ABSTRACT
The introduction of modern institutions of higher education in Muslim contexts marginalised the indigenous institutions of higher learning. This chapter demonstrates that this marginalisation of madrasahs, their defensive position and their becoming a closed system is a modern phenomenon, which started from the age of colonialism and continues up to the present, post-colonial or neo-colonial era. Perceiving European education to be ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’, as opposed to the ‘backward’ and ‘obsolete’ indigenous education, the colonial powers and Muslim rulers started to establish European types of higher educational institutions. The colonisation itself, it was thought, was possible because of the advanced educational structures of the Europeans, and therefore the implication was that Muslims should borrow that structure (see Hourani, 1997; Lapidus, 2002).
