This document discusses key points of convergence between Montessori education principles and Islamic teachings regarding children. It highlights Montessori's observation of spontaneous learning in children from 0-3 years old, which aligns with the Islamic concept of "fitrah" or innate human nature. The document also notes Montessori and Islam's shared view that the fundamental problem in education is how adults oppress children by inserting themselves between the child and their inner guidance. Both traditions emphasize allowing the child freedom to learn and develop naturally.

1. Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem
© Hajar’s Well 2013
The Montessori Approach:
Points of Interest for the Muslim Family
“Oh Mankind, indeed We have created you from a male and a female and have made you into peoples and
tribes that you may know one another”
Quran Al Kareem, 49 The Chambers, ayah 13
“We have come together in this way because we have touched upon a point which is common to all cultures, nations, societies, religions –
The Child.”
Maria Montessori
1
As awareness of the Montessori Method gradually gains momentum in the modern Muslim context, the Muslim Ummah and the World of
Montessori Education might consider a number of significant points of convergence in Dr. Montessori’s discoveries about the child, with the
teaching in the Qur’an. This is a subject which requires a more extensive project, and this paper will limit itself essentially to two founding
principles of Montessori education – the concepts of “spontaneous education”, and the problems with (and remedies for) adult interaction with the
child.
Dr. Montessori offers scientific evidence from the fields of embryology and biology for the fact that all newborn children are alike, and reveal laws
of growth common to all cultures. She goes further to point out that this growth is the result of a common system of learning which is operated
most actively between the ages of 0 to 3. Scientists agree that the milestones, for example, of the appearance of language in children are consistent
regardless of cultural background. Dr. Montessori makes use of this most obvious example of spontaneous learning, to provide proof of the
original and founding principle upon which “the Montessori Method” is based: “Within the child there is a very scrupulous teacher. It is he who
achieves these results in every child, no matter in what region he is found. The only language that man learns perfectly is acquired at this period of
childhood when no-one can teach him.”2
Other aspects of understanding and comprehension developed without direct adult instruction include
space and time, cause and effect, motor control and general discrimination.
“Our Lord is the One Who gives everything its constitution (creation, shape), then gives guidance”
Sourah Ta Ha 20, Ayah 50
The Muslim is familiar with this observation of Montessori’s through the Islamic concept of “Fitrah”, which describes the innate nature given to
all creatures, to the members of its species and to it individually. Along with the rest of the creation, the newborn child is in a state of order and
harmony with the cosmos. As Norma Tarazi puts it, the basic fitrah of the human being is “to be connected with and responsible to God
Almighty.”3
There is not much attention afforded to understanding the fitrah of the child by Muslims generally, and looking into what universal
characteristics Montessori observed and reported about the child would be valuable both to enhance practice of our own faith and to preserve this
state of fitrah, which Muslims acknowledge is often lost due to parental intervention. The lack of careful reflection upon this gift to the child means
that Muslim parents are often unwittingly equally guilty of stifling the fitrah of the child as parents of all other faiths, resulting in a child that might
nominally be called a Muslim, but lacks the inspiring characteristics of the “normal” child, which Dr. Montessori uncovered for the world.
She describes the changes in her students as follows:
“What is to be particularly noted in these child conversions is a psychic cure, a return to what is normal. Actually the normal child is one who is
precociously intelligent, who has learnt to overcome itself and to live in peace, and who prefers a disciplined task to futile idleness” (Montessori,
1966)4
“Thanks to these exercises, a wonderful integration takes place in the infant soul, as a result of which the child becomes calm, radiantly happy,
busy, forgetful of himself and, in consequence, indifferent to prizes or material rewards.”5
1
Maria Montessori, quoted by E.M. Standing in Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work p. 78
2
Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind p. 5
3
Norma Tarazi, The Child in Islam p. 12
4
Maria Montessori, The Secret of Childhood, p 148
5
E. M. Standing, Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work p 251

2. Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem
© Hajar’s Well 2013
The second most important principle upon which the Montessori Method is based is Dr. Montessori’s conclusion that the fundamental problem in
education is social, rather than educational.6
Dr. Montessori describes a condition (still existing today) in which the child is treated oppressively by
adults, and seen as an entity with no present but only future, value to society. Regarding traditional schools in the modern context Angeline Stoll
Lillard makes reference to the fact that “Negative feelings toward school remain prevalent today: children applaud the days when they are out of
school, and adults frequently comment to children that they are lucky and must be happy when school is canceled.”7
There is no more
convincingly clear evidence that the time that the child spends at school seems oppressive to them, contrary to the experience of the child who is
allowed to experience the freedom which the Montessori Method – or for that matter other non-Western methods of education with which the
Montessori Method actually resonates.
The source of this oppression of the child by most adults, regardless of religious persuasion, is essentially a misunderstanding. The adult believes
that it is his role to teach the child, and inserts himself (or the child’s teacher, or nurse) between the child, and what Muslims call “the guidance”
given by God, and what Montessori calls the “inner teacher”. The result is disharmony both in the adult’s proper “connection and responsibility to
God”, and the child’s. It is important for the reader to understand that even nominal Montessori Educators can suffer from a failure to understand
this aspect of the Montessori Philosophy.
“It is true that these children have demonstrated to us the interior laws of the formation of man, laws which have given rise to a method of
education which has spread all over the earth. Unfortunately, the stupendous importance of this revelation has become overlaid and confused by a
disproportionate emphasis on the new method, which came out of it. For it was not the method which produced the marvelous manifestations, so
much as the manifestations with produced the method – or more accurately, sketched it’s general outlines.”8
The Islamic faith puts great emphasis on studying creation, and Muslims lay stress on showing that there are evidences for scientific truths
unknown at the time of the revelation of the Qur’an, in the Qur’an, as it appeared 1400 years ago. The Montessori Educator less familiar with the
Qur’an, might be interested to note that a Muslim mother is urged to breastfeed her child during its first two years – a ‘prescription’ which
Montessori certainly would applaud. This essay can do no more than offer these small hints to the Muslim Family interested in Montessori, to
suggest that looking closely at the means of producing positive changes in the child are consistent with the teachings of the faith regarding the
general freedom of mankind to choose activities, and to offer primary submission and obedience only to God. Surely not everything in
Montessori’s philosophy will find agreement in Islam, but there are essential truths, and empirical evidences, which Muslims cannot overlook as
they try to fulfill their own cosmic task of duty to God.
6
Standing, 1984 p 251
7
Lillard, 2005 p 4
8
Maria Montessori, Her Life and Work by EM Standing, the quote is Montessori’s p 179