The Concept of Child Education in Islam According to Abdullah Nashih Ulwan and its Relevance to Family Education in the Digital Era

Abstract

This study critically examines Abdullah Nashih Ulwan’s conception of Islamic child education and its contemporary relevance to family education in the digital era. Employing a qualitative library research design, this study draws primarily on Ulwan’s Tarbiyatul Aulad fi al-Islam and relevant scholarly literature on Islamic education, character formation, family pedagogy, and digital childhood. The data were analyzed through content analysis involving conceptual reduction, thematic classification, interpretive synthesis, and conclusion formulation. The findings reveal that Ulwan’s framework offers a holistic and integrative model of child education encompassing seven interrelated domains: faith, moral, physical, intellectual, psychological, social, and sexual education. These domains collectively aim to cultivate children as spiritually grounded, ethically responsible, intellectually capable, emotionally stable, socially competent, physically healthy, and morally self-protective individuals. In the context of digital transformation, Ulwan’s thought remains highly relevant in addressing key challenges of family education, including excessive gadget use, exposure to inappropriate digital content, weakened parent-child communication, diminished parental role modeling, and declining value control. The study further demonstrates that Ulwan’s educational methods—role modeling, habituation, advice, attention, supervision, and corrective discipline—can be adapted as an Islamic pedagogical framework for digital parenting. This study contributes to the discourse on Islamic family education by positioning Ulwan’s classical educational thought as a normative, pedagogical, and practical foundation for strengthening children’s character formation in contemporary digital environments.