The dynamic relationship between political, social and educational changes is central to determining whether educational reform occurred in the Muslim world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Changes in curricular and instructional policies and their implications for intellectual and cultural development are discussed in relation to four major issues.

The Muslim world initially rejected as irrelevant changes introduced from Europe in the early nineteenth century. Changes in technical, military, and vocational training dictated by local rulers and elites did not conform to the traditional educational practices that were the remnants of Islamic education. Comparing these practices with recent changes runs the risk of overstating where and how educational reform has taken place.

Available literature indicates that old practices were not reformed and changes resulted in no significant attitudinal or cultural development. Setting the European utilitarian and the Muslim altruistic modes against each other resulted in centralized state-controlled educational institutions and a complete departure from Islamic education.

The intellectual stagnation that characterized the Muslim world since the early fourteenth century remained despite mass and compulsory schooling in the postcolonial era. Recent reports indicate school and teacher shortages, low educational quality, lack of planning and of curricular and instructional compatibility, and disparity in access to and completion of all types and levels of education between the sexes and between rich and poor and rural and urban populations.