This is a selected and annotated bibliography of works on madrasa education in India published in Urdu and English between 1990 and 2006. It sums up the major arguments and facts presented in these writings.
Yoginder Sikand
1. Ahmad, Manzoor, Islamic Education: Redefinition of Aims and Methodology, New Delhi: Genuine Publications, 1990.
This book argues forcefully for the promotion of ‘modern’ education among Muslims, seeing this as in accordance with Islam rather than being opposed to it. In his preface, Ali Ashraf writes that madrasas generally operate with the ‘un-Islamic’ notion of a rigid distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge, focussing almost wholly on the former. Because of this, their students are ill-equipped for the ‘modern’ world and are not able to properly interpret and apply their faith in the contemporary context. On the other hand, he says, the way in which ‘modern’ education has come to be defined and constructed leads to an alienation from religion. Hence, Muslim students, whether in madrasas or ‘secular’ schools, are faced with one form of alienation or the other. This calls for the need to synthesise Islamic and ‘modern’ education.
Manzoor Ahmad further elaborates on this point, calling for a radical overhaul of the Muslim system of education. He critiques what he sees as the absence of moral content in ‘modern’ schools, contrasting this with the notion of education in Islam, which is geared to winning God’s pleasure and is not simply a means for material progress in this world. He argues that, in contrast to Christianity, there is no rigid distinction between ‘religion’ and the profane world in Islam, and, hence, between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge. Islam, he says, also envisages knowledge as free for all and as a life-long process. Islamic education aims at promoting righteousness, of the individual as well as of society, based on the Islamic revelation, thus providing a harmonious balance between individual and social needs. Ahmad quotes from the Qur’an and the Hadith to make this point and to stress the importance Islam gives to knowledge and moral action based on knowledge.
Ahmad argues that the rigid dualism characteristic of Muslim education today is principally a result of the colonial encounter, a reaction to Western hegemony which caused many ulama to shun Western forms of knowledge as ‘un-Islamic’ simply because of their association with the colonialists. At the same time, this dualism was encouraged by the colonial rulers, owing to the legacy of a tradition of hostility between religion and the state and science and religion in Europe, which was reflected in the educational systems that they established in their colonies that were premised on a separation between religion and worldly affairs. Ahmad discusses the efforts of Muslim reformists in India, such as Sayyed Ahmad Khan and the pioneers of the Nadwat ul-‘Ulama, to counter this dualism, but laments the fact that it still exists, primarily owing to the unfamiliarity of most ulama with ‘modern’ social sciences as well as the inability or unwillingness of ‘Western’ educated Muslims to dialogue with the ulama. He pleads for bridging the gulf between the two groups in order to harmonise religion and science and prepare what he sees as committed, practising Muslims who are able to excel in all spheres of life.
Ahmad also calls for the ‘Islamisation’ of various sciences, arguing that the manner in which these have been constructed leave God completely out of the picture because of the historical rivalry between science and church in Christendom, which, he says, was largely absent among Muslims. He critiques what he calls the myth of the objectivity of modern sciences. The absence of a proper normative framework for ‘modern’ knowledge, which Islam is seen as providing, has, he says, led science to be freed from moral control, resulting in using knowledge for tremendous destruction, including wars and environmental destruction, colonialism and capitalist exploitation. By ‘Islamising’ various sciences, he argues, Muslims will overcome their perceived fear that such knowledge might negatively impact on their faith and identity. By equipping themselves with knowledge of such disciplines, suitably cleansed of their atheistic assumptions, they will, he says, be able to play the role that God envisages for them as His ‘deputies’ on earth, establishing peace and justice and individual and social well-being in this world and in the Hereafter. It will, in fact, so he claims, strengthen Muslims in their faith as, apparently, new discoveries in the fields of social and natural sciences will confirm the truths of the Qur’an, unravelling new meanings of the text.
Ahmad praises the role played by numerous Indian madrasas in the anti-colonial struggle and in providing mass education, particularly to the poor. Yet, he argues, there is an urgent need for madrasa reform. He critiques the present madrasa curriculum, pleading for it to be ‘missionary oriented’, stressing research, scholarly objectivity, openness and tolerance, freedom of thought and focussed less on memorisation and more on understanding. He laments the relatively little attention given in the madrasas to the learning of conversational Arabic, on comprehension of the Qur’an and familiarity with the contemporary world, and the overwhelming stress given to medieval fiqh or jurisprudence, which, he says, in taught in a way to magnify sectarian differences. In his scheme of re-orienting madrasa education he says the main objective of the Qur’an—which he defines as conducting one’s life in accordance to God’s Will, including exploring the mysteries of the universe—should be given particular attention. Madrasas in India, he says, must also be sensitive to the country’s multi-religious context and to the need for inter-community harmony. They must also consider the question of the employment of their graduates. They should provide students at the higher levels the possibility of short-term courses in various ‘modern’ subjects to allow them to appear for entrance examinations conducted by different universities. Universities historically associated with Muslim education should accept the principle of equivalence between students from madrasas and from universities at various levels to enable madrasa students to join universities. Madrasas, Ahmad says, must also teach their students crafts and the English language and should use new teaching aids to make education more interesting.
In order to ‘defend’ Islam from its ‘detractors’, Ahmad writes that madrasas should enable students to study Islam in the contemporary socio-political context and must inform them about ‘anti-Islamic’ ideologies so that they can combat them. The usefulness of teaching antiquated philosophy, as madrasas presently do, is, he says, dubious, since they are unable to confront the anti-Islamic writings of Orientalists. In order to gain a more contextually sensitive understanding of Islam students, Ahmad argues, must not be taught only the classical Qur’anic commentaries but must also be familiarised with recent commentaries that take into account modern-day issues and problems. Tolerance for Muslims following other schools of jurisprudence must also be cultivated.
Ahmad then examines the Government Policy for the Education of Minorities, as laid out in the National Education Policy document of 1986, which set various ambitious targets for minority education. These included imparting technical skills through community polytechnics to be established in areas of predominantly minority population; evaluation of textbooks from the point of view of ‘national integration’; orientation and training programmes for principals, teachers and managers of minority educational institutions to be undertaken by the National Council for Educational Research and Training; extending University Grants Commission scheme of assistance to universities and colleges to start coaching classes for students from educationally backward minorities; establishing resource centres at the Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Kashmir University, Marathwada University and Osmania University; establishing early childhood education centres in areas predominantly inhabited by educational backward minorities; promoting the teaching of mathematics, science and English in madrasas; setting up early childhood educational centres in areas predominantly inhabited by educationally ‘backward’ minorities; requesting state governments to set up an institutionalized mechanism to compile statistical information regarding educational facilities available to educationally ‘backward’ minorities; directing state governments to eliminate delays in sanctioning teachers’ posts for linguistic minorities and ensure availability of textbooks in these languages, and, if required, setting up printing presses and teachers’ training facilities in these languages; ensuring fair representation of minority-managed educational institutions in government schemes for computer literacy, vocational and technical education and crafts’ training; establishing girls’ schools and hostels in areas of high minority concentration, along with provision of other incentives such as free mid-day meals and uniforms; and setting up state-wise federations of minority NGOs and educational institutions for helping implement government schemes. Ahmad does not discuss the actual implementation of these ambitious programmes, but appears sceptical, owing to what he sees as the indifference to Muslim issues of many bureaucrats responsible for implementing these programmes as well as lack of awareness about these programmes among Muslims.
Ahmad also discusses various proposals suggested by a workshop on Muslim education organised in Delhi in 1988 by the Institute of Objective Studies, including forming small travelling groups or jama‘ats of Muslims who would travel from place to place creating awareness among Muslims of the need for education; inclusion in Friday sermons of appeals to Muslims to educate their children; commissioning of studies by social scientists identifying social factors for Muslim educational marginalisation; organising evening classes for various subjects for Muslim students as well as coaching centres for professional courses; setting up Muslim hostels in different towns, critique of anti-Islamic references in textbooks used in state schools; encouraging madrasas to provide general education to the junior high school level, in addition to religious knowledge; opening study centres of open universities in larger madrasas and preparing video cassettes on various subjects for use in madrasas.
2. Ahmad, Washim, ‘Psychology of Education: Madrasas of UP’, Economic and Political Weekly, 25-31 March, 2000.
(http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2000&leaf=03&filename=1120&filetype=html)
This article focuses on the maktabs and madrasas of eastern Uttar Pradesh. The author argues that the sort of education that these institutions today impart must be understood in their historical context, particularly in relation to the British divide-and-rule policy that resulted in the increasing marginalisation of large numbers of Muslims, who, in the aftermath of the 1857 Revolt, were seen by the British as potentially subversive, and, hence, were cruelly suppressed. This led to an increasing insularity among the ulama, who believed that Islam was under ‘threat’ from the British and so consciously eschewed any association with the forms of knowledge associated with the British. This led to what the author calls an ‘attitude of exclusiveness’, ‘isolationism’ and mental ‘ghettoisation’ characteristic of the ulama and their madrasas. ‘The historical and psychological processes that have gone into the making of these institutions’, the author says, ‘are mostly the creations of a reactionary nature’. Hence, he stresses, ‘it is imperative to understand their psychology’.
Madrasas, the author argues, are characterised by an ‘exclusivist attitude’, which is bolstered by the fact that ‘excessive importance is attached to the study of Islam in utter disregard of other systems of education’. Their underlying assumption, he says, is that ‘nothing valuable exists outside, nothing at least worth being assimilated from any other system’. Consequently, many ulama are averse to any change in response to changing conditions and are opposed to any structural change in the madrasa curriculum. The exclusivist mind-set that the madrasas aim at cultivating, the author says, results in negative views of other communities, and since the madrasas cater only to Muslims their students are denied any opportunity for meaningful interaction with people of other communities. Hence, they grow up feeling alienated in India’s religiously plural environment. ‘They feel out of place if they pass through a non-Muslim area’, the author says, adding, ‘On buses they hesitate even when asking for a ticket, and in the trains, they don’t easily mix or socialise with other fellow travellers, comfortable only while among their own kind’.
Yoginder Sikand
1. Ahmad, Manzoor, Islamic Education: Redefinition of Aims and Methodology, New Delhi: Genuine Publications, 1990.
This book argues forcefully for the promotion of ‘modern’ education among Muslims, seeing this as in accordance with Islam rather than being opposed to it. In his preface, Ali Ashraf writes that madrasas generally operate with the ‘un-Islamic’ notion of a rigid distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge, focussing almost wholly on the former. Because of this, their students are ill-equipped for the ‘modern’ world and are not able to properly interpret and apply their faith in the contemporary context. On the other hand, he says, the way in which ‘modern’ education has come to be defined and constructed leads to an alienation from religion. Hence, Muslim students, whether in madrasas or ‘secular’ schools, are faced with one form of alienation or the other. This calls for the need to synthesise Islamic and ‘modern’ education.
Manzoor Ahmad further elaborates on this point, calling for a radical overhaul of the Muslim system of education. He critiques what he sees as the absence of moral content in ‘modern’ schools, contrasting this with the notion of education in Islam, which is geared to winning God’s pleasure and is not simply a means for material progress in this world. He argues that, in contrast to Christianity, there is no rigid distinction between ‘religion’ and the profane world in Islam, and, hence, between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge. Islam, he says, also envisages knowledge as free for all and as a life-long process. Islamic education aims at promoting righteousness, of the individual as well as of society, based on the Islamic revelation, thus providing a harmonious balance between individual and social needs. Ahmad quotes from the Qur’an and the Hadith to make this point and to stress the importance Islam gives to knowledge and moral action based on knowledge.
Ahmad argues that the rigid dualism characteristic of Muslim education today is principally a result of the colonial encounter, a reaction to Western hegemony which caused many ulama to shun Western forms of knowledge as ‘un-Islamic’ simply because of their association with the colonialists. At the same time, this dualism was encouraged by the colonial rulers, owing to the legacy of a tradition of hostility between religion and the state and science and religion in Europe, which was reflected in the educational systems that they established in their colonies that were premised on a separation between religion and worldly affairs. Ahmad discusses the efforts of Muslim reformists in India, such as Sayyed Ahmad Khan and the pioneers of the Nadwat ul-‘Ulama, to counter this dualism, but laments the fact that it still exists, primarily owing to the unfamiliarity of most ulama with ‘modern’ social sciences as well as the inability or unwillingness of ‘Western’ educated Muslims to dialogue with the ulama. He pleads for bridging the gulf between the two groups in order to harmonise religion and science and prepare what he sees as committed, practising Muslims who are able to excel in all spheres of life.
Ahmad also calls for the ‘Islamisation’ of various sciences, arguing that the manner in which these have been constructed leave God completely out of the picture because of the historical rivalry between science and church in Christendom, which, he says, was largely absent among Muslims. He critiques what he calls the myth of the objectivity of modern sciences. The absence of a proper normative framework for ‘modern’ knowledge, which Islam is seen as providing, has, he says, led science to be freed from moral control, resulting in using knowledge for tremendous destruction, including wars and environmental destruction, colonialism and capitalist exploitation. By ‘Islamising’ various sciences, he argues, Muslims will overcome their perceived fear that such knowledge might negatively impact on their faith and identity. By equipping themselves with knowledge of such disciplines, suitably cleansed of their atheistic assumptions, they will, he says, be able to play the role that God envisages for them as His ‘deputies’ on earth, establishing peace and justice and individual and social well-being in this world and in the Hereafter. It will, in fact, so he claims, strengthen Muslims in their faith as, apparently, new discoveries in the fields of social and natural sciences will confirm the truths of the Qur’an, unravelling new meanings of the text.
Ahmad praises the role played by numerous Indian madrasas in the anti-colonial struggle and in providing mass education, particularly to the poor. Yet, he argues, there is an urgent need for madrasa reform. He critiques the present madrasa curriculum, pleading for it to be ‘missionary oriented’, stressing research, scholarly objectivity, openness and tolerance, freedom of thought and focussed less on memorisation and more on understanding. He laments the relatively little attention given in the madrasas to the learning of conversational Arabic, on comprehension of the Qur’an and familiarity with the contemporary world, and the overwhelming stress given to medieval fiqh or jurisprudence, which, he says, in taught in a way to magnify sectarian differences. In his scheme of re-orienting madrasa education he says the main objective of the Qur’an—which he defines as conducting one’s life in accordance to God’s Will, including exploring the mysteries of the universe—should be given particular attention. Madrasas in India, he says, must also be sensitive to the country’s multi-religious context and to the need for inter-community harmony. They must also consider the question of the employment of their graduates. They should provide students at the higher levels the possibility of short-term courses in various ‘modern’ subjects to allow them to appear for entrance examinations conducted by different universities. Universities historically associated with Muslim education should accept the principle of equivalence between students from madrasas and from universities at various levels to enable madrasa students to join universities. Madrasas, Ahmad says, must also teach their students crafts and the English language and should use new teaching aids to make education more interesting.
In order to ‘defend’ Islam from its ‘detractors’, Ahmad writes that madrasas should enable students to study Islam in the contemporary socio-political context and must inform them about ‘anti-Islamic’ ideologies so that they can combat them. The usefulness of teaching antiquated philosophy, as madrasas presently do, is, he says, dubious, since they are unable to confront the anti-Islamic writings of Orientalists. In order to gain a more contextually sensitive understanding of Islam students, Ahmad argues, must not be taught only the classical Qur’anic commentaries but must also be familiarised with recent commentaries that take into account modern-day issues and problems. Tolerance for Muslims following other schools of jurisprudence must also be cultivated.
Ahmad then examines the Government Policy for the Education of Minorities, as laid out in the National Education Policy document of 1986, which set various ambitious targets for minority education. These included imparting technical skills through community polytechnics to be established in areas of predominantly minority population; evaluation of textbooks from the point of view of ‘national integration’; orientation and training programmes for principals, teachers and managers of minority educational institutions to be undertaken by the National Council for Educational Research and Training; extending University Grants Commission scheme of assistance to universities and colleges to start coaching classes for students from educationally backward minorities; establishing resource centres at the Aligarh Muslim University, Jamia Millia Islamia, Kashmir University, Marathwada University and Osmania University; establishing early childhood education centres in areas predominantly inhabited by educational backward minorities; promoting the teaching of mathematics, science and English in madrasas; setting up early childhood educational centres in areas predominantly inhabited by educationally ‘backward’ minorities; requesting state governments to set up an institutionalized mechanism to compile statistical information regarding educational facilities available to educationally ‘backward’ minorities; directing state governments to eliminate delays in sanctioning teachers’ posts for linguistic minorities and ensure availability of textbooks in these languages, and, if required, setting up printing presses and teachers’ training facilities in these languages; ensuring fair representation of minority-managed educational institutions in government schemes for computer literacy, vocational and technical education and crafts’ training; establishing girls’ schools and hostels in areas of high minority concentration, along with provision of other incentives such as free mid-day meals and uniforms; and setting up state-wise federations of minority NGOs and educational institutions for helping implement government schemes. Ahmad does not discuss the actual implementation of these ambitious programmes, but appears sceptical, owing to what he sees as the indifference to Muslim issues of many bureaucrats responsible for implementing these programmes as well as lack of awareness about these programmes among Muslims.
Ahmad also discusses various proposals suggested by a workshop on Muslim education organised in Delhi in 1988 by the Institute of Objective Studies, including forming small travelling groups or jama‘ats of Muslims who would travel from place to place creating awareness among Muslims of the need for education; inclusion in Friday sermons of appeals to Muslims to educate their children; commissioning of studies by social scientists identifying social factors for Muslim educational marginalisation; organising evening classes for various subjects for Muslim students as well as coaching centres for professional courses; setting up Muslim hostels in different towns, critique of anti-Islamic references in textbooks used in state schools; encouraging madrasas to provide general education to the junior high school level, in addition to religious knowledge; opening study centres of open universities in larger madrasas and preparing video cassettes on various subjects for use in madrasas.
2. Ahmad, Washim, ‘Psychology of Education: Madrasas of UP’, Economic and Political Weekly, 25-31 March, 2000.
(http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2000&leaf=03&filename=1120&filetype=html)
This article focuses on the maktabs and madrasas of eastern Uttar Pradesh. The author argues that the sort of education that these institutions today impart must be understood in their historical context, particularly in relation to the British divide-and-rule policy that resulted in the increasing marginalisation of large numbers of Muslims, who, in the aftermath of the 1857 Revolt, were seen by the British as potentially subversive, and, hence, were cruelly suppressed. This led to an increasing insularity among the ulama, who believed that Islam was under ‘threat’ from the British and so consciously eschewed any association with the forms of knowledge associated with the British. This led to what the author calls an ‘attitude of exclusiveness’, ‘isolationism’ and mental ‘ghettoisation’ characteristic of the ulama and their madrasas. ‘The historical and psychological processes that have gone into the making of these institutions’, the author says, ‘are mostly the creations of a reactionary nature’. Hence, he stresses, ‘it is imperative to understand their psychology’.
Madrasas, the author argues, are characterised by an ‘exclusivist attitude’, which is bolstered by the fact that ‘excessive importance is attached to the study of Islam in utter disregard of other systems of education’. Their underlying assumption, he says, is that ‘nothing valuable exists outside, nothing at least worth being assimilated from any other system’. Consequently, many ulama are averse to any change in response to changing conditions and are opposed to any structural change in the madrasa curriculum. The exclusivist mind-set that the madrasas aim at cultivating, the author says, results in negative views of other communities, and since the madrasas cater only to Muslims their students are denied any opportunity for meaningful interaction with people of other communities. Hence, they grow up feeling alienated in India’s religiously plural environment. ‘They feel out of place if they pass through a non-Muslim area’, the author says, adding, ‘On buses they hesitate even when asking for a ticket, and in the trains, they don’t easily mix or socialise with other fellow travellers, comfortable only while among their own kind’.
The education imparted in the madrasas generally ‘narrowly conditions’ the mind, says the author, creating ‘a sense of self-sufficiency without ever really educating’. Students are taught to look at the world only through the lens of Islam as narrowly defined. For instance, they know little or nothing about the history of India other than the deeds and lives of various Muslim rulers and Muslim scholars, seemingly not being concerned with other aspects of Indian history. Even the learning of subjects such as English is seen through a religious lens, as a means for engaging in missionary work among non-Muslims rather than as a means to learn from others. Furthermore, students are sought to be enthused with religious zeal to work for what is labelled as the ‘cause of Islam’, but, so the author says, are left ignorant of ‘cold facts, ground realities, and a true understanding of the situation that they are living in’. This is routinely reflected in the speeches and writings of the ulama. This is, in part, a reflection of the fact that the education imparted in the madrasas is largely ‘bookish’, with students not taught to relate their studies to actual social reality and to develop their own understanding by analysis and criticism.
Furthermore, they are actively encouraged to relate to other Muslim sects in a fiercely polemical mode, being taught by their teachers to believe that their own interpretation of Islam is the only normatively valid one. Because of the narrow education they receive, madrasa graduates have few skills that can earn them a job other than as imams or as madrasa teachers, thus going on to reinforce the system without making any changes in it. Consequently, far from alone playing any significant role in ‘nation-building’, they are even unable to help ‘build’ the Muslim community, who they claim to be serving, or so the author claims.
The author suggests that a radically reformed and modernised syllabus be tried out on an experimental basis in a small number of madrasas willing to accept it, for which well-trained teachers should be employed. This experiment might enthuse other madrasas to follow suit over time. Further, instead of allowing madrasas to monopolise the production of Islamic religious specialists, the task of training such experts should be given to the departments of Islamic studies in various universities. This would, the author argues, ‘relieve the masses from the suffocating embrace of religious scholarship’, while also saving the community the enormous resources that it spends on madrasas every year.
3. Akhter, Andalib, ‘Madrasa Faculty Say Yes To Modern Syllabus’, Islamic Voice, February, 2003.
This article is a report of a workshop involving madrasa teachers, organized by the Department of Education, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Contrary to the general perception that madrasas in India are averse to the idea of ‘modernisation’ of the education system, many madrasa teachers in Delhi, this article claims, favour inclusion of ‘modern’ subjects in the curriculum, at least at the elementary level. However, they are unwilling to accept any intervention from the government in their functioning, fearing that this would dilute their autonomy and religious identity. A major problem in introducing ‘modern’ subjects in the madrasas, the article says, is that few madrasas can afford the high salaries that teachers of these subjects generally expect. The author argues that if sensitively approached, many madrasa teachers are willing to experiment with reforms and innovations. However, such reforms, he says, have to come from within and cannot be imposed from without, including by the state.
4. Akhter, Andalib, ‘Madrasas on the Fast Track’, Islamic Voice, December 2001.
This article looks at the proposal of the Union Human Resources Development Ministry (HRD) to offer funds to ‘modernise’ madrasas and bring them into the ‘national mainstream’. In this regard, the Ministry launched a scheme to recruit science teachers for selected madrasas and to provide them with computers. This article refers to a report issued by HRD Ministry that claims that the government is spending Rs.12 crore annually on madrasas and that it has increased the remuneration for teachers appointed in madrasas to teach ‘modern’ subjects to Rs. 3000. The budget of the National Bureau for Promotion of Urdu Language, the report says, had been substantially raised to Rs. 8 crore in 2001 in order to encourage computer education among Muslims. The article mentions that some 100 such computer centres have been set up in 67 districts in 22 states, in which 7000 students are being trained in computer applications. The article merely reproduces official figures and makes no attempt at explaining the actual impact of the government’s schemes.
5. Alam, Arshad, Science in Madrasas
(http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2005&leaf=04&filename=8583&filetype=html )
The author notes that while there is much discussion today in ulama circles about the presumed compatibility between science and Islam, this does not entail any critical re-examination of the ulama’s understanding of religion. Rather, every effort is made to ‘prove’ that the findings of modern science are already present in the Qur’an and Hadith. In order to defend Islam from possible scientific scrutiny they provide novel interpretations of these textual sources. As the ulama and many madrasa students see it, science is hardly distinguishable from technology. Hence, while they willingly accept and legitimize the use of modern technology and inventions, they do not accept those assumptions of Western science that conflict with their understanding of Islam. Rather than talk of Islam and science’, madrasa students and teachers, in their defence of Islam, seek to prove Islam is science.
However, the author argues that the acceptance of modern technology and inventions as well as the desire to prove that ‘Islam is science’ is itself ‘a very modern activity […] a sign perhaps of an internal churning within Indian Muslims’. ‘The very fact that science is being explained Islamically’, the author says, ‘points to its influence and impact’ on the ulama. It reflects the fact that madrasa students seek, in their own ways, to make sense of the changing world around them, in order to ‘undo a lot of their own anxieties, the resolution of which intellectually satisfies them’.
Another way in which some madrasa students seek to relate to science and appropriate it is by claiming that pious Muslims discovered all sciences. This, they say, was because these men found guidance and inspiration for their work in the Qur’an. This assertion is backed by the claim that since the Qur’an is the last word on everything in this world and beyond, it contains information about everything, including science. Madrasa students attribute the decline of the scientific tradition among Muslims to the presumed decline in Muslims’ commitment to Islam. They argue that the scientific advancement made by Christians and Jews was because, or so they claim, they studied the Qur’an. Some students even claim that some major scientists were Muslims but their names were changed and hence the world does not know them as having actually been Muslim. This, and the fact that madrasa students and the ulama are enthusiastic about the use of a range of technological inventions and gadgets, suggests, the author argues, that “this sector is increasingly feeling the pressures of ‘modernity’ and trying to come to terms with it”. Yet, he adds, ‘this understanding of science is not about the celebration of a critical individual. Rather its sole concern is about improving an average Muslims’ everyday life. Science here is not about creative uncertainties, of ceaseless explorations, of being a method of critical awareness. Science here is all about livelihood and consumption’.
Such a conception of science, the author says, is widely shared. Madrasa teachers and students argue that science is not anti-Islam. Rather, ‘it is a tool to show the glory of God’. Hence, they stress, ‘Every Muslim should study science but with an Islamic purpose: of proving that every word of the Qur’an is correct. However, if there is contradiction between Qur’an and science, then one should endeavour to falsify the facts of science’. The author relates this approach to modern science to the difference that the ulama make between ‘ilm or religious knowledge based on the Qur’an and Hadith and fann or skills required to lead a comfortable life, including crafts or trading skills and also the scientific study of social and material reality needed to earn a living. The former is seen as constituting ‘core knowledge’. The latter is considered to be an ‘addition […] to this core’. This ‘utilitarian conception of science’, the author argues, helps to reinforce the legitimacy of the ulama at a time when they are no longer the sole transmitters of religious knowledge, with Islam being increasingly accessed by ‘ordinary’ Muslims through print and television, resulting in the undermining of the authority of the ulama. Hence, modern technology is willingly embraced by the ulama to provide them new means to communicate with ‘ordinary’ Muslims and to arrest their own declining influence.
The ulama’s approach to science is also a means, the author says, to give them a ‘contemporary face’ at a time when they and the madrasas are increasingly being criticized for not including ‘modern’ subjects in the madrasa curriculum. ‘It is perhaps under such pressure’, the author says, ‘that madrasas are now keen to point out that Islam is not anti-science and that there is no harm in teaching science in madrasas’. However, as the author rightly points out, ‘It is […] another matter as to how many madrasas would really promote the teaching of science within their sacred boundaries’.
In conclusion, the author argues that, as the ulama of the madrasas see it, traditional religious subjects should remain the core of the madrasa curriculum. Science is welcomed provided it does not disturb this core, which is considered to be eternally true and beyond critical scrutiny in the light of ‘modern’ science. Far from being a critical methodology, science here becomes a tool for the further defence of religion. This fact needs to be noted by advocates of madrasa ‘reform’, and the author argues for the need for developing ‘a model through which religious and non-religious subjects can be integrated into a well meaning whole’ if the object of ‘reform’ is to “produce a critical citizenry through ‘modern’ madrasa education”. In this regard, he says, the government’s programme of ‘modernisation’ of madrasa education is critically flawed, because instead of enabling madrasa students to join the educational ‘mainstream’, it simply ‘gives sops to madrasas by way of some funds to arrange for teaching of modern subjects’, but without thinking of the purposes of introducing such subjects in madrasas and the results which it might have. By simply making ‘modern’ subjects an ‘add-on’ to the existing religious core, he says, the end result might well be the training of students whose only interest in science is to prove that all scientific discoveries and inventions are contained in the Islamic textual tradition.
6. Alam, Arshad, State, Community and Ideology: Locating Contemporary Madrasas, M.Phil. Dissertation, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2000.
This dissertation provides an overview of madrasa education in India from a political economy perspective, focusing particularly in the changes in the system over the decades. It aims to understand the location of the madrasas within the matrix of state, community and ideology, focusing on the madrasas’ role in the formation and reinforcement of Muslim community identity, their diverse relationships with the wider, religiously plural Indian society and with the Indian state. It is, as Alam puts it, an effort to understand how madrasas, as civil society institutions, seek to circumvent the hegemony of the state and engage in the creation of their own ‘hegemonic influence’.
Alam points out that in pre-British India, madrasas, particularly those patronized by various Muslim rulers, catered to the elites, including ‘high’ caste Muslims and even, in many cases, Hindus. ‘Low’ caste Muslims were excluded, by and large, from the system. Medieval Indian madrasas were geared to training not just religious specialists but also government officials. Hence, madrasas taught not just religious subjects but also subjects that were needed for civil servants, such as Persian, calligraphy, philosophy, mathematics and so on. Madrasas varied in their emphasis on certain subjects, some giving more stress on religious subjects (manqulat) and others on secular disciplines (ma‘qulat). Generally, a student learnt a mix of both sorts of subjects and then went on to specialise in the subject(s) of his choice, depending on the career that he planned for himself. There was, as Alam points, no single or fixed curriculum in the madrasas, and they displayed varying political positions. Alam talks about a symbiotic relationship between leading ulama, trained in the madrasas, and the Muslim nobility, the ulama providing legitimacy to the rulers and ‘manufacturing consent’, and the rulers, in turn, patronizing the ulama.
Discussing the changes in the overall orientation of the madrasas in the colonial period, Alam shows how, with the collapse of the Mughal state, the ulama had to turn to the general Muslim populace, including the ‘low’ caste Muslims, for patronage. Hence, the colonial period witnessed, for the first time, a growing number of ‘low’ caste Muslims, many from poor families, enrolling in the madrasas, a feature that continues today. In turn, this was linked to an increasing involvement of the ulama in reforming popular religious traditions among the ‘low’ caste Muslims, exhorting them to abide by the dictates of the shari‘ah and to become ‘better’ Muslims. This concern for the reforming of popular traditions was a project in which both Muslim and Hindu elites were deeply implicated, both seeking to augment numbers of their co-religionists, stem possible conversions among the ‘low’ castes to other religions and present themselves as the ‘natural leaders’ of the reified religious communities that they sought to construct and lead. Alam sees this concern for the Muslim ‘public’ as a novel development, pointing out that in the past leading ulama associated with the Muslim courts displayed little concern for the religious instruction of ‘common’ Muslims. He argues that this shifting constituency of the ulama must be seen, in part, as an effort by the ulama to maintain their hegemony within civil society in the absence of royal patronage.
This growing concern on the part of the ulama with the private lives of ‘ordinary’ Muslims, which today is the overwhelming focus of the ulama, was a pragmatic recognition of the fact that, under the British, the authority of the ulama had been reduced only to that sphere, Alam argues. It also reflected the colonial state’s own way of conceptualizing Indian society as consisting of various religious communities whose private lives and personal laws should not be interfered with, and the colonial notion of religion as being simply concerned with the individual’s personal life, having no relevance in the public sphere. This, ironically, worked, in a way, to the benefit of the ulama, who used this freedom to carve out their own area of influence by seeking to ‘hegemonise’ the Muslim private sphere. Accordingly, the curriculum of the madrasas focused particularly on issues related to the private lives of Muslims.
Alam then looks at the contemporary roles of the madrasas and their ulama. He discusses their role in the formation and construction of Muslim community identity and in maintaining community boundaries between Muslims and others. He sees the ulama as operating essentially in the private or personal domain, a phenomenon that goes back to British colonial times when Islamic law was restricted only to Muslims’ personal affairs. It is this personal realm that the ulama seek to represent and ‘hegemonise’, in response, Alam says, to the perception of threats to Muslim community identity emanating from the homogenizing, intrusive state that increasingly defines itself in ‘upper’ caste Hindu terms and from anti-Muslim Hindu extremist forces. This also entails a critique of popular religious traditions among the Muslims that the ulama see as ‘un-Islamic’. Alam sees the sort of ‘Islamisation’ that the madrasas aim at promoting as ‘a movement to make Islam a relevant source of power and social control’, while at the same time glossing over internal inequalities and distinctions of caste and class as well as regional cultural diversities. Alam seeks to link this discussion to the ulama’s own ambitions of representing the Muslim community by staking their claim to being the spokesmen of Islam. This explains, Alam argues, the stiff resistance put up by the ulama to any effort on the part of the state to interfere or intervene in the personal realm (such as for reforming Muslim Personal Law), because it is precisely that closely-guarded realm that the ulama seek to ‘hegemonise’ in order to press their claim as custodians of all Muslims and of Islam as such. This concern with the protection of the private sphere reflects the colonial notion that religion is largely a private matter.
Yet, as Alam also points out, the notion of Muslim community identity that the ulama seek to reinforce is not a monolithic one, since the ulama and their madrasas are fiercely divided on sectarian lines. The madrasas are geared not simply to the teaching of Islam but, rather, to a particular sectarian version or vision of Islam, each madrasa being associated with one or the other competing Islamic sect or maslak, each of which sees itself as representing the single normative Islamic tradition and views the others as deviant, if not ‘un-Islamic’. The madrasas, therefore, play a key role in perpetuating sectarian versions of Islam while, ironically, claiming to champion the notion of a monolithic Islam. In other words, they are concerned with imparting a denomination- or sectarian-determined notion of Islamic identity, which makes co-ordination among the madrasas of different sects an almost impossible task.
Alam also critiques the ways in which many contemporary ulama have understood the notion of ‘ilm or knowledge. Pointing out that the Qur’an does not make a rigid distinction between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ knowledge, he says that most ulama have sought to restrict the notion of ‘ilm to religious knowledge alone, in which they are specialists. This is linked to the ulama’s own claims of speaking for all Muslims, by-passing the hegemonic activity of the state and extending their hegemony over Muslim civil society. Consequently, efforts by the state and other actors to reform the madrasa curriculum by introducing ‘modern’ subjects are often condemned as ‘interference’ in religious affairs and even as ‘conspiracies’ to dilute or destroy Muslim identity. Alam sees the halting efforts made by some madrasas to ‘modernise’ as hardly adequate and appeals for what he calls ‘a radical rupture within the Islamic epistemology’. However, he believes that the state is hardly interested in promoting this agenda since it has a vested interest in strengthening the authority of the ulama through which various political parties seek to garner Muslim votes.
The ‘upper’ caste Muslim elites, in addition to the ulama, too, are not in favour of any radical transformation of the madrasas, or so Alam claims, even as increasing numbers of poor, ‘low’ caste Muslim children enrol therein. In this sense, he says, the ‘low’ caste Muslims have come to constitute the ‘public’ for the ulama, who see them as in need of ‘true’ Islam. In turn, children passing out of the madrasas have bleak life-chances in an increasingly competitive world, the only option for many of them being to become ulama who promote the ideological concerns of their particular sect by opening more madrasas.
The study then examines the on-going debate on Muslim Personal Law (MPL), which is one of the major concerns of the ulama, the nitty-gritty of which they teach in the madrasas, and projected by them and Muslim political elites as the core of Muslim community identity. Alam argues that the state’s reluctance to intervene in the domain of MPL stems from an erroneous notion, which the ulama also uphold (in order, Alam suggests, to bolster their own authority), of Muslims being a homogenous block defined only by religion. Alam sees this reified notion of Muslim identity as a colonial legacy that has afforded little space for the articulation of caste or class ideologies and identities within the larger Muslim community. It thus becomes handy both for the state as well as the ulama in order to represent Muslims as primarily a religious community, with the ulama as its leaders. Only in this way, Alam says, can the ulama stake their claim to be the sole spokesmen of the community, a claim that the Indian state, too, is glad to recognize. In this sense, Alam says, madrasas must be seen as sites of social reproduction of the ulama that are conferred legitimacy and authority by the Indian state. The state is equally complicit as the ulama in this bargain, and no political party wishes to antagonize the ulama for fear of losing Muslim votes. Consequently, Alam laments, alternate Muslim voices, that offer different perspectives on Islam and shari‘ah, or those of ‘low’ caste Muslim activists seeking to challenge ashraf or ‘high’ caste Muslim, hegemony go unrecognized by the state while also being condemned by the ulama as ‘divisive’ or even as ‘anti-Islamic’.
This study rejects the notion of Muslims as a homogenous religious block, highlighting internal class and caste distinctions and the growing ‘lower’ caste Muslim mobilization in different parts of the country that seeks to challenge the authority of the ‘high’ caste or ashraf Muslims and the ulama who seek to downplay the issue of caste and class within the larger Muslim fold. This, of course, is precisely the same strategy adopted by ‘upper’ caste Hindu elites, whose discourse of ‘Hindu unity’ and Hindutva is intended to deny internal caste/class differences within the ‘Hindu’ fold and thereby to perpetuate ‘upper’ caste hegemony.
7. Alam, Arshad, ‘Understanding Madrasas’, Economic and Political Weekly, 31 May, 2003
(http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2003&leaf=05&filename=5871&filetype=html)
Key to understanding the madrasas, this article argues, is the fact that modern madrasas were established during colonial times in order to guard the private sphere of Muslims from ‘modernist’ intrusions. Within the private sphere they engaged in what the author calls ‘hegemonic representation of the Muslim masses’. Contemporary madrasas continue to use the colonial dichotomy of public and private spheres to resist state intrusions in their pursuit of a particular kind of religious education. Introducing ‘modern’ education in madrasas would defeat their very purpose, the author claims.
The author argues for a historical understanding of the madrasas to appreciate the fact that they have always been undergoing change, rather than remaining static, unlike what is often, but wrongly, imagined. Advocates of madrasa reform must appreciate this fact in order to challenge the argument that madrasas are impervious to reform. It is crucial, the author argues, to distinguish between medieval and contemporary madrasas. The former were often patronised by the nobility and trained prospective bureaucrats, in addition to ulama. Accordingly, they taught both ‘religious’ as well as ‘secular’ subjects.
That religion was something separate, concerned only with the personal life of an individual, was an idea alien to the medieval educational system, the author says. This distinction was the specific contribution of the colonial period, reflecting the British experience and understanding of ‘religion’ as a separate category. Building on this notion, madrasas narrowed down the focus of their teaching to what came to be understood as ‘religious’, as other subjects now came to be taught in universities. As religion became increasingly privatised, and in the absence of real Muslim political authority, the ulama and the madrasas increasingly came to focus on seeking to control and regulate the private lives of ‘ordinary’ Muslims. This provided them their major source of authority and influence within the community. Accepting, as a matter of strategy, this colonial logic, the ulama ought to insulate the personal sphere in which state intrusions were resisted. Within this sphere they were able to engage in the ‘hegemonic representation’ of the masses. Madrasas served as the most important tool for this ‘hegemonic activity’, through which a particular notion of Muslim identity, based on a close conformity to the practice or sunnah of the Prophet and eschewal of all local practices and beliefs, was sought to be instilled and reproduced. This represented an elitist project aimed at a critique of the customary practices of ‘low’ class/caste Muslims, which were seen as ‘Hinduistic’ and, hence, as in need of being ‘cleansed’.
The author argues that the colonial category of religion as a private affair and the colonial distinction between the private and public spheres continues to be used by the ulama today to resist any efforts on the part of the state or ‘modernist’ Muslims to reform or regulate the madrasas, this being seen as threatening to undermine the ulama’s authority and being branded as unwarranted ‘interference’ in religious matters.
8. Alam, Mukhtar, Madrasas and Terrorism: Myth or Reality?, New Delhi: Indian Social Institute, 2004.
In recent years, this book argues, madrasas in India have come under increasing attack as being alleged ‘dens of terror’. In particular, madrasas located on the border between India and Nepal have been decried as being reportedly associated with the Pakistani Inter-Services’ Intelligence. This study, based on a survey of several madrasas located along the Indo-Nepal frontier in Bihar, West Bengal and West Bengal, argues that the anti-madrasa propaganda is misplaced. The author blames anti-Muslim Hindutva forces for this propaganda, and, based on an opinion survey of ulama, madrasa students and government, including police, officials, says that this propaganda has no truth in it.
The author argues that, far from working in league with ‘anti-national’ forces, these madrasas are engaged in promoting education among impoverished Muslim families living in areas where the state has hardly made any provision for their education. Several of these madrasas are, indeed, conservative in their orientation and are opposed to the inclusion of any modern disciplines in their curriculum. This, however, so the author claims, by no means suggests that they are ‘anti-national’. At the same time, the author laments, some ulama want to restrict education in the madrasas only to narrowly-defined religious subjects or to ‘those tenets of Islam that suit them most’ and ‘preach that people should not question the authority of the ulama and should not apply reason in religious matters’. By opposing ‘modern’ education, these ulama, the author contends, are ‘working against the original vision of Islam’.
According to the study says, in recent years some smaller madrasas in the border areas surveyed have included ‘modern’ subjects in their syllabus. The argument that all madrasas are averse to reform is, therefore, mistaken. Most of the students, many of their parents and 52% of the teachers, favour some degree of ‘modernisation’ of the madrasa syllabus, including the teaching of computers and English and vocational training. Many of them argue that madrasas should be restructured in such a way that after a few years’ education children can opt to either join regular schools or else go on for higher religious education in order to train as ulama.
The study provides some interesting statistics about the madrasas surveyed in the border districts. Most of them were established after 1960, and the majority of them are independent, not being affiliated with various state government madrasa boards. In some districts along the border madrasas are playing a major role in promoting female literacy. These madrasas cater mainly to poorer families. Only 39% of the fathers of the male madrasa students and 11.4% of the fathers of female madrasa students have studied beyond the primary level. Most of the mothers of madrasa students are unable to read and write. Most of the parents of the students are small peasants and landless labourers. Poverty, plus the fact that it is often only in the madrasas that Urdu is taught, makes madrasas an attractive option for many poor Muslim families in these areas, the study argues.
The study concludes with a list of suggestions for madrasa reform, including the institution of a Central Board of Madrasa Education under the Ministry of Human Resources Development which would include both ulama as well as ‘modern’-educated specialists in it; incorporating ‘modern’ subjects in the madrasa curriculum, to be taught with the help of texts prepared by the National Council for Educational Research and Training, inducting school- and college-educated teachers, including women, in the madrasas; authorizing local level statutory panchayat committees to run government-funded madrasa modernisation schemes; declaring unlawful defamation of madrasas a punishable offence; arranging for separate budgetary allocation for programmes for minority institutions, with their implementation being supervised by representatives of minority communities; establishing training institutes for madrasa teachers; launching of awareness campaigns stressing the need for education; and, in order to prevent or control corruption, arranging for zakat funds to be directed to madrasas under supervision of local civil society representatives.
9. Ali, Asma Arif, Hyderabad Ke Dini Madaris Mai Sunni Ladkiyon Ki Talim-o-Tarbiyat (‘The Education and Training of Sunni Muslim Girls in Hyderabad’s Religious Schools’), unpublished manuscript, Henry Martyn Institute, Hyderabad, 2002.
This study documents the history of girls’ madrasas in Hyderabad city. It begins with a brief overview of girls’ religious education in Hyderabad city under the Nizams, showing how the Muslim nobility patronized religious schools located in mosques, Sufi lodges and madrasas. It points out that the institution of girls’ religious schools in Hyderabad is a novel one, the first such school, the Madrasa Aisha ul-Niswan, having been established as recently as 1986. In the pre-1947 period, religious education for girls, generally from economically better-off families, was provided in the homes of the nobility, generally by female teachers or ustanis. This sort of education was informal and was largely restricted to basic religious instruction, and did not aim, as is the case today, to train ‘alimas and fazilas, women with expertise in religious disciplines. Although from the early twentieth century onwards the Nizam and members of Hyderabad’s nobility began establishing some girls’ schools wherein ‘modern’ as well as religious subjects were taught, they were not, strictly speaking, madrasas as the term is generally understood today. Rather, they focused particularly on secular subjects, although Islam was taught as a subject as well.
In Hyderabad today, Ali writes, there are almost 50 girls’ madrasas, some of them being residential. Most of them have been established in the last 20-25 years and are, broadly, of three types. Firstly, those that conform to the traditional dars-i nizami curriculum without any changes. Secondly, those that follow the dars-i nizami but with minor modifications. Thirdly, madrasas that have developed a new curriculum, incorporating English, computers and arts and crafts, in addition to standard religious subjects. A common feature of all these madrasas is the stress on moral training, character building and appropriate Islamic etiquette. Strict pardah is enjoined for all students. Students are also encouraged to participate in some extra-curricular activities, including debates, writing for their madrasa’s magazines, reciting the Qur’an and poems in praise of the Prophet and delivering lectures on religious and social issues. In contrast to other schools, these madrasas, Ali says, do not ‘encourage aggressive competition among the students’. Rather, she contends, they train them to ‘cooperate with and help each other’. As Ali sees it, these madrasas serve a crucial role in protecting and strengthening Muslim identity from the threats of Westernisation, materialism and consumerism.
Ali writes that today in Hyderabad there is a rapidly growing demand for such girls’ madrasas, especially those that also teach some ‘modern’ subjects. Some of them have adjusted their syllabus in such a way as to enable their students to join regular schools after the tenth grade. Several girls who have graduated from these madrasas have gone on to take admission in regular schools and have performed well. Because religious instruction is their primary focus, many Muslims see them as providing an appropriate sort of education for their girls. Yet, Ali says, there is considerable room for improvement. The level of English in madrasas that teach the subject is quite low. None of the madrasas that Ali surveyed teaches Hindi or the state language, Telugu. Ali suggests that the teaching of English be improved, that basic Hindi and Telugu be introduced in the curriculum and that madrasas explore the possibility of working together with open universities to enable their students and teachers to take various other courses as well.
10. Ansari, M. Shoyeb, Education in Dini Madrasas: An Opinion Survey of Curriculum, Method of Teaching and Evaluation in Dini Madaris, New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1997.
This book seeks to argue the case for the introduction of ‘modern’ subjects as part of a comprehensive programme of reform in the madrasas. It is based on a survey undertaken among students and teachers at selected leading madrasas in North India. The author argues that while the managers of many madrasas are not in favour of such reforms (some fearing that it would dilute the ‘Islamic’ character of their schools, and others suspecting that it would undermine their authority), many students think otherwise.
The author claims that the cost-benefit ratio for the money spent by the community on the madrasas is woefully inadequate. Not only is the gross expense per student excessive, the quality of education imparted in many madrasas is poor. Many madrasas have poor infrastructural facilities. Teachers’ salaries are low, which means that many madrasas are not able to attract good teachers. Madrasa managers often exercise undue interference, and are also often open to charges of corruption and nepotism. An enforced authoritarianism inhibits the creative urges of the students. Being left ignorant of the world around them, so the author says, many students develop an ‘inferiority complex’, being ‘alienated from the rest of society’ and unable to ‘adjust with the environment’. No madrasa has a teachers’ training programme, and so teachers are generally unable to ‘take the psychological problems of students into account’, and, instead, often use corporal punishment. The methods of teaching remain archaic, limited mainly to rote learning, and modern teaching aids, including as simple an instrument as the blackboard, are rarely, if ever, used. Methods of evaluation should be improved and madrasas need to introduce a range of extra-curricular activities, Ansari advises.
The present curriculum used in most Indian madrasas is also in urgent need of reform, the author argues. Many madrasas neglect Qur’anic commentary, limiting it, at most, to one antiquated text, the Tafsir-i Jalalayn. Consequently, students are left ignorant of modern commentaries that reflect scientific discoveries and that interpret the Qur’an in a contemporary idiom. Excessive stress is given to fiqh, and the focus is to rebut other fiqh schools and promote sectarianism. The underlying principles of fiqh (usul-i fiqh), necessary for developing new juridical responses to new issues, are generally left ignored. Antiquated texts on logic and philosophy, written centuries ago to combat the challenge of Greek rationalism, are still being taught in the madrasas. Some madrasas have begun teaching elementary English, but the standard of teaching leaves much to be desired, Ansari complains.
11. Ara, Arjumand, ‘Madrasas and Making of Muslim Identity in India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 3 January 2004
(http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2004&leaf=01&filename=6668&filetype=ht
ml).
This article examines the role of madrasas in constructing, preserving and promoting a particular notion of Muslim identity in India. It looks at the shifts in the madrasas in this regard, from rather elite beginnings in the medieval period as institutions for the training of officers to staff the imperial bureaucracy as well as ulama and transforming in the colonial period into a system of education for poor Muslims, as better-off Muslims chose to send their children to ‘modern’ schools instead. Today, the author alleges, madrasas have become a major obstruction in the path of progress of the Muslim community, although she admits the significant role of madrasas in providing basic literacy to poor Muslims. Providing literacy may be a valuable contribution, but, along with it, the author laments, madrasas seek to present a particular, rigid and obscurantist notion of Islam and Muslim identity that, in the author’s pinion, is greatly harmful from the point of view of the Muslim community itself and of India at large. In addition, most madrasas continue teaching a centuries’-old curriculum, leaving their students virtually ignorant of the contemporary world, making the sort of education they receive irrelevant, in several respects, in today’s context.
While the community provides almost all the resources for the madrasas, Ara argues, the grip of self-serving maulvis on the system serves only their own interests as they seek to reinforce a notion of Muslim identity that the author regards as ‘traditional’, ‘fundamentalist’, ‘exclusivist’ and even, ‘escapist’. This is further reinforced by the continuing attacks on Muslims spearheaded by Hindu chauvinist groups, making Muslims ever more insecure, and, consequently, ever anxious to preserve the sort of self-identity that the ulama wish to reinforce. Adding to this are the relentless attacks by Hindu chauvinists on the madrasas, wrongly equating them with certain radical madrasas in Pakistan, and accuse them, with no evidence at all, of being training centres for ‘terrorists’.
Madrasas, the author writes, were a by-product of a feudal society, and one that, in her words, ‘should have died away with the introduction of a democratic and a liberal social order’. However, they still continue to exist and even flourish, because conservative religious organisations have a vested interest in promoting such institutions in order to insulate Muslims from what they see as alien and alienating cultural influences and to perpetuate Muslim poverty, through which they can continue to assert their claims to lead the community. They are, she argues, also a principal means for perpetuating the authority of the ulama, whose apparent lack of enthusiasm for ‘modern’ education for the Muslim masses is a reflection of a fear that this might lead to a gradual undermining of their own authority and influence, as ‘lay’ Muslims begin to interpret Islam on their own, without taking recourse to the ulama for guidance.
The author regards the sort of passive, ritualistic Islam which she claims is taught in the madrasas as representing a grossly incorrect understanding of the faith. She sees it as reflecting the interest of Muslim elites, including the ulama, in keeping the Muslim masses ‘backward’ through which they can continue to claim to speak for the Muslim community and for Islam. ‘Poor Muslims’, the author writes, ‘who were made to believe that their most valued treasure, Islam, was in danger, vowed to protect the tradition of madrasas even at the cost of their lives. Even today madrasas are falsely considered as the institution that played the greatest role in saving that saved Islam from extinction. Ironically, poor Muslims consider madrasas the protectors of Islam without realising that many of the ulama and the maulanas, who exhort them to protect the system, send their own children to public schools, convents and even to Europe and America for higher studies’.
The author critiques not just the Hindutva chauvinist political parties but also self-styled ‘secular’ parties for perpetuating Muslim backwardness, often through entering into alliances with conservative ulama to garner Muslim votes. She argues that these parties are fearful of alienating the ulama and so have done little or nothing at all to address the question of madrasa reform, apprehensive that this would be opposed by the ulama. The ulama, the Muslim political elites as well as the various political parties have a vested interest in keeping Muslims educationally backward, she claims, which explains, in part, the woeful level of investment by the state in education in Muslim localities. The answer to this dilemma, the author argues, is a struggle against Hindu and Muslim ‘fascism’ as well as promoting ‘modern’ schools, instead of madrasas, among Muslims.
12. Bandyopadhyay, D., ‘Madrasa Education and the Condition of Indian Muslims’, Economic and Political Weekly, 20 April 2002
(http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2002&leaf=04&filename=4359&filetype=html).
India cannot progress, the author argues, if the Muslims, the country’s largest religious minority, remain educationally backward. Hence, Muslim education should be considered as a major priority. A major problem in this regard, however, is what the author regards as ‘fundamentalist elements’ among the Muslims who, he claims, have a vested interest in keeping Muslims backward, including by resisting reforms in the madrasas. In this regard, so the author argues, ‘the interests of the non-secular religious groups and those of the so-called secular and progressive politicians merge, reinforcing one another’.
The author raises questions about the sort of graduates madrasas are producing, asking if the education imparted in these schools is ‘likely to make the students good and responsible citizens of our sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, or make them incompatible with the basic values on which our republic rests?”. The author sees a political orientation as basic to some madrasas, linking this to the quest on the part of Muslim elites overthrown by the British to re-establish Muslim rule in India, for which some madrasas were established as ideological training centres for would-be mujhahidin. The most significant of these was the Deoband madrasa., which taught a conservative, patriarchal version of Islam. The author discusses the Deoband madrasa curriculum in order to argue the point that, being rigidly conservative, it has no room for ‘modern’ forms of knowledge or liberal sensibilities. One particular issue that the author regards as particularly worrisome is the stern literalism with which most madrasas approach the Qur’an and Hadith, which, in his view, makes for particular problems in promoting inter-communal harmony and gender justice. This literalism can also be used, as it has in other countries, to promote militancy in the name of jihad.
The author recognises the role that madrasas are playing in promoting literacy among the poor, but insists that they need to be radically reformed if they are to produce students who can play a positive role in the development of the community and the country at large. In this regard, the author discusses the scheme for ‘modernising’ madrasas instituted by the Government of India, under which scheme financial assistance is given to madrasas who chose to join the scheme for teaching Science, Mathematics, Social Sciences and English. However, the author contends, the scheme has not proved to be successful. Instead of funding the madrasas, which the author regards as ‘obscurantist’, the government should, he says, fund initiatives to promote regular schools among Muslims. Furthermore, state funding to madrasas, he argues, goes against the spirit and letter of the Indian Constitution and its mandate of religious neutrality.
13. Bi, Kulsoom, Modernisation of Madrasa Curriculum: A Study of Perceptions and Attitudes of Molvis and Students, M.Ed. Dissertation, Department of Education, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, 2001.
This study is based on a sample of 50 ulama and 150 students from 5 madrasas in Delhi. It finds that most of the surveyed madrasas claim to be teaching Hindi, English, Mathematics and Natural and Social Sciences, in addition to religious subjects, although the standard of teaching of these subjects leaves much to be desired. None of these madrasas has received any assistance from the state. A majority of students and teachers feel that the madrasa ‘modernisation’ scheme announced by the Government of India is a farce and is actually intended to provide the state with an excuse to interfere in the functioning of the madrasas as well as to dilute the control of the madrasas’ management committees. Interestingly, most students are in favour of studying ‘modern’ subjects as well, and a little more than half express the view that they would rather learn these from a college- or university-educated teacher than from a madrasa-trained maulvi.
The study recommends that the government should be transparent and, if sincere in its profession of concern for madrasa ‘modernisation’, should work along with the ulama and Muslim social activists to convince the madrasas that its ‘modernisation’ scheme does not have any hidden agenda. Equally, there is a need for a change in the mind-set of the ulama and madrasa managers with regard to the state. Being citizens of the country, the author says, Muslims, too, have a right to access funds from the state for their development, including for improving the functioning of the madrasas. For the success of the madrasa ‘modernisation’ scheme the author recommends that the state involve more madrasa teachers and managers in its formulation and implementation.
14. Bonita Aleaz, ‘Madrasa Education, State and Community Consciousness’, Economic and Political Weekly, 5 February, 2005.
This article looks at the role of madrasas in shaping Muslim community identity in West Bengal. It also looks at the policies of the government of the state, which, the author argues, while financially supporting a number of madrasas, has done little to improve their conditions by way of infrastructural support or curricular reform.
The author speaks of the growth in the number of madrasas in certain districts in the state bordering Bangladesh but says that the rhetoric of them being engaged in ‘anti-national’ activities is unsubstantiated. In fact, the author says, these madrasas represent ‘efforts made by the absolutely downtrodden Muslims’ to educate their children, and these should be encouraged rather than condemned.
Surveying the ‘aliya or state-supported madrasas in West Bengal, the author argues that although they follow the state-approved curriculum and teach certain ‘modern’ subjects, their overall performance and standard is low. Hence, they ‘remain islands of exclusion, neither able to provide passage to their students into the world of professionals nor able to train Muslim students adequately to allow resumption of secular education after initial training’. Most of the madrasas in the state have poor infrastructural facilities. The syllabus of the state-sponsored ‘aliya madrasas is too heavy for their students, combining both Islamic subjects and the state government’s syllabus. Many of them do not receive state-approved funds on a regular basis. Numerous applications made by madrasas to the state for upgradation are refused on flimsy grounds, thus ruling out the possibility of them being considered on par with state schools. Numerous posts in ‘aliya madrasas lie vacant due to neglect by the government. As an instance of the government’s insensitivity towards madrasas the article refers to police atrocities on madrasa students who had taken out a demonstration to draw the attention of the government to the plight of the madrasas.
Overall, the author concludes, despite forming almost a fourth of the state’s population, the Muslims of West Bengal have been sorely neglected by the government, and the various programmes initiated by the government to promote education have largely by-passed them.
15. Engineer, Asghar Ali, ‘Muslims and Education’, Economic and Political Weekly, 25-31 August, 2001.
The author argues against the stereotypical notions of Muslims being opposed to ‘modern’ education, especially for girls, preferring to send their children to acquire religious education in madrasas instead. Part of the reason for this notion, he says, is the considerable rise in the number of madrasas in the country from the mid-1970s onwards as petrodollars began finding their way to ulama and Islamic organisations in India from Arab countries to set up such institutions.
The author points to a major distinction between the medieval and the contemporary Indian madrasas. The former taught both ‘rational’ as well as ‘revealed’ sciences, were patronised by the nobility and were geared to the training of would-be bureaucrats to staff the Muslim courts. The later madrasas, in contrast, limited themselves largely to religious learning and catered mainly to the poor, training them to become religious specialists. Further, while the madrasa was the principal institution of Muslim learning in the medieval period, it had to share this privilege with ‘modern’ schools and universities starting in the colonial period, leading to a growing challenge to the authority of the ulama. Engineer argues that not all ulama were, however, opposed to ‘modern’ learning, as is sometimes imagined. He also shows that while many university-educated Muslims supported the British, numerous ulama were in the forefront of the anti-colonial movement.
The popularity of madrasas today, the author contends, is not because of a refusal of Muslims to send their children to regular school, but, instead, reflects the fact of the class character of the Muslim community, most Muslims being relatively poor and the Muslim middle-class being relatively small. Since madrasas provide free education, clothes, lodging and boarding, many poor Muslims who lack the resources to send their children to school, they choose to send them to madrasas instead. The growth in the number of madrasas, Engineer says, is also because the ulama have a vested interest in establishing more such institutions, many of them receiving generous grants from wealthy Arab patrons for this purpose.
Contrary to widespread notions, many Muslims would like their children to receive a ‘modern’ education, and, the author points out, Muslim families are increasingly choosing to send their children, including girls, to regular schools and colleges if they can afford it. This phenomenon is expected to grow with the growth of the Muslim middle-class. If efforts are made to promote ‘modern’ education among Muslims, the author concludes, Muslims would certainly welcome, rather than oppose, this, irrespective of what the ulama might say.
16. Engineer, Asghar Ali, ‘Talim-o-Tarbiyat of Muslim Children’, Milli Gazette, (http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/2004/16-31Jul04-Print-Edition/163107200436.htm)
Being largely of indigenous origin, and having been deeply influenced by other cultures, the Indian Muslims must, this author stresses, develop a form of education that is suited to the particular Indian cultural context while still remaining rooted in the Islamic religious and cultural tradition. They need, he says, to learn to appreciate the positive aspects of the religious and cultural traditions of the other communities that also live in the country. They need to recognize their multiple identities, particularly the fact that they are not just Muslims alone but also Indians as well. Based on this recognition they need to evolve a form of education that harmonises the demands that these multiple identities make on them. In this regard, the author critiques ‘fundamentalist’ forces that oppose this approach in the name of a ‘purist’ agenda. He also critiques the madrasas for the sort of education that they provide that is, in his view, ill-equipped to prepare children for the challenges of living in a modern and plural society. He stresses the importance of women’s education, and argues that this is, in fact, positively encouraged in Islam.
17. Fahimuddin, Modernisation of Muslim Education in India, New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2004.
This book is a study of selected madrasas in Uttar Pradesh that are currently receiving some sort of financial support from the Government of India under the Madrasa Modernisation Scheme. In Uttar Pradesh there are 119 such madrasas, and the study examines 30 of these.
The book begins with a general overview of madrasas in India, looking at such features as their history, growth in recent years, student and teachers’ background, curricula, sources of income and heads of expenditure and perceptions of reforms needed in the system. The author shows that many madrasas do, indeed, wish to reform, while preserving their religious core intact, but notes that some ulama are opposed to this. He regards this opposition as dangerous and counter-productive, and as ‘leading to a kind of self-imposed isolation’ and social exclusion.
While appreciating the madrasas’ role in preserving and promoting Muslim identity and the education of poor Muslims in the face of hostile Hindutva forces, Fahimuddin argues that the insistence of some ulama that Muslims should not go in for ‘modern’ education is dangerous for the Muslims themselves. ‘The majority of Muslims, being poor’, he says, ‘were swayed by the propaganda of the hardliner ulama of danger to Islam and thought to [sic.] protect the faith by advocating the irrelevance of mainstream education and the need of [sic.] madrasa education for Muslims to protect Islam’. He regards the opposition of some ulama to ‘modernisation’ of the madrasas as reflecting what he says is a lack of ‘serious thought’ given to the issue. He argues that such ulama have ‘misunderstood the meaning, scope and purpose of such modernisation’ and have failed to learn from the example of past Indian and foreign Muslim reformists. They need to be convinced, he says, that ‘modernisation’ does not mean the complete replacement of the present syllabus with ‘modern’ or ‘secular’ subjects. At the same time, Fahimuddin calls for madrasas to be more open and receptive to people of other faiths, and in this regard speaks of some madrasas in Bihar that also have some Hindu students. Arguing against the stern exclusivity many madrasas seek to reinforce, he argues that madrasas ‘should abandon the fixed notion that nothing is to be taken from non-believers and that even the good of non-Muslims is to be avoided. Muslims need to adopt, modify and temper with pragmatism their own ides as well as their knowledge of others’.
Another worrisome development that the author notes is that from the 1970s onwards money from Gulf sources has been used to establish madrasas in India that propagate an extremely literalist understanding of Islam. Some ulama have set up such madrasas simply to attract foreign money. The author sees what he says is the rapid growth of lower-level madrasas in many parts of the country as particularly worrisome because, as he puts it, ‘they are assuming the place of mainstream education among Muslims’. Further, he says, Muslims do not require the vast number of religious functionaries that these madrasas churn out every year. It is these smaller madrasas that are in particular need of reform, because it is they, in contrast to the big madrasas like Deoband and Nadwa, that cater to the educational needs of hundreds of thousands of Muslim children. At the same time, Fahimuddin vehemently denounces the charge of madrasas being training centres for ‘terrorists’, and points to the fact that the state authorities have, till date, not been able to identify a single madrasa that provides armed training to its students.
The book profiles the madrasas that it has surveyed, enumerating their numerous problems. Most of the students come from poor families and, owing particularly to poverty, they are characterized by a high drop-out rate. In many maktabs girls outnumber boys. In addition, the book refers to the setting up in recent years of a number of girls’ madrasas, indicating a growing enthusiasm on the part of many Muslim parents to educate their girl children.
Many of the surveyed madrasas had poor infrastructural facilities. Most had at least a small library, but few had any books on any non-religious subjects. Teachers, in general, were very poorly paid. Only 23% of the teachers received an annual salary of Rs.40,000 and above. Most teachers had received no training whatsoever. Interestingly, many younger teachers and most students were in favour of ‘modernisation’ of the curriculum, including the introduction of vocational training. Some of them wanted ‘modern’ subjects to be introduced in such a way in the syllabus that after a few years of study children in madrasas can choose to join a regular school or else carry on in the madrasa to acquire higher religious knowledge.
As far as the government’s Madrasa Modernisation Scheme is concerned, the author argues that the burden on the teacher teaching ‘modern’ subjects (Mathematics, Science, English and Hindi) is simply too much to handle, resulting in poor teaching standards. The salary given to the teacher (Rs. 600 per month for part time teachers and Rs. 2200 per month for full-time teachers) is woefully inadequate. The one-time grant of Rs. 4000 to each madrasa joining the scheme for buying books and science and mathematics kits is also insufficient. Although the examinations for the ‘secular’ subjects taught by these government-paid teachers are held internally by the madrasas themselves, the author feels that the progress that the students made in these subjects has been reasonably good. Hence, he calls for the expansion of the scheme to include more madrasas as well as to increase the funds allotted to each madrasa participating in the scheme, including for teachers’ salaries. He also suggests that all government-sponsored schemes being implemented in government schools, including the mid-day meal scheme, various scholarship schemes and infrastructural development projects, be extended to madrasas as well. For this purpose he suggests the possibility of the UP Dini Ta‘limi Council, which presently runs hundreds of maktabs in Uttar Pradesh, to be appointed by the state as a nodal agency to transfer state grants to madrasas. This suggestion, however, ignores the restriction placed on the state on financing religious educational institutions.
Similarly, some of his other suggestions are equally utopian and impractical. Thus, for instance, he appeals for madrasa education ‘to be rejuvenated in such a form that it should not remain reserved for Muslims alone but Hindu, Sikh and Christian children may also study in madrasas. The perception that madrasas are religious institutions is to be given a back-stage’. This proposal is unlikely to enthuse the ulama, as, indeed, non-Muslim parents, both of whom generally see madrasas as essentially schools intended for producing Muslim clerics. Similarly, Fahimuddin’s proposal that state governments ‘bring a legislation to take over all the madrasas offering education up to the intermediate level and prescribe the curriculum of the [sic.] mainstream education’ is equally disastrous. It would effectively deny Muslims their Constitutional right to administer educational institutions of their choice and is bound to be vehemently opposed not just by the ulama but by the vast majority of the Muslim community as well as threatening to turn madrasas into appendages of the state.
Fahimuddin’s suggestion that the state play a more pro-active role in ‘modernising’ the madrasa curriculum appears somewhat more sensible, although, given the way he details it, it seems entirely unrealistic and even Constitutionally invalid. He calls for the state to institute a committee of ‘enlightened’, ‘liberal’ Muslim intellectuals and ulama who should suggest a revised curriculum for higher madrasas and make it binding on the madrasas to register with state government-approved madrasa boards and to adopt the new curriculum. In his enthusiasm for madrasa ‘modernisation’, the fact that the state cannot force any educational institution to accept a particular syllabus or to be affiliated with a particular board or body completely escapes him.
Yet, Fahimuddin’s earnest appeal to madrasa to ‘modernise’ is well taken and so is his trenchant critique of what he calls ‘vocal Muslim ideologists’ who are ‘burdened with the legacy of Islamic fundamentalism’. Their efforts to ‘confront social realities’, he says, are ‘generally short-sighted’, ‘lack long-term perspective’ and ‘refuse to see the compelling need’ for Muslims to ‘modernise’. Because of this, the tens of thousands of students studying in the madrasas are faced with a bleak future, to which the opponents of madrasa ‘modernisation’ appear indifferent, he argues. Hence, Fahimuddin concludes, ‘their ideology is as dangerous as Hindu communalism and only contributes to further Muslim marginalisation’.
18. Farooquee, Rasheed Kausar, ‘Religious Education for Indian Muslims’, Muslim and Arab Perspectives, 4:1-6, 1997, pp.187-200.
The author’s basic argument is that the Indian Muslims ‘do not know what their basic problem is’. Hence, he says, they provide ‘wrong solutions’ to their malaise. The marginalisation of the Muslims, he argues, does not owe to poverty or lack of ‘modern’ education but from the fact that Muslims have ‘deviated’ from the path of Islam. Only by following Islam faithfully and reviving what the author regards as a truly ‘Islamic’ educational system can their problems be solved. In this regard the author chastises Muslims who have abandoned religious education for ‘modern’ education. It is not that Islam is against all secular knowledge or that Muslims should ignore it, the author says, adding, ‘The Islamic stance is that knowledge of Islam is compulsory and all branches of human knowledge are only optional’.
The author critiques the notion that Islam is a stumbling block in the path of progress, insisting that Islam is not a mere personal matter but covers every aspect of a believer’s private and collective life, including education. Hence, he regards the dominant contemporary notion of education that has no room for religion as pernicious and anti-Islamic. As the author sees it, it is a manifestation of a deep-rooted ‘conspiracy’. Thus, he explains, the defeat of the Crusaders convinced the Christians that military conquest of the Muslims was not possible. Hence, ‘They calculated an intellectual war and hatched against Islam and the ulama a long-term plot’. This policy led to the marginalisation and destruction of madrasas by European colonialists in large parts of the Muslim world, denying madrasa graduates entry to the bureaucracy and leaving open to them only the possibility of working as religious specialists. Because of this, the student composition of the madrasas, in India as elsewhere, underwent a radical change. While earlier madrasas catered to the elite, due to the ‘conspiracy’ of the Europeans, the author says,
[O]nly the low-downs (sic.) of the society, the orphans and the physically and mentally retarded came for admission to the madrasas merely because their parents could afford no secular education or had to while away their time till they were physically able to earn a livelihood. These caricatures of their worthy predecessors developed a frightful inferiority complex, languished for a day’s bread, turned, more often than not, into homosexuals, squabbled among themselves and exploited Islam as it was the only means of exploitation they had access to.
On the other hand, the Muslim elites, who, in the past, were educated in madrasas, now began to send their children to Western-style schools. The author sees this as a result of a compact between the Muslim elites and the British colonialists. The elites are described as having been driven by lust for wealth and disdain for Islamic values. ‘Whenever it suited their designs’, the author says, these irreligious elites could ‘buy fatwas from the starving ulama, set them against each other and exploit the masses at leisure’.
Another blow to traditional Islamic education, the author argues, came in the form of Orientalism, which was conceived by Europeans to ‘destroy Islam’. Instead of studying Islam from the ‘socially inferior’ ulama, Muslim elites preferred to learn it from the ‘crafty Orientalist’ Europeans. For their part, the Orientalists are said to have changed their previous strategy of directly condemning Islam. Instead, they are said to have begun praising some aspects of it while at the same time ‘interspersing their texts very carefully with subtly malicious remarks under the pretence of scientific outlook’, thereby seeking to promote doubts about the Qur’an in order to suggest the need for reinterpretation of the text, which was calculated to ‘annihilate the very raison d’etre of the Qur’an’.
The Orientalists are said to have succeeded in administering this ‘sweet poison’ as Muslim elites took to it in a big way. The latter did not realise that ‘no ideology can be fairly and justly presented by those who disbelieve it’. Here the author argues that the Qur’an itself says that Christians and Jews cannot be friends of Muslims, and asks how, given ‘all conspiracies of Jews and Christians against Islam’, Muslims can accept the Orientalists’ views of their religion. He accuses Muslim elites, who describe themselves as ‘modernists’, of blindly imitating the Orientalists by using ‘alien standards’ to judge Islam in order to give it what they call a ‘reformed’ or ‘modernist’ interpretation, by which they actually intend to make Muslims ‘un-learn Islam’ and to use it for their own benefit.
The answer to this malaise, the author argues, is the establishment of a vast network throughout India of Islamic centres of learning, where secular education should be subordinate to Islam and should serve to promote the ‘Islamic cause’. In the meantime, he says, madrasas and secular institutions can help learn from each other through exchange of their graduates. The author also suggests that Islamic Studies be made compulsory in all Muslim educational institutions, the aim being that all Muslims should be ‘ideological’ and not just simply ‘cultural’ Muslims, so that they become ‘a distinguished ummah’, guiding all their affairs in accordance with Islam and as interpreted by the ulama.
19. Hindustan Ke Aham Dini Madaris (‘Important Madrasas of India’), New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, n.d..
This book is a directory of several hundred of madrasas in Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar, West Bengal, Punjab, Delhi, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Haryana. The details provided for each madrasa include reason and year of establishment, number of students, structure of syllabus, extra-curricular activities, number of buildings and sources of income.
In his introduction, Muhammad Qamar Ishaq stresses the role of madrasas in the protection of Muslim identity in India, in the promotion of Islam, Islamic culture and learning and in training religious specialists. At the same time, he is critical of their role in fanning sectarianism. He advocates wide-ranging reforms in the madrasa syllabus and teaching methods, including the introduction of various ‘modern’ subjects and technical training. He laments the fact that in many madrasas students are forbidden even from reading books written by ulama belonging to other Muslim sects, and he appeals for madrasas to be more open to others and to the outside world in general. He stresses the need for a rough uniformity of the syllabus and examination systems of the different madrasas, with all madrasas being brought under a broad federation. Their students, he says, should be made aware of national and international developments. Madrasas, he adds, should also provide facilities for specialisation at higher levels in different disciplines, arrange for social activists, lawyers, journalists and religious specialists belonging to other faiths to interact with the students so that the students improve their understanding of the world around them, seek recognition of their degrees with universities in India and abroad and improve the salaries and working conditions of their staff.
20. Husain, M.G., Muslim Education and Madrasa Education in Purnea District of Bihar, New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 2004.
This book deals with various aspects of madrasa education in Bihar. The book begins with a discussion on the importance of education in Islam, focussing on the fact that in the early Islamic period there was no rigid dualism between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge, unlike later on. The author discusses the emergence of new sciences and disciplines as Islam spread out of the Arabian peninsula, the development of the schools of Islamic law, the influence of classical Greek thought on the early Muslims and the flowering of various sciences in medieval Muslim societies. He then moves to a discussion of the history of madrasa education in India, the emergence of a rigid distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge in the Muslim educational system in the period of British colonial rule, the economic, political and educational marginalisation of large sections of Muslims in the aftermath of the failed 1857 revolt, the establishment of the madrasa at Deoband as a reaction to the colonial presence and to the political and cultural threat posed by the British, as well as the transformation of the class character of madrasa students as the British closed the doors to employment in government services to men with a traditional madrasa education, as a result of which better-off Muslims began sending their children to ‘modern’ schools, while madrasas increasingly began catering to the poor.
The book then discusses various efforts made in the colonial period to reform Muslim education, including the work of Sayyed Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh University, the Nadwat ul-‘Ulama and the All-India Muslim Educational Conference. It also examines major developments in the post-1947 period that have seriously impacted on the madrasas, including the abolition of zamindari and the dissolution of the princely states that resulted in denying several madrasas valuable sources of patronage and the increasing threats to Muslim identity from state and non-state forces, including a communalised and Hindu-centric education system, which, the author argues, is a major factor for the increasing number of madrasas that have been set up in recent years. The author discusses the setting up of madrasa education boards in some states that have sought to incorporate ‘secular’ subjects into the syllabus of madrasas affiliated to them. He also refers to a number of maktabs that have also introduced basic ‘secular’ subjects in their curriculum.
In discussing the growing number of madrasas being set up in different parts of the country today, the author claims that this is a reflection of growing frustration among Muslims for being denied their due by the state as well as by their own religious and political leaders, who, the author argues, have a vested interest in keeping the ‘common’ Muslims ‘ignorant’ and ‘poor’. He suggests that this is also a ‘defence mechanism of the communal psyche to protect traditional values against the onslaught of Western culture’ and also reflects ‘lack of motivation to compete with the majority community’. At the same time, he says, it also reflects a desire on the part of many Muslim parents that their children should have a good grounding in their religion before they embark on secular education.
The author then discusses various aspects of the curriculum generally employed in most Indian madrasas. He writes that because of their ‘un-Islamic’ insistence on a rigid dualism between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ subjects, many madrasas continue to exclude all forms of ‘worldly’ knowledge from the syllabus. However, he does admit that several madrasas would like to incorporate the teaching of science but cannot afford the high salaries that science teachers demand. The author does not conceal his unhappiness with the ulama and managers of the madrasas. On the whole, he claims, the ulama ‘have not so far cared to ponder over the fact that in their madrasas they are producing students who can neither find a good job for themselves nor can reinforce a modern Muslim’s faith in spirituality’. The author also argues that the quality of madrasa teachers is low, that their teaching methods need considerable reform and that several madrasas suffer from mismanagement.
The remaining portion of the book deals with the findings of a survey of madrasas conducted by the author in the three districts of the former Purnea region of Bihar: Kishanganj, Araria and Purnea. This region has a large Muslim population and is characterised by widespread poverty and illiteracy. According to the findings of the survey, more Muslims in this region have studied in madrasas than in general schools. A majority of respondents argued that economic compulsions, rather than religious reasons, were behind their decision to send their children to madrasas rather than schools. Several of them said that if they could have afforded it, they would have sent their children to good schools instead of to madrasas, although almost all also stressed the importance of at least basic Islamic education. Respondents were divided on the need for incorporating ‘secular’ subjects in madrasas, but most expressed the fear that children in madrasa would grow up feeling ‘inferior’ to others because of lack of knowledge of ‘secular’ subjects.
21. Islahi, Sultan Ahmad, Hindustan Main Madaris-i Arabia Ke Masail (‘The Problems of Arabic Schools in India’), Azamgarh: Idara-i ‘Ilm-o Adab, 1996.
This book provides a fairly comprehensive discussion of the problems of madrasas in India from the point of view of a reformist ‘alim. The author begins with a discussion of important Muslim educational movements in north India, including the Aligarh movement, the Deoband school, the Nadwat ul-‘Ulama, Lucknow and the Madrasat ul-Islah and the Jami‘at ul-Falah, both in Azamgarh. He examines their different approaches to the question of appropriate ‘Islamic’ education, reforms in the madrasa syllabus (particularly in the teaching of fiqh and tafsir or Qur’anic commentary, and the inclusion of subjects such as History, Comparative Religions, Natural and Social Sciences, Conversational Arabic, English, Hindi etc.), new teaching methods and reforms in the system of madrasa management.
The author argues for a comprehensive programme of reform of the madrasas if they are to retain their relevance. He stresses the need for the exclusion of certain texts from the syllabus, particularly those related to what he regards as ‘outdated Greek philosophy and logic’, replacing them with books that seek to rebut what he sees as contemporary ‘un-Islamic’ and ‘anti-Islamic’ ideologies, such as atheism, capitalism, communism, etc.. Madrasas should also desist from fanning sectarianism, the author says. This is in line with his understanding of the role of madrasas as institutions for training would-be missionaries to ‘defend’ Islam. Madrasas, he urges, must shift their focus from rote learning and the learning of particular books to the learning of particular disciplines. They should also pay attention to the problems of employment of their graduates, and for this the author suggests that certain crafts and skills be taught to the students so that they can widen their employment possibilities and not remain confined to being religious specialists in mosques and madrasas alone. Madrasas must also democratise their methods of functioning, and the author insists on the need for reforms in teacher-student relations and in relations between teachers and the madrasa management bodies.
22. Khan, Mohammad Sharif, Islamic Education, New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1986.
This book begins by stressing the importance of knowledge in Islam and then traces the historical evolution of the institution of the madrasa. The author shows how, with the development of fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence and its assuming overwhelming importance in the madrasa syllabus, the ‘intellectual’ and ‘secular’ sciences’, in the development of which the Arabs had once played a leading role, began to decline. Consequently, the ulama and the madrasas began to be increasingly isolated from society, seeing themselves as ‘absolutely self-sufficient’. The author contrasts this with the early Muslim period, when Islamic scholars did not disapprove of ‘worldly’ knowledge, regarding it as also part of ‘religious’ learning.
The author argues the case for an ‘integrated curriculum’ for contemporary Indian madrasas, including the basic Islamic subjects plus Social and Natural Sciences, Mathematics, Hindi, English and Comparative Religions. While the author insists on the need for ‘modernising’ the madrasas he also stresses that ‘modernisation’ must not be equated with ‘Westernisation’. ‘Modernisation’, he says, is essential for the ulama to keep abreast of contemporary developments, including of ‘un-Islamic’ ideologies that need to be combated, as well as to provide Muslims with proper leadership.
23. Madrasas and Informal Centres of Religious Education Among Muslims in Delhi, (unpublished manuscript) New Delhi: Institute of Social Analysis and Communication, 1996.
This study examines the institution of the ustani, or female Muslim teacher, and her role in promoting informal education among Muslim girls in the Muslim-dominated parts of the Walled City of Delhi. The ustani, the study notes, teaches mainly the Qur’an and the rules of prayer etc., gathering girls in her own home. A typical ustani has around 25 students studying with her. Most of these are first-generation literates, whose parents are either unable to read and write at all or else have a very low level of educational attainment. They are, for the most part, from poor families, their fathers working as rickshaw drivers, semi-skilled workers and small shop-keepers. Generally, girls who attend the ustanis’ classes also attend regular school, but, given their economic background and their parents’ attitude towards girls’ education, most of them would probably drop-out of regular education after primary school. Most of their parents, the study says, feel that although a modicum of education is needed for girls, their future place is within the home and, hence, do not favour the idea of them going in for higher education. Withdrawn from school at an early age, they normally help augment the family’s meagre income by engaging in various income-generation activities based in their homes, such as embroidery and bead-making.
The study found that most ustanis were in the age group 50-60 years, an age, the study notes, not conducive to receptivity to new ideas due to their traditional socialisation and lack of ‘modern’ education. Yet, many ustanis are not opposed to ‘modern’ education for Muslim girls, provided the girls also receive religious education. Accordingly, they adjust their timings to allow their students to study in regular schools as well. The study noted several younger ustanis in their 40s who had a modicum of ‘modern’ education and who actually encouraged their students to receive such education. One ustani, a physically challenged woman with a degree in education, provides not only Qur’anic education but also remedial classes. She also teaches her students stitching, embroidery and other home-management skills. Several younger ustanis expressed the desire to teach their students ‘modern’ subjects but lacked the facilities to do so.
The ustanis are viewed by the community with respect for they are seen as motivated by religious commitment, providing education to the girls as a religious duty. Few ustanis charge their students any fees, although many of them receive a token gift, usually in the form of a shalwar-kameez set when the girls complete reading the Qur’an or when they get married. In addition, often the girls help the ustanis with their household tasks, such as sweeping, cooking and washing.
The study opines that the younger-generation ustanis, if provided suitable training and exposure, could help promote modern education, including basic Hindi, English and Mathematics, to their students to help supplement what they learn at school and to provide them with what the report calls ‘family life education’.
In addition to the ustanis, the report also refers to boys’ madrasas in Delhi. Several of these wish to incorporate some sort of modern education in their syllabus. Although they stress that their basic aim is to train religious specialists, they encourage at least some of their students to go on to join regular schools. Parents of many madrasa students want their children to go in for ‘modern’ education after finishing their basic religious training. Very few managers of the madrasas, the report notes in conclusion, were aware of the state’s madrasa ‘modernization’ scheme, and only one of the surveyed madrasas had benefited from the scheme.
24. Meenai, Zubair, Situational Analysis of Madrasas in Bharatpur, Rajasthan, New Delhi: Society for All-Round Development, 2005.
This short report provides a general overview of some aspects of madrasa education in the Bharatpur district of Rajasthan, home to a Muslim peasant community known as the Meos. The Meos are one of the most educationally marginalised communities in India. The author attributes this, in large measure, to the pathetic poverty of the community, which has been systematically neglected by the state. The female literacy rate among the Meos is less than 5%, for which poverty, the need for girls to take care of their younger siblings, the burden of domestic work, the illiteracy of parents, large families and early marriage are largely responsible. The notion that the ideal place of a girl or woman is her home and that education of girls should be geared to training good wives and mothers is deeply-rooted among the Meos, as among several rural non-Muslim communities in Mewat, which further inhibits the promotion of female education. The fact that there are few alternative employment opportunities in Mewat and the discrimination that Meos, as Muslims, face in securing employment in both the private as well as public sectors, has a further debilitating impact on Meo enthusiasm for school education.
It is in this context that madrasas function as an alternative form of education in Mewat, providing free education and often boarding and lodging to Meo children, mostly from impoverished families. In this sense, the author argues, many parents who would ideally like their children to study in regular schools, are forced, owing to poverty, to send their children to madrasas instead. In addition, education at a madrasa provides would-be ulama a means for employment as respectable religious specialists.
The report discusses various aspects of the madrasa syllabus, finances and administration. It notes the fairly high drop-out rate in the madrasas, particularly after students finish the six-year alimiyat course. It briefly touches upon the ways in which some madrasas approach the question of curricular reform. Many madrasas are opposed to formal association with the state, even for promoting ‘reforms’, fearing that this might lead to government control. However, some madrasas in Rajasthan have benefited from the support provided by the Rajasthan Waqf Board and the Rajasthan Madrasa Board. They look at these organisations as ‘Muslim’ bodies, although they are actually government organisations, and so are not wholly averse to association with them. Yet, even here there is considerable scepticism because of the experience that several madrasas have had with government bodies. For instance, under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme and some other schemes of the Madrasa Board and Waqf Board, some madrasas opted for a para-teacher, whose salary was paid for by the Board, to teach English, Hindi, Mathematics and Environmental Studies, but the teachers lacked motivation and did not take their job seriously. Consequently, the madrasas soon abandoned the scheme and appointed their own teachers. In addition, supply of free textbooks under this scheme was erratic and the programme involved considerable red-tapism. The author adds that because madrasas are largely autonomous in their affairs and because there is no overall coordinating body, enabling madrasas to frame their own syllabus, the reform project becomes even more difficult.
Most madrasas in Bharatpur, the author says, are characterised by poor infrastructural facilities. Although they have managing committees, their functioning is normally in the hands of an individual or group of individuals, often the founder of the madrasa or his descendants. Madrasas in general, the author argues, lack professional management. Individuals gifted with some managerial and fund-raising capabilities tend to be appointed as managers. Often this post passes from father to son and held within the family.
‘Modernisation’ of the madrasas, the author suggests, cannot be imposed from without but must come through dialogue with the ulama, who must also be sensitised to issues of contemporary concern, such as women’s rights and inter-community relations. NGOs could help facilitate this by helping to devise programmes for professionalizing the management of madrasas, working with madrasas to introduce basic ‘modern’ subjects in their curricula, assist them in improving their infrastructural facilities and provide teachers’ training facilities.
25. Nadvi, Syed Riyasat Ali, Islami Nizam-i Ta‘lim (‘Islamic System of Education’), Azamgarh: Dar ul-Musannifin, 1992.
This book deals with the system of Islamic education in classical times. Through an examination of books on pedagogy and history and the biographical accounts of early Arab and Iranian ulama it discuses the subject of Islamic educational philosophy. The aim of Islamic education, it says, is not the accumulation of knowledge for its own sake or for material advancement, but, rather, in order to lead a life in accordance with the will of God. Islam, the author argues, lays particular stress on the acquisition of knowledge—not simply of religion, as narrowly understood, but also of the wonders of creation, which the Qur’an describes as among the ‘proofs’ of God and which it exhorts humans to ponder over and discover. Hence, says the author, Islam inspired early Muslim scholars to make impressive strides in various fields of science. The author here discusses various Qur’anic verses and numerous statements attributed to the Prophet Muhammad extolling the virtues of scholars and stressing the importance of knowledge.
The author then discusses the evolution of Islamic education. To begin with, it was, he says, provided in halqas or ‘learning circles’ in mosques. Later, it was also provided in literary salons, in the hospices of the Sufis, and, then in madrasas, following the establishment of such institutions in Egypt, Iraq and Iran from the eleventh century onwards by various rulers. He describes in detail the royal grants given to ulama to establish madrasas, some of which had hostels, libraries and hospitals attached to them, and the close relationship between the leading ulama and the Muslim nobility. He provides interesting details about the rules of proper behaviour that the ulama and their students were meant to abide by, the relationship between the two being, ideally, like that between a father and his sons. The concluding section of the book deals with the madrasa curriculum. The author shows how different disciplines received varying degrees of attention in different parts of the Muslim world, this reflecting local circumstances. Although many madrasas taught both ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ sciences, he says that over time many of them began focussing on the former alone. Furthermore, rather than placing the Qur’an and the Hadith, statements attributed to the Prophet, at the centre of their curriculum, they tended to place inordinate stress on fiqh, the nitty-gritty of Muslim jurisprudence as developed by the Imams of the different legal schools. This, in turn, promoted reformist efforts, first to return to the Qur’an and the Hadith as the main pillar of the curriculum, and, then, under the impact of European colonialism, to also revive the teaching of the ‘rational’ sciences in order to ‘recover’ the holistic educational tradition that the author sees as integral to a proper understanding of Islam.
26. Neyazi, Taberez Ahmed, ‘Madrasa Education’, Economic and Political Weekly
(http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2002&leaf=09&filename=4939&filetype=html).
This article seeks to critically interrogate and challenge the notion of Indian madrasas as dens of ‘terror’. The author argues, however, that religious education, be it Islamic or Hindu, carried out within the narrow and unquestioned confines of faith, is hardly likely to encourage the critical imagination. In this respect, he says, Muslim madrasas are no different from most Christian or Hindu theological seminaries.
Challenging the reading of certain verses of the Qur’an which critics claim breed militancy, the author seeks to present an Islamic theology of inter-community dialogue and harmony, articulating an alternate interpretation of these verses. He argues that the notion of just war is present in almost every religion and that the Islamic notion of jihad is, therefore, hardly unique. Hence, he says, to claim, as some critics do, that madrasas, in contrast to Hindu or Christian seminaries, are somehow intrinsically prone to militancy is fallacious.
27. Noor Mohammad, ‘Scope for Modernisation of Madrasas in India’, in S.N.Singh (ed.) Muslims in India, New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 2003.
This article explores the possibility of introducing the teaching of ‘modern’ subjects in the madrasas. The author notes that the vast majority of mosque-schools or maktabs in India teach only the Qur’an and basic Islamic beliefs and rituals. Relatively few of them teach their students to read and write, even in Urdu. He suggests that, while maintaining their religious character, maktabs can be transformed into non-formal education centres by employing additional teachers for subjects such as basic Hindi, English and Mathematics, so that after completing their basic education their students can go on to join government or private schools in the sixth grade. The author suggests similar curricular revision in the higher-level madrasas so that students who complete the ‘alim course can be considered at par with those who have passed the higher secondary examination and can join regular schools.
For this ambitious programme of ‘modernisation’ of maktabs and madrasas the author suggests that funds could be procured from the state, the Maulana Azad Educational Foundation (which receives funds from the Union Government) and from Waqf Boards. He suggests radical reforms in the functioning of the Waqf Boards, which, he says, are badly managed, corrupt and highly politicized. State-funded development projects, he writes, could also be extended to include madrasas in order to promote technical training as part of their curriculum.
28. Qamruddin, Hindustan Ki Dini Darsgahen: Kul Hind Survey (‘The Madrasas of India: An All-India Survey’), New Delhi: Educational Society, 1996.
This book provides a general survey of madrasas in India today. It makes a long list of suggestions for reform, including in teaching methods, syllabus, management, etc.. It calls for madrasas to explore the possibility of affiliation with universities and stresses the importance of ‘modernisation’ in order that the ulama may provide proper religious guidance to Muslims, be better trained for their missionary task among non-Muslims, provide their students with better career options and offer understandings of Islam that are contextually more relevant to today’s times.
29. Qasmi, Abdul Basit Hamidi, Nayab Taqreeren: Asr-i Hazir Ke Taqazon Se Hamahang Sulagte Masail Par Mubni Chand Inami Taqriron Ka Majmua (‘Rare Speeches: A Collection of Prize Speeches on Burning Contemporary Issues’), Deoband: Kutubkhana Naimiya.
This book is a collection of speeches delivered by the author, an ‘alim from Bihar, a graduate of the Dar ul-‘Ulum Deoband. It contains short forewords and notes of appreciation by numerous leading Deobandi ulama, including Muhammad Islam Qasmi, Jamil Ahmad Sikorwi, and Mufti Hijaz Rashid Qasmi, teachers of the Deoband madrasa, Shamsul Haq, qazi and shaikh ul-hadith of the Jamia Rahmani, Munger, as well as teachers at some other Deobandi madrasas in Bihar. Presumably, therefore, the contents of the book reflect a widely-shared shade of opinion of a large section of Deobandi ulama, though probably not all.
Two speeches included in this book deal with education. The first (pp.36-45) is titled Talim ul-Niswan Ka Nizam (‘The System of Girls’ Education’). The author argues that Islam stresses the acquisition of ‘knowledge’ (‘ilm) for all Muslims, males as well as females. By ‘knowledge’, Qasmi says, is meant ‘religious knowledge’ (‘ilm-i din), or ‘that knowledge through which one’s religious beliefs and prayer are perfected’. He insists that when the Prophet insisted that all Muslims should acquire ‘ilm, what he meant was religious knowledge only. He thus critiques other Muslims who include ‘worldly’; subjects under the rubric of Islamically appropriate ‘ilm, arguing that ‘English, History and Geography are not ‘ilm, but, rather, skills (hunar)’. He argues that every Muslim should have at least so much ‘religious knowledge’ as to lead a proper Islamic life.
Education for women, Qasmi adds, is not meant for enabling them to take up a job outside the home, but, rather, ‘to reform their beliefs, actions, social relations and morals’, leading to ‘knowledge of the permitted (halal) and forbidden (haram) and to the fear of God’. Hence, he opposes the teaching of ‘non-religious’ subjects for Muslim girls. He regards those who advocate this sort of education for girls as ‘blindly imitating Europeans’ and insists that ‘ilm is confined only to the ‘ilm-i din’. Earning a livelihood, he says, is the duty of the man, not the woman, and it is binding (wajib) on the woman to observe pardah. He argues that ‘reason (‘aql) says that worldly knowledge cannot be had while observing pardah’. Hence, he insists, there is no need for women to learn anything other than ‘religious knowledge’. However, he says, under conditions of ‘severe necessity’ there is no absolute prohibition on a woman learning ‘modern’ subjects but this must be done in pardah and only after completing her religious studies. For this purpose she must study only from either another woman, or, if this is not possible, then from a mahram male, that is a male relative whom she is forbidden by Islamic law from marrying. He insists that ‘worldly knowledge is not good for women but can be destructive for them’. In case they have no male to support them financially, it is permissible for Muslim women to learn some ‘worldly arts’ (funun-i duniya) so that they can earn their livelihood, but still, he warns ‘they should be experts not in worldly but in religious knowledge’.
Qasmi insists that ‘all the problems of women can only be solved through Islamic education’. Accordingly, he says, women should be provided with such education that is in accordance with their ‘nature’ (fitrat) as explained in (the Deobandi version of) Islam. He appears to equate modern education with Westernisation, and condemns the latter as ‘destructive’, for, he asks rhetorically, ‘Western culture is blind, so how can it provide light to others?’. To bolster this claim he quotes some obscure Western writers, who, he claims, are ‘great intellectuals’, who argue that the right place of women is the home and who are opposed to higher education for them. Interestingly, he does not provide any references for these quotes. Thus, for instance, he quotes a certain ‘Samuel Samails’, whom he describes as ‘the greatest writer in England and possessor of great morals (inglistan ka sabse bada musannif aur ala ikhlaq ke allama), who says that ‘a respectable woman is one who stays at home and spins thread’, lamenting that women today refuse to do so. ‘Samails’ is also quoted as saying that women should learn ‘only that modicum of chemistry that will help them remove the froth from food cooking in vessels and that amount of geography that will enable them to learn the usefulness of windows and ventilators’. Qasmi quotes another Western scholar, a certain ‘Lord Brain’, whom he describes as a ‘Jew’, who insists that woman’s library should possess no book other than the Torah and the Bible, and who laments that today ‘besides their biological differences, differences between males and females have been erased’. Qasmi also approvingly quotes an American ‘scholar’, a certain ‘Losan’, who argues that ‘women have no capacity for higher education’, because such education is ‘against their nature’.
‘Modern’ education, as Qasmi sees it, is bound to lead Muslim women away from the path of Islam. He claims that ‘modern’ educated Muslims ‘do not care about religion, do not distinguish between halal and haram, know nothing about the angels, don’t know which angels used to deliver the Divine revelations, or how many famous angels there are and what their names are or the details of the life after death, or the number of heavenly books and which prophet received which book and who the first prophet was, or the reality of faith and disbelief’. ‘Modern’ educated women, he goes on, ‘have no love for Islam’. ‘They use magic and spells to subjugate their husbands, very few of them know the Prophet’s mothers’ name and are not observant of prayers and are ignorant of the rules of religious purity (taharat)’. ‘Women today’, he declares, ‘are interested only in fighting, abusing, lying, backbiting, going to the cinema, watching television, and cooking’. ‘They move around without caring for pardah and engage in adultery’. In short, he says, the have begun to ‘follow Satan’. ‘All this’, he says, ‘is because they lack religious education’. Due to this, ‘their actions are not good’.
To remedy this situation, Qasmi says, Muslim girls must be educated only in religious madrasas. This is urgently required because if women lack religious education their children and the future generations of Muslims might be tempted to take to disbelief and immorality, he argues. He is totally opposed to girls studying in regular schools, seeing this as inevitably leading to irreligiousness and immorality. He describes Muslim women who study in colleges and universities as doing so simply in order to ‘become European and English’, and accuses their male relatives who arrange for them to take admission in such institutions as ‘sellers of their conscience’ (zameer farosh).
Ideally, says Qasmi, Muslim girls should study in their own homes, from older female relatives or, if this is not possible, then from mahram males who have some knowledge of Islam. Brighter girls can be given higher religious education and for the others it is enough to teach them ‘basic religious rules’ and encourage them to observe these. This, Qasmi argues, approvingly quoting the Deobandi scholar Ashraf Ali Thanvi, is the ‘best method’ of girls’ education. If this is not possible then girls can be allowed to study in an all-girls’ madrasa in their own locality. They should not be sent to co-educational maktabs or madrasas ‘because these are bereft of shame and modesty’. In the maktabs and madrasas girls should observe strict pardah. They should not study with non-mahram male teachers and must not have any contact with male employees in the madrasas. In addition to religious subjects, Qasmi says, they should also be taught various domestic skills.
Another lecture included in this book is titled Nisab-i Talim Aur Hukumat Ka Mutaliba: Tarikh Aur Haqiqat Ke Ainey Mai (‘The System of Education and the Government’s Demands: In the Mirror of History and Fact’) (pp.92-102). It deals with the government’s suggestion that madrasas ‘modernise’ their syllabus, a proposal that Qasmi vehemently opposes.
The syllabus employed in most of the Indian madrasas, the dars-i nizami, Qasmi says, has, from British times onwards, been seen by the government with ‘intense hatred and prejudice and has consistently been targeted’. The British, he claims, were ‘totally opposed to Islamic education’ and ‘could not tolerate any educational curriculum that represented Islamic learning and culture’. Hence, they ‘plotted to remove the dars-i nizami from the madrasas’ and subjected the ulama to severe suppression ‘for two hundred years’. Yet, they failed to ‘remove the love for the dars-i nizami from the hearts of its champions’, because ‘the truth establishes itself’. Despite the terrible tortures that the ulama had to allegedly suffer at the hands of the British for refusing to abandon the dars-i nizami, they held on to it firmly and ‘refused to leave their intellectual treasure at the mercy of enemies’. In this way they ‘proved that students who had studied the dars-i nizami were far more capable than university-educated students’.
Yet, Qasmi admits, no educational curriculum can be ‘eternal’ and that is why, he says, changes have been made in the dars-i nizami ‘to the extent required’ (ba qadar-i zarurat) and says that even the Deoband madrasa (which he describes as the ‘Great Centre of Asia, The Throbbing Heart of the Muslim Community and The Focus of the Eye of the Muslims, the Arabic University Dar ul-‘Ulum Deoband’) has made such ‘appropriate changes’ in its syllabus ‘from time to time’. However, he does not tell us exactly what changes Deoband has made in its syllabus.
Qasmi sees the present-day Government of India as walking in the same path as the British colonialists and as being goaded by the same alleged motives. The Government, he says, ‘does not want the dars-i nizami to exist’, although ‘it is this syllabus that Muslims have been following from the very beginning’. The Government’s appeals for madrasas to ‘modernise’ and for Muslims to go in for ‘modern’ education, he says, is actually a ‘conspiracy’ because ‘by doing so, Muslims, taking to modern education, will go far from the noble teachings of Islam, and, like students in modern educational institutions, will become useless’. If, as the government suggests, ‘modern’ subjects are included in the madrasa curriculum, ‘it will become very difficult for Muslims to protect their religion and identity’. This is precisely why, Qasmi alleges, that the Government ‘instigates some ignorant Muslims, telling them that in this modern age they need modern education and that, hence, the dars-i nizami should be reformed’. Consequently, Qasmi says, ‘many gullible and innocent Muslims have fallen victim to this propaganda’, and he appeals to them to realize that ‘the aim of the Government is to cause Muslims to distance themselves from religious learning and to destroy Muslim identity’.
Qasmi claims that he is not opposed to ‘modern’ education as such, which he seems to equate simply with learning the English language. The ulama, he says, have never forbidden the learning of English, because even the Prophet instructed Zaid, one of his followers, to learn a foreign language—Syriac—as it was then needed, just as English is required today. However, the ulama did oppose Muslims who wanted their children to study only ‘modern’ subjects and ignore religious education. The ulama, he says, believe that Muslim children can indeed learn English but thus must begin only after they finish their religious education. English should not be included in the madrasa syllabus because then the syllabus will ‘get mixed-up’ and the ‘real aim of madrasa education will be destroyed’. He cites the example of the Deoband madrasa where facilities have recently been made for some madrasa graduates to study English and computers.
Reforming the madrasa syllabus, Qasmi insists, is none of the business of the government, because it is the ulama of the madrasas themselves, and not the government, who shoulder the responsibility of managing them and arranging for their financing. Qasmi sees the state’s offers of assistance in this regard as ‘aimed at destroying the aims of the madrasas’. In fact, Qasmi says, the madrasa syllabus is hardly in any need of reform, and here he quotes the late Qari Muhammad Tayyeb, rector of Deoband, as saying, ‘As far as the syllabus is concerned, it is totally satisfactory. This syllabus has produced great ulama and, as far as minor adaptations are concerned, these have been made in the past and will be made in the future as well’. Qasmi also quotes the Deobandi scholar Ashraf Ali Thanvi as saying that the Arabic texts selected by the ulama of the past as part of the madrasa syllabus ‘contain everything necessary and the only thing is that they need to be understood properly’. If the books included in the dars-i nizami ‘are studied even by a person of medium intellectual capacity’, Thanvi is quoted as saying, ‘it will produce amazing, unbelievable powers and capabilities, such capacities that a person with a degree from America, London and Britain cannot walk in front of a student of a madrasa, because the dars-i nizami is a treasure house of knowledge’. To further back his argument that the dars-i nizami is in no need of major change, Qasmi refers to the leading Pakistani Deobandi scholar Taqi Usmani, who, when asked about certain books included in the dars-i nizami, ‘shouted out in excitement’ and said that ‘These books create strong capacity and should never be abandoned’.
Instead of ‘reforming’ the madrasas, Qasmi says, ‘modern’ educational institutions should be reformed to include Islamic Studies for Muslims enrolled therein. He ends his lecture by declaring that the Muslims will not tolerate any change in the dars-i nizami, because, he says, the fact that Islamic faith and identity are far stronger in South Asia than anywhere else in the world is largely because of the present syllabus and system of madrasa education. If the syllabus is changed, he argues, madrasas might continue to exist but they would be ‘bereft of religion and the religious spirit’. In the face of the Government’s ‘opposition’ to the dars-i nizami, he declares in conclusion, Muslims must not lose hope because even the prophets and other revered personages of the past great faced tests and trials.
30. Qasmi, Muhammadullah Khalil, Madrasa Education: Its Strength and Weakness, New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2005.
This book, written by a graduate of the Deoband madrasa, is a defence of the traditional madrasa system. It is rather poorly written, defensive and uncritical in tone and replete with grammatical errors. The book begins with an overview of the importance of knowledge in Islam (which the author effectively reduces to religious knowledge) and the history of the evolution of the institution of the madrasa. It then goes on the laud the achievements of the Deoband madrasa, its role in preserving and protecting its own understanding of Islam and Islamic identity and spawning literally hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller madrasas all over South Asia that are providing Islamic education and literacy to several million students, most of whom come from poor families.
The author argues for a controlled and rather restricted ‘modernisation’ of the madrasas, and explains this as necessary in order that would-be ulama can prove to be better missionaries of Islam, which he believes to be the only true religion. In order that would-be ulama can communicate Islam more effectively to non-Muslims, he says, madrasas should introduce the teaching of English. This, he says, is ‘Islamically’ acceptable. All languages, he says, are gifts of God; the Prophet Muhammad instructed one of his disciples to learn Syriac and Hebrew; and one of the pioneers of the Deobandi movement, Qasim Nanotvi, also favoured the learning of English so that the ulama could engage in missionary work among the British and ‘modern’ educated Indians. Likewise, the author says, the early Deobandi ulama were not opposed to ‘modern’ education, but only insisted that children should go to school after they had spent some years in a madrasa studying Islam so that they would not lose their faith or go astray. The author writes that the early Deobandis actually allowed for madrasa graduates to go on to join regular universities to receive ‘modern’ education. However, the author does not tell us how many such graduates were actually able or willing to do so.
The author is opposed to any radical or structural change in the madrasa syllabus. He sees advocates of ‘modernisation’ as being impelled by ‘anti-Islamic’ motives, for, he believes, they wish the reform the madrasas out of existence by secularising them. Madrasas, he insists, are institutions for the training of ulama. Hence, religious studies must remain the core of their curriculum. Just as, he says, engineering students are not asked to study medicine, so, too, madrasa students should not be forced or expected to study secular subjects more than the basic minimum. He sees the madrasas as already providing this basic minimum, pointing to some madrasas that have incorporated some ‘modern’ subjects in their curriculum. If madrasa students were forced to study ‘modern’ subjects in depth, in addition to the standard Islamic disciplines, he says, the burden on them would be simply too heavy and they would turn out to be neither good ulama nor good ‘modern’ scholars. Yet, he does admit that there is still room for improvement. He is willing to accept a modicum of ‘modern’ education in the madrasas that, as he says, will help students to be better and more effective ulama and Islamic missionaries. However, if ‘modernisation’ is advocated for any other purpose it is simply unacceptable. This, he says, is the unanimous view of the ulama.
The author calls for madrasas to give more stress to conversational Arabic, Sufism (to improve the morals of the students), Comparative Religions (in order to refute the claims of ‘deviant’ sects and other religions as well as to engage in missionary work among their adherents), English (to train missionaries to work among non-Muslims, to counter Orientalist writings on Islam, to provide religious leadership as well as produce Islamic literature for Muslims living in the West and to reach out to modern educated, secularised Muslims to bring them back to the path of Islamic orthodoxy), and basic social sciences (to develop jurisprudential responses to modern economic and political issues).
The concluding part of the book deals with the vexed issue of madrasas and ‘terrorism’. The author flatly denies the charge that Indian madrasas have any association with ‘terrorism’. He quotes Indian state officials, including top police officers, as saying that they have been unable to identify a single madrasa, even in war-torn Kashmir, that is engaged in providing armed training to students. The author insists that talk of petrodollars flowing into India to from Arab countries to finance madrasas is grossly exaggerated. Relatively few such madrasas get such funds and that too through legal channels, he says. In contrast, he asks, why is it that Christian and Hindu organizations in India, which receive much more money from abroad than madrasas, are never similarly questioned? Critiquing the detractors of the madrasas who claim that there has been what they call a ‘mushrooming’ of madrasas in India in recent years, especially along the borders with Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which they see as a security threat, the author says that there has been no abnormal growth in the number of madrasas in these areas. The confusion arises, he says, because small maktabs, attached to mosques, are also clubbed along with madrasas in order to present an image of a sudden and dramatic increase in numbers. Further, he says, in these border regions, Muslims, by and large, are an impoverished community and the state has done little for their educational development, a function which the madrasas there have now taken upon themselves. Rather than being condemned, they should be praised for this service, he argues.
The author contends that much of the rhetoric about madrasas and ‘terrorism’ stems from a misleading equation between Indian madrasas and madrasas in Pakistan, some of which, he admits, have been engaged in training militants. In contrast to these Pakistani madrasas that have received patronage from the state, the Indian madrasas are largely apolitical, he says. The author also believes that the madrasas are themselves to blame, in part, for the propaganda against them, because they have not taken enough measures to acquaint non-Muslims about what is actually taught therein. Hence, he appeals to them to invite others to see the madrasas for themselves. He also believes that Indian madrasas can play a crucial role in promoting peace in South Asia and countering militancy, given that some of their ulama enjoy considerable respect in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. Rather than alienating them as ‘terrorists’, he says, the Indian state should seek to constructively engage with them in order to serve the cause of peace in South Asia.
31. Qasmi, Muhammad Sajid, Madrasa Education Framework, New Delhi: Manak Publications, 2005.
This book, by a graduate of the Deoband madrasa, provides a broad overview of the madrasa system of education in India. It is written in a very defensive mode, seeking to argue that the madrasa system needs no basic reforms. After providing an overview of the importance of knowledge in Islam and the history of madrasa education in West Asia and India, the book focuses particularly on the Deoband madrasa. The author uncritically extols the madrasa, but also highlights the important role it played in India’s freedom struggle and in providing education to the poorer classes among the Muslims. He also refers to other madrasas in order to show that madrasas are not homogenous, but, rather, that they vary in their emphasis on particular aspects of the Islamic scholarly tradition as well as in their approach to ‘modern’ education.
Although the author argues that there is no need for any structural change in the madrasa curriculum, he admits the need for the introduction of basic English, Mathematics, World Affairs, Comparative Religions and Sufism in their syllabus. These are needed, he says, in order to enable would-be ulama to function in the contemporary world as well as, he says, to combat what he sees as ‘anti-Islamic’ ideologies. After students have learnt to recite or memorise the Qur’an, he says, they should do a five-year course, consisting of Urdu, Persian, Religious Studies (diniyat), Biography of the Prophet Muhammad, Mathematics, Geography and Comparative Religions, only after which they should enrol for the ‘alimiyat degree in the madrasas. He appears to see the value of teaching Comparative Religions not in terms of promoting dialogue with adherents of other faiths but, rather, to counter other religions, which he sees as false, this being rooted in his belief that his Deobandi version of Islam alone represents the truth. Likewise, he advocates the teaching of English and social sciences in the madrasas simply in order to train would-be ulama to ‘defend’ Islam from other faiths and ideologies and to become better missionaries so that they can be more effective in preaching Islam to people of other religions. He also recommends that madrasas reduce the number of old books on Philosophy and Logic, restricting them to the basic minimum needed to properly comprehend classical Islamic texts.
On the whole, the author is not enthusiastic about any radical change in the madrasas, and goes so far as to insist that this demand is actually a ‘conspiracy’ of what he describes as the ‘enemies of Islam’ (specifically referring to Christians and Jews) to secularise the madrasas and thereby deprive the Muslims of their religious leadership so that, in turn, they would gradually lose their faith in and commitment to Islam. In this regard, he quotes the Deobandi scholar Asad Madani, head of the Jamiat ul-Ulama-i Hind, as saying that appeals for ‘modernisation’ of the madrasas are ‘a plot by Christian [and] Jewish missionaries’. He appeals to madrasas not to take any financial aid from the Indian state, seeing this, too, as a ‘conspiracy’ to dilute the religious character of the madrasas and to pave the way for the state to interfere in their functioning. He insists that Indian madrasas do not preach terrorism, and contrasts them with schools run by certain right-wing Hindu groups that do so. In conclusion, he argues, the demand being made by numerous Hindutva organisations in India today that madrasas be closely regulated or even closed down reflects what he alleges to be a ‘conspiracy’ to erase Islam from the country. Without engaging with the critiques of the madrasas being made not just by Hindutva elements but also by secular forces, Hindu as well as Muslim, he argues that in the name regulating or banning the madrasas the advocates of madrasa reform want that ‘the centres of Islamic learning that teach tolerance and brotherhood and are engaged in global peace cannot influence more [sic.] in India’.
32. Qasmi, Rashid Ahmad, ‘Teachers for Modern Education in Madrasahs’, Milli Gazette,
(http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/15102002/1510200259.htm).
The author, the head of a Deobandi madrasa in Mewat, Haryana, discusses problems that he sees associated with the state’s efforts to introduce ‘modern’ subjects in the madrasas. He raises the question of whether the teachers appointed by the state to teach these subjects would be governed by the rules and regulations prescribed by the madrasas or by those framed by the government. In case teachers appointed by the state indulge in activities, deliberately or inadvertently, which are deemed prejudicial to the interests or objectives of the madrasa and if the madrasa management thinks that their continuing employment may be harmful for the madrasa, he asks, will the management be justified in dispensing with their services? Furthermore, he says, teachers for ‘modern’ education in madrasas appointed by the Ministry of Education can be either men or women and can belong to any religious community. This is unacceptable to the madrasas because, as he says, from the ‘Islamic point of view’ teachers having ‘particular qualifications and characteristics’ alone can be appointed as teachers in the madrasas. Presumably, by this he means that women and non-Muslims are not eligible to teach in madrasas.
The author discusses the possibility that books prescribed by the state for ‘modern’ subjects might conflict with Islam, in which case, he stresses, they cannot be taught to children in the madrasas. He argues that the primary objective of the madrasas is to train students in various Islamic disciplines, for which teachers and students need to spend considerable time and effort. Demanding that they also learn a range of ‘modern’ subjects as well, he says, will prove to be too heavy a burden for them, causing them to devote less time than is needed to their religious studies’ lessons.
The author insists that his arguments are not ‘mere suppositions’ or ‘wishful thinking’, and claims that madrasas receiving government assistance in Bihar and in some other states have lost their ‘religious character’. Hence, he stresses, it is imperative that the questions he raises be seriously looked at both by madrasas as well as by the state while framing policies related to madrasa education.
33. Rehman, Jameelur, A Study of the Role of Maktabs in the Total Literacy Campaign in the Muslim Areas of the Walled Study of Delhi, M.Ed. Dissertation, Department of Education, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, 1995.
This study examines the possibility of maktabs playing a role in helping the government in its Total Literacy Campaign, based on an examination of the functioning of five maktabs in the Muslim-dominated parts of Old Delhi. The study provides interesting details about the maktabs. Some of them operate in a single shift, while others have two or even three shifts, although they all have a single, rather poorly-paid, teacher. The salary of an average maktab teacher, the study notes, is considerably less than the minimum statutory wage for unskilled workers. Most of the teachers also serve as imams or prayer-leaders in the mosques to which the maktabs are attached, and a few of them supplement their income by repairing watches. All of them are trained ulama, having studied in different madrasas till various levels.
According to the study, both boys and girls study together in the maktabs, the latter only till the age of puberty. The education imparted in the maktabs consists of learning to read and recite the Qur’an as well as basic religious obligations such as prayers and supplications. Only one of the five maktabs teaches children how to write Urdu, but their writing and reading skills were found to be very poor. Only 6.7% of the students can read notices and advertisements in Urdu. None of the maktabs has benefited from the scheme supposedly run by the Delhi Government to employ part-time Mathematics and Science teachers in maktabs. 80% of the members of the maktab management committees and most maktab teachers welcome the possibility of such teachers and believe that they would not impair the religious instruction being given in the maktabs.
The study finds that the maktabs are very informally run. Three out of five maktabs surveyed charge a nominal tuition fee and also keep attendance records, while the others do not. Most children studying in the maktabs come from poor families, and their fathers are, for the most part, small shop-owners, daily wage labourers and rickshaw drivers. Only 26.6% of their fathers were literate. 60% of the students had between six and eight siblings. 73.3% of the students studied only in the maktabs, while the rest also attended public or private schools in the area. More than half the students helped their families to supplement their income by doing some sort of manual work. The vast majority of the parents were found to take little interest in their children’s studies such as by enquiring about their progress from their teachers. 66.7% of the parents wanted the maktabs to restrict themselves only to religious education, expecting that after gaining a basic understanding of Islam their children could go on to enter the job market. Owing to their poverty, few parents hoped for or expected their children to enrol in regular schools after finishing their education in the maktabs. On the other hand, the study found a considerable interest among the students to go in for regular education if they could afford it. 73.3% of the students wanted to join regular schools after finishing their maktab education and only 33.3% wanted to work as religious specialists.
The study concludes that the maktabs are not playing any significant role in fulfilling the objectives of the National Literacy Mission’s Total Literacy Campaign. This explains why, the author says, some maktab teachers send their own children to study in regular schools in addition to the maktabs. The author stresses the need for maktabs to incorporate basic English, Mathematics and Science in their curriculum, and for this appeals to the state and Muslim organizations to work together. In this way, he says, the maktabs might be able to play a more active role in promoting literacy and general awareness among the Muslim poor.
34. Reifeld, Helmut & Hartung, Jan-Peter (eds.) Islamic Education, Diversity and National Identity: Dini Madaris in India Post-9/11. Sage Publications, New Delhi Year: 2006
Recent writings on madrasas in South Asia have tended to view them from the point of view either of security or of 'reform'. Various other crucial aspects of madrasas, including their social, economic, cultural and political roles, have received little attention from both writers who tend to see them in stereotypically negative terms. Yet, as the various contributors to this volume argue, madrasas need to be seen in a broader perspective and the debate about them needs to move beyond security-driven concerns and the agenda of 'reform' that is sought to be imposed from without.
Jan-Peter Hartung's piece on the discourse of madrasa reforms examines various arguments put forward by a range of actors, including many ulama, for suitable modifications in the madrasa curriculum. The central point Hartung makes is that Muslim social activists regard madrasa reform as crucial but yet insist that it must not lead to a complete secularisation of madrasas because they see their principal purpose as being to train ulama or religious specialists. Reform, Hartung says, is not easy, because there is no central church-like authority in Islam that can lay down official doctrine or policy for all Muslims.Reform is made even more difficult by sectarian divisions, because of which a common reform programme is rendered almost impossible.
In another piece included in the book, Hartung looks at the reformist efforts of the Nadwat ul-'Ulama in Lucknow, dwelling particularly on the influence of the Nadwa in the Arab world, principally as a result of the work of its former rector, the late Sayyed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. Hartung links the contacts between Nadwa and institutions in the Arab world and elsewhere to accusations about Indian madrasas as being allegedly linked to 'terrorosm' levelled by Hindu fascist groups and elements within the state apparatus, and stresses the point that these charges are baseless. He argues that it must be acknowledged that Muslim scholarship has always had a crucial transnational dimension and that this is not a modern phenomenon geared to promoting 'terrorism'. In fact, he points out, the ulama of the Nadwa and other noted Indian madrasas have always stressed their support of the Indian Constitution as the best presently-available dispensation for Muslims living as a minority in India.
Hartung ends his essay with an appeal for the state to adopt a truly integrative policy that acknowledges the rights of every cultural and religious group to protect and preserve its traditions and run its own institutions. In particular, he insists, the ongoing campaign to stigmatise Muslims and the madrasas must cease for there to be any dialogue at all.
Saiyid Naqi Husain Jafri's article provides a brief overview of madrasa education in late Mughal India and then examines discourses of madrasa reform in colonial India. It shows that an important section of the ulama were indeed open to changes in the madrasa curriculum to meet the challenges posed by British rule, Orientalist, Hindu and Christian critiques of Islam, and the growing tendency towards irreligiousness. This was best exemplified in the case of Lucknow's Nadwat ul-Ulama, which, although it was intended to be an alternative to both the Aligarh Muslim University and the Dar ul-Ulum, Deoband, did not prove to live up to the dreams of its founders.
Somewhat the same arguments are presented in Farhat Hasan's paper, which deals particularly with perceptions about madrasas in colonial India. It shows the impact of colonialism on the views of numerous Muslim 'modernists' regarding madrasas, challenging the notion of a rigid separation between 'religious' and 'secular' knowledge in Islam. At the same time, Hasan says, it would be incorrect to regard the ulama as wholly opposed to 'modern' knowledge, as is often imagined. What they resented was the tendency to conflate modernity with Western culture, which they saw as inevitably leading to irreligiousness. Thus, for instance, some of the leading elders of the Deoband madrasa allowed for their students to learn 'modern' subjects after completing their basic religious degree, and even argued for the need for ulama to learn English, particularly for missionary purposes.The chain of madrasas that began being set up in the period of British rule, Hasan writes, was also intended to counter religious 'fuzziness', religious spaces and traditions that Muslims and people of other communities shared with each other, these being seen as 'un-Islamic'. However, while these madrasas stressed a notion of a unified, essentialised Muslim community, they were, for the most part, associated with one or the other maslak or school of thought, and one of their principal purposes was to combat other, or what were seen as rival, forms of Islam. This inevitably led to increasing sectarianism, and a further fracturing of the wider Muslim community.
Another interesting aspect of the colonial impact on Muslim education, which Saiyid Zaheer Husain Jafri discusses, was the gradual replacement of Sufi hospices or khanqahs by madrasas as major centres of Islamic instruction in colonial India. This he traces to a variety of factors, including to Islamic reformist and colonial critiques of popular Sufism and to the expropriation of landed estates attached to Sufi shrines by the colonial state which undercut their economic viability. The transfer of the management of many of these shrines to government Waqf Boards further undermined the autonomy of the shrines and their traditional role as centres of learning.
Sayyed Najmul Raza Rizvi's article examines the history of Ithna Ashari Shia religious education in Awadh, tracing it to the establishment of Shia rule in the area. He shows how royal patronage was crucial in sustaining a number of Shia madrasas in Lucknow and in other towns of the region, many of whose graduates then went on to take up various jobs in the royal court and in the administrative services. This tradition of learning was, however, seriously undermined when the British annexed Awadh and forcibly closed down numerous madrasas. Today, some Shia madrasas survive in Lucknow, and, unlike in the past, are attended mainly by students from poor or lower-middle class families. Some of them restrict themselves to the traditional curriculum, while others have included certain 'modern' subjects or else have adjusted their timings to allow their students to attend private or state schools as well. Yet others have adopted the curriculum prescribed by the state-affiliated Arabic and Persian Board that makes provision for some 'modern' subjects as well. Another way in which Shia organisations in Lucknow have sought to respond to the growing demand for 'modern' education is by setting up or running madrasas and 'modern' schools and colleges under the same management body, thereby facilitating the entry of madrasa graduates into the 'modern' education system.
Paul Jackson's paper looks at the past and present of madrasas in Bihar, India's most poverty-stricken state and home to a sizeable Muslim population. He notes that a number of madrasas in Bihar are affiliated to the state-constituted Bihar Madrasa Board, which provides them with grants-in-aid for teachers for selected subjects. Yet, this model of state assistance to madrasas has not worked satisfactorily, and should serve as a warning to those who argue for more state intervention in order to 'reform' the madrasa system. In most cases of aided madrasas, funds from the state come late, if at all, sometimes taking more than two years for the money to be disbursed. The entire process is also racked with corruption and red-tape, for which Bihar is so notorious. Consequently, many madrasa teachers go for long periods without salaries, which, in any case, are pitiably low. Most madrasas have no funds for infrastructural development, appointing good teachers or introducing 'modern' subjects, even if they wanted to, as indeed many of them would ideally like to.
In these madrasas as well as madrasas not affiliated to the Board, there is no evidence to suggest, Jackson says, any evidence of militant indoctrination or 'terrorist' training being imparted to students, who come mainly from very poor families and for whom madrasa education is often the only available avenue of education because it is provided free. It also assures them some sort of employment as religious specialists. In fact, Jackson says, madrasa teachers often stress the importance of harmony between Muslims and people of other faiths, general moral values, the role of the ulama in India's freedom struggle as well as the need for students to work for the welfare of the country.
In a similar vein, Patricia, Roger and Craig Jeffery discuss madrasas in rural Bijnore, a district with a large Muslim population in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Contesting the argument that Muslims are themselves wholly to blame for their educational marginalisation or that they are averse to 'modern' education, the authors point out that significant numbers of Muslim families choose to send their children to madrasas because of poverty, the Hinduistic ethos of government schools and the relative neglect by state educational authorities of Muslim localities.
This problem has been particularly exacerbated as a consequence of privitisation, because of which state investement in Muslim education, already negligible, has been further reduced.The authors write that there is no evidence to suggest that madrasas are engaged in promoting 'terrorism' or hostility between Muslims and others, as is often alleged. 'Indeed', they say, 'madrasa staff often comment on the need for religious tolerance and on the variety of legitimate paths to spiritual understanding and morality'. Far from promoting 'anti-national' views, many madrasas organise events to commemorate India's Republic Day and Independence Day, where the duties and rights of citizens of India, Muslims and others, are stressed.
A crucial point that the authors make is that the madrasas should not be seen as a radically different form of education, with absolutely no parallels with other systems of education that exist side-by-side in the same region.'Far from being hermetically sealed streams of formal education', they point out, 'schools and madrasas display numerous inter-linkages and similarities. Teachers in these and other schools-government as well as government-aided and private schools managed by Hindus-and madrasa teachers display overlapping and parallel educational philosophies', as for instance in their stress on discipline and the importance paid to moral education and obedience.
In fact, the authors go on, 'Schools often display a more militaristic tone in their disciplinary regimes than madrasas, through the physical routines in the daily school assemblies, with children lined up in the school and performing exercises to a senior child's shouted instructions and the relentless beat of a huge drum'.
Another point that the authors are at pains to stress is that the notion of madrasas and their ulama being relentlessly opposed to girls' education is erroneous. In fact, they write, in many places girls outnumber boys in maktabs or mosque-schools, and recent years have witnessed the emergence of the number of girls' higher-level madrasas. These institutions are geared towards what the authors term as 'domesticated femininity', training girls to be good mothers and wives in future, their future place being seen as within the home. Yet, even here there are fine nuances that should be recognised.
Thus, the authors write of the urban ulama that while they display a variety of views on the quantum and level of education that girls should receive, 'most are keen to see girls receiving formal schooling even after adolescence'.Related to this is the point that the ulama's views on girls' education is not that very different from that of many Hindu community leaders. Thus, they stress, "[S]nipping away the explicitly Islamic aspects of the maulawis' [ulama's] views on girls' education exposes parallels with the rationales of local Hindu and Muslim school teachers, who likewise emphasise the importance of educated mothers in extending the teachers' 'civilising' role into the home".
This role is related to the notion that the ulama, being experts in certain texts and disciplines, are in a position of authority over other Muslims, who, therefore, are seen as being in need of the ulama's guidance. This 'civilising' mission is not, of course, unique to the madrasa teachers, and is, in fact, something that they share with middle class urban dwellers' views of the poor.Madrasas have, in recent years, had a bad press, and are routinely described in lurid terms in the non-Muslim media.
Marieke Winkelmann's paper examines Muslim reactions to recent media discourses in India regarding madrasas. She refers to fake intelligence reports designed specifically to malign madrasas as 'dens of terror' as feeding into Western and Hindu fascist discourses about Islam, and looks at Muslim defences of the madrasa system from charges of being associated with 'terrorism'. Partly as a response to ongoing media discourses, many madrasas have recognised the need for 'reform' and the author presents examples of certain noted Indian madrasas that have made important efforts to introduce 'modern' subjects in their curricula. At the same time, Winkelmann notes that most Indian madrasas are opposed to state offers of assistance for 'modernisation', seeing these as insincere and motivated to dilute their autonomy and their Islamic identity. In any case, she says, government-run madrasas are known for their low standards because their teachers, being assured of a regular salary, do not generally take their duties seriously. Hence, the best hope for reform is from within, rather than by being imposed by the state or any other external agency.Appealing for a shift in the way in which madrasas are often discussed today, in terms of whether or not they have any association with 'terrorism',
Arshad Alam argues the case for understanding madrasas in the particular social contexts in which they are located. After making the point that the madrasas that he has visited have no association whatsoever with militancy, he argues that the largely 'low' caste/class student profile of the madrasas is related to the fact that they provide free education and access to the Islamic scriptural tradition for these groups, which is a powerful symbolic asset in their quest for upward social mobility. At the same time, Alam argues, madrasas must be seen as 'hegemonic institutions', with one of their ideological functions being to maintain class relations within Muslim society, being largely silent on issues of class and caste dominance within the community, thereby reproducing the 'Muslim elite agenda of identity'.
Alam argues for the need to interrogate this silence on internal divisions within the community for, as he puts it, "Islam in India cannot be carried on the tired shoulders of poor lower-caste Muslims, while the 'benefits of Islam' continue to be cornered by privileged sections of the Muslim communities in India".
Yoginder Sikand's article examines the diverse ways in which madrasa reform is imagined by a range of actors, including ulama, Muslim 'modernists' and Islamists. These views are related to the different ways in which the notion of Islamic knowledge is constructed, being presented as static and fixed but, in actual practice, being internally contested.
The author notes that some ulama see no need for reform in the madrasa curriculum and argue that since the madrasas produced great scholars in the past they can continue to do so today and in the future by using the same curriculum. They regard the traditional curriculum as perfect and hence see no need to change or to learn from others. In a sense, this is related to their claim of being authoritative spokesmen of the faith, this resting on their mastery of certain texts. If these texts are altered or if the curriculum is expanded to include 'modern' disciplines their claims to authority might well be undermined. Others argue that if 'modern' subjects are included it might lead their students astray, being trapped by the snares of the world.
However, Sikand suggests that the notion that the madrasas are wholly opposed to reform is erroneous. He highlights numerous cases of madrasas that have incorporated 'modern' subjects into their curriculum. Of particular concern in this regard is the controlled 'modernisation' that the ulama argue for, and their point that it should not lead to the complete secularisation of the madrasas or turn them into general schools or dilute their specifically 'religious' character, because their particular function is the training of religious specialists. Hence, they insist, 'reform' should be such that would enable the ulama to perform their task as religious specialists in the contemporary context. There is no need, they stress, for specialised training in 'modern' subjects as then the burden on the students would be simply too great and they would be 'neither good for this world nor for the next'. At the same time, they stress that Muslim parents who want to educate their children in 'modern' subjects are free to send them to 'modern' schools.
Arguments for reform are also linked to the recognition of the need for the widening of career options of madrasa graduates, to counter anti-Islamic propaganda, to the need to develop a religious leadership that can help empower the community and to awareness of the fact that unless the ulama are aware of contemporary debates they may not be able to reach out to non-Muslims as well as to 'modern' educated Muslims. The actual pace of this reform is, however, slow, and, besides inertia, it is also related to the poor financial conditions of most madrasas.
This book, bringing together diverse perspectives on India's madrasas, is a major contribution to present debates on the subject. It strongly suggests the need to examine madrasas in terms different from which they are often seen, as simply in terms of their political roles. It marks an important shift in they way in which madrasas are often described, as simply religious institutions, by seeking to locate them in the social contexts in which they are located.
The 'Post 9/11' tag attached to the subtitle of the book is, of course, unfortunate, and reflects the tendency of Western 'scholars' [this book is the outcome of a conference organised by a conservative German foundation] to see the world through Western lenses, and to impose an event occurring in the West as a defining moment for the rest of the world. That, the unnecessary historical details that abound in certain articles and the considerable overlaps between several of the contributions detract from the merit of the book, but that is no reason why the book itself should not be recognised as a valuable effort to bring an element of seriousness into ongoing discussions about madrasas, which is still dominated by those who actually know little about them.
35. Saiyed, A.R. & Talib, Mohammad, ‘Institutions and Ideas: A Case Study in Islamic Learning’, in Christian W. Troll, Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries (vol.2) (Religion and Religious Education), New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1985.
This study is a critique of the Deobandi madrasa system and its associated worldview. The authors argue for the need for ‘reconstruction’ of Islamic thought in the contemporary context, but argue that the single biggest obstacle in this regard are the ‘orthodox’ ulama, who claim a monopoly on representing Islam. The ulama have ‘frozen’ Islam in its ‘medieval form’, the authors say, in order to promote their own vested interests, power, wealth and authority. This is also linked to what the authors see as the rural or peasant background of many ulama and their lack of awareness of the complexities of the modern world. Because of this, they generally frown on any change in the curriculum and teaching methods in the madrasas and stress rote learning, involving teaching of fixed, memorisable statements and formulas that freezes Islamic thought into an exact replica of the past.
The authors examine the social structural factors that perpetuate Islamic thought in its present mode in the madrasas, seeking to relate ideas to social settings. They look at the social context that makes it possible for ulama to ‘remain medieval in their outlook and worldview, in the process perpetuating an image of Islam as ‘un-changing’, ‘medieval’ and ‘pre-modern’. They trace the opposition of many ulama to ‘Western’ knowledge to the colonial encounter, the displacement by the British of the Mughals, the closing of the doors to government service to madrasa graduates under the British, the association of ‘modern’ education with Christian missionaries, whose opposition to Islam was well known, and the cruel suppression of the Muslims, particularly the ulama, by the British in the aftermath of the failed 1857 Revolt. Because of this, many ulama saw ‘modern’ education as wholly anti-Islamic or as calculated to destroy Muslim faith and identity. They sought to combat this by setting up a chain of madrasas all over the country and thereby counter British cultural and political domination.
Today, the authors say, many madrasas carry on in the same tradition, seeing Islam as in need of being protected from what they see as ‘anti-Islamic’ forces. Hence, they stress the need for their students to observe external markers of distinction (dress, appearance, life-style) and maintain strict obedience to teachers, and are characterized by a ‘completely authoritarian set-up’ that frowns on any change. Such madrasas, most notably those associated with the Deoband school, continue with the traditional dars-i nizami syllabus to perpetuate a ‘non-variant’ Islam, with secular education being either discouraged or else seen as a handmaiden to Islamic learning. Most madrasas discourage freedom of enquiry and expression and fiercely denounce alternate understandings of Islam in the belief that the sectarian vision of Islam as upheld by a particular madrasa is final and normative. Their libraries are, accordingly, stocked almost entirely with carefully chosen and prescribed texts and students are discouraged from reading anything that might lead to ‘deviation’. In this way madrasas seek to insulate themselves and their students from the ‘modern’ world, cultivating in them a ‘thorough disregard and supercilious disdain for any and every change in the society’.
One major reason for this state of affairs, the authors opine, is the changed social composition of the ulama. In pre-colonial times, madrasas trained bureaucrats and so attracted sons of the elites. With the onset of colonial rule, opportunities for madrasa students to acquire such jobs were closed, as a result of which elite and middle-class Muslim families began sending their sons to ‘modern’ schools instead. This trend still continues today, as a result of which today most madrasa students as well as ulama come from poor families, particularly from villages and small towns. Madrasa education provides them with a means for upward social mobility. Students go on to work as religious functionaries or set up their own madrasas, thereby perpetuating the system. They, the authors say, see their impending poverty as religious functionaries as a religious blessing, as providing them with particular benefit in the life after death. Madrasas also provide for them a refuge, where they see a sense of solidarity and equality which their existential situation is said to deny them. In other words, the social background of the majority of madrasa students ‘appears to have a greater receptivity to the attitudes values and conception of the world promoted and inculcated by the madrasas’. In particular, the authors contend, the unquestioned acceptance of the claim of the eternal validity of the shari‘ah, which the madrasas constantly stress, is ‘sustained through an organized condition of fatalism’ that is related, in part, to the social background of most madrasa students.
Given this, the authors argue that change in the ‘thought system’ of the madrasas is only possible through a change in the ‘institutional setting’ where this thought flourishes and ‘acquires its characteristic mode’. This, they say, can happen only when ‘certain principles or aspects of beliefs are proved to be outmoded in their functioning with reference to the changing vicissitudes of society’. This requires that the custodians of the madrasas give contemporary challenges ‘a status worthy of being given a serious reckoning and a careful analysis’. Changes in the madrasas also depend on the extent to which the madrasas are ‘reified’ in the imagination of their defenders, invested with attributes believed to be beyond human theorising and review. Madrasas, argue the authors, suffer from a high degree of ‘reification’, reflecting the fact that their custodians have ‘relinquished the capacity to reinterpret those aspects of religious dogma and creed which were originally a product of human reasoning and formulation and interpretation’. Another indication of this high degree of ‘reification’ of the madrasas and their thought system is that, as they see it, issues and problems of the world are treated as strictly subordinate, with their focus being almost entirely on normative concerns.
The Deoband madrasa, the authors argue, was established on account of the ideological conflict between Muslim ‘orthodoxy’ and British colonialism, and even now ‘the tradition of tension between the madrasa and the surrounding society continues’, with the madrasa seeking to remain hermetically sealed off from what the ulama regard as the ‘un-Islamic’ influences of the wider world, castigating alternate thought-systems as ‘anti-Islamic’ and even ‘Satanic’. This goes to such extremes that students are not encouraged to read anything other than what their teachers prescribe, not even literature by other Muslim groups. Hence, the changes occurring outside the seminary, the authors argue, ‘stand a remote chance’ of becoming a basis for any significant changes in the madrasa system. The changes brought about by ‘modernity’, which are treated as ‘non-issues’, scarcely find a place in the official cognition of the madrasa managers, teachers and students.
The authors make the interesting point that the ulama play an important role in ‘reifying’ the madrasa system and its thought-system by including a massive range of items, physical and social, in this ‘reification’ process. Thus, in the case of the Deoband madrasa, this ‘reification’ is actualized by invoking the transcendent will in explaining the origin of the madrasa, even its physical buildings, syllabus and by-laws, all of which are presented as some sort of extension of God’s will, thus ‘tilting the priorities of cognition in favour of the ideational over the existential’.
However, such extreme ‘reification’, the authors argue, that is so characteristic of the Deoband tradition is not to be found in all madrasas, many of which recognise that their thought-system as well as the syllabus they employ are definitely influenced by human effort and so, to that extent, are amenable to change and reform. The point to be asked when assessing the relative lack of receptivity to change among the Deobandis, the authors note, is precisely what social, economic, political and historical factors have made for this degree of ‘reification’ because, they argue, this is not something that is intrinsic to the madrasa system as such, as the variety and the openness to change in the case of early Arab and Indian madrasas demonstrates.
36. Seminar on Elementary Education and Minorities in India: A Report, New Delhi: Vikramshila Education Resource Society, New Delhi, 2004, pp.47.
This report details the proceedings of a seminar on Muslim education supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The report sees Muslim educational ‘backwardness’ as a result of lack of access to opportunities. It notes that the issue of Muslim education is generally discussed in terms of affiliation of minority educational institutions to Boards or Universities or reservation for Muslims in colleges and universities. Consequently, issues related to the broader ‘development’ paradigm are generally ignored. Muslims as an educationally marginalized community are rarely, if ever, considered when formulating state educational policies and programmes, the report notes.
The report sees madrasas as a ‘separate’ system of education outside the ‘mainstream’, thereby working to ‘perpetuate discrimination’. It notes that almost all madrasas lack trained teachers and relatively few of them have made any provision for ‘modern’ education. Part of the attraction of the madrasas, it says, lies in the fact that many Muslims are unable to identify with or even feel threatened by the ethos of general schools, which is seen as ‘Hinduistic’. The report regards the increasing number of madrasas as a result of limited access for many Muslims to ‘mainstream’ schooling, and says that this unequal access violates the principles of equity and justice.
India, the report states, cannot advance if its Muslims remain educationally ‘backward’. At the same time, it notes that many Muslims confront what they see as a major dilemma of having to choose between retaining their cultural identity and getting ‘integrated’ into the ‘wider society’. If the curriculum in general schools is insensitive to the cultural needs of Muslims, it says, many Muslims will inevitably choose not to send their children to regular schools, and will, instead, send them to madrasas or Muslim-managed schools instead. One way out of this dilemma, it says, is by ‘modernising’ the madrasa curriculum and by providing suitably ‘modernised’ madrasas state recognition and affiliation with universities, such as has been attempted in West Bengal. Further, it suggests, Muslim NGOs can work with the state in order to promote Muslim education, including in the field of madrasa reform.
37. Shahabuddin, Syed, ‘Reorganisation of Madrasah Education’, in Taher, Mohamed (ed.) Educational Developments in the Muslim World, New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1997.
The author argues that in the face of the growing challenge of Westernisation, ‘modernisation’ and atheism and the influence of the ‘non-Islamic’ environment, there is an urgent need for institutions that can help preserve Islamic values and identity. The Indian Constitution provides minorities the right to establish educational institutions of their choice. Muslims must, therefore, set up such institutions whose responsibility it would be to ensure that all Muslims have at least a basic knowledge of Islam. These institutions would also train religious specialists, such as madrasa teachers, prayer leaders, muazzins, muftis etc., as these are indispensable for the community. They would also produce Islamic scholars to propagate the faith, ‘rebut and refute the calumnies broadcast by hostile elements’ and transmit Islamic values and traditions to the coming generations. Hence the importance of madrasas, the author says.
The author critiques Muslim-managed schools and colleges for allegedly failing to fulfil what is expected of them. Their main motive now is said to be profit-making or providing employment to relatives of members of governing committees, instead of the preservation of the religion, language and culture of the community, which is precisely the reason for which the Constitution provides minorities the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. While enjoying this Constitutional right, the author laments, these institutions are not particularly ‘Islamic’ in their ethos, sharing a common curriculum and environment with non-Muslim institutions. ‘Only by striving towards an Islamic content and an Islamic environment can the minority institutions established by Muslims or in the name of the Muslim community serve a useful purpose’, the author argues. Such institutions, he says, should include Islamic Studies in their curriculum at the primary level in addition to the state-approved syllabus. At the secondary level, Islamic Studies should be offered as an additional subject, in addition to which seminars, study circles and conferences should be organised to stress the importance of the ‘Islamic way of life’.
The author also suggests certain reforms in madrasas. Madrasas, he says, should include Islamic and Indian History, Geography, General Science, Politics, Civics, Economics, Mathematics, English, Urdu and Hindi in their syllabus so that students can understand the ‘spirit of the time’ and provide leadership to the community. In higher-level madrasas or jami‘as, he says, there should be option for specialisation in one of four subjects: Arabic literature, Qur’anic commentary, Hadith and Islamic Jurisprudence. The system of Islamic education in the madrasas, he suggests, should run parallel to the national system so that at every stage it should be possible to exchange students between the two streams.
In order to improve the functioning of the madrasas, the author calls for the setting up of a Council for Islamic Education in every district, to which all madrasas in the district would be affiliated. Likewise, there should be State and National level Councils, which would organize regular meetings with teachers and managers of madrasas to improve teaching methods and curricula. The author appeals for the practice of door-to-door collection of donations for madrasas to be stopped. In its place he calls for the ‘rationalisation’ of the method of fund collection for madrasas and insists that madrasas should not ‘in any way’ depend on state funds. One reason for this, he says, is that very few madrasas funded by the state ‘ever achieve an environment conducive to inculcation of Islamic virtues’. Instead, like all government institutions, they become ‘dens of corruption, wastage and inefficiency’, with their teachers spending less time teaching than in pleasing the educational authorities. Hence, the author argues, sarkari madrasas, madrasas that get funding from the state, should be gradually transformed into azad or independent madrasas, refusing to take any money from the state. However, the author laments that ‘the trend is very much in the opposite direction’.
The author also talks of the desirability of a common syllabus and examination system for all madrasas, for which he suggests that madrasas in the country be affiliated to one or two higher-level dar ul-‘ulums so that their degrees are all awarded in the name of the dar ul-‘ulums and so carry ‘national recognition and weightage’. Such standardisation, he says, would help improve teaching standards and the general level of piety in the madrasas and in the wider community and might also be able to help promote a more responsible and effective community leadership at the national level.
38. Sikand, Yoginder, Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India, New Delhi: Penguin, 2005, pp. 358, ISBN: 0-14-400020-2.
This book provides a fairly comprehensive account of madrasas and their evolution in South Asia. It begins with a discussion on the notion of ‘knowledge’ in the Qur’an and the Hadith, showing that in the early Muslim period this was not limited to strictly ‘religious’ knowledge, unlike later, when, with the emergence of the schools of fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence, it began to be seen as such by many ulama. It also shows that the notion of ‘alim itself has undergone a major shift over the centuries. While earlier it signified a scholar in any discipline, with the rise of the faqih or expert in Muslim jurisprudence it was considerably narrowed down to refer only to a scholar in what came to be narrowly defined as ‘religious’ subjects. This also went alongside the evolution of the institution of the madrasa as separate from learning-circles in the mosques, as a centre of formal Islamic education. The author discusses the mutually supportive relationship between the rulers and the court ulama and their role in seeking to enforce varying, and often contradictory, notions of Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ on the populace. In addition, the author also mentions other ulama and Sufis who were opposed both to the court ulama and the rulers, for which many of them had to face stern punishment and even death.
The book then discusses the history of madrasas in pre-colonial India. It examines their changing sources of support and patronage, their curricula and teaching methods and their roles in training bureaucrats and religious specialists. It looks at crucial transformations in the madrasas with the onset of colonial rule, leading to a narrowing down of the curriculum, the emergence of a sharp distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge, a major shift in the social composition of their teachers and students as well as organisational changes inspired by the colonial model. It examines debates about reforms in the madrasa curriculum, with different visions of normative Islamic education being offered by different sets of actors, including several who argued for the inclusion of some ‘modern’ subjects in the madrasas for various purposes. In this context, the author also discusses the varying attitudes of ulama of different schools to British rule, India’s freedom struggle and the question of Hindu-Muslim relations.
Madrasas in contemporary India are the focus of the remainder of the book. The author shows that madrasas are not homogenous, but, rather, differ considerably across regions and even among schools of thought. He discusses what, for heuristic purposes, he calls a ‘typical’ north Indian ‘traditional’ madrasa, looking at its curriculum, teaching methods, relations between students and teachers, students’ career paths and options, as well as the worldview that the madrasa seeks to inculcate in its students. He contrasts this with other types of madrasas, such as those run by some Islamist groups and Muslim reformists, and also looks at the relatively recent phenomenon of madrasas that train girls to become religious specialists. He also closely examines ongoing debates on madrasa reform and ‘modernisation’, looking at the diverse views and agendas of the ulama, Islamist ideologues, Muslim reformists and the state, all of whom advocate ‘reform’ in different ways. In this regard he refers to the scope and pace of reforms that numerous madrasas have made in recent years by changes in their curriculum and teaching methods, as well as through affiliation with state educational institutions.
The concluding chapter of the book deals with the contentious issue of madrasas and ‘terrorism’. It disagrees with the claims of those who allege that madrasas in India are engaged in training ‘terrorists’, but suggests that the ways in which many madrasas teach their students to look at other religions and their adherents does indeed promote an insular mentality which bodes ill for inter-community harmony. In this regard, the chapter profiles several Muslim leaders, including some ulama, who argue for the urgent need for madrasas to engage in inter-faith dialogue, not simply for missionary purposes but also for promoting peaceful relations between the different communities. The chapter also looks at how several madrasas and the ulama have sought to respond to the charge of promoting ‘terrorism’ by issuing statements countering these charges, promoting inter-community dialogue meetings and acknowledging the urgent need for certain reforms.
39. Siraj, Maqbool A., ‘Madrasas Need Social Audit’, Islamic Voice, July, 1992.
35. Saiyed, A.R. & Talib, Mohammad, ‘Institutions and Ideas: A Case Study in Islamic Learning’, in Christian W. Troll, Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries (vol.2) (Religion and Religious Education), New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1985.
This study is a critique of the Deobandi madrasa system and its associated worldview. The authors argue for the need for ‘reconstruction’ of Islamic thought in the contemporary context, but argue that the single biggest obstacle in this regard are the ‘orthodox’ ulama, who claim a monopoly on representing Islam. The ulama have ‘frozen’ Islam in its ‘medieval form’, the authors say, in order to promote their own vested interests, power, wealth and authority. This is also linked to what the authors see as the rural or peasant background of many ulama and their lack of awareness of the complexities of the modern world. Because of this, they generally frown on any change in the curriculum and teaching methods in the madrasas and stress rote learning, involving teaching of fixed, memorisable statements and formulas that freezes Islamic thought into an exact replica of the past.
The authors examine the social structural factors that perpetuate Islamic thought in its present mode in the madrasas, seeking to relate ideas to social settings. They look at the social context that makes it possible for ulama to ‘remain medieval in their outlook and worldview, in the process perpetuating an image of Islam as ‘un-changing’, ‘medieval’ and ‘pre-modern’. They trace the opposition of many ulama to ‘Western’ knowledge to the colonial encounter, the displacement by the British of the Mughals, the closing of the doors to government service to madrasa graduates under the British, the association of ‘modern’ education with Christian missionaries, whose opposition to Islam was well known, and the cruel suppression of the Muslims, particularly the ulama, by the British in the aftermath of the failed 1857 Revolt. Because of this, many ulama saw ‘modern’ education as wholly anti-Islamic or as calculated to destroy Muslim faith and identity. They sought to combat this by setting up a chain of madrasas all over the country and thereby counter British cultural and political domination.
Today, the authors say, many madrasas carry on in the same tradition, seeing Islam as in need of being protected from what they see as ‘anti-Islamic’ forces. Hence, they stress the need for their students to observe external markers of distinction (dress, appearance, life-style) and maintain strict obedience to teachers, and are characterized by a ‘completely authoritarian set-up’ that frowns on any change. Such madrasas, most notably those associated with the Deoband school, continue with the traditional dars-i nizami syllabus to perpetuate a ‘non-variant’ Islam, with secular education being either discouraged or else seen as a handmaiden to Islamic learning. Most madrasas discourage freedom of enquiry and expression and fiercely denounce alternate understandings of Islam in the belief that the sectarian vision of Islam as upheld by a particular madrasa is final and normative. Their libraries are, accordingly, stocked almost entirely with carefully chosen and prescribed texts and students are discouraged from reading anything that might lead to ‘deviation’. In this way madrasas seek to insulate themselves and their students from the ‘modern’ world, cultivating in them a ‘thorough disregard and supercilious disdain for any and every change in the society’.
One major reason for this state of affairs, the authors opine, is the changed social composition of the ulama. In pre-colonial times, madrasas trained bureaucrats and so attracted sons of the elites. With the onset of colonial rule, opportunities for madrasa students to acquire such jobs were closed, as a result of which elite and middle-class Muslim families began sending their sons to ‘modern’ schools instead. This trend still continues today, as a result of which today most madrasa students as well as ulama come from poor families, particularly from villages and small towns. Madrasa education provides them with a means for upward social mobility. Students go on to work as religious functionaries or set up their own madrasas, thereby perpetuating the system. They, the authors say, see their impending poverty as religious functionaries as a religious blessing, as providing them with particular benefit in the life after death. Madrasas also provide for them a refuge, where they see a sense of solidarity and equality which their existential situation is said to deny them. In other words, the social background of the majority of madrasa students ‘appears to have a greater receptivity to the attitudes values and conception of the world promoted and inculcated by the madrasas’. In particular, the authors contend, the unquestioned acceptance of the claim of the eternal validity of the shari‘ah, which the madrasas constantly stress, is ‘sustained through an organized condition of fatalism’ that is related, in part, to the social background of most madrasa students.
Given this, the authors argue that change in the ‘thought system’ of the madrasas is only possible through a change in the ‘institutional setting’ where this thought flourishes and ‘acquires its characteristic mode’. This, they say, can happen only when ‘certain principles or aspects of beliefs are proved to be outmoded in their functioning with reference to the changing vicissitudes of society’. This requires that the custodians of the madrasas give contemporary challenges ‘a status worthy of being given a serious reckoning and a careful analysis’. Changes in the madrasas also depend on the extent to which the madrasas are ‘reified’ in the imagination of their defenders, invested with attributes believed to be beyond human theorising and review. Madrasas, argue the authors, suffer from a high degree of ‘reification’, reflecting the fact that their custodians have ‘relinquished the capacity to reinterpret those aspects of religious dogma and creed which were originally a product of human reasoning and formulation and interpretation’. Another indication of this high degree of ‘reification’ of the madrasas and their thought system is that, as they see it, issues and problems of the world are treated as strictly subordinate, with their focus being almost entirely on normative concerns.
The Deoband madrasa, the authors argue, was established on account of the ideological conflict between Muslim ‘orthodoxy’ and British colonialism, and even now ‘the tradition of tension between the madrasa and the surrounding society continues’, with the madrasa seeking to remain hermetically sealed off from what the ulama regard as the ‘un-Islamic’ influences of the wider world, castigating alternate thought-systems as ‘anti-Islamic’ and even ‘Satanic’. This goes to such extremes that students are not encouraged to read anything other than what their teachers prescribe, not even literature by other Muslim groups. Hence, the changes occurring outside the seminary, the authors argue, ‘stand a remote chance’ of becoming a basis for any significant changes in the madrasa system. The changes brought about by ‘modernity’, which are treated as ‘non-issues’, scarcely find a place in the official cognition of the madrasa managers, teachers and students.
The authors make the interesting point that the ulama play an important role in ‘reifying’ the madrasa system and its thought-system by including a massive range of items, physical and social, in this ‘reification’ process. Thus, in the case of the Deoband madrasa, this ‘reification’ is actualized by invoking the transcendent will in explaining the origin of the madrasa, even its physical buildings, syllabus and by-laws, all of which are presented as some sort of extension of God’s will, thus ‘tilting the priorities of cognition in favour of the ideational over the existential’.
However, such extreme ‘reification’, the authors argue, that is so characteristic of the Deoband tradition is not to be found in all madrasas, many of which recognise that their thought-system as well as the syllabus they employ are definitely influenced by human effort and so, to that extent, are amenable to change and reform. The point to be asked when assessing the relative lack of receptivity to change among the Deobandis, the authors note, is precisely what social, economic, political and historical factors have made for this degree of ‘reification’ because, they argue, this is not something that is intrinsic to the madrasa system as such, as the variety and the openness to change in the case of early Arab and Indian madrasas demonstrates.
36. Seminar on Elementary Education and Minorities in India: A Report, New Delhi: Vikramshila Education Resource Society, New Delhi, 2004, pp.47.
This report details the proceedings of a seminar on Muslim education supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The report sees Muslim educational ‘backwardness’ as a result of lack of access to opportunities. It notes that the issue of Muslim education is generally discussed in terms of affiliation of minority educational institutions to Boards or Universities or reservation for Muslims in colleges and universities. Consequently, issues related to the broader ‘development’ paradigm are generally ignored. Muslims as an educationally marginalized community are rarely, if ever, considered when formulating state educational policies and programmes, the report notes.
The report sees madrasas as a ‘separate’ system of education outside the ‘mainstream’, thereby working to ‘perpetuate discrimination’. It notes that almost all madrasas lack trained teachers and relatively few of them have made any provision for ‘modern’ education. Part of the attraction of the madrasas, it says, lies in the fact that many Muslims are unable to identify with or even feel threatened by the ethos of general schools, which is seen as ‘Hinduistic’. The report regards the increasing number of madrasas as a result of limited access for many Muslims to ‘mainstream’ schooling, and says that this unequal access violates the principles of equity and justice.
India, the report states, cannot advance if its Muslims remain educationally ‘backward’. At the same time, it notes that many Muslims confront what they see as a major dilemma of having to choose between retaining their cultural identity and getting ‘integrated’ into the ‘wider society’. If the curriculum in general schools is insensitive to the cultural needs of Muslims, it says, many Muslims will inevitably choose not to send their children to regular schools, and will, instead, send them to madrasas or Muslim-managed schools instead. One way out of this dilemma, it says, is by ‘modernising’ the madrasa curriculum and by providing suitably ‘modernised’ madrasas state recognition and affiliation with universities, such as has been attempted in West Bengal. Further, it suggests, Muslim NGOs can work with the state in order to promote Muslim education, including in the field of madrasa reform.
37. Shahabuddin, Syed, ‘Reorganisation of Madrasah Education’, in Taher, Mohamed (ed.) Educational Developments in the Muslim World, New Delhi: Anmol Publications, 1997.
The author argues that in the face of the growing challenge of Westernisation, ‘modernisation’ and atheism and the influence of the ‘non-Islamic’ environment, there is an urgent need for institutions that can help preserve Islamic values and identity. The Indian Constitution provides minorities the right to establish educational institutions of their choice. Muslims must, therefore, set up such institutions whose responsibility it would be to ensure that all Muslims have at least a basic knowledge of Islam. These institutions would also train religious specialists, such as madrasa teachers, prayer leaders, muazzins, muftis etc., as these are indispensable for the community. They would also produce Islamic scholars to propagate the faith, ‘rebut and refute the calumnies broadcast by hostile elements’ and transmit Islamic values and traditions to the coming generations. Hence the importance of madrasas, the author says.
The author critiques Muslim-managed schools and colleges for allegedly failing to fulfil what is expected of them. Their main motive now is said to be profit-making or providing employment to relatives of members of governing committees, instead of the preservation of the religion, language and culture of the community, which is precisely the reason for which the Constitution provides minorities the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. While enjoying this Constitutional right, the author laments, these institutions are not particularly ‘Islamic’ in their ethos, sharing a common curriculum and environment with non-Muslim institutions. ‘Only by striving towards an Islamic content and an Islamic environment can the minority institutions established by Muslims or in the name of the Muslim community serve a useful purpose’, the author argues. Such institutions, he says, should include Islamic Studies in their curriculum at the primary level in addition to the state-approved syllabus. At the secondary level, Islamic Studies should be offered as an additional subject, in addition to which seminars, study circles and conferences should be organised to stress the importance of the ‘Islamic way of life’.
The author also suggests certain reforms in madrasas. Madrasas, he says, should include Islamic and Indian History, Geography, General Science, Politics, Civics, Economics, Mathematics, English, Urdu and Hindi in their syllabus so that students can understand the ‘spirit of the time’ and provide leadership to the community. In higher-level madrasas or jami‘as, he says, there should be option for specialisation in one of four subjects: Arabic literature, Qur’anic commentary, Hadith and Islamic Jurisprudence. The system of Islamic education in the madrasas, he suggests, should run parallel to the national system so that at every stage it should be possible to exchange students between the two streams.
In order to improve the functioning of the madrasas, the author calls for the setting up of a Council for Islamic Education in every district, to which all madrasas in the district would be affiliated. Likewise, there should be State and National level Councils, which would organize regular meetings with teachers and managers of madrasas to improve teaching methods and curricula. The author appeals for the practice of door-to-door collection of donations for madrasas to be stopped. In its place he calls for the ‘rationalisation’ of the method of fund collection for madrasas and insists that madrasas should not ‘in any way’ depend on state funds. One reason for this, he says, is that very few madrasas funded by the state ‘ever achieve an environment conducive to inculcation of Islamic virtues’. Instead, like all government institutions, they become ‘dens of corruption, wastage and inefficiency’, with their teachers spending less time teaching than in pleasing the educational authorities. Hence, the author argues, sarkari madrasas, madrasas that get funding from the state, should be gradually transformed into azad or independent madrasas, refusing to take any money from the state. However, the author laments that ‘the trend is very much in the opposite direction’.
The author also talks of the desirability of a common syllabus and examination system for all madrasas, for which he suggests that madrasas in the country be affiliated to one or two higher-level dar ul-‘ulums so that their degrees are all awarded in the name of the dar ul-‘ulums and so carry ‘national recognition and weightage’. Such standardisation, he says, would help improve teaching standards and the general level of piety in the madrasas and in the wider community and might also be able to help promote a more responsible and effective community leadership at the national level.
38. Sikand, Yoginder, Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India, New Delhi: Penguin, 2005, pp. 358, ISBN: 0-14-400020-2.
This book provides a fairly comprehensive account of madrasas and their evolution in South Asia. It begins with a discussion on the notion of ‘knowledge’ in the Qur’an and the Hadith, showing that in the early Muslim period this was not limited to strictly ‘religious’ knowledge, unlike later, when, with the emergence of the schools of fiqh or Islamic jurisprudence, it began to be seen as such by many ulama. It also shows that the notion of ‘alim itself has undergone a major shift over the centuries. While earlier it signified a scholar in any discipline, with the rise of the faqih or expert in Muslim jurisprudence it was considerably narrowed down to refer only to a scholar in what came to be narrowly defined as ‘religious’ subjects. This also went alongside the evolution of the institution of the madrasa as separate from learning-circles in the mosques, as a centre of formal Islamic education. The author discusses the mutually supportive relationship between the rulers and the court ulama and their role in seeking to enforce varying, and often contradictory, notions of Islamic ‘orthodoxy’ on the populace. In addition, the author also mentions other ulama and Sufis who were opposed both to the court ulama and the rulers, for which many of them had to face stern punishment and even death.
The book then discusses the history of madrasas in pre-colonial India. It examines their changing sources of support and patronage, their curricula and teaching methods and their roles in training bureaucrats and religious specialists. It looks at crucial transformations in the madrasas with the onset of colonial rule, leading to a narrowing down of the curriculum, the emergence of a sharp distinction between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge, a major shift in the social composition of their teachers and students as well as organisational changes inspired by the colonial model. It examines debates about reforms in the madrasa curriculum, with different visions of normative Islamic education being offered by different sets of actors, including several who argued for the inclusion of some ‘modern’ subjects in the madrasas for various purposes. In this context, the author also discusses the varying attitudes of ulama of different schools to British rule, India’s freedom struggle and the question of Hindu-Muslim relations.
Madrasas in contemporary India are the focus of the remainder of the book. The author shows that madrasas are not homogenous, but, rather, differ considerably across regions and even among schools of thought. He discusses what, for heuristic purposes, he calls a ‘typical’ north Indian ‘traditional’ madrasa, looking at its curriculum, teaching methods, relations between students and teachers, students’ career paths and options, as well as the worldview that the madrasa seeks to inculcate in its students. He contrasts this with other types of madrasas, such as those run by some Islamist groups and Muslim reformists, and also looks at the relatively recent phenomenon of madrasas that train girls to become religious specialists. He also closely examines ongoing debates on madrasa reform and ‘modernisation’, looking at the diverse views and agendas of the ulama, Islamist ideologues, Muslim reformists and the state, all of whom advocate ‘reform’ in different ways. In this regard he refers to the scope and pace of reforms that numerous madrasas have made in recent years by changes in their curriculum and teaching methods, as well as through affiliation with state educational institutions.
The concluding chapter of the book deals with the contentious issue of madrasas and ‘terrorism’. It disagrees with the claims of those who allege that madrasas in India are engaged in training ‘terrorists’, but suggests that the ways in which many madrasas teach their students to look at other religions and their adherents does indeed promote an insular mentality which bodes ill for inter-community harmony. In this regard, the chapter profiles several Muslim leaders, including some ulama, who argue for the urgent need for madrasas to engage in inter-faith dialogue, not simply for missionary purposes but also for promoting peaceful relations between the different communities. The chapter also looks at how several madrasas and the ulama have sought to respond to the charge of promoting ‘terrorism’ by issuing statements countering these charges, promoting inter-community dialogue meetings and acknowledging the urgent need for certain reforms.
39. Siraj, Maqbool A., ‘Madrasas Need Social Audit’, Islamic Voice, July, 1992.
The author observes that most of the money given by Muslims as charity goes to madrasas. Since they receive money from, the public, he says, madrasas should be accountable to them. This, however, he claims, is not the case. He argues that the community does not need as many madrasas as presently exist, and says that their output is not commensurate with the heavy investment involved. There are simply not enough job opportunities to absorb all their graduates. Given the syllabus that is used in the madrasas, their graduates have few career options other than as religious specialists, narrowly defined. Hence, they generally set up their own madrasas and attract funds for running them, leading to further diversion of community resources from other pressing concerns, such as setting up schools, libraries, community housing projects, newspapers, hospitals, cooperatives, interest-free societies and social development projects.
The extent of diversion of precious resources to madrasas can be gauged, the author says, from the fact that in Bihar alone Muslims run 1391 madrasas (including several which exist only on paper) and only 45 high schools. The corresponding figures for Uttar Pradesh are 742 and 167 respectively. Madrasas are not, the author claims, properly serving the cause of the faith or of the community. He stresses that their syllabus is in need of revision and reform and laments that there is no mechanism to control or monitor them. Because most madrasa students lack any training in ‘modern’ or ‘secular’ subjects, English and vernacular languages other than Urdu and are unaware of the complexities of the modern world, they are said to be ‘diffident’ and unable to present or defend Islam. Hence, the author argues, there is an urgent need for considerable reform in their curricula.
40. Wasey, Akhtarul, Madrasas in India: Trying to Be Relevant, New Delhi: Global Media, 2005.
40. Wasey, Akhtarul, Madrasas in India: Trying to Be Relevant, New Delhi: Global Media, 2005.
This book, a collection of articles of disparate quality, provides a broad overview of the history and present condition of Islamic education in India, focussing particularly on thequestion of madrasa reforms.
In his introduction to the book, Akhtarul Wasey locates the salience of madrasas in the context of the importance that Islam places on knowledge. He points out that the Qur’an makes no division between ‘worldly’ and ‘religious’ knowledge, seeing knowledge as acomprehensive whole. Hence, he says, the distinction that contemporary madrasasoften make between these two forms of knowledge is ‘un-Islamic’ and must be done away with. He employs this rationale to argue the case for the teachingof ‘modern’ natural and social sciences in the madrasas. Wasey makes several othersuggestions for madrasa reform, including promoting discussion and debate inplace of blind conformity, providing technical skills to students and helpingpromote better relations between madrasas and ulama of the different Muslim sects. To promote these reforms he calls for the setting up of a central body to which all madrasas should be affiliated. Instead of individual madrasas collecting their own donations, this body would receive funds from the public and would disburse it to the madrasas depending on their performance.
Reforms in the madrasa system is the focus of Muhammad Arshad’s paper. He refers to the halting efforts by some madrasas to include modern social and naturalsciences in their curriculum, noting that these have not been very effective.This does not mean, he says, that the majority of the ulama are opposed tocurricular reform. Yet, Arshad argues, the managers of the madrasas must beconvinced that reforms are necessary in order for them to retain their relevanceand to train ulama who are familiar with the wider society. He suggests thatone way madrasas can bridge the dualism between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’knowledge with minimum disruption is by affiliating themselves to thestate-sponsored open school system, which would allow their students to pursue‘modern’ education along with their religious training.
A graduate of the Deoband madrasa, Waris Mazhari provides a fascinating insider’s perspective on contemporary madrasas and the dilemmas facing advocatesof reform. He calls for the excision of certain ‘irrelevant’ texts and theinclusion of modern social sciences and English in the madrasa syllabus.Instead of the books based on ancient Greek philosophy that madrasas teach, he calls for madrasa students to be familiarised with modern philosophies in order to express Islam in a mode relevant to today’s times. He critiques the overwhelming focus of the madrasa syllabus on juridical or fiqh issues and reliance on medieval fiqh texts. In place of taqlid, blind conformity to medieval juridical consensus, he calls for madrasas to stress therevival of ijtihad or creative reason in matters of jurisprudence. Likewise, he suggests the teaching of commentaries on the Qur’an by modern authors instead ofthose only by medieval scholars, pointing out that all scholars, nomatter how great, bear the imprint of their times and so their works cannot beconsidered sacrosanct. He concludes that while these reforms will help makemadrasa education more relevant, they might encounter stiff resistancefrom some sections of the ulama who might construe these as threatening toundermine their own authority.
Yoginder Sikand’s essay examines significant voices for reform in the Indianmadrasas, showing how they reflect different agendas and visions of appropriateIslamic education. Some ulama, he points out, are averse to change, seeing themadrasa curriculum prepared by their elders as ideal, arguing that theinclusion of secular subjects might dilute the religious identity of themadrasas. On the other hand, a number of younger generation ulama, Islamistideologues as well as liberal Muslims are today calling for structural changesin the madrasas. Some of them see this as a means to overcome what they regardas the ‘un-Islamic’ dualism between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ knowledge. Otherssee it as a means for the ulama to be aware of modern conditions, to presentIslam in a more intelligible mode, to assist in the task of Islamic missionarywork and to help promote the confidence and employment possibilities of madrasagraduates. Such reforms are also seen as essential toMuslim empowerment. The ‘holistic’ understanding of Islamic knowledge that theadvocates of reform appeal for a return to serves, the author argues, as a means toappropriate and to come to terms with ‘modernity’, to fashion a form of‘modernity’ that is suitably ‘Islamised’. It also helps fortify Muslims’ faithin their religion in a world where many Muslims see themselves as increasinglymarginalised.
A graduate of the Deoband madrasa, Waris Mazhari provides a fascinating insider’s perspective on contemporary madrasas and the dilemmas facing advocatesof reform. He calls for the excision of certain ‘irrelevant’ texts and theinclusion of modern social sciences and English in the madrasa syllabus.Instead of the books based on ancient Greek philosophy that madrasas teach, he calls for madrasa students to be familiarised with modern philosophies in order to express Islam in a mode relevant to today’s times. He critiques the overwhelming focus of the madrasa syllabus on juridical or fiqh issues and reliance on medieval fiqh texts. In place of taqlid, blind conformity to medieval juridical consensus, he calls for madrasas to stress therevival of ijtihad or creative reason in matters of jurisprudence. Likewise, he suggests the teaching of commentaries on the Qur’an by modern authors instead ofthose only by medieval scholars, pointing out that all scholars, nomatter how great, bear the imprint of their times and so their works cannot beconsidered sacrosanct. He concludes that while these reforms will help makemadrasa education more relevant, they might encounter stiff resistancefrom some sections of the ulama who might construe these as threatening toundermine their own authority.
Yoginder Sikand’s essay examines significant voices for reform in the Indianmadrasas, showing how they reflect different agendas and visions of appropriateIslamic education. Some ulama, he points out, are averse to change, seeing themadrasa curriculum prepared by their elders as ideal, arguing that theinclusion of secular subjects might dilute the religious identity of themadrasas. On the other hand, a number of younger generation ulama, Islamistideologues as well as liberal Muslims are today calling for structural changesin the madrasas. Some of them see this as a means to overcome what they regardas the ‘un-Islamic’ dualism between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ knowledge. Otherssee it as a means for the ulama to be aware of modern conditions, to presentIslam in a more intelligible mode, to assist in the task of Islamic missionarywork and to help promote the confidence and employment possibilities of madrasagraduates. Such reforms are also seen as essential toMuslim empowerment. The ‘holistic’ understanding of Islamic knowledge that theadvocates of reform appeal for a return to serves, the author argues, as a means toappropriate and to come to terms with ‘modernity’, to fashion a form of‘modernity’ that is suitably ‘Islamised’. It also helps fortify Muslims’ faithin their religion in a world where many Muslims see themselves as increasinglymarginalised.
Besides these arguments for the inclusion of ‘modern’ subjects inthe madrasa curriculum, the author also examines various arguments put forward byMuslim reformists for changes in teaching methods and for reviewing texts usedfor classical subjects such as jurisprudence and Qur’anic commentary, as well astheir views on the thorny issue of inter-sectarian differences and disputationsthat many madrasas stress and promote.
S.Ubaidur Rahman’s article focuses on the reform of the madrasas. He argues against the rigid dualism between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ knowledge that most madrasas seem to uphold, and calls for reforms in the madrasa curriculum in order to make madrasa education relevant to today’s demands. He cites the instance of numerous reformed madrasas and Arabic colleges in Kerala as a possible model for madrasas elsewhere in India to emulate. Reforming the madrasas, Ubaidur Rahman says, is an urgent necessity in order to present Islam in a modern idiom, to ‘answer Orientalists’ and to provide juridical (fiqhi) responses to issues of contemporary concern. He claims, ignoringcompletely the numerous madrasas that are gradually ‘modernising’ theircurriculum, that the managers of the madrasas ‘don’t seem to be even slightlyinclined to think that there is any need to make any changes and improvement inthe madrasa syllabus’. He also discusses the propaganda about madrasas being allegedly involved in promoting ‘terrorism’.
S.Ubaidur Rahman’s article focuses on the reform of the madrasas. He argues against the rigid dualism between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ knowledge that most madrasas seem to uphold, and calls for reforms in the madrasa curriculum in order to make madrasa education relevant to today’s demands. He cites the instance of numerous reformed madrasas and Arabic colleges in Kerala as a possible model for madrasas elsewhere in India to emulate. Reforming the madrasas, Ubaidur Rahman says, is an urgent necessity in order to present Islam in a modern idiom, to ‘answer Orientalists’ and to provide juridical (fiqhi) responses to issues of contemporary concern. He claims, ignoringcompletely the numerous madrasas that are gradually ‘modernising’ theircurriculum, that the managers of the madrasas ‘don’t seem to be even slightlyinclined to think that there is any need to make any changes and improvement inthe madrasa syllabus’. He also discusses the propaganda about madrasas being allegedly involved in promoting ‘terrorism’.
Based on his travels toseveral madrasas in eastern Uttar Pradesh along the India-Nepal border, heargues that, contrary to the claims of Hindutva ideologues and certainintelligence sources, none of these border madrasas are engaged in anysubversive activities. Far from fanning communal hatred, these madrasas providefree education to numerous poor children in areas where there are no otherschools. Some of these madrasas even have Hindu students and teachers. Othershave Hindu donors and patrons.
The alleged links between Indian madrasas and ‘terrorism’ are discussed in moredetail by Adil Mehdi, who sees these allegations as a recent phenomenon. LikeUbaidur Rahman, he believes that these allegations are unfounded. Referring tothe Deoband madrasa, which some newspapers have branded as the ‘nerve-centre ofterrorism’, he tells us that the bulk of the Deobandi ulama opposed thePartition of India and the ‘two nation’ theory of the Muslim League. Instead,they supported the Congress and the notion of a united India. For this they wereactively patronised by Indian leaders for their patriotism. Mehdi critiquesthe tendency of sections of the press to equate Indian madrasas with theircounterparts in Pakistan, arguing that while some madrasas in Pakistan haveindeed been involved in training militants, this is not the case in India,because the context in India is very different. He refers to his interviews withsenior police officials in different parts of the country,including Kashmir, who stress that no madrasa that they are aware of providesits students with armed training.
Mehdi also looks at the rhetoric of ‘reform’ articulated by a range of actors.For Hindutva ideologues, who see Islam as a ‘foreign’ and ‘barbaric’ religion,the demand that madrasas reform themselves serves, Mehdi argues, as ‘a ruse’ for‘purging’ madrasas of their ‘Islamic content’. Likewise, for governments thatare making similar demands the pressure for ‘reform’ emanates from ‘a beliefthat madrasas pose a threat or at least a potentially fundamentalist threat,even in the absence of any evidence’. In other words, Mehdi contends, theproposed ‘reforms’ are geared to countering this perceived threat rather thanconstituting a ‘meaningful attempt at substantial long-term overhaul of thesystem’. For their part, many ulama are reluctant to accept offers ofassistance from the state for ‘reform’, fearing this would dilute the ‘Islamic’character and autonomy of the madrasas as well as undermine their own authorityand control. Mehdi acknowledges that some madrasas, under growingpressure from outside as well as popular demand, have started teaching subjectslike English, Hindi and computer applications, but argues that ‘these attempts remain atbest token gestures and are not integrated with the overall education’.
Mehdi also looks at the rhetoric of ‘reform’ articulated by a range of actors.For Hindutva ideologues, who see Islam as a ‘foreign’ and ‘barbaric’ religion,the demand that madrasas reform themselves serves, Mehdi argues, as ‘a ruse’ for‘purging’ madrasas of their ‘Islamic content’. Likewise, for governments thatare making similar demands the pressure for ‘reform’ emanates from ‘a beliefthat madrasas pose a threat or at least a potentially fundamentalist threat,even in the absence of any evidence’. In other words, Mehdi contends, theproposed ‘reforms’ are geared to countering this perceived threat rather thanconstituting a ‘meaningful attempt at substantial long-term overhaul of thesystem’. For their part, many ulama are reluctant to accept offers ofassistance from the state for ‘reform’, fearing this would dilute the ‘Islamic’character and autonomy of the madrasas as well as undermine their own authorityand control. Mehdi acknowledges that some madrasas, under growingpressure from outside as well as popular demand, have started teaching subjectslike English, Hindi and computer applications, but argues that ‘these attempts remain atbest token gestures and are not integrated with the overall education’.
Meena Kandaswamy, former editor of the Chennai-based journal Dalit, echoesMehdi in making similar claims about what she calls ‘the Hindutva jihad againstmadrasas’. She bitterly critiques Hindutva ideologues for what she regards astheir fallacious propaganda about Indian madrasas being ‘dens of terror’, whichshe sees as part of their larger ‘anti-Muslim’ and ‘Brahminical’ agenda. At the sametime as Hindutva leaders demand that madrasas should be ‘modernised’ and mademore ‘scientific’, she says, they turn a blind eye to the hatred and violenceand patent unscientific obscurantism that is actively promoted in scores ofHindutva schools all over the country.
41. Winkelmann, Mareike Jule, ‘Everyday Life in a Girls’ Madrasah in Delhi’, in Radhika Chopra & Patricia Jeffery (eds.) Educational Regimes in India, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005.
This article examines the functioning of a girls’ madrasa in Delhi, the Jami‘at ul-Banat. The author begins with a note on the diversity within the madrasa system of education, pointing out that the common perception that madrasas are a monolith is misleading. She argues that girls’ madrasas are a fairly recent phenomenon in India, going back to the years immediately after the Partition. Before this, Muslim elites made arrangements for their girls to be taught at their own homes by female teachers.
The Jamiat ul-Banat, established in 1996, is associated with the Deobandi school of thought and the Tablighi Jama‘at movement. Girls in the madrasa are aged between 12 and 17 and mostly come from lower-middle class families. Many of them are from outside Delhi, and live inside the madrasa in strict pardah. They are not allowed to leave the madrasa premises unless in cases of emergency or for vacations. They are forbidden from seeing un-related men, even the one male teacher employed in the madrasa.
The course used in the madrasa is a modified version of the dars-i nizami, with some difference in the teaching of fiqh, with more attention paid to details of jurisprudence related to women. The girls also learn basic English, Hindi and Mathematics. Besides this, there is what the author calls an ‘invisible’ curriculum, through which the students internalize rules about appropriate culture (adab) and deportment. They are also encouraged to participate in the work of the Tablighi Jama‘at, preaching its particular understanding of Islam to local women. In this sense, although the version of Islam that the students learn is heavily patriarchal, the education that the girls receive and their involvement in the Tablighi Jama‘at provides them a new access to religious authority. Many of the girls will go on to marry and see their education as a means to become better wives and mothers. Others might also go on to establish girls’ madrasas of their own or else take up employment in the growing number of such madrasas in different parts of the country. The author argues that the appeal of such madrasas for some Muslim families lies in the fact that they offers an alternate form of education that is seen as culturally appropriate, which allows them to send their daughters out of their homes, and often to other towns and cities, rather than remain home after attaining puberty.
42. Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
41. Winkelmann, Mareike Jule, ‘Everyday Life in a Girls’ Madrasah in Delhi’, in Radhika Chopra & Patricia Jeffery (eds.) Educational Regimes in India, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005.
This article examines the functioning of a girls’ madrasa in Delhi, the Jami‘at ul-Banat. The author begins with a note on the diversity within the madrasa system of education, pointing out that the common perception that madrasas are a monolith is misleading. She argues that girls’ madrasas are a fairly recent phenomenon in India, going back to the years immediately after the Partition. Before this, Muslim elites made arrangements for their girls to be taught at their own homes by female teachers.
The Jamiat ul-Banat, established in 1996, is associated with the Deobandi school of thought and the Tablighi Jama‘at movement. Girls in the madrasa are aged between 12 and 17 and mostly come from lower-middle class families. Many of them are from outside Delhi, and live inside the madrasa in strict pardah. They are not allowed to leave the madrasa premises unless in cases of emergency or for vacations. They are forbidden from seeing un-related men, even the one male teacher employed in the madrasa.
The course used in the madrasa is a modified version of the dars-i nizami, with some difference in the teaching of fiqh, with more attention paid to details of jurisprudence related to women. The girls also learn basic English, Hindi and Mathematics. Besides this, there is what the author calls an ‘invisible’ curriculum, through which the students internalize rules about appropriate culture (adab) and deportment. They are also encouraged to participate in the work of the Tablighi Jama‘at, preaching its particular understanding of Islam to local women. In this sense, although the version of Islam that the students learn is heavily patriarchal, the education that the girls receive and their involvement in the Tablighi Jama‘at provides them a new access to religious authority. Many of the girls will go on to marry and see their education as a means to become better wives and mothers. Others might also go on to establish girls’ madrasas of their own or else take up employment in the growing number of such madrasas in different parts of the country. The author argues that the appeal of such madrasas for some Muslim families lies in the fact that they offers an alternate form of education that is seen as culturally appropriate, which allows them to send their daughters out of their homes, and often to other towns and cities, rather than remain home after attaining puberty.
42. Zaman, Muhammad Qasim, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change, Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2004.
This book provides a broad overview of the roles and functions of the ulama, looking at how these have been transformed over time. The arguments it proposes are discussed in the specific context of the ulama in British India and, following the partition of India in 1947, in Pakistan. Zaman’s concern is not so much to assess the question of the supposed decline of the ulama as to examine the changing ways in which the ulama have sought to maintain their claims of being the authoritative spokesmen of scripturalist Islam. This he relates to their struggles to assert their authority against new challengers, in the form of the state, one hand, and Muslim ‘modernists’ and Islamists, on the other.
Zaman’s basic thesis is that the notion of a radical division between the ‘religious’ (dini) and ‘secular’ (duniyavi) spheres, on which most contemporary traditionalist ulama seek to construct their claims to authority as experts in a narrowly-defined religious sphere, is actually alien to the early Islamic tradition and represents a relatively recent innovation. In pre-colonial times, Zaman tells us, no such division was recognized or even known. Rather, religion infused all other spheres of social life and was inseparable from them. This reflected the Qur’anic insistence of all forms of legitimate knowledge as being divine and of all actions, personal as well as social, as being forms of service to God if conducted according to the ethical commandments of the holy text.
Yet, how and why is it, Zaman asks, that the ulama acquiesced so willingly in the colonial logic of ‘religion’ and the ‘secular’ representing two separate spheres, sometimes taking this to such lengths as to imagine the two as mutually contradictory? How is it, he questions, that despite their continued verbal assent to the notion that there is no division between the two spheres in Islam, in practice they operate on the basis of this assumption and even use it to bolster their own claims?
The answer that Zaman supplies to this seeming paradox is persuasive and compelling. Quoting from colonial documents, he tells us that for the British, India was seen as somehow ‘excessively’ religious, with religion dominating every sphere of life, for both Hindus as well as Muslims. Working with a post-enlightenment Western Christian assumption of religion being a separate sphere of life, neatly set apart from the secular, colonial administrators sought to mould the India that they ruled in their own image. Thus, the scope of religion was sought to be confined to the private sphere, while all other aspects of life were to be governed by a secular logic. Whole areas of law, which had previously be governed by the shari‘ah for Muslims, were now taken under secular jurisdiction, and over time the scope of the enforceable shari‘ah was reduced simply to the private sphere, or to the domain of what is today called Muslim Personal Law.
Likewise, education was also secularized, and madrasas, that had once taught a range of both ‘traditional’ as well as ‘rational’ sciences, soon came to focus only on the former. Today, Zaman argues, this poses a major challenge to those who wish to reform the madrasas. Reform proposals are quickly dismissed as ‘interference in religion’ by traditionalists who wish to establish their own control on the norms governing the private sphere. Such proposals are seen as a major challenge to their own authority, although they are generally branded by many ulama as an ‘attack on Islam’ or as a subtle way of secularising the madrasas from the backdoor and diluting their religious content.
On the face of it, Zaman says, the acquiescence of the ulama in what was clearly an attack on their influence seems puzzling. It is true that some ulama did try to resist the British militarily, as in the case of the 1857 revolt. However, realizing the futility of armed conflict, they soon came to terms with the reality of the colonial state and sought to make the best of an unenviable situation. Since, effectively, religion had been reduced to the private sphere, Zaman argues, the ulama struggled to establish their credentials as authoritative guides in this realm. The colonial state, and later, the post-colonial states in both Pakistan and India accepted the claims of the ulama as official interpreters of this privatized Islam, which enabled the ulama to adjust to new political conditions without a massive or sudden disruption of their authority. Inevitably, therefore, religion came to be reduced, in practice, if not in theory, to a bundle of rules related to worship, personal deportment and personal behaviour and belief, with both the ulama and the state deploying the same binary colonial logic.
The remainder of the book deals with the ulama in post-1947 Pakistan. Zaman notes how difficult it is to speak about the Pakistani (or any other, for that matter) ulama as a single homogenous whole. Sectarian divisions between Sunnis and Shias, and, within the Sunni camp, between rival groups of ulama such as Deobandis, Barelvis, Ahl-i Hadith and Islamists, threaten the carefully constructed image of a solid Muslim monolith. Zaman carefully describes the complex political linkages of these different groups, showing how they represent a range of options that shift over time and across sectarian affiliation: from passive apolitical or politically quiescent to radical and even militant in response to actions taken by the Pakistani state that has sought to court them for its own interests and strategic objectives.
Zaman provides an insightful discussion of the question of radical activism in certain contemporary Pakistani madrasas. He argues that although numerous Pakistani madrasas and ulama are indeed supporters of a militant form of Islam, they are a minority. While not seeking to downplay the threat that they pose, he writes that most Pakistani madrasas actually have little to do with militant politics. Many Pakistani ulama might support an ‘Islamic state’, variously defined, but not all or even most of them would approve of terror tactics.
Thus, not all ulama support Osama bin Laden or the Taliban, for instance. In fact, Zaman tells us, the Pakistani Deobandis, one of the most politically assertive of the ulama of the country, had a complex and in some sense ambiguous relationship with the Taliban. While almost all of them seem to have expressed their support for the Taliban, several of them were rather critical, although in a mild sort of way, of some of their more controversial methods and policies. Zaman argues that the radicalization of many Pakistani madrasas cannot be seen in isolation, as representing a supposed inherent logic that inevitably drives the madrasa as an institution to this sort of politics. Rather, he stresses, it is the instrumental use of the madrasas and of radical Islamism by Pakistani political elites and external players like America and Saudi Arabia and the willingness of some sections of the ulama to go along with this agenda that explains the phenomenon.
The book closes with an appeal for the reform of the madrasas if they are to play a constructive role in the development of the community. This also calls, Zaman suggests, for new ways of imagining the role of religion in contemporary society. In conclusion, he writes, in the continued absence of a comprehensive ijtihad or application of independent reasoning in the light of the Qur’an in order to meet new challenges and to revise worn-out ways of thinking about religion, madrasas would probably continue to be victims of a stultified conservatism that can do the world and the Muslims themselves little good.
0 comments:
Post a Comment