Emancipated Education: Essays on the Nurturing of Critical Discourse

by Azhar Ibrahim

The obsession with world rankings and vocational training has turned universities into factories for the production of students and publications. Teaching plays second fiddle to research output, normally circulated within a small circle of ‘experts’ to be validated or condemned to the abyss, leading to the justifiable charge that universities are ivory towers. In Emancipated Education Dr Azhar Ibrahim’s call to reclaim the space of what he calls the educative front, as a site for emancipation, is timely and urgent. Channelling the thoughts of giants like Paulo Freire and N.F.S. Grundtvig, the book articulates the higher purpose of higher education. It serves to re-humanise the human process of learning that we may have harmed.
Dr Nazry Bahrawi
Literary and cultural critic
Co-founder of the Bras Basah Open School for Theory and Philosophy


Dr Azhar’s book is a detour around the current climate of global education, which tends to celebrate rankings at the expense of empowerment and humanisation. He clearly shows that education should be a combative front against any establishment, without having to succumb to dogmatic power, through a combination of reason, ethics, conscience and spirituality. For him, education is not just a ladder for immediate gains, but is also supposed to be a part of supra-structure to ensure social justice. Emancipated Education is a must-read book for teachers, lecturers, and education policy makers alike who wish to recharge their intellectual spirits.
Dr Achmad Uzair Fauzan
Director of the Office for International Affairs,
Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta

387 pages

Published September 4, 2022

About the author

Azhar Ibrahim, PhD. is a visiting fellow at the Department of Malay Studies National University of Singapore (NUS). He obtained his PhD., MA, from the same department in 2002 and 2008 respectively. His dissertation focused on the humanism and intellectualism among Malay literary intelligentsia while his MA thesis dealt with the study of religious orientations as reflected in feudal Malay society and its continuities in the present. He majored both in Malay Studies, and Southeast Asian Studies at undergraduate level. He has been a Lecturer for almost ten years at the National Institute of Education, (NIE) Nanyang Technological University, teaching classical and modern Malay literature, sociology of the Malays, as well as Islamic intellectual traditions and civilization. At NIE he also co-teach multiculturalism and critical pedagogy. His research interest includes sociology of religion, sociology of literature and critical literacy, and the Malay-Indonesia intellectual development. Currently he is pursuing his post-doctoral research at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark for (2009/2010), and later at Temple University, USA (2010/2011) under the NUS Overseas Postdoctoral Fellowship. His postdoctoral research focuses on Social Theology in Muslim Southeast Asia: Trends and Challenges, and the Theology of Dialogue in Malay-Indonesian Societies: Prospects and Impediments. He has co-edited and published widely in Malaysia and Indonesia.