Educational Review: International Journal

Between Al-Azhar and the UIN: Paradigms of Reform in Egyptian and Indonesian Islamic Higher Education

2025-11-02T01:27:52+00:00

The landscape of Islamic higher education in the twenty-first century is marked by a persistent tension between tradition and modernity. Institutions across the Muslim world face the challenge of preserving the sanctity of ʿulūm al-dīn (religious sciences) while engaging with the demands of global knowledge economies and secular academic standards. This study examines two emblematic responses to that tension: Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, the millennium-old bastion of Sunni orthodoxy, and Indonesia’s State Islamic University (UIN) system, a contemporary experiment in integrating Islamic and modern sciences. Using a qualitative comparative policy analysis, the research draws on legal documents, institutional statutes, curricula, and reform reports, complemented by secondary literature on Islamic educational reform. Comparatively, Al-Azhar’s paradigm safeguards authority through continuity, while UIN’s cultivates innovation through pluralism. Both confront similar pressures, globalization, market demands, and the politics of religious legitimacy, but respond in divergent ways. The analysis suggests that reform in Islamic higher education is not a uniform process but a spectrum of paradigms shaped by each nation’s political ethos and epistemological vision. For Al-Azhar, the challenge ahead is to reclaim autonomy without severing tradition; for the UINs, it is to deepen integration beyond structure to methodology. Ultimately, the study argues that the future of Islamic higher education lies not in convergence toward a single model, but in sustaining a plurality of reform trajectories where faith and modernity continue to negotiate their fragile, creative coexistence.

Religious Socialization and Female Subjectivity: Religious-Zionist Adolescent Girls in Israel

2024-08-22T10:38:31+00:00

A study examined the link between religiosity, gender and subjectivity in religious Zionist education in Israel. The analysis revealed that the girls' daily experiences of modesty and their anticipated experience of being wives and mothers shaped a religious subjectivity that is subject to divine law and the male world. Judaism, like other religious-cultural contexts, plays a pivotal role in shaping girlhood-womanhood by means of its educational institutions and socialization practices. The religious understanding of gender and female sexuality in Judaism and its constraints on girls and women are diffused by such all-encompassing institutions and practices. This fact raises the issue of how religious conceptions, as transmitted by these socialization agencies, are embedded in the everyday experiences and subjectivity of girls. Specifically, the study presented in this article explored how adolescent religious girls in Israel translate the conception of girlhood and womanhood, as filtered through their religious-Zionist education, into their selfhood and how they contend with it.

Duality and Integration: Paradigm Shifts in Islamic Higher Education Policy in Indonesia and Sudan in the Contemporary Era

2025-11-02T01:49:37+00:00

Modern Islamic higher education continues to wrestle with an enduring paradox, the uneasy coexistence between ʿulūm al-dīn (religious sciences) and ʿulūm al-dunyā (worldly sciences). This study explores how two Muslim-majority nations, Indonesia and Sudan, have confronted this duality through distinct yet converging paradigms: integration of knowledge and Islamization of knowledge. Drawing on a qualitative comparative policy analysis, the research examines key documents, national education laws, ministerial decrees, university statutes, curricular frameworks, and scholarly literature, to uncover how each country conceptualizes and institutionalizes “integration.” Comparatively, Indonesia’s model is dialogical, “bottom-up,” gradual, and institutionally adaptive, whereas Sudan’s is declarative, “top-down,” and politically centralized. The contrast underscores how epistemological reform cannot be divorced from the political imagination of the state. Indonesia’s integration thrives on pluralism and negotiation; Sudan’s Islamization sought purity and control. Both, however, face common pressures: globalization, accreditation standards, and the marketization of higher education that continually test the coherence of Islamic knowledge paradigms. The study concludes that the shift from duality to integration is not a linear process but a dynamic negotiation between theology, politics, and modernity. For Indonesia, the challenge lies in deepening integration beyond structure to substance; for Sudan, the post-2019 period offers a chance to reconstruct Islamic higher education free from authoritarian ideology. Ultimately, the cases illustrate that integration, much like faith itself, is an unfinished project, one that must be continually rediscovered in the dialogue between revelation and reason.

Morale Values Internalization in Nussa and Rara

2024-12-19T06:19:00+00:00

Characters come from developing inner moral values, which is something that is sought to emerge as a result of education. It is necessary to develop the values of Islamic education in students from an early age because that is the right time to instill moral values in children in the form of daily habits. The concept of Islamic education for students must be contextual by providing educational value packaged as attractively as possible so that children enjoy learning. One of the appropriate media to apply in creating students with morals is through the animated film Nussa and Rara. This research aims to discover what Islamic values are contained in the animated movies Nussa and Rara from the thirteen episodes selected by the researcher. Furthermore, the type of research used is a qualitative descriptive method to uncover and understand something behind unknown phenomena and is used to gain insight. The qualitative information analysis used in this research is information reduction analysis, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. From this research, a result was obtained in the 13-episode film Nussa and Rara animated series, there are seven characters which include: 1) Religious towards Allah and the Messenger of Allah, 2) Trustworthy, 3) Doing good to parents, 4) Doing good to teachers, 5) Doing good to friends 6) Polite, 7) Having an attitude of tolerance, 8) Discipline, 9) Responsibility, 10) Generous, 11) Humble, 12) Love the environment, 13) Curiosity, 14) Honest, 15) Independent, 16) Creative, 17) Social care.