Al-Attas Revisited on the Islamic Understanding of Education

Al-Attas has been an important figure in the Islamisation of knowledge project. One of his original contributions has been to offer an Islamic account of education in terms of adab and ta'dib . He holds that the words commonly used to describe the Islamic understanding of education, tarbiyah and rububiyyah , are unable to do the job. This paper argues that not only is ta'dib not better than tarbiyah/rububiyyah for denoting the Islamic understanding of education but that it can only be subsumed under rububiyyah . This is because ta'dib , at best, refers to only the ethical and social aspects of education without all aspects of education.