Islamic Institutions of Higher Learning in Ghana: The Case of the Islamic University College

Abstract

This paper is a preliminary study of the development of Islamic institutions of higher learning in Ghana, focusing primarily on the only existing institution, the Islamic University College, Ghana (IUCG), founded by the Ahlul-Bait Foundation of Iran.¹ I offer a brief historical background on Muslims and secular education, including higher education, from the colonial period to the postindependence era. I then proceed to assess the operations of the IUCG, highlighting its success and challenges. So far, in Ghana, as I indicate in this chapter, Muslims’ quest for higher education can be described as the search for marketable skills within a Muslim environment, with training in theology as a secondary aspiration. This perception stems from three major considerations. First, Muslims constitute a minority in Ghana (about 16 percent of the overall population), and they have traditionally been marginalized in the secular education sector, a situation that increasingly exacerbates the social and economic disparity between them and non-Muslims. Second, considering the high cost ofeducation in Ghana and the stiff competition for admission to the public universities, access to university education is difficult for most Ghanaian Muslims. Furthermore, for many Muslims, the Arab world is better equipped with the facilities and resources for training in the Islamic sciences. Related to this, many of the Arabophone elites who had returned from their training in Middle Eastern universities were already offering advanced religious training to their students; what seemed to be lacking is secular university education that would allow Muslims to compete effectively with other citizens in political and social leadership, and in personal economic sustenance. Consequently, unlike other West African societies with large Muslim populations that have been well established in all sectors of their societies, Ghanaian Muslims are still struggling to place themselves in strategic positions in their society. University education is key to this search for inclusion in local and national leadership, and in individual economic and social development. Therefore, at the university level, the desire for secular education is emerging as a priority over religious education, although religious education is seen as a critical source of spiritual guidance and personal ethics.