Islamic education; The research process and its assumptions

Concerns about the Islamicization of humanities make it necessary to offer objective criteria, and the science of education is no exception. Thus, attending the macro process of research is the most significant factor in the Islamicization of education. That is because the factor both makes it possible to explain the relationship between the scientific and religious aspects of Islamic education and facilitates responding to issues like the relationship between the divine message, reason, and experience, the status of efficacy, and the relationships between educational elements. The present study investigated discussions on the philosophy of science and Islamic education, and it was shown that the process of doing research in Islamic education was, similar to other sciences, made up of two stages (i.e., theorization and theory evaluation). The stages of theorization in that science started with theorization about educational goals, proceeded by investigating the foundations, principles, and other educational elements, and ended with theorization about educational issues. The results showed that the scientific dimension of the theories was approved when they reflected reality and were agreeable, generalizable, and coherent, while the religious dimension relied on their reference to the divine message. Thus, reliance on the divine message as the only source of achieving educational goals was considered the most significant factor in the Islamicization of science at the first step of the study, and reliance on divine educational goals with the assistance of reason and experience was theorized as the guarantees of achieving the specified goals in the investigation of the foundations and other educational components. Therefore, reference, efficacy, and internal and external coherence were introduced as the criteria to evaluate theories on Islamic education.