Written by Abdul-Rahim Ammar
The Madrassah – Modern Issues
The
madrassah is an ancient institution and has survived for fourteen
hundred years. We have outlined in other chapters how the madrassah has
evolved over the centuries. Once a thriving institution which served as
the pulsating heart of the Islamic community, it has been neglected,
allowed to decay, and is now the object of suspicion on the global
stage.
Since the tragic events of 9/11, the madrassah
has attracted a great deal of attention. During the days of the Taliban
and the prelude to the Afghan war, it was the principal focus of the
American media. It was made to appear as if all the goblins in the
mountains of Afghanistan were hiding in the madaris between Kabul and
Peshawar.
The madrassah is not a monolithic
institution with a single structure. It appears in many shapes and
forms. It has a variety of structures, and is subject to the same social
and political pressures as is the society at large. It defies
simplistic packaging for ten second sound bites or TV infomercials. In
the context of South and Central Asia, it is at once a source for social
stability and a legitimate target for cultural and political reform.
At
the outset, a clarification in terminology must be made, and a
differentiation established between maktab, madrassah and jami. A maktab
is any school, whether it is secular or religious. Every child who
attends school goes to a “maktab”. A madrassah is usually a religious
school in which Arabic is taught as part of a religious curriculum. A
jami is a university in which advanced religious studies are pursued and
graduate degrees are granted. Al Azhar, Deoband, Qum and Nadwa are
universities that are classified as “jam””. This chapter focuses
specifically on the madrassah.
In its early years, the
madrassah was a mosque-based religious school similar to Bible schools
attached to churches in America. It is only in recent years that the
paradigm has shifted to secular education sanctioned by the government
with a heavy emphasis on technical subjects.
No
reliable statistics exist on the number of madaris in South Asia. From
Kabul to Kerala, the landscape is dotted with thousands, perhaps tens of
thousands of Islamic religious schools. In some areas, such as
Afghanistan and the NW Frontier, they are the sole means of education
for children. In others, such as the educationally advanced South India
belt, they exist side by side with the secular schools. Some are no more
than an assembly in the open, under a tree, where poor children sit on
bare soil and memorize their lessons. A few are richly endowed, with
millions of dollars in property, and modern facilities. All of them call
themselves “deeni madaris” to ensure that the attendees, and the
donors, know that they are different from the secular schools, and that
they cater to “deen” as opposed to “duniya”.
These
madaris provide a valuable social service in parts of South Asia. In
some villages, notably in the NW frontier province of Pakistan and in
Afghanistan, they make the difference between literacy and illiteracy.
The molvi sahib who heads up the madrassah, teaches reading and writing
in the local language, introduces the child to elementary Arabic, and
facilitates basic memorization of the Qur’an and Hadith. These madaris
provide employment to scores of religious teachers who would otherwise
be unemployed. One thing they do not teach, as is commonly alleged in
the news media, is terrorism, unless you take the extreme position that
teaching the basics of religion is the same as teaching terrorism.
The
disservice that the madaris perform is not in what they teach but in
what they do not teach. We have shown in another chapter how the
syllabus of the madrassah has been marginalized over the centuries.
Where it once exposed the student to a broad spectrum of disciplines,
the modern madrassah limits a student to the study of a few subjects.
Absent is a study of natural science, mathematics, sociology or history.
Gone also is tasawwuf, the spiritual dimension of Islam. As a
consequence, a typical graduate of a madrassah has little understanding
of the modern world, feels marginalized and is alienated from it. This
feeling of alienation is the main reason why so many molvis and mullahs
taken extreme positions on contemporary issues. Such extreme positions
are often transmitted to the captive audiences that the mullahs command
at religious and social gatherings.
In this chapter,
we briefly examine some of the modern issues facing the madrassah using
examples from the South Asian experience. Since the subject involves
living history, some aspects of it are bound to be controversial.
The Student Body
The
great majority of students who attend the madrassah are from the poorer
sections of society. Fathers who cannot afford the cost of a secular
education bring their children to the madrassah so that the child gets
at least an elementary education in the religious disciplines.
In
recent years, the influx of middle class Muslims into the Tableeghi
Jamaat has worked to the benefit of the madaris, as many Tableeghi
families prefer religious schools to secular ones. The escapist
orientation of the Tableeghi Jamaat and the deeni (as opposed to dunawi)
orientation of these schools tend to complement each other.
Consequently, the economic profile of a typical student in a madrassah
has somewhat improved.
In addition to imparting
elementary education (taalim), the madrassah performs a secondary
function, that of tarbiyat. In practice, this second function is even
more important than the first. Tarbiyat means molding of character. In
the same sense that a potter molds a pot on a wheel, the teacher in a
madrassah molds a pupil into a mold. Discipline tends to be very strict,
indeed harsh, in most madaris. The tarbiyat function of a madrassah is
what distinguishes a religious school from a secular school. Whether a
graduate of a madrassah becomes an extremist or a sufi depends to a
large extent on the tarbiyat that the molvi or the shaikh imparts to the
student.
The dropout rate in most madaris is high.
Sometimes it is as high as 60 percent. This could be attributed in part
to the underlying poverty of the families and partly to the harsh
discipline imposed on the students. Grinding poverty compels many a
promising son to quit school and enter the work force as a teenager and
support the family. Those who complete a few years of schooling seek
employment as mullahs in small villages where incomes are low and
opportunities few. Those who complete their diploma and earn the degree
of aalim, move to the larger towns and cities where there is more money
and the opportunity to build lucrative personal trusts is much higher.
Some
of the graduates go on to do their graduate work at Deoband, Nadvatul
Ulema or the University of Medina. The university in Medina, in
particular, is a respected center of learning. A degree from Medina
offers a far greater guarantee of a lifetime job than does a masters
degree in English from any of the well-known secular schools. A large
number of students from the subcontinent attend the University and
obtain degrees of aalims and faazils. In addition, the University
publishes books, which are used in the curricula of the madaris.
The Impact of Colonialism
The
colonial period introduced a historical discontinuity into the
evolution of the madrassah. The injection of foreign and alien
interference scuttled the natural evolution of this institution. The
discontinuity may be illustrated by examining the syllabus followed
before and after the colonial period. In the table below we have
summarized the syllabus as it was during the period of the Great Mogul
Akbar (circa 1600) and as it is today.
Subjects taught during Akbar’s reign (circa 1600) Subjects taught today
Akhlaq
Arithmetic Arithmetic
Astronomy
Tareeq
Mantiq
Tib
Falahat
Masahaat
Fiqh Fiqh
Hindsa
Languages Languages (Urdu, Farsi, Arabic)
Literature Literature
Tazkiya
Tadbeer
Manzil
Ramal
Siasat e madan
Riyazee
Ilahiyat
Qur’an, Hifz, Hadith Qur’an, Hifz, Hadith
India
was the first great non-Western civilization to fall to Europe and it
was here that the colonists perfected the mechanism of dismantling the
traditional educational systems and replacing them with systems that
served the colonial administrative machines. The Indian experience
illustrates this observation. Until 1824, the East India Company
maintained the pretense that it was ruling in the name of the Mogul
emperor in Delhi. In 1828 the company abandoned the use of Farsi in the
Indian courts and replaced it with English. With the Anglicization of
the judicial system, there was an immediate need for lawyers who could
represent Indian clients. This encouraged the growth of English-medium
schools. Convents and seminaries initially ran these schools. Gradually,
English was introduced into the public school systems. In 1832, the
Company abandoned the pretense that it was a proxy for the Mogul
emperor, relegated him to a pensioner of the company and took over
direct rule of the subcontinent. The madaris, which taught Arabic and
Farsi, took a direct hit. They were marginalized to teaching Gulistan
and Boostan, classics of the Eastern languages, but which had no
utilitarian value in the new colonial order.
The
Muslims who had lost the power struggle with the British for control of
India, had a deep distrust of the foreigners, whom they called Firangees
(a derogative term derived from the term Frank). This distrust did not
stop at the English language and culture but extended to philosophy,
science and mathematics. Isolation set in and the old system of
education was marginalized and retreated into a corner. Even the
rudimentary exposure to philosophy and mathematics that was offered in
the Nizamiya syllabus was abandoned because the Firangees were much
better at these subjects than the mullahs. For survival, the mullahs had
to introduce product differentiation into religious education and give
it new branding. This was done by attaching the label “deen” to the
madrassah to differentiate them from the secular schools which taught
subjects related to “duniya”. The bifurcation of education into deeni
talim and dunawi talim was now complete. As the prospects of the
graduates from madaris finding jobs in the government evaporated, the
mullahs drew an ever-tighter circle around the madrassah syllabus so as
to guard the religious turf. Even the application of the Shariah did not
escape this marginalization. Where once the Shariah embraced all
aspects of life, it was now confined to “Muslim personal law”. Any
subject that would open the society up to Western influences was
summarily abandoned. The air was taken out of the educational balloon
and where once teachers and students alike would soar high and take in
vast vistas, they were now grounded and could only gaze at the dirt
below.
The Saudi Influence
While a
great majority of the madaris in South Asia are poor, and are located in
rural or remote areas, there are some that are well endowed with land
and money. Thanks to the largesse from Saudi Arabia, and donations from
the Gulf, some madaris are opulent even by international standards.
While some are literally run from thatched huts, some have vested
properties of millions of rupees. The Molvis in these madaris live in
comparative opulence, move about in expensive cars, own mobile phone,
and dine on nothing less than the highest quality basmati rice.
The
injection of oil money into the madrassah has been a mixed blessing.
Money taints the natural growth of culture much in the same way as
foreign political dominance. While oil money did help build the
infrastructure of some schools, the price paid was the abandonment of
the spiritual Islam that had grown up in the subcontinent over a
thousand years, and its replacement by a largely ritualistic Islam
prevalent in Arabia and the Gulf. Without the spiritual glue to hold the
community together, there has been an increase in fragmentation along
narrow, legalistic lines. A visible result of this fragmentation is the
proliferation of the jama’ats in the subcontinent, each one declaring
that it possesses the exclusive map to salvation and the maps owned by
the other jama’ats are only partially correct. Up until the time of
partition, Islam in India and Pakistan had a strong spiritual content.
The eloquence of Allama Iqbal would lose its lofty grandeur if it were
stripped of its spiritual content. That “traditional” Islam has
disappeared and has largely been replaced by a “Salafi” Islam wherein
rules, regulations and arguments dominate.
This
paradigm is beginning to change. The first Gulf War of 1991 drained the
resources of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. More recently, after
9/11, with “terrorism” becoming a household world, many governments have
clamped down on the international transfer of funds. Money transfers
from America come under microscopic scrutiny. These developments have
placed a financial crunch on the madaris. With sources of foreign funds
drying up, the madaris have had to fall back on local resources.
Notwithstanding the decreasing external financial support, most of the
madaris in the subcontinent continue to look to the Saudi universities,
such as the University of Medina, and to the established academies at
Nadva and Deoband, for guidance on their curriculum.
The Academic Hierarchy
The
religious schools in the Subcontinent show a definite hierarchy. At the
top of the academic ladder are the academies at Deoband and Nadwa. In
the Islamic landscape of South Asia, Deoband and Nadwa occupy a position
similar to Caltech and MIT in the technological landscape of the United
States. Established in the late 19th century during the British period,
their influence on the social, political and religious landscape on
Muslim India is far greater than of Aligarh University which was founded
about the same time by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. Many of the students who
graduate from the madaris as “aalims” (learned men) go on to study at
Deoband and Nadwa for their graduate studies and obtain the diploma of
fazil (equivalent of a doctorate). Both of these academies have a
conservative leaning, more so since the Saudi version of Islam hit the
subcontinent along with petrodollars. Their influence, through their
alumni, radiates all over Asia and beyond. These schools have led the
way for the demolition of traditional Islam and its replacement with a
more rigid Islam close to the Wahhabi brand from Najad. On the positive
side, there is no question that both of these institutions have produced
many scholars of the first rank.
The vast majority of
madaris are located in small villages. Run by a lone teacher or a
Molvi, who doubles as the “pesh-imam” of the local mosque, the village
madaris are financially poor often to the point of destitution. They
teach elementary Arabic, memorization of a few passage from the Qur’an,
and a few basics about religious rites and obligations. They receive
local patronage from the subsistence farmers and petty traders. They are
valued for their social utility because they help develop the moral
character (tarbiat) of the students. Even parents who send their
children to government run secular schools ensure that their children
attend a madrassah on a part time basis. The network of these madaris is
so large and they are so interwoven into the fabric of society that
there is very little a government can do to change them, except with a
tremendous investment in infrastructure and manpower, or through
outright coercion.
At the next higher level are the
well-established schools that are run by professional ulema. Some of
these schools are old and date back to the Mogul period. Others are new
and sprang up as Saudi money became available to the Indo-Pak religious
market. Our research led us to eleven such schools located in Southern
India and some patterns emerged from our observations:
The older schools, established in the seventeenth and 18th centuries
are run by ancient waqfs. They do not solicit funds from outside
sources. They offer a traditional Nisab (curriculum), which includes a
study of the Qur’an, Sunnah of the Prophet, early Islamic history,
elementary philosophy and arithmetic, and emphasize tazkiyah and purity
of heart. They are often attached to a zawiya or a qanqah. An example is
Jamia Lateefia in Vanambadi.
The newer schools were
established during the late British period. Some sprang up in the
nineteen sixties when Saudi money became available to the Indian
religious market. These schools actively solicit local as well as
international funding. Some are very well off and own substantial
properties. The teachers are mostly a product of the schools in Northern
India (Nadwa, Devband). Some have studied at Medina University. Their
Nisab (curriculum) places a heavy emphasis on Hadith and less so on
other aspects of the Sunnah. These schools are popular with the more
established jama’ats, such as Jamaat e Islami and the Tableegi Jamaat.
The graduates of these schools become Molvis in the masjids in the
larger towns. The dropouts settle in the villages and become teachers at
the local mosque-madrassah.
Influence of the Nadva
In
the subcontinent, the large, industrially backward state of Uttar
Pradesh in the Gangetic plain has served as the nursery for molvis. At
one time, this area was the prosperous heart of the Mogul Empire. As
such, the local seminaries received royal patronage from Delhi. As the
Empire disintegrated, and local centers of power emerged, patronage
continued under regional nawabs, noblemen and wealthy landlords. The
area also benefited from the fact that it was the home of the Urdu
language, which became the language of instruction of Muslim India
during the British period. Today, a large proportion of mullahs who lead
the prayers in local mosques across the width and breadth of India come
from Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh is also home to
some of the well-known higher institutions of Islamic learning,
including Aligarh University, Nadvatul Ulema and Devband. These
institutions have had a major impact on Islamic thinking in the
subcontinent. Whereas, Aligarh University founded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan
in the 1880s as a school for westernized education has thrived as a
secular institution after partition, Nadvatul Ulema and Deoband have
become major centers of orthodoxy, radiating their influence far beyond
the borders of South Asia. While these academies have produced a large
number of outstanding scholars, they have also produced a much larger
number of molvis with a constricted vision of Islamic learning. Their
approach is didactic. They do not teach the inductive method as applied
to nature, history or the human soul. While the syllabus of these
institutions is outstanding in the disciplines of tafseer, fiqh, Kalam
and hadith, it is pitifully inadequate in the natural, mathematical or
historical sciences. And noticeably, it is weak in the sciences of the
soul, commonly referred to as Sufism. It is for these reasons that while
Deoband and Nadva have produced a large number of Maulanas, they have
not produced a single noteworthy mathematician, logician, historian, man
or woman of science, or Awliya.
Nadwa and Deoband
have exercised an influence on the social and religious fabric of Muslim
India far greater than Aligarh Muslim University. In the hierarchy of
religious schools, Deoband and Nadwa occupy the same place as Caltech
and MIT do for technical education in the United States. Graduates from
lesser-known schools across South Asia attend Nadva and Deoband for
advanced education and research and carry back with them the stamp and
the orientation of these two academies. Conservative to the core, they
focus on the exoteric religious disciplines disregarding both the
esoteric aspects of religion as well as the inductive sciences of
science, sociology and history. Both were orthodox institutions to begin
with, but under Saudi influence, they have moved even further to the
right. Both schools graduate hundreds of aalims each year. Trained only
in the traditional disciplines, these aalims are ill equipped to handle
questions posed by the modern global materialist civilization, or
relating to the rapidly changing South Asian political landscape.
Indeed, their chief contribution has been to destroy and decimate the
traditional Islamic culture in the subcontinent and replace the
spiritual Islam that had developed on Indian soil for a thousand years
with a dried version manufactured in Saudi Arabia.
Much
of the influence of the molvis from Uttar Pradesh has been due to their
fluency in Urdu. Urdu has been the language of qutbas in many parts of
India since the demise of Farsi in the early part of 19th century.
However, this situation is changing in more recent years. In
post-partition India, Urdu has steadily lost its importance and has
ceased to be the lingua franca of Muslims. Many madaris in the North
have adopted themselves to Hindi and those in other areas are offering
instruction in the regional languages. Thus Bangla is the medium of
instruction for Bengalis, Marathi is taught in Maharashtra, and Tamil in
Tamil Nadu. Even in the Gulf, where there is a large concentration of
migrants from Kerala, and several well-to-do Kerala Muslims have
established schools, Malayalese rather than Urdu is the preferred medium
of religious instruction for expatriate Muslim children. These changes
are bound to reduce the influence of the Urdu speaking belt on the
further development of the madaris.
There is almost
always a worldly agenda behind the establishent of madrassahs. The first
thing that a mullah does when he moves into a town is to start a deeni
madrassah, a product for which there is a ready market. The dissociation
of deeni taalim from the dunavi ta’lim has been sold to the South Asian
market for over three hundred years. The process is a predictable one.
First, the mullah looks for and befriends the local rich, those who are
capable of donating land and money. The legal framework in India allows
the packaging of this not-so-selfless effort as a religious and
charitable trust, owned by the Molvi, into which the local landlords and
merchants are inducted. As the madrassah acquires property and is on
its way to becoming established, the donors are slowly squeezed out. The
Mullah becomes the owner of the trust.
The worldly
agenda of the mullahs should not detract from the social service that
they have provided. Many of the madaris offer free education, boarding
and lodging for orphans and the destitute. Sometimes, they offer the
only opportunity for the children of the poor to learn to read and
write. The illiteracy rate in the Muslim third of South Asia would be
higher were it not for the service provided by the madaris.
The Mullah and the Microphone
In
the religious culture of Muslims, the Mullah occupies a position, which
is the object of envy of any politician. Once a week, during the Friday
Qutbah, the Mullah has the control of the pulpit and the microphone
from where he can preach, sermonize, lead and coax the worshippers. The
faithful are required to listen to him in rapt attention. It is not
permitted to interrupt a sermon unless the Mullah says something against
the basic tenets of religion such as idolatry or shirk. Thus the mullah
has the ear of a captive audience. No politician can dream of a
platform like this one which affords a speaker the unflinching attention
of an audience. Unless the qutba (The Friday sermon) is co-opted by a
repressive government, the Mullah is free to choose a subject of
interest to him and the community. It is this unique access to the
microphone that sustains the power of mullah. It can be broken, modified
or controlled only at the expense of destroying the freedom of worship
and freedom of speech as has been done in Saudi Arabia and some of the
Middle Eastern countries.
Terrorism not in the Curriculum
Hard
as you try, you will not find the madaris teaching, even remotely,
anything resembling violence or terrorism. Indeed, most of the teachers
in the religious schools come from groups such as the Tableeghi Jamaat,
which has turned its back on the affairs of this world and has confined
itself to “matters of the other world”. How could one associate such
escapist pursuits with violence?
The Taliban in
Afghanistan are more a product of their culture than of the madaris they
graduate from. It is like blaming the American school system for the
divorce rate in the United States. Neither in the syllabus nor in the
tarbiat (training) is there even the slightest hint of violence or
terrorism.
Reformation of the Syllabus
The
madrassah has become the repository of vested interests just like any
other institution in modern life. There is money on the line. Sometimes,
it is big money. The molvis and mullahs stand to lose by modernizing
the madrassah. First, it would blur the line between deeni talim and
dunawi talim. Second, it would deny the mullahs their claim for
exclusive control over deen. Third, it would dry up their source of
funding. In other words, the madaris would then become just like any
other school. The mullahs would no longer head up the list of invitees
whenever a poor villager slaughters a chicken for a feast. Most
importantly, their exclusive claim to God and heaven would be
compromised.
The more prosperous madaris would have
the most to lose from a modernization of their curriculum. These schools
cannot compete with the secular schools in subjects dealing with
science and technology. Opening up their curriculum to modern education
would be like inviting “duniya” into their closeted “deen”. The owners
of these schools, or of the trusts that run these schools, would lose
their market niche. Therefore, they jealously guard their current market
position as the guardians of “deeni taalim”.
An
attempt at the transformation of the madrassah must therefore be
gradual, preserving the stability that this institution provides while
enhancing its social usefulness. The changes must also come from within
the community rather than imposed from the top. A first step in this
direction is the reintroduction into this syllabus a study of the
mathematical, natural and historical sciences as well as Qur’anic
spirituality (tazkiya). These subjects were a part of the Nizamiya Nisab
as late as the 18th century. Once mathematics is mastered, science,
philosophy and the natural sciences will follow. Gradually, the Nizamiya
Nisab will be transformed into an Islamic Nisab embracing the Qur’anic
sciences, mathematics, the natural sciences, philosophy and technology.
The
probability of a successful reformation of the syllabus would increase
substantially if the molvis are trained to see the benefits of a
liberalized syllabus, which includes a study of the languages,
mathematics, history and spirituality. A top-down approach offers
several advantages: It trains the teachers and has the highest potential
for student reach. It offers the highest benefit-to-cost ratio. It
exposes the vast majority of mullahs to the beauty and majesty of the
natural and historical sciences in an Islamic framework.
If
history is any guide, a reform process, which is strongly opposed by
the mullahs is likely to fail, or cause a major social upheaval.
Kemalist Turkey achieved such reforms but the Kemalist revolution was
the tail end of a long series of reformations starting with the
Tanzeemat in the first half of the 19th century. And the Kemalists had
to use coercive methods to ensure that the reforms would succeed.
Another
aspect of reform is potential competition with secular schools. The
madaris could enjoy an advantage vis-a-vis secular schools if they
offered quality instruction in secular as well as religious subjects.
There is hunger among the people of South Asia for both secular and
religious knowledge. Unfortunately, the madaris are neither competent to
teach the secular subjects nor can they compete in secular fields. The
inability to compete has pushed the molvis into a corner. To preserve
their turf and protect their employment, they take a hard position on
the division of instruction into deeni and dunawi domains. To coax the
mullahs to emerge from their shell, both financial incentives and
external pressures may be required.
Technology and the Madrassah
Science
and technology have had a checkered history among Muslim people. The
scientific method was cultivated by Muslim scholars in Spain and
Central Asia in the Middle Ages. But it withered after the Mongol
invasions of the 13th century. In succeeding centuries, Muslim scholars,
while paying lip service to the need for mastering science and
technology, looked with deep suspicion on anything that disturbed their
partitioning of the sacred and the profane. The introduction of the
printing press into Muslim societies is a case in point. While the
printing press was introduced into Europe in the 15th century, it was
not until 1728 that it found acceptance in the Ottoman Empire. It was
introduced into Mogul India even later. The reason was the determined
opposition of the ulema who felt that the Word of God, namely the
Qur’an, would be defiled if it touched a wooden or iron press. While the
printing press made possible the wide diffusion of books in Europe, the
Muslim world limped along with hand written manuscripts. It is not
uncommon even to this day to find a mullah who stands up before a large
gathering of Muslims and harangues them that science is secular and it
fosters unbelief.
Notwithstanding the oppositon of
some mullahs, the all-reaching embrace of technology cannot be avoided,
not even by the most insular madrassah. Technology transforms societies
and cultures and the madrassah cannot escape the winds of change. Many a
farsighted ulema now realize that the students in the madaris must
study science and technology along with the traditional subjects if they
are to face the modern world. In slow measures, even the most orthodox
ulema have started to bend in the direction of technological education.
At madrassah e lateefiya in Bangalore the students learn to use
computers along with memorization of the Qur’an and Hadith. Mobile
phones are used by molvis to talk to each other. IT driven technologies
have made the teachers and the sheikhs realize the need to upgrade the
teaching of science and mathematics. Many a school in Southern India
require their students, before they graduate, to acquire the equivalent
of a high school diploma. These may not seem like much from a global
perspective, but constitute a fundamental and welcome departure from the
rigidity that characterized the syllabus in most madaris and seminaries
until recent times.
9/11 and American pressures- the Issue of Terrorism
It
has been alleged time and again that the nineteen men who carried out
the 9/11 attack on the world trade center were products of the
madrassah. Based on published reports, the perpetrators, most of whom
came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt were more secular than religious. If
published literature is any guide, no connection has been proven between
the perpetrators and the madaris. Nonetheless, the accusation is
repeated often times, and most people in America have come to believe,
that the attack was connected with students who attend madaris. Indeed
the madrassah has been accused to be the breeding ground for “jehadis”
and “terrorists”. If perception is reality, it has hurt the image of the
madrassah in the global consciousness. And it will affect fundamentally
and profoundly, the further evolution of the madrassah as we go forward
into the twenty first century.
There have been
several consequences of this xenophobia. Money, which used to flow
freely from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries has decreased to a
trickle. Donations from America and other Western nations have just
about stopped. Even small donations are questioned. The allegations
against several Islamic charities have fostered a sense of fear among
potential donors. The madaris now must fend for themselves and depend on
local support.
A second side effect has been
increased government surveillance of all madaris. Laws have been passed
in the United States that make it legal to visit and search places of
congregation, including places of worship. Representatives from the
police departments and intelligence departments routinely visit the
madaris in India and Pakistan and question the teachers and molvis. In
Afghanistan, total chaos reigns and the madrassah operates under the
perennial fear of violence. The shadow of government surveillance has
increased further the difficulty that the madaris face in raising funds
or recruiting students.
A much more disastrous result
of 9/11 and the injection of the term “terrorism” into politics is the
destruction of educational links that have existed between religious
schools and seminaries in different parts of the world. For almost a
millennium, the madaris in Southern India radiated their influence far
beyond the borders of South Asia. As early as the 12th century, it was
the migration of Awliya from the trading communities of Southern India
and Gujarat that introduced Islam into the Indonesian and Malaysian
Archipelago. Until recently, the madaris in the South attracted students
from Sri Lanka, Maldiv Islands, Malaysia and Indonesia. Alumni from the
schools of Vanambadi and Salem are scattered all over South-East Asia.
Because
of official restrictions following 9/11 and the suspicion that somehow
the madrassah is a breeding ground for terrorists, that link has been
cut. Now, these students come no more and an age-old connection between
India and SE Asia has been broken. The movement of scholars and students
and the cross-fertilization of ideas and cultures that it fostered for a
thousand years has been scuttled. Student exchanges foster
international understanding and are a major element in the
liberalization of the madrassah. The scuttling of this process will
increase the isolation and alienation of the madrassah from global
liberal currents.
Contributed by Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, PhD
