A Rhizomatic Approach to Education; A Criticism on its Challenges for Islamic Education (From an Epistemological Point of View of Critical Realism)

Islamic education meets various challenges today. Some of them have risen from the encounter between theism and materialism. Post modernism aroused such paradoxical standpoints among Muslim scholars that in one hand some scholars have taken it as a golden opportunity for religious education and a solution for revamping its weakness, and in the other hand there are some ones who have asserted that postmodernism basically rejected possibility of religious education. To establish postmodernism's doctrines, rhizomatic approach had entered into the 20th century's knowledge system. It naturally carried with itself positive and negative attitudes to religious education. Through this research paper, it was presumed that rhizomatic approach to knowledge posed some threats to religious education and the author was to respond to these challenges based on knowledge system of critical realism. Therefore, in this study, first the characteristics of rhizomatic approach to knowledge are presented, second, its challenges for religious education are recognized, and third the enumerated challenges are scrutinized from a critical realism's point of view.