Holistic English is a textbook for primary-class students for whom
English is a second language. The philosophy of this textbook is
inspired by Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Heritage (IRKH), i.e.,
the Quran, Authentic Hadith, works of Classic Muslim Scholars
and Integration of Knowledge scholars. Following this, the body
of contemporary knowledge has also been studied to further
understand the subject to be taught and its core competencies.
As per Islamic Perspective, the purpose of learning a language is
to communicate the truth in the most befitting manner whereby
the highest form of truth is the concept of Tawheed. Since this
can be heavy for Grades 1 - 6, Tawheed is recoined as Islamic
Healthy Habits and Islamic Akhlaq derived from the repository
of Islamic knowledge on health. This gives us a primary grade
friendly purpose of learning a language, i.e., “One studies English
language to learn and communicate Islamic Healthy Habits and
Islamic Akhlaq”.
According to some sources on Islamic health, the human being is
divided into 5 segments health-wise: Physical Body, Biochemical
Body, Mind, Heart and Soul. Muslims are instructed to learn about
these five segments and look after each of them. Therefore, this
textbook’s units are devoted to embedding in the minds of the
students the Islamic Healthy Habits in the context of taking care
of these five constituents of the body. Once the Islamic Healthy
Habits are learned, they need to be communicated.
The sequence of communicating these habits is from the Islamic
Perspective, i.e., starting from one’s self, family, neighbours, society
and finally, looking after the environment. The units of the book
are organised considering this aspect as well.