Toward a Conceptual Expansion of Islamic Curriculum

“Islamic Curriculum” is one of the newly-emerging concepts and areas in the curriculum studies. It mainly focuses on islamization of the curriculum based on the monotheistic worldview. However, no clear and defensible theoretical framework has been offered on the nature of Islamic curriculum and its boundaries. This paper aims to present an initial idea and framework for the Islamic curriculum and its boundaries. For this purpose, the content of existing works on Islamic curriculum was described, analyzed and criticized in the three stages. In the first stage, after identifying individual related works, the author's purpose of the Islamic curriculum and his/her intended dimension(s) for islamization of the knowledge dimensions of the curriculum were analyzed. In the second stage, the nature of author's activity –theorizing or applying current Western theories- were analyzed in the works. In the third stage, the works were criticized with regard to their content and conceptualization. Based on the current status, two main trends could be identified in this perspective: enriching Islamic curriculum with Islamic values, based on the theoretical framework of curricula design and development dominated in the West; and Islamic curriculum as a major philosophical-valued theory. Due to the insufficiency of these trends and their ignorance toward different knowledge dimensions of the Islamic curriculum, this study proposes a third alternative trend and seeks to call upon the specialists to consider the production of the Islamic curriculum knowledge by expanding theoretical discussions in all its related dimensions. Undoubtedly participation in the production of appropriate Islamic curriculum knowledge needs some so-called theorizing, as the only way of creating new knowledge.