Country report: Religious education in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia is a multi-ethnic and multi-racial country, with a multi-religious and multi-cultural people as a result. Despite its diversified nature, Malaysia is a country that constitutionally acknowledges Islam as the official religion, and all affairs pertaining to Islam are at the highest priority. The key concerns that may be raised are: What about the implementation of education, particularly religious education? What curriculum has been designed? How are the teachers trained? This article presents the policy developments of religious education in the country, with an emphasis on Islamic religious education. An overview of existing research literature is also provided, as are some crucial questions that may lead to the future research agenda for religious education in Malaysia.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamic religious education
• multi-ethnic and multi-racial society
• multi-religious education
• Malaysia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Elective Islamic religious subjects for upper secondary level consists of al-Qur’an and al-Sunnah Education, Islamic Jurisprudence Education, and Worldview of Islam.

2. Dini subjects consist of Islamic Theology, Islamic Jurisprudence, Methodology of Islamic Sciences, Contemporary Arabic Language, and Arabic Literature and Rhetoric.

3. Tahfiz subjects consist of al-Qur’an Memorisation, Skills Related to al-Qur’an, Sciences of al-Qur’an and al-Sunnah, Sciences of Islamic Studies, and Sciences of Arabic Language.

4. Malaysian national education system refers to levels of preschool education, primary education, secondary education, and post-secondary education.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Asyraf Isyraqi Bin Jamil

Asyraf Isyraqi Bin Jamil is currently a senior lecturer/assistant professor of Islamic Education Programme, Academy of Islamic Studies, University of Malaya, Malaysia. He teaches and publishes in the fields of history, philosophy and administration of Islamic education. He is proposing a research project on multi-religious education in Malaysia to study the needs and ways of implementation of multi-religious teaching and learning within Malaysian education system.