ABSTRACT
When the first edition of Non-Western Educational Traditions was being written in the mid-1990s, I noted that “it is, in an important sense, inappropriate for a book concerned with non-Western educational traditions to include a chapter on Islam and the Islamic educational heritage.” I observed that, after all, Islam is one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, along with Judaism and Christianity, and approximately one-fifth of the world’s population is Muslim.1 More important, I suggested that Islam as a religion is not independent of the religions of the West in the same way as Buddhism and Hinduism. Rather, I pointed out that Islam is part of what can be termed the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, sharing with Judaism and Christianity many core beliefs, ideas, and values.2 To be sure, the idea that all three religions are part of a single, unified tradition is for some people a problematic one, because just as they share many
elements, so too do they disagree about key issues.3 Nevertheless, historically the three faiths are closely related in ways quite different from their relations with most other religions. This suggests, of course, that Islam is not really “nonWestern” in the same way as the other societies and religions examined in this book. Indeed, much of what we consider to be the basis for the Western tradition from the period of classical antiquity was preserved for us not in the West, but rather by Islamic scholars in the Middle Ages.4
