The Illusion of Western Educational Superiority

Well, mean, everyone everywhere in every country, says that their education system is bad. I don't think I've ever been to any country where the people thought that their education system was that they were satisfied with their schools. Much less, you know, actually proud of their education system. Everyone thinks that their education system is the worst. But there's another common opinion which is that, whether people say it or not, if they're in the global South, there's a holdover idea from colonialism that education in the West is superior.

The aspiration is always to get a degree overseas in The UK or America or wherever else to get a bachelor's or master's or PhD because it's more prestigious to have a degree from the West. People imagine that if you have a degree from the West, then it means that you are more qualified than someone who studied in your own country. This is one of those few remaining areas in which people are still unselfconscious about expressing explicit belief in western supremacy, you know. It's getting less, socially acceptable to be enamored with the West. Even if people still actually do feel enamored with the West.

It's less acceptable socially to express that explicitly, but not in the area of education. People will still say, as if it's a fact of nature, that Western education is the best in the world, and they'll pursue higher education in Europe or America or wherever else, or they'll push their kids to do that because this aspect of psychological colonization, hasn't ever really been challenged or confronted, but it has to be. This is a crucial point really because this mindset is going to block everything else about psychological decolonization. I mean I'm sorry to put it this way but if you think that whiter education is higher education then you'll never be able to see yourself, or see your teachers, or see your scholars, your experts as anything but inadequate and inferior. Of course this is a this is a false perception of reality imposed by colonialism and Eurocentric narratives that forever cast the people of the global South as nothing but supporting side characters in the story of the world.

And that story is a work of fiction. You're not only believing lies about yourself and your nations, but you're believing lies about the West. Lies about the West that even westerners don't believe anymore. I mean it's a strange state of affairs when the only people left in the world who still cling to the idea of western supremacy are non westerners. I mean you're like someone who's trying to jump from the iceberg onto the Titanic after they've collided.

For too long, for too long we've been led to believe that western education is supreme. That a degree from the West is more valuable and signifies a greater level of expertise and higher standards than a degree from, one of the universities in our own country. But look, higher education in the Muslim world and in the global South not only competes with the West, but it often surpasses the West. That's the reality. Our people are just as intelligent, they're just as educated as westerners, and usually even more so.

It's not prestigious to hold a degree from the West. That doesn't make you any more qualified or more capable than anyone else. Our education institutions in the global South and in the Muslim world are nurturing some of the brightest minds on this planet. Minds that challenge the status quo, minds that innovate and minds that create and that can connect the modern world with our heritage, with our culture, with our dean, with our history for a more comprehensive and contextualized understanding. Because look, we don't live in your context.

We don't exist as your supporting cast in a movie about you. I mean, we are talking about America. It's a vacuum. It's an isolated peculiar anomaly of a society. We don't live or understand the world in that contextual vacuum.

Our context is a continuum from the first when Rasulullah began receiving Wahi until this Ramadan, one thousand four hundred fifty seven Hijri years later. We're part of a train of transmission of Islam from that time until today and onwards into the countless generations of the future. That's our context. And that automatically gives our education and our scholars and our academics and our students a more enlightened, a more illuminated appreciation of learning and knowledge and it contextualizes the concept of excellence, what it means, what it's for, why it matters, and it has nothing to do with you or your context. We were serious about education for centuries.

I mean the oldest university in the world is our university, at least two centuries before they even had a university in Europe. If our education was deteriorated it was under colonization and it's still today psychological mental colonization that makes us continue to imagine that our education systems are inadequate. You know all they really have left in the West is this Western centric ranking system for universities telling the world that they have the best universities. But that's just branding. Like a handbag, it's actually only worth $20 but they're selling it for $200 because of the logo.

The actual value of western education is mediocre at best these days. You know the best eye doctor that I ever had and the best pair of glasses that I ever had was made in Gaza and was by a doctor in Gaza. And I have some pretty complex issues with my eyesight but that doctor was able to identify and understand those problems within maybe three minutes. And then he made me the best prescription lenses that I've ever had. And that's just one example out of many examples from my own life and experience.

Without exception I have found that the knowledge and skill levels of professionals in Asia, The Middle East and Africa far surpass anything that I ever encountered when I was living in The US. All educated and trained in their own countries. The landscape of higher education in our part of the world is evolving rapidly. I mean there is a surge in institutions and student enrollments throughout the Muslim world and throughout the global South. Our countries are witnessing unprecedented growth in institutional numbers and student populations.

We are actively shaping the future of academia in the world. Meanwhile, enrollment in higher education in the West is in free fall. I mean no one can afford it. And the quality and the utility of the education that they get isn't worth it. You know I used to tutor a high school student in Turkey and the things that they were learning at that level of school, high school, was beyond what bachelor's degree students study in America.

The depth and the breadth of their study, the military discipline and structure of their education was astonishing. It was so impressive. So we need to shake off this notion that there's any prestige attached to a western degree. And in fact, we need to shake off this idea that a degree has anything to do with prestige. Again it's just like an overpriced handbag.

A handbag has a purpose and it isn't prestige. Education has a purpose and it isn't prestige. If you start focusing on the actual purposes of things then maybe you won't be as misled, maybe you won't be as fooled and misdirected the way that they're trying to do to you. Because again the education, the learning that's taking place in our schools is top notch and it's producing people with outstanding skills and acumen. And that's what education is supposed to do.

Your degree is supposed to signify that you know something. It isn't supposed to be a a banner declaring your class status and your level of privilege. Because again if you attach high status and privilege to having a mediocre western education just because it is western then you are reinforcing colonized mentalities. You're attaching value to Western ness and giving that more value than the actual value of your education or the actual standard of your education. Like it matters more to you that you got your mediocre education in the West than it matters that it is a mediocre education.

Like the mediocrity of the education is somehow trumped by the fact that you've got that in the West. That somehow that changes the mediocrity to excellence. Well it doesn't. And if this attitude persists, we're not gonna get the most genuinely qualified people into the positions that they need to be in in order for your society to flourish and succeed. You're gonna be putting people in positions who worship the West and who belittle their own society and their society's achievements and its history and its culture and its beliefs and its heritage.

In other words you're going be putting people in charge of your country, of your society who look at you with the same disdain that the colonizers do. And they're going to run things in accordance with what they think the colonizers will approve of because they are hopelessly mesmerized by the West to the extent that they think Western approval is more important than the flourishing of your society and the success of your society. They will actually be opposed to political independence and economic sovereignty because they hold their own people in contempt. And they think that nothing is good unless the West is being obeyed or being emulated. And that's a massive threat to your society.

Really it's an existential threat because I mean look, the way the West has run their own societies has resulted in a miserable situation, a catastrophic situation. If you follow them you will ruin your society the same way that they ruin theirs. And we know that's true because they have ruined theirs. And I mean that quite literally. They're not even reproducing.

They're dying out. The way that they've run their societies, their economies, run their economic and political system has left them with dwindling populations. To the point where they're replacing themselves with robots and automation. That's not a successful model. And the fact that it's an unsuccessful model is part of the whole reason why the global economy is shifting out of the West.

If you follow their way, they will destroy the East and they will destroy the South the same way that they destroyed their own lands within the next century or less. Now this has to be stopped. Our psychological decolonization is necessary literally for the existential longevity of the human race because the mentality of the colonizers is inherently self destructive. There's nothing to learn from that except what not to do and how not to run a society. So yes, it is fundamentally dangerous to hold their education as being better than ours because it absolutely is not.

I would even support giving hiring preferences to graduates who have degrees from local institutions not only because they're very likely better qualified, but also just to break that colonized mindset once and for all. You know, if no Muslims and no one else in the global South went to study in the West, if we boycotted western universities and institutions for the next two or three generations of students say, It wouldn't decrease our number of scholars, our number of experts and professionals in the slightest. And the quality of our scholars and the quality of our experts and the quality of our professionals wouldn't be even slightly lowered. We lose nothing by not sending our people over there to get overpriced mediocre education and we gain nothing by sending them over there except maybe, more people who will just prolong the misimpression that mediocre western education is superior.