Defending the Madrasas: Indian Ulama Respond

By Yoginder Sikand

Owing to a series of violent events in the last several years in different parts of India, Indian Muslim organizations, including madrasas, have been pushed on the defensive. Although the actual identity of the perpetrators of these violent attacks has, in most cases, not been reliably ascertained, the media has been quick to blame Muslims for them. Influential sections of the Indian media, as well as right-wing Hindu organizations, have singled out madrasas, in particular, for attack, branding them as ‘factories of terror’, although there is no evidence of Indian madrasas engaging in any sort of armed training or militant indoctrination. Demands continue to be made, mostly by hardened anti-Muslim ideologues who have little or no understanding of the madrasas, that madrasas be banned forthwith or else be closely monitored and controlled by the state.

Faced with the mounting campaign against them, ulema-led Muslim organizations, including madrasas, have been forced to respond by denying involvement in these violent attacks. They have organised several seminars and press meetings on the issue and to make clear their stand, to argue that, contrary to media allegations, madrasas have nothing to do with terrorism, for, it is argued by the ulema, Islam and terrorism are completely incompatible.

The mounting attacks against the madrasas, as the numerous conventions that have been organised recently indicate, suggest that the ulema are now being compelled to engage in the wider social and political arena to defend themselves from the charges against them, being forced out of the narrow confines of their seminaries. This might well prove to be a blessing in disguise, for it is possible that it might pave the way for greater and more meaningful dialogue between at least some sections of the ulema and certain well-meaning non-Muslim civil society groups and the state. In the long term, this interaction might have a positive impact on the madrasas themselves, making them more open to curricular and administrative reform as well as perhaps promoting contextually relevant understandings of Islam more conducive to a multi-religious society such as India. It might also enable non-Muslim civil society groups and the state to better appreciate the important contributions that madrasas are making in providing free education to poor Muslims, and this might facilitate their working with the ulama on common projects or for common purposes.

Yet, these conventions, such as those that I have attended, are clearly inadequate in certain respects, important though they are. Almost all of these have been organized by ulema groups, who present themselves before the state and the media as the sole legitimate leaders and spokespersons of the entire Muslim community. This claim is, of course, hardly true, although the fact that the ulema are taking the lead in airing Muslim grievances is bound to lead to a further entrenchment of the claim of the ulema to represent Muslims in public forms. It might also further marginalize the feeble efforts of ‘modern’ educated Muslims, more familiar with contemporary developments and, in some cases, articulating more contextually relevant understandings of Islam, to represent Muslim aspirations, including with regard to such issues as Muslim economic, political and educational empowerment and the problems of Muslim women, issues on which they may differ substantially with many ulema.

These conventions organized by ulema bodies, while serving the valuable purpose of defending the madrasas and Muslim organisations more generally from attack, must be seen in the context of an ongoing struggle for authority within the Muslim community, between ‘secular’ and ‘modern-educated’ Muslims and the ulema, on the one hand, and between different sections of the ‘ulama of various sectarian backgrounds, on the other, as to exactly who is qualified to speak for Muslims and Islam.

That it is now largely the ulema, associated with different madrasas and schools of Islamic thought, who are in the forefront of defending Muslims from the charge of ‘terrorism’ in public forums, such as these conventions, is hardly surprising. Especially in north India, there are relatively few Muslim organizations run by non-ulema working for the benefit of working class and poor Muslims or for articulating Muslim issues and aspirations in the public domain. The number of madrasas, that cater essentially to poor Muslims, training them to become ulema, far exceeds that of organizations run by Muslims who are not madrasa-trained ulema. Muslim organisations whose work is to promote religious education and awareness are far more numerous than those working for Muslim economic welfare or ‘modern’ education. This indicates the fact that the ulema and their madrasas are much more organically rooted in Muslim society, particularly in north India, than their non-ulema counterparts. Hence, it is not surprising that the ulema see themselves as the leaders of the community and most qualified to defend it from the attacks that it is seen as facing today. Hence, too, a large section of the Muslim masses choose to entrust the ulema, rather than non-ulema Muslim leaders, such as Muslim politicians or social activists, with that onerous responsibility.

That it is essentially the ulema who are now visibly defending Muslims and their organizations, while non-ulema Muslims appear relatively much less active, is a reflection of the fact that there are relatively few grassroots-level Muslim organizations, particularly in north India, where most Indian Muslims live, that are not run or controlled by the ulema and that are devoted to anything but religious education. A directory of Muslim NGOs across the country recently published from Delhi indicates that the vast majority of such organizations are run by ulema and have religious aims and objectives. A survey conducted by the noted scholar Imitaz Ahmad some years ago clearly shows that most funds provided by Muslims by way of zakat, sadqa and other forms of pious donation are given to madrasas, where poor Muslim children receive free boarding, lodging and education. Hence, while economically more prosperous Muslims aspire to send their children to ‘modern’, preferably English-medium, schools, the responsibility of maintaining and transmitting the Islamic religious and scholarly tradition, which is associated with low-paid jobs such as that of imams and khatibs in mosques and teachers in madrasas, is placed firmly on the shoulders of Muslim children from poor families who attend the madrasas. It is commonly, although erroneously, thought that zakat and other such forms of religiously-inspired charity should be provided only to madrasas and other such religious causes, and not for, say, promoting economic empowerment or ‘modern’ education among the Muslim poor, the argument being that donations to ‘religious’ causes are a source of continued blessings for one even after death (sadqa-e jariya). This notion, promoted by some ulema because serves their own interests as well as that of the madrasas that they run, has been critiqued by several Islamic scholars as ‘un-Islamic’ and as reflecting a rigid division between ‘religion’ (din) and the ‘world’ (duniya) that is said to have no warrant in the Qur’an. Consequently, middle-class Muslims, notable exceptions apart, have paid little attention to developing organizations working among the poor on secular issues, such as ‘modern’ education or economic betterment, remaining satisfied with providing charity to the ulema of the madrasas for them to shoulder that duty, and supposing that they have abided by an important religious duty by doing so.

This explains why middle-class Muslims enjoy few organic links with the Muslim masses. It also explains why it is that it is the ulema who do. In turn, this tells us why it is not middle-class Muslims but the ulema who are now in the forefront of defending the madrasas, a phenomenon further buttressed by the fact the few, if any, middle-class Muslims send their children to study in these institutions. This is a reflection of the yawning chasm between the ulema and middle class and elite Muslims, whose ways of understanding the world are, in crucial respects, vastly different. This also points to the rigid educational dualism so starkly characteristic of Indian Muslim society, between the ulema of the madrasas and middle-class Muslims, educated in English-medium schools, both of whom have little or no opportunity of interacting with each other.

Most middle-class Muslims, like their non-Muslim counterparts, are content to carry on with their own private lives and their quest for economic ‘success’, having little or no concern for the Muslim poor, who lead miserable lives in the ghettoes into which they have been condemned to live. This indifference to the plight of the Muslim poor is yet another reason for the very small number of organizations run by non-ulema working for the welfare of the poor Muslims and for Muslim community causes other than those strictly ‘religious’, especially in north India. In turn, this explains why it is not ‘middle’ class Muslims so much as the ulama and Islamic organisations who are today in the forefront of visibly representing Muslim demands and concerns in the public domain. Many middle-class Muslims, seeking to ‘integrate’ into what is arbitrarily defined as the Indian ‘mainstream’, desirous of maintaining good relations with their non-Muslim counterparts (essentially middle-class ‘upper’ caste Hindus) and careful not to antagonise them, consciously or otherwise seek to downplay overt signs of their ‘Muslim-ness’ in public. They make conscious efforts to distance themselves from the Muslims in the ghettos, in order both to stress their claim of being ‘superior’ and more ‘cultured’ than them as well as to convince their non-Muslim peers that while the Muslims of the ghettos may be ‘obscurantist’, they themselves are not, and are no different, except for certain rituals that they might occasionally practice or in their names, from the middle class non-Muslims whom they seek to ‘integrate’ with. This tendency has been exacerbated by the growing wave of Islamophobia in India and abroad in recent years. Such Muslims are haunted by the fear of being branded as ‘communal’, ‘anti-national’ and ‘terrorist’ if they were to take up the cause of the Muslim poor and of Muslims harassed by agencies of the state and rabidly anti-Muslim Hindutva organizations. That duty, therefore, has been left to the ulema and Islamic organizations to shoulder.

Although their approach might be limited, the role of the ulema in articulating Muslim aspirations needs to be appreciated with empathy, given their limited resources and lack of appropriate cultural capital necessary for articulating Muslim concerns before the wider non-Muslim public and the state. This does not, however, mean that the ways in which they have been going about doing so are entirely appropriate and effective. The several meetings to defend the madrasas from charges of ‘terrorism’ that I have attended in recent years have consisted of all-Muslim audiences, with speakers delivering long lectures in chaste Urdu, which few non-Muslims can understand. Consequently, if the intention of these meetings was to convince non-Muslims of the credentials of the madrasas, they have, because of the way in which they have been structured, been largely unsuccessful. That purpose could have been served if non-Muslims, including the media, civil society groups, human rights activists as well as leaders of organisations that are today in the forefront of the campaign against madrasas, had been invited to attend these conventions and listen to what the ulema have to say in their defence. Further, they should have taken the form of serious dialogue and frank exchange of views between the ulema and their critics rather than the one-sided monologues and apologetic defence of madrasas and Islamic groups that they have so far consisted of.

This, however, is easier said than done, for most ulema have limited contacts, if at all, with non-Muslim civil society groups whom they could possibly dialogue with. At the most, certain ulema groups have links with certain non-Muslim politicians, and it is mostly these that have constituted the miniscule non-Muslim presence at the conventions that have recently been organized, thus effectively limiting their impact on the broader non-Muslim public. This, coupled with the fact that most ulema are not comfortable in Hindi or English and given that their organizations generally lack any effective liaison with the non-Muslim media, has meant that the conventions have not succeeded in making much of a dent on non-Muslim opinion about the madrasas.

Not only have most of these conventions been addressed and attended almost wholly by Muslims, thus defeating their very purpose of reaching out to the wider society, they have also been entirely ulema-dominated ventures. Only a few non-ulema Muslim intellectuals and activists have participated in these events, reflecting both a certain indifference on the part of this class to issues that these conventions have taken up as well as perhaps a fear on the part of their ulema organisers that their presence might undermine the claims of the ulema of speaking for Islam and Muslims.

A central theme repeated by ulema speakers in all the conventions that have been organised recently to defend the madrasas and Islamic organizations is the claim that Islam is, by definition, opposed to terrorism. There is a world of difference, these speakers have argued, between legitimate Islamic jihad and terrorism. Speakers at these conventions have insisted that Muslims, by definition, are passionately opposed to terrorism because Islam forbids it. A ‘Muslim terrorist’, they have argued, is a contradiction in terms. Muslims should not be blamed for terrorism, these speakers have declared. Rather, they insist, the West, Israel and the Hindutva lobby are the principal practitioners of terrorism, and Muslim resistance to this, they have argued, is more often than not legitimate self-defence, as for instance in Palestine and Iraq.

The recent fatwas and pronouncements of leading Indian ulama declaring the incompatibility between Islam and terrorism are a welcome development, and will probably help mould public opinion, both Muslim and non-Muslim, against terrorism. It might also help, to an extent, in changing the views of many non-Muslims about Islam, particularly about the notion of jihad. Yet, this defence is inadequate because many of the ulema who articulate this line fail to deal seriously with the fact that there are indeed Muslim groups who do engage in terrorism precisely in the name of Islam and who represent an interpretation of Islam that, in this regard, is in contrast to that articulated by those ulema who insist that Islam has no room for terror. While the argument that certain non-Muslim actors, including certain states, are also engaged in various forms of terror is legitimate, it is clearly misleading to deny that certain Muslims, too, do so, and that too in the name of Islam. This, too, needs to be condemned with equal passion. To be more effective, this condemnation of terrorism engaged in by certain groups who claim to be ‘Islamic’ must not remain, as it has, at a general level. Instead, these groups should be specifically mentioned by name in the fatwas issued against terrorism, something that the conventions organized by the ulema on terrorism have generally failed to do.

Despite the obvious limitations of the response of the ulema to mounting charges of ‘terrorism’ being labeled against madrasas and other Muslim organizations, something, it must be said, is better than nothing at all. The response of the ulema can better be appreciated when contrasted with that of middle-class or elite Muslims, who appear to be doing little, if anything, in this regard. Clearly, however, Muslim grievances cannot best be articulated by the ulema or only by them, given their worldview and training and their limited contacts with and exposure to non-Muslims, although in this regard they have a crucial role to play. It is imperative, therefore, that concerned ‘modern’ educated Muslims, too, seriously seek to engage in the process, being more at ease with the ‘modern’ world and more sensitive to contemporary social realities. Only then can Muslim views be articulated more effectively, and genuine dialogue with others, including non-Muslim groups and the state, be promoted.

It is another matter that an influential section of the ulema might well be averse to this, fearing that this might challenge their own claim to speaking on behalf of Islam and all Indian Muslims. The state and various political parties, too, might not look at this development kindly, as such Muslims are bound to make more demands on the state for their comunity, in terms of genuine empowerment, than the ulema have, the demands of many ulema groups being minimal, such as the preservation of Muslim Personal Law, the restoration of the Babri Masjid, unlocking mosques under the control of the Archaeological Survey of India, the declaration of a public holiday on the occasion of the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad or allowing Muslim government employees to grow beards and to take off from work on Fridays. But whether sufficient numbers of concerned non-ulema, ‘modern’ educated Muslims will indeed respond to the growing harassment of Muslims and their institutions by getting actively engaged in Muslim community issues remains to be seen.