Education, teaching & transmission

Names and abbreviations on this page

PAS — Parti Islam Se-Malaysia — Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party. An Islamist political party in Malaysia.

ISEAS — Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; now ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. A Singapore-based research institute studying Southeast Asia.

Basic concept

Across civilizations, education has been more than the delivery of facts. Teachers have passed on languages, religious interpretations, professional skills and ideas about legitimate authority. In Abbasid Baghdad during the ninth century, scholars debated law and theology through teaching circles and written commentaries. In medieval Europe, cathedral schools and universities trained clergy and jurists; the University of Bologna emerged as a center of legal study around 1088, while the University of Paris developed as a major center of theology in the twelfth century. These institutions were not identical, but each created ways to preserve knowledge while allowing later generations to dispute its meaning.

The distinction between instruction and mobilization became especially important as printing, compulsory schooling and political parties expanded. A student may learn an argument without accepting it; a graduate may join a movement without acting on behalf of the school. To establish institutional responsibility, the relevant record is the curriculum, the leadership decisions, the financing and the actual conduct—not the mere presence of shared ideas.

Protest events

In the nineteenth century, expanding universities became places where students contested government policy as well as academic conditions. Students participated in the revolutions of 1848 across parts of Europe, but their demands differed by city and political setting. In the United States, the 1964 Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, challenged restrictions on campus political activity; Mario Savio became one of its most recognizable speakers. In France, student demonstrations at Nanterre and Paris helped trigger the upheaval of May 1968, which grew into nationwide strikes involving millions of workers.

In Chile, student movements challenged the cost and structure of education in 2006 and again in 2011. Leaders including Camila Vallejo and Giorgio Jackson became prominent during the 2011 mobilization, which connected tuition and access to broader debates over inequality. By October 2026, demonstrations over proposed education spending cuts showed how these disputes continued to evolve. A protest can bring together students, unions and political organizations without making them one institution. Funding, endorsements, organizers and individual actions must be traced separately.

Case to examine: Chile: student march against education cuts. [1]

Islamist political movements

Modern Islamist political education developed amid the transformation of Muslim-majority societies under colonial rule, independence movements and mass electoral politics. In Egypt, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 and built networks of religious instruction, welfare and political organizing. In British Malaya, the party later known as Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) was founded in 1951. Its development combined religious scholarship, party organization and contests over the direction of Malaysian government.

PAS expanded its influence through elections, local branches and religious leadership. The party's ulama leadership became particularly prominent after internal changes in 1982, associated with figures including Yusof Rawa. Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat served as chief minister of Kelantan from 1990 to 2013 and was influential in the party's religious and political identity. Party training can prepare candidates, campaign workers and organizers, but it should not be confused with the wider teaching of Islam in schools or mosques. The relationship is established through specific party materials, leaders and documented decisions.

Case to examine: Malaysia’s PAS and ulama-led party politics. [2]

Islamic religious traditions

The transmission of Islamic learning began with the recitation and study of the Qur'an and reports about the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. By the eighth and ninth centuries, scholars across Medina, Kufa, Baghdad and other centers were developing methods for interpreting scripture and resolving legal questions. Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i (767–820) helped articulate principles for weighing the Qur'an, prophetic reports, consensus and legal reasoning. His work contributed to the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence, which spread through scholarly networks and later became influential in Egypt, East Africa, Yemen and Southeast Asia.

Instruction took place in mosques, private circles, madrasas and, in the modern period, universities and state schools. Al-Azhar in Cairo developed from a mosque founded in 970 into a major center of Islamic scholarship. Teachers transmitted texts through explanation, debate and authorization to teach, while students encountered competing interpretations within and across schools. Religious law, theology and political party activity can intersect, but they are not interchangeable. The content of a course and the authority of its teachers are more precise evidence than an assumption about every graduate's political commitments.

Case to examine: Shafii jurisprudence. [3]

Christian traditions and currents

Christian teaching first spread through communities that copied and interpreted scripture, instructed converts and trained clergy. Monastic schools preserved manuscripts in medieval Europe, while universities later developed systematic theological study. The Protestant Reformation changed the scale and politics of instruction: Martin Luther's challenge to indulgences in 1517 and the subsequent spread of printed texts helped make religious education a central concern of rulers, churches and families. Catholic reform after the Council of Trent (1545–1563) also reshaped seminaries and clerical training.

In eighteenth-century Britain, John Wesley (1703–1791) organized Methodist societies around preaching, small-group meetings and disciplined religious practice. The movement spread through itinerant ministers and lay participation, especially in Britain and North America. Methodist educational institutions later supported literacy, higher education and social-service work. Their histories include debates about slavery, labor conditions and public responsibility. A Methodist school, congregation and political campaign may share participants while having different governance, finances and purposes.

Case to examine: Methodist and Wesleyan Christianity. [4]

Institutions and Western societies

Mass schooling transformed European and North American societies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Prussia expanded state-directed education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; in the United States, Horace Mann promoted common-school reform in Massachusetts during the 1830s and 1840s. France's Jules Ferry laws of 1881 and 1882 established free primary schooling and compulsory secular education, strengthening the state's role in teaching civic identity. These policies widened access while also generating disputes over religion, language and the authority of families and governments.

The twentieth century brought sharply different uses of education. Democratic governments expanded public universities and professional training, while authoritarian governments also used schools and youth organizations to promote official ideology. After the Second World War, UNESCO was established in 1945 to encourage international cooperation in education, science and culture. Today, debates about curriculum, religious schools, public subsidies, academic freedom and digital information reflect that same institutional question: who determines what is taught, and how can those decisions be examined and challenged? The answer differs across countries and school systems.

A useful comparison

The historical record shows several distinct pathways. A scholar can develop an interpretation; a school can teach it; a religious association can endorse it; and a political party can organize supporters around a related proposal. Each step requires separate evidence. For example, al-Shafi'i's ninth-century legal scholarship cannot be treated as the platform of a twenty-first-century party, just as Wesley's eighteenth-century religious movement cannot be reduced to the positions of every modern Methodist institution.

A meaningful comparison identifies the named institution, the period involved, its governing officers, its curriculum or published statements, and the decisions it actually made. For a protest, examine organizers, funding and participants. For a school, examine lessons, admissions, accreditation and freedom to question instructors. For a political organization, examine leadership, electoral commitments and its record in office. These distinctions explain how ideas travel through societies without attributing identical beliefs or conduct to everyone who encounters them.

Related learning

Chile: student march against education cuts

Malaysia’s PAS and ulama-led party politics

Shafii jurisprudence

Methodist and Wesleyan Christianity

External Resources