Civilisational Malakah in Higher Education: A Comparative Analysis of Islamic Epistemology and Modern Western Competency Frameworks

Contemporary higher education increasingly seeks to develop graduates who possess not only disciplinary knowledge but also competence, learner agency, critical thinking, responsibility, and the capacity to adapt to change. Competence alone, however, does not fully explain the extent to which such capabilities have been internalised, the normative foundations that guide their use, or the ways in which education contributes to the formation of knowledgeable individuals and societies. This article employs comparative conceptual analysis and integrative literature synthesis to examine the concept of malakah and the epistemological foundations of Islamic education alongside modern Western competency frameworks. The comparison focuses on four dimensions: the formation of competence, the sources and hierarchy of values, the purposes of education, and the relationship between individuals, institutions, and society. Modern Western competency frameworks demonstrate particular strengths in operationalising learning outcomes, graduate attributes, active pedagogy, student agency, and competency assessment. Islamic educational thought, by contrast, places particular emphasis on the internalisation of mastery through malakah, the orientation of knowledge through adab, judgement through hikmah, and the sustainability of human formation through a culture of knowledge. On the basis of this synthesis, Civilisational Malakah (Malakah Peradaban) is proposed as a higher education meta-competency framework comprising six interrelated domains: epistemic, competence, malakah, adab-axiological, hikmah, and civilisational culture. Rather than replacing modern competency approaches, the framework extends them by integrating capability, internalisation, value orientation, and civilisational responsibility. Its implications suggest that higher education should align curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and institutional culture in order to form graduates who are not only competent but also capable of using knowledge with consistency, adab, wisdom, and responsibility. The framework remains conceptual and requires empirical validation in future research