do people think all Muslim countries are one and the same?

i mean, people generalize shit into monoliths. when it comes to politics, unless you're pulling out an opinion poll every godsdamned religion gets mashed down into its own little box and there is no variation within it so help me whatever god it's worshiping.

Yeah, "Fatima probably didn't exist" is one thing, "It's only a university if it's White and Christian before the 19th century" is a whole nother ball of wax.

Isn't that the post?

Higher education predates Islam.

... for having a common meme template pointing out a piece of historical trivia?

Man, I don't even fucking think religion as a whole is compatible with modern democratic societies, and I have a special hate in my heart for the Abrahamic religions, but this entire comment section has really made me feel like I've been tossed a decade or two into the past.

Most Muslim countries allow women to pursue university education, even theocracies as shitty as Iran, so I presumed the left was representative of a conservative trying to appeal to tradition.

A. It was a mosque. It got converted later to a madrasa, so no, She didn't found an education center.

B. A madrasa Is the equivalent to a Christian seminary, not a full fledged university

The University of Taxila predates both Plato's academy and the instiution in question. The meme makes a somewhat dubious claim. It may be more accurate to say it's the oldest still operating place of higher learning.

What about Plato’s Academy? It was an institution of higher learning, and it certainly existed long before the one in the meme. I’m not saying that the Academy was the first one either, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were others before hand.

Certainly, if we want to get into the question of who exactly was first, we could probably come up with a few dozen names. That it is very early in the academic tradition is what's important to the meme and the message.

It seems to me like the claim “the oldest currently existing university” got converted to “the first university” and those are definitely not the same.

I would say "yes-and-no."

Whatever university has the strongest claim to be the oldest currently existing university probably also counts as the first university, because of the irregularity of the structure of learning institutions in the Classical and pre-Classical era (to the best of our knowledge). Plato's Academy, which you mentioned, was arguably more of an enduring round-table than an institution with students and teachers, and to our knowledge didn't have any sort of curriculum. Plato's Academy was a place where philosophers and important folk got together to mutually intellectually enrich each other, rather than to pass on specific knowledge or competencies.

Generally we consider a university more like a school - with set staff, set students, and a set course of learning; Plato's Academy had a head, I believe, but not regular teachers or students, and simply discussed matters in a learned way amongst themselves. If you went there ignorant, you would learn something, but attendance and learning, or attendance and teaching, were not synonymous; and you came and went according to when you were satisfied with what you were discovered, rather than there being courses or degrees that could be completed.

China might have a good claim on the oldest university, tbqh, but I couldn't trace the history there, personally. It's far from my fields of interest.

The University of Oxford was founded in 1096 as a Catholic university with a curriculum in theology and canon law. The University of Cambridge was founded in 1209 by people from the University of Oxford, so also largely clergy. The University of Salamanca was founded in Spain in 1218, also to teach theology and canon law (and, in fairness, some harder sciences as well). The first subjects to be taught at the University of Padua when it was founded in 1222 were law (civil law and canon law) and theology.

And while it's true that the University of al-Qarawiyyin was founded as a mosque, mosques in that time were well-known and attested as places of learning; there's evidence that al-Qarawiyyin was a madrasa from the very beginning (and proof of it by the 12th Century at the latest), and while people in European universities try to draw a distinction between the definition of "university" and "madrasa," there's no real evidence for a meaningful difference that doesn't just boil down to "well, they do stuff differently."

I mean… It was actually a mosque focused on religious education when it was founded.

... do you not understand how other modern universities started?

It didn’t become a an accredited university until the 20th century

... accreditation for universities wasn't a thing until the 19th century, so I don't know what you expect that proves?

but I mean I guess we can move the goal posts some more if we want.

You're tilting at windmills.

According to the widely circulated narrative, the school linked with al-Qarawiyyin ultimately became the focal point of the present-day University of al-Qarawiyyin. The assertion that the university was founded by Fatima al-Fihri alongside the mosque is not clearly rooted in historical evidence.[22] The university library, linked to Fatima’s story, was restored and reopened in 2016, gaining attention from influential sources such as The Guardian, Smithsonian, TED, and Quartz that claimed that the library was the world’s oldest continuously operating library, and that it was founded by Fatima herself. According to Ian D. Morris, a historian of early Islamic societies, there is no empirical evidence to support claims that Fatima founded the library.[23] The lack of historical sources and consultation with historians by commentators, including think-tanks, NGOs, social scientists, journalists, and bloggers, has resulted in numerous “sourceless, baseless” iterations of the Fatima story. As the story is useful to present-day discourses about women and sciences in Islamic history, Morris concludes that the speculation repeated by modern writers “says more about the current value of Fatima as a political symbol than about the historical person herself.”

If you check the source cited, the position taken by the author in question is very pedantic. He asserts that as the library was not specifically mentioned as part of the mosque in the earliest records, it should not be regarded that Fatima founded the educational institution; and that he doubts that the educational regime would have been 'advanced' enough for him to consider it a university at the time. This ignores the very real continuity of religious institutions of the period, especially Muslim religious institutions which placed a high value on scholarship and literacy, with learning and teaching. We recognize founders in other contexts who planted the seed rather than planning out the full end-product all the time. But when it's a Muslim and a woman, suddenly specifics become vital.

Idk if it’s true or not but it checks all of the boxes for misinformation spread in liberal circles.

Lord. What irony.