Responses to Globalization in Malaysian Islamic Education: Philosophical - Underpinnings, Curricular Changes, Revivalism and the Moderate Islam adhari

This paper will survey, certain observable Responses to Globalization which have taken place in Islamic Education in Malaysia in the decades since the late- s. These changes would be identified, and wherever possible, traced back to certain schools of Islamic Education, whose long history predates the era of British Colonization (of Malaya). In the backgrounder, it will be discussed how the establishment of secular-type education by the British colonialists became an alternative system which then grew into the monolithic post-Independence National education system, thus forcing the old-model of Islamic education – characterizedby the pondok (from Arabic funduk) student residences – into the backwaters as an educational system of last resort for Muslims. The revival of Islamic Education inMalaysia coincided with the world-wide phenomenon of Islamic Resurgence in the late s. This was followed by the Malaysian Government’s renewed interest in Islamic Education, which manifested in the State-government funded Sekolah AgamaKerajaan. Responses toward the phenomenon of Western-engendered Globalization as well as Global Islamic Resurgence, can be found in the local Islamic educationsystem, but the nature and scope of these Responses have tended to vary from state to state, thus motivating the Malaysian government to formulate the all-encompassing and moderate concept of Islam Hadhari. For the purposes of this paper, particular focus will be made on certain Philosophical Underpinnings and Changes of Curricula Forms and Structures in present-day Malaysian Islamic Education