USA Africa Dialogue Series - Major misperceptions of Boko Haram rectified (1)

A major popular misconception about Boko Haram is that they believe
that Western book learning/ education is Haram / forbidden by
Islam.This is a distortion and oversimplification of their position,
perhaps as it has filtered through to their less educated followers
and this misconception has been used as propaganda, by which to
stigmatise and even ridicule and sneer at the group as being
backward.

But as Toni Johnson points out,

http://www.cfr.org/africa/boko-haram/p25739

"Many Nigerians believe Yusuf rejected all things Western, but Lubeck
argues that Yusuf, who embraced technology, believed Western education
should be "mediated through Islamic scholarship," such as rejecting
the theory of evolution and Western-style banking."

"Mediated through Islamic scholarship" is nothing new, there is
currently a serious movement among genuine Islamic scholars such as
the noted Iranian doyen of Islamic studies, Professor Seyyid Hossein
Nasr, working on "the Islamisation of Knowledge". This is surely what
is meant by "Western education should be "mediated through Islamic
scholarship," , that we do not see all things ( including science,
history and philosophy, through the prism/ lens of Western or Eastern
scholarship.....

http://www.google.se/search?q=Seyyid+Hossein+Nasr&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a

http://www.google.se/search?q=%E2%80%9Cthe+Islamisation+of+Knowledge%E2%80%9D&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a

http://www.google.se/search?q=Seyyid+Hossein+Nasr%3Aon+the+Islamization+of+knowledge&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:sv-SE:official&client=firefox-a

It is a variation of another larger endeavour , "the indeginization
of knowledge " which would even incorporate translation and
adaptation of knowledge into terms that are relevant to those who want
to imbibe or make use of it....

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