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Abstract

This study addresses a persistent gap in Islamic education scholarship: although modernization, Westernization, epistemic dependency, and Islamic educational reform have been widely discussed, Necmettin Erbakan’s educational thought has not been adequately reconstructed into an integrated framework that links scientific advancement, moral-spiritual formation, epistemic autonomy, and institutional reform. Using qualitative document analysis, the study examines Erbakan’s major writings, parliamentary speeches, and selected National Outlook documents through theoretically informed thematic analysis. Multiple Modernities, epistemic dependency, and taʾdīb function as complementary analytical lenses while allowing themes to emerge inductively from the corpus. The findings reveal three interconnected dimensions: the critique of the imitative mentality as a source of educational and intellectual dependency; the integration of scientific competence with spiritual, moral, and cultural formation; and the reconstruction of curricula, knowledge-producing institutions, and transnational academic cooperation to strengthen educational autonomy. These findings are synthesized into an emergent model of Value-Based Modernization. The study’s theoretical contribution lies in integrating dimensions usually treated separately, alternative modernity, epistemic autonomy, Islamic human formation, and institutional reconstruction, into a coherent educational model. It thereby extends contemporary debates on Islamic modernities and decolonial education by positioning Islamic education as an active mechanism for culturally grounded modernization within contemporary Muslim educational contexts undergoing rapid change.

Keywords

Epistemic autonomy Islamic education Multiple modernities Taʾdīb Value-based modernization Westernization

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How to Cite
Onbasi, E. P., & Onbasi, A. (2026). Modernization Without Westernization in Islamic Education: Reconstructing Erbakan’s Value-Based Modernization Model. Jurnal Pendidikan Islam. Retrieved from https://journal.uinsgd.ac.id/index.php/jpi/article/view/55254
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