Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Seerah of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) At University Level in South Asia
Keywords:
Seerah of the Holy Prophet PBUH, Pedagogical Approaches, Islamic Education, South Asia, University CurriculumAbstract
Seerah is basically defined as the life of the Holy Prophet PBUH. Seerah doesn’t only talk about the way Prophet PBUH lived his life, but it covers all the topics related to Prophet PBUH’s life in extreme detail as well. It includes personal life, decisions, children, wives, treaties, battles, relations, and many more. In simple words, Seerah is the study of Prophet PBUH’s life from birth till his death, covering every single detail. This tells us how important this genre of study is, but there is a huge gap in teaching this subject. There is plenty of content available, along with research on Seerah, but the research on pedagogy and teaching methods of Seerah has gaps. This research tries to fill in those gaps. The main focus of this research is the pedagogy of Seerah in South Asia, specifically universities in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Despite Seerah being one of the very core studies of Islamic studies, the way it is being taught in universities of South Asia isn’t enough for students' understanding. This research focuses on how the seerah is being taught in South Asian universities, what the teaching strategies are, how to make seerah interesting, what the curriculum design and structure are, and what the teaching objectives are. This study uses a qualitative and comparative research methodology as it compares the old and modern methods of Seerah pedagogy such as it focuses on the traditional Madrassa style teaching, usage of primary resources, ignoring modern technologies and tools, traditional university teaching styles like usage of secondary resources, ignoring primary resources and not critically analyzing the seerah incidence. This research also compares how Seerah is being taught in Pakistan vs India vs Bangladesh. This article finds out the best pedagogy method for Seerah and the best approaches to find out how to teach Seerah by using all kind of resources and making the students eligible of raising questions, finding queries and critically analyzing every event on every scale. This research concludes that the best approach combines both: it respects the classical tradition while also encouraging students to think analytically and connect Seerah to the challenges of today.
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