This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 3, 2023 - April 9, 2023

The contemporary challenges to youth life and thought are numerous. In the development of each individual, life and thought are found to be very closely intertwined. Thought is supposed to influence and shape life, while life is expected to enrich thought.

This is generally the case in theory, especially for adult life and thought. In practice, however, the intertwining pattern between life and thought is much more complex, and it varies from individual to individual.

In the case of youth, age and environment matter a great deal more. In the development of the human person, the period of adolescence, or the formative period of adulthood, is generally acknowledged as the most critical. This is the period when vulnerability to negative external cultural influences is at its greatest possible level.

The issue of the intertwining pattern between life and thought during the period of adolescence needs to be deeply studied so that we can better understand youth psychology with the view of providing better perspectives for high-quality education for youth and more effective responses to the challenges that they face.

The issue in question is both about ways of thinking and ways of acting and doing things. In contemporary youth education, we find that much less attention is being paid to the issue of ways of thinking. As a core concern of education, external behaviour and the art of making things, of which technology is the most obvious and also the most impactful in our times, appear to be emphasised at the expense of inner life and the art of thinking.

We argue that the main reason for this imbalance of attention to the things that matter in personal development is the predominance of the perspectives of behavioural psychology over the perspectives of cognitive psychology in educational theories and practices.

The current neglect in schools of the subject of the science and art of thinking is not without undesirable consequences on the quality of education. But even when the subject of thinking is taught to students, usually under the name of “creative thinking”, it is not done so in the light of the Islamic intellectual tradition that also concerns itself with thinking about spiritual matters.

There is widespread belief that there is no place for rational thinking in the domain of discussion of spiritual issues. This belief is being propagated and perpetuated by those ideologies and currents of thought that posit the view that religious beliefs and rational thinking are somehow antagonistic to each other.

The impact of this erroneous belief on the minds of youth has been enormous. A mental space has been created in many of our youths in which faith and knowledge and spirituality and intellectuality become separated from each other, with certain ideological forces rather determined not just to perpetuate this gulf of separation but even to further widen it.

This ideologically generated gulf of separation has the unfortunate effect of undermining both the intellectual and the spiritual strengths of our youth. When religious faith and knowledge begin to be viewed as two mutually exclusive domains in a person’s inner reality, then that faith will be deprived, albeit in a gradual manner, of its intellectual and rational support that is so much needed by the youth.

It is not only spiritual but also intellectual strength that is undermined as a result of the separation. In view of the major shortcomings in the contemporary education of our youth, we are arguing for their spiritual and intellectual empowerment through strategies and methods that are mindful of current social realities.

A restoration of Islam’s holistic ways of thinking to their rightful place in theoretical and applied epistemology would be an indispensable component to this empowerment. It has often been said that Islam is a complete way of life. However, we could hardly claim Islam to be as such if we were to exclude its dimension of thinking, which is so central to this religion.

In short, we likewise need to emphasise that Islam is a complete way of thinking. In Islamic civilisation, intellectuality and spirituality or knowledge and faith always go hand in hand. For our youth, particularly, the motto for all times is “thought clarity and spiritual maturity”.

Posing as challenges to youth thought are the numerous currents of thought competing for influence. These currents of thought pertain to practically every aspect of human life. Their sources may be either from within or outside Islam, or both.

Of central concern to us are those currents of thought that could cause great confusion in the minds of our youth. Currents of thought that are paraded and championed in the name of Islam, but that are in actuality deviations from the true teachings of Islam, are most likely to cause the greatest confusion in the minds of young Muslims.

How youths perceive these contending currents of thought and react to them would depend very much on the kind and level of knowledge already in their possession. It is a question of whether or not their state of knowledge is sufficient to deal with these currents of thought and the issues they raise.

The nature of the issue at hand is thus essentially an issue of personal knowledge sufficiency and competency. This issue brings to the fore the question of the place and role of knowledge in the problematic encounter between youths and the diversity of contemporary currents of thought.

Muslim youth needs to be informed that Islam is essentially a religion of knowledge and, as such, is blessed with a treasury of knowledge that could serve as a source of criteria to distinguish between truth and error and, therefore, as a source of effective responses to the contending currents of thought in question.

Posing as challenges to youth life are the various lifestyles currently pursued in society that are also competing for influence and adoption. These lifestyles may be transient in nature but, in many of these cases, their adoption has already proved the kind of harm they could do to their way of life that is inherited from tradition.

In a free and open society where there is an ever-present clash of lifestyles, between the good and the bad or between the healthy and the unhealthy, youths are under a strong temptation to experiment with unhealthy lifestyles. The challenge faced by the youth boils down to how to secure ways and means of self-empowerment that would enable them to resist this temptation.

We have briefly discussed the crucial role of education in the process of self-empowerment. It is important to note, though, that, by education, we do not mean just any kind of education but rather an education that would help deliver spiritual and intellectual strengths to the student.

In addition to the role of education, there is the role of civil society groups or of the whole community. More particularly, we are speaking here of the role of ummatic consciousness and solidarity and the idea of collective-empowerment. While having intellectual strength may be enough for some individual youths to resist evil temptation from external sources, it may not be so for some other youths. It is the intellectually and spiritually weaker and vulnerable youths that need group or community help.

Datuk Dr Osman Bakar is emeritus professor, Al-Ghazali chair of epistemology and civilisational studies and renewal, at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation (ISTAC-IIUM)

Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.

P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's AppStore and Androids' Google Play.