LAUSR

This study enumerates the principles of education explicitly taught in the text of the Qur’an. As Islam’s only undisputed source of infallible divine direction, the educational principles contained therein constitute a divinely-sanctioned pedagogy. In recent years, much has been said in academic circles about the dangers of essentializing Islam. If academia is to reframe its questions about Islamic educational philosophy to account for its many interpretations, however, a greater understanding of the common text being interpreted, namely, the Qur’an, is essential. Understanding Islamic education in the context of its most central text is lacking, though, as few studies have provided a thorough textual analysis of educational philosophy within the Qur’an itself. To this end, we undertook a systematic linguistic analysis of the Qur’an in its entirety in both the original Arabic and various English translations. From these analyses, we found three main themes, including: first, independent, inferential reasoning; second, orthopractic teleology; and third, memorization and the spoken word. The unique contribution of this article is to provide a strong foundation of strictly Qur’anic educational philosophy upon which further hermeneutical research can investigate how that philosophy has been interpreted and practiced by Islam’s various denominations throughout its rich history.