The quest for knowledge has always been viewed as an important responsibility and obligation for Muslims. This follows from injunctions in the Qur'an and hadith that among other things impress upon Muslims the need to “seek knowledge even as far as China” and “to seek knowledge from cradle to grave”, and which further instruct that “the first thing created by God was the intellect” and “one learned man is harder on the devil than a thousand ignorant worshippers”. The pursuit of knowledge in Islam is understood by Muslims above all to be an expression of faith. Therein lies a fundamental difference between Islamic perspectives on education and modern, secular understandings of the function of knowledge, which tend to ascribe to knowledge an instrumentalist value towards the advancement of material interests. Islamic schools do not have as their primary task the supply of labour to the state or equipping citizens for the modern economy, particularly when such aims may entail compromises of faith and creed. This is not to say, however, that the considerations of physical welfare and the fulfilment of basic material needs are not a matter of concern for Muslim parents, teachers, and students alike. Indeed they are. The point to stress is that these concerns are seldom articulated as the foremost priority. Islamic schools are seen to provide Muslim students with specifically religious education and their concern is, above all, the matter of spiritual well-being. It is to this end that they follow distinct and long-cherished traditions of knowledge accumulation and dissemination. Any assessment of the Islamic education system, whether for the purpose of policy formulation or the study of a time-honoured tradition and institution, must necessarily bear this in mind.

Because of the place of knowledge in Islam, the Islamic school has through the centuries been considered a major social and religious institution of the Muslim world. This should not detract from the fact that Islamic education is in and of itself hardly a monolithic entity devoid of its own dichotomies and dissonances. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, what “knowledge” entails, who enjoys the authority to define it, and what the appropriate forms and structures are of the institutions and pedagogies through which it is transmitted — these questions are subjected to intense debate and contestation, not least from within Muslim communities themselves.