Living Insights Foundation for Education (LIFE) is a non-profit organisation that provides curriculum and training support for English-speaking Islamic institutions, homeschools, and individuals. It adopts a Trivium-based education that revives the traditional Islamic disciplines and methods of learning.

How LIFE’s new holistic framework for education can better prepare your children to be Muslim today.

Education systems around the world are quickly recognising that their factory model of education is failing children. The compartmentalised approach to education segments learning and thinking, leaving children unable to see a connection or relevance to the information they learn whether it be in math, science, humanities, or art. At Living Insights Foundation for Education (LIFE), we believe instruction of all subjects, Islam included, needs to be more than just teaching facts or preparing students to enter the workforce. To educate our children is to empower them with a solid understanding of their holistic place in the world socially, morally, and spiritually. LIFE’s goal is to use Islamic thought to refocus the way we teach and learn. We want to prepare students to perform competitively and spiritually (with Ihsan) in all fields of life.

Our project and aim:

Drawing from historic manuals in the various Islamic Sciences, LIFE hopes to develop curricula and resources to help the everyday parent build a healthy Islamic foundation for their child.

LIFE’s Traditional Disciplines Project is a 4—6-year project that is focused on using traditional Islamic educational manuals  as well as a network of Muslim scholars and educators to develop educational resources including curricula and textbooks for English speaking Muslims around the world. Our resources will be compatible for a variety of spaces, ages, and stages and can be used in homeschooling, Islamic schools and institutions, and in the average Muslim home.

Our model?

LIFE takes the Well-Trained Mind, an applied trivium curriculum, as an existing, successful model. It successfully draws on classical disciplines and re-organises them in a practical and accessible manner. While our model, the Well-trained Mind, benefited from centuries of translations from classical languages into English, Muslims need to perform a similar task, translating at least the core texts from their classical tradition. The TDP identifies the core texts and explains their importance in the translation of each major work. It will then produce a manual explaining how to connect the maps of the traditional and modern disciplines to draw on classical education. 

Why LIFE?

Mandatory state curricula offer communities the right to develop curricula matching their values. Muslims have not capitalised on such an opportunity. Previous attempts to produce such curriculum suitable as educational resources, prominently the World Conferences on Islamic Education and Islamisation movement, produced next to nothing for primary and secondary education. Rather, they focused on establishing Islamic universities, resulting in losing a whole generation of Muslims. Muslims who have attempted to produce curricula for the contemporary student have drawn on various Western models. However, the Islamic system of education drawn on by LIFE is very clear: a balance of teaching (ta'lim) and character development (tarbiya), an integration of reason and revelation, and a classical methodology of engaging with texts and subjects. No existing materials have these attributes

Scholars and teachers need to act fast to mainstream our traditional systems of teaching and learning (through creating traditionally authentic models of education.) At LIFE, we are working on reviving traditional Islamic curriculum that offer a) developed materials reflecting a sound understanding of Islamic heritage, b) a balanced yet critical understanding of modernity and c) materials which are written according with the highest standards of English language. 

Our Founder

Shaykh Mustafa Styer is an American-born, Oxford University-trained educationalist and researcher in Islamic theology. Mustafa is a British qualified teacher (QTS), trained as a curriculum developer at UCL Institute of Education, University of London, the UK’s leading research institution in education. Mustafa has devoted many years in developing Islamic education curricula and pedagogy. He has worked as head-teacher, deputy head, curriculum coordinator, and a teacher trainer in tarbiya for the Association of Muslim Schools UK established by Yusuf Islam. He was the primary developer seconded by the AMS-UK to implement the secretary of state's encouragement of Muslim schools to join the state system. As a result of this position, he produced schemes of work, lesson plans and all necessary educational resources for several subjects of the primary and secondary curriculum. Mustafa began his traditional Islamic studies in Damascus in 1995 and continues his studies learning the Dars-i Nizami and Ottoman syllabi from Sheikh Salih al-Ghursi and others. Shaykh Mustafa has published academically and privately and is currently a senior researcher at Tabah Foundation's Classification of the Sciences project and resides currently in the UK.

Listen to Shaykh Mustafa Styer explaining in a list of short videos the insights behind the organisation and the challenges ahead for this project.

Here is A word from the chair of our trust, Hajj Idris Mears (former president of the Association of Muslim Schools (AMS-UK)

"Please support this LaunchGood campaign of LIFE (Living Insights Foundation for Education). Education is the tool of social renewal in the face of the present day global collapse of the human being. The endangered species is the human being. We are born only potentially human and education is the only way to actualise spirit and intellect that make us human. LIFE addresses the present collapse of human personal and societal health by the renewal of traditional educational methodologies. It is based on sound research and teaching practice."

SeekersGuidance supports LIFE

What can you do to help?

Your donations, no matter how large or small, are a sadaqa jarriya (on-going charity) to be used in developing educational materials that will be used continuously to teach future generation insha’Allah. Part of our campaign is also Zakat-eligible, as stated below. 

Help us build an institution that can serve others connect their children with an education that will not only help them today, but also tomorrow., in sha Allah.

Visit our website to learn more about our work and upcoming courses:

https://www.livinginsights.org.uk