INTRODUCING EXISTENTIALIST PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES FOR CULTIVATING AUTHENTICITY IN ISLAMIC EDUCATION

Abstract

The Arab Muslim world has had brief encounters with “Western Existentialism,” a post-Enlightenment European literary movement, during the nineteenth century. (Di-Capua, Existentialism 70 years After 2019) mentions it was introduced by Alexander Koyré, a fleeing Russian French immigrant who took up a teaching position at a Cairo university thereby exposing a generation of young Egyptians, to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty the likes of Husserl and Heidegger. Most notable among them was Abdur Rahmān Badawī (b.1917-d.2002). Since then, different Arab and Islamic forms of existentialist thought evolved in literary works aimed at decolonialisation and suppression around the Arab Muslim world. Though this article is not a follow up of those early achievement it sets out to highlight key issues and themes of what a speculative “Islamic” existentialist approach to education practice (thereafter referred to as EIEPs) must consider.