especially, with the coming of the British
colonialists and the concomitant infiltration of western scholarship, the
Islamization of Knowledge pioneered by the Jihad leaders gradually began
to fade. At first, the North opposed vehemently the spread of the western
system of education, because it was linked with Christian missionary propaganda
(Fapohunda 1982). As such, the emirs of the North and their subjects
stood fmly against this alien system, a stance that accounts for the
disparity in western education between the South, that had welcomed it,
and the North.
Unfortunately, like most other Muslim countries, Nigeria continues to
suffer from the colonial legacy of the West. In particular, its elites are the
worst victims of colonization of mind by the West’s so-called secular ideology.
Its education and other systems of life continue to be based largely
on the structure of that secular ideology.
Education is the single most important instrument for grooming and
channelling a society in the desired direction. To rescue Muslim societies
from the yoke of western secular civilization and to reestablish Islamic
civilization requires the decolonization of the secularized minds and spirits
of the elites as well as of Muslim intellectuals (the ulama), professionals,
and political leaders, on the one hand, and the training of young
people in Islamic knowledge and education, on the other. In order to
return the society to the Islamic system of life, the first task is the Islamization
of the educational system (both formal and informal) for the Muslims
and the Islamization of the country’s ulama ...