Note from Rafik Beekun
The three oldest universities in the world are Islamic universities:
| 859 |  Fes, Morocco |
University of Al-Karaouine | Considered the oldest continuously-operating degree-granting university in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records. |
| 975 |  Cairo, Egypt |
Al-Azhar University | A degree-granting jāmiʿah (“university” in Arabic) with individual faculties for a general college and theological seminary, Law and Jurisprudence, Grammar, Astronomy, Philosophy, and Logic. Professors at Al-Azhar also delivered lectures on Medicine during the time of Saladin. |
| 1065 |  Isfahan, Iran |
Nizamiyya | Technically two institutes under one governance, one in Isfahan and another in Baghdad |
However in the most recent list of top 100 universities in the world, not a single one is a university from an Islamic country.
Guardian.co.uk
Oxford University has slipped in the international league table of the world’s top universities – in a study which shows the advance of academia in Asia that will soon pose a challenge to the Ivy League and Oxbridge.
The study, from Times Higher Education and QS Top Universities shows that overall the UK still punches above its weight, second only to the US. The UK has four out of the top 10 slots and 18 in the top 100. But there has been a significant fall in the number of North American universities in the top 100, from 42 in 2008 to 36 in 2009.
Please click here to read the article and view the rankings.
The Islamic Workplace 
tawhid1982
February 7, 2010
I think some clarifications are in order regarding the matter of university rankings.
A lot of people – including aspiring students, academics themselves, journalists and members of the general public – are confused about the notion of rankings of universities worldwide.
This problem of confusion can be mainly attributed to a lack of knowledge on the matter, lack of media attention on the issue and lack of scrutiny laying bare the gist of the rankings methodology.
“Guardian” newspaper in the UK (a nonmuslim country) is one of its largest and most widely read.
However, the rankings you referred to is not originally produced by “Guardian” itself but claimed to be taken from “Times Higher Education” and “QS Top Universities”.
Analyzing both “Times Higher Education” and “QS Top Universities” for the methodology, we find that while they may originate in the UK, they want to assess universities across the globe.
How did they do so?
Upon visiting the link to “Times Higher Education” site, we discover that its rankings are supposedly a collaborative effort between “QS” and “Times Higher Education”.
A ranking for the “top 200” universities globally is indeed observable at “Times Higher Education”s site – the first half of which is referred to in your post.
Actual methodology for the exercise is only found at “QS Top Universities”‘s site.
Now let us delve into the issue with greater gusto. Let us analyze the “QS Top Universities” ranking for its methodology, put it under the microscope.
From this link
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/methodology/simple-overview
you can observe that a simple methodology explanation is provided.
A good 50% of the weight behind the rating comes from “employer review” and “academic peer review”.
Therefore it’s very important that the employers and academic peers surveyed should span the entire world.
In reality, it is mostly a Western-centric view of the world that decides the list of survey respondents, strongly centred around the anglophone world in particular.
Which is why, upon further examination, it is discovered that, the list of universities which are ASKED TO BE RANKED by the “QS Top Universities” is mostly western in origin with some focus added to regions westerners feel at ease with.
Let’s take a look at universities which are ASKED TO BE RANKED by other academic peers by “QS Top Universities”.
For “Best Research in Art & Humanities – International”
(see the following link)
http://research.qsnetwork.com/qs_surveysystem/index.php?viewonly&order=normal&partnerset=0&survey=52&jump_to_section=3
the following universities from Muslim majority countries are ASKED TO BE RATED (thus the overwhelming majority of muslim countries and universities are MISSING FROM THE WESTERN inspired rankings!)
Asia, Australia & New Zealand
Bangladesh
University of Dhaka
Indonesia
Airlangga University
Bandung Institute of Technology (BIT)
Bogor Agricultural University
University of Brawijaya
Diponegoro University
Universitas Gadjah Mada
University of Indonesia
Iran
Sharif University of Technology
University of Tehran
Lebanon
American University of Beirut (AUB)
Malaysia
Universiti Kebangsan Malaysia (UKM)
Universiti Malaya (UM)
Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
Pakistan
University of Karachi
University of Lahore
National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)
Quaid-i-azam University
University of Engineering & Technology (UET)
Saudi Arabia
King Abdul Aziz University (KAU)
King FAHD University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM)
King Saud University
United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates University
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Egypt
Cairo University
Turkey
Bilkent University
Cukurova University
Haceteppe University
Istanbul Technical University
Istanbul University
KOC University
SABANCI University
More or less the same list is observed for other subject reviews. Academic peers ONLY GET TO CHOOSE FROM AMONG THESE UNIVERSITIES.
A total of 10 countries with Muslim majority are even ASKED TO BE RANKED, indicating the limited extent of such rankings.
The total number of universities ASKED TO RANKED/REVIEWED BY ACADEMIC PEERS stands at a meagre 33
Indonesia 7
Turkey 7
Malaysia 5
Pakistan 5
Iran 3
Saudi Arabia 3
Bangladesh 1
Egypt 1
United Arab Emirates 1
It is solely a case of IGNORANCE displayed by the QS and Timer Higher Education authorities which is natural since they are based in the UK and focus mostly on regions that are closely aligned to them.
As another example, the online survey is reported (according to QS own website) to be circulated among former respondents and subscribers to two publications which are not only anglophone but headquartered and centred in former British colonies of Singapore, USA, Australia and so on.
This is the exact reason (lack of British and other western knowledge on anything outside their “sphere of influence”) that Russian Universities are missing in such rankings.
Only a meagre 5 universities from Russia
Kazan State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Novosibirsk State University
Saint Petersburg State University
Tomsk State University
are ASKED TO BE REVIEWED by QS. Academic peers only get to choose from these universities only.
I do not want to make random guesses on the origin or location of most of the 9,000+ survey respondents, but seeing as they are mostly English speaking, select universities mostly located in the western world (or closely aligned to western interest in culture, politics and lack of morality) and/or subscribe to two widely published English language publications, we might attribute this lack of Muslim (country origined) universities to lack of knowledge IN THE WESTERN WORLD about such universities.
The Russian Federation did rectify the mistakes in such western rankings by publishing their own rankings taking into account the various institutions in the former soviet union member states.
Quite naturally, Kazakhstan, and some other Muslim majority states’ universities were ranked highly in such ratings exercise.
Such Russian origin rankings exercises also involved questionnaires and surveys to universities across large swaths of the world, but missed the mark owing to their own limited knowledge of the entire world.
Russian rankings only redressed the imbalance of lack of former Soviet Union universities in Western rankings. It never addressed the lack of most of the Muslim world’s universities not being surveyed by either Western or western inspired rankings.
It is time for the Muslim world to publish such rankings exercise for which OIC can take a lead.
And I am strongly refuting the use of the SESRTIC based rankings exercise which rates on such measures as publications output in western journals, or such methodologies.
It is also pertinent that Arabic, the most widely spread language in the Muslim world, be more frequently used for business, politics, literature, and more pertinently for science and technology.
We must observe that even for this blog, there are “Translate” “widgets” available.
Out of the 9 widgets, available only 1 (Arabic) is spoken by mostly Muslims. 3 are spoken by mostly nonmuslim Oriental countries (Japan, Korea, China) and the rest of the 5 are spoken by European/Western countries and their colonies.
Obviously the blog itself is in English, a western and European langauge mostly widespread in the Western world and its close colonial outposts.
We could have noted that Persian is spoken by more people than Korean, and Indonesian is also one of the greatest languages in the world by number of speakers. Its economic clout is not less than Korean in reality (although western publications like IMF and other immoral western institutions intentionally downgraded Indonesian GDP figures to reflect poorly on Muslim majority countries. This was done in 2008 CE.).
Persian, Turkish or Indonesian – in addition to the most obvious choice of Arabic – could have been added to this blog as possible translation options instead of Korean or Italian etc.
The lack of knowledge or awareness about the Muslim world that we attributed to the western rankings is relevant to the author of this blog as well.
I hope you will not mind changing the blog to reflect the reality of the Muslim world better by adding translation widgets for Muslim majority spoken languages.
Regards.
tawhid1982
February 7, 2010
I think some clarifications are in order regarding the matter of university rankings.
A lot of people – including aspiring students, academics themselves, journalists and members of the general public – are confused about the notion of rankings of universities worldwide.
This problem of confusion can be mainly attributed to a lack of knowledge on the matter, lack of media attention on the issue and lack of scrutiny laying bare the gist of the rankings methodology.
“Guardian” newspaper in the UK (a nonmuslim country) is one of its largest and most widely read.
However, the rankings you referred to is not originally produced by “Guardian” itself but claimed to be taken from “Times Higher Education” and “QS Top Universities”.
Analyzing both “Times Higher Education” and “QS Top Universities” for the methodology, we find that while they may originate in the UK, they want to assess universities across the globe.
How did they do so?
Upon visiting the link to “Times Higher Education” site, we discover that its rankings are supposedly a collaborative effort between “QS” and “Times Higher Education”.
A ranking for the “top 200” universities globally is indeed observable at “Times Higher Education”s site – the first half of which is referred to in your post.
Actual methodology for the exercise is only found at “QS Top Universities”‘s site.
Now let us delve into the issue with greater gusto. Let us analyze the “QS Top Universities” ranking for its methodology, put it under the microscope.
From this link
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/methodology/simple-overview
you can observe that a simple methodology explanation is provided.
A good 50% of the weight behind the rating comes from “employer review” and “academic peer review”.
Therefore it’s very important that the employers and academic peers surveyed should span the entire world.
In reality, it is mostly a Western-centric view of the world that decides the list of survey respondents, strongly centred around the anglophone world in particular.
Which is why, upon further examination, it is discovered that, the list of universities which are ASKED TO BE RANKED by the “QS Top Universities” is mostly western in origin with some focus added to regions westerners feel at ease with.
Let’s take a look at universities which are ASKED TO BE RANKED by other academic peers by “QS Top Universities”.
For “Best Research in Art & Humanities – International”
(see the following link)
http://research.qsnetwork.com/qs_surveysystem/index.php?viewonly&order=normal&partnerset=0&survey=52&jump_to_section=3
the following universities from Muslim majority countries are ASKED TO BE RATED (thus the overwhelming majority of muslim countries and universities are MISSING FROM THE WESTERN inspired rankings!)
Asia, Australia & New Zealand
Bangladesh
University of Dhaka
Indonesia
Airlangga University
Bandung Institute of Technology (BIT)
Bogor Agricultural University
University of Brawijaya
Diponegoro University
Universitas Gadjah Mada
University of Indonesia
Iran
Sharif University of Technology
University of Tehran
Lebanon
American University of Beirut (AUB)
Malaysia
Universiti Kebangsan Malaysia (UKM)
Universiti Malaya (UM)
Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
Pakistan
University of Karachi
University of Lahore
National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST)
Quaid-i-azam University
University of Engineering & Technology (UET)
Saudi Arabia
King Abdul Aziz University (KAU)
King FAHD University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM)
King Saud University
United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates University
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Egypt
Cairo University
Turkey
Bilkent University
Cukurova University
Haceteppe University
Istanbul Technical University
Istanbul University
KOC University
SABANCI University
More or less the same list is observed for other subject reviews. Academic peers ONLY GET TO CHOOSE FROM AMONG THESE UNIVERSITIES.
A total of 10 countries with Muslim majority are even ASKED TO BE RANKED, indicating the limited extent of such rankings.
The total number of universities ASKED TO RANKED/REVIEWED BY ACADEMIC PEERS stands at a meagre 33
Indonesia 7
Turkey 7
Malaysia 5
Pakistan 5
Iran 3
Saudi Arabia 3
Bangladesh 1
Egypt 1
United Arab Emirates 1
It is solely a case of IGNORANCE displayed by the QS and Timer Higher Education authorities which is natural since they are based in the UK and focus mostly on regions that are closely aligned to them.
As another example, the online survey is reported (according to QS own website) to be circulated among former respondents and subscribers to two publications which are not only anglophone but headquartered and centred in former British colonies of Singapore, USA, Australia and so on.
This is the exact reason (lack of British and other western knowledge on anything outside their “sphere of influence”) that Russian Universities are missing in such rankings.
Only a meagre 5 universities from Russia
Kazan State University
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Novosibirsk State University
Saint Petersburg State University
Tomsk State University
are ASKED TO BE REVIEWED by QS. Academic peers only get to choose from these universities only.
I do not want to make random guesses on the origin or location of most of the 9,000+ survey respondents, but seeing as they are mostly English speaking, select universities mostly located in the western world (or closely aligned to western interest in culture, politics and lack of morality) and/or subscribe to two widely published English language publications, we might attribute this lack of Muslim (country origined) universities to lack of knowledge IN THE WESTERN WORLD about such universities.
The Russian Federation did rectify the mistakes in such western rankings by publishing their own rankings taking into account the various institutions in the former soviet union member states.
Quite naturally, Kazakhstan, and some other Muslim majority states’ universities were ranked highly in such ratings exercise.
Such Russian origin rankings exercises also involved questionnaires and surveys to universities across large swaths of the world, but missed the mark owing to their own limited knowledge of the entire world.
Russian rankings only redressed the imbalance of lack of former Soviet Union universities in Western rankings. It never addressed the lack of most of the Muslim world’s universities not being surveyed by either Western or western inspired rankings.
It is time for the Muslim world to publish such rankings exercise for which OIC can take a lead.
And I am strongly refuting the use of the SESRTIC based rankings exercise which rates on such measures as publications output in western journals, or such methodologies.
It is also pertinent that Arabic, the most widely spread language in the Muslim world, be more frequently used for business, politics, literature, and more pertinently for science and technology.
We must observe that even for this blog, there are “Translate” “widgets” available.
Out of the 9 widgets, available only 1 (Arabic) is spoken by mostly Muslims. 3 are spoken by mostly nonmuslim Oriental countries (Japan, Korea, China) and the rest of the 5 are spoken by European/Western countries and their colonies.
Obviously the blog itself is in English, a western and European langauge mostly widespread in the Western world and its close colonial outposts.
We could have noted that Persian is spoken by more people than Korean, and Indonesian is also one of the greatest languages in the world by number of speakers. Its economic clout is not less than Korean in reality (although western publications like IMF and other immoral western institutions intentionally downgraded Indonesian GDP figures to reflect poorly on Muslim majority countries. This was done in 2008 CE.).
Persian, Turkish or Indonesian – in addition to the most obvious choice of Arabic – could have been added to this blog as possible translation options instead of Korean or Italian etc.
The lack of knowledge or awareness about the Muslim world that we attributed to the western rankings is relevant to the author of this blog as well.
I hope you will not mind changing the blog to reflect the reality of the Muslim world better by adding translation widgets for Muslim majority spoken languages.
Regards.
NB This is a second post in order to confirm receipt of the long and detailed original post.