Interview: Maqbool Ahmad Siraj

Maqbool Ahmad Siraj is the executive editor of the Bangalore-based English monthly Islamic Voice, India’s largest-circulated Islamic magazine in English. He is also a regular contributor to various Indian dailies and mag­azines and the Urdu service of BBC Radio.

(Interviewed by Yoginder Sikand)

Q: What do you feel about all this talk today of Indian madrasas having emerged as ‘factories of terror’?

A: I feel that much of this propaganda against the madrasas is based on fabricated stories fed by intelligence agencies that have now been massively infiltrated by right-wing Hindu elements. I myself, and many other Muslims, too, are critical of the worn out and antiquated syllabus and curriculum followed by the madrasas, but to accuse them of indulging in anti-Indian activ­ities is a total figment of the imagination. On the one hand, madrasas are branded as ultra-orthodox, conservative and out­dated, and, on the other hand, they are accused of using sophisticated instruments for spreading terror. These two accusations don’t gel at all with each other.

Q: But, surely, for instance in Pakistan, some madrasa students have been trained in the use of sophisticated weapons and are associated with various militant groups?

A: The situation in Pakistan is very different from that in India. There, agencies of the state have liberally assisted some madrasas in providing military training to their students, whereas such patronage in India is absolutely unthinkable. Many madrasas on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan were nurtured on a steady diet of aimed struggle being the only means of salvation against imperialism. A good number of their students were inducted into the war against the Soviets. America trained these and other Afghans against the Russian occupation forces, in the name of jihad. The Americans used these fighters for their own purpose, and once that the purpose was fulfilled and the fighters that they nourished began to turn against them, America branded them as terrorists. When they were serving America’s purposes they were eulogized as freedom fighters fighting the godless Russians.

Of course, by pointing this out I don’t mean to absolve these particular Pakistani madrasas of the charges against them. As far as the Indian madrasas are concerned, a few students in some madrasas might actually have been involved in subversive activities, but to accuse the madrasas as a whole of being dens of terror is totally baseless. I think this propaganda is being spread by right-wing Hindu groups simply to tar­nish the image of Muslims and to win the favour of the Americans, who now insist that Islamic ‘jihadist’ forces repre­sent the greatest threat to the security of the world.

Q: What do you feel about the reporting on madrasas in the Indian press?

A: It is largely one-sided, and scores of newspapers publish carefully doctored and completely false reports that are often written by right-wing Hindu elements working in various intelligence agencies. Such agents also regularly write letters to various newspapers spreading malicious stories about Muslims, in order to build up an image of the community as a pack of ter­rorists. Large sections of the press have become willing tools in the hands of these fascist Hindu forces, who operate through intelligence agencies in order to provide a credible ring to their false allegations against Muslims.

Let me cite a small example. Recently, a group of madrasa students in a village near the town of Meerut took out a procession on Indian Independence Day, carrying the Indian tri-colour and a white flag representing peace, love and harmony. Two leading Delhi-based dailies reported that these students had staged a demonstration in the village waving Pakistani flags! Shortly after this report was published, a journalist working for the Delhi-based Muslim fortnightly Milli Gazette interviewed the police inspector of the village, Omkar Singh, a Hindu. Mr Singh told the reporter that the slogans that the madrasa students had raised in sup­port of inter-communal amity and unity would fill the heart of any Indian with pride. But just see how the incident was reported in the press!

Q: What changes do you think need to be made in the madrasa system of education to bring it in tune with the demands of the present-day?

A: The syllabus that is used in most of the madrasas India is a modified version of the
dars-e nizami, which was formulated more than three hundred years ago. The world has changed drastically since then, so the present syllabus can hardly meet the challenges of modern life. I think madrasas must introduce some sort of vocational training for their students, so that they can earn a decent living once they graduate. The present syllabus does not aim at this at all, as a result of which the community as a whole suffers. Large amounts of the community’s own funds, in the form of donations and zakat collec­tions, are spent on these students, and I think much of this is a waste of precious resources. I would go so far as to say that the place of traditional madrasas should be taken by Depart­ments of Islamic Studies in universities and research centres for the study of Islam. But till that happens, the reform process must be attempted through the existing madrasas, such as, for instance, by introducing the teaching of various social sciences, through which the students would be able to reinter­pret Islam in accordance with the changing times.

Q: You have written extensively on the need for Muslim scholars to reinterpret Islam through the creative exercise of reason or ijtihad to meet the demands of modern times. What exactly do you mean by this?

A: I’ll cite a small instance to suggest what I mean. Many years ago, while on a visit to Colombo, I met a certain Buddhist philanthropist, who runs an international eye-bank, distributing thousands of corneas to blind people throughout the world. I asked him how many Muslims had donated him their eyes to his eye-bank. He told me that so far only four had pledged their eyes after their death. On the other hand, he told me, he was sending some eighty corneas a week to various Muslim coun­tries. It struck me then that when it comes to the question of gifting their eyes to others Muslims would raise a hundred and one excuses in the name of alleged ‘restrictions of the shariah, but they wouldn’t at all bother about similar supposed shariah rules when it comes to receiving grafted corneas!

A commu­nity that only receives from others and does not give will inevitably be pushed down to beggar status. In the last four hundred years Muslims have not made any significant contribution to the world. Every modern invention that we take for granted today has come to us from the West. If at all Muslims do any scientific research they would work on things like dates, camels and cumin seeds, since the Prophet himself is said to have used these. I think this narrow attitude is not just sicken­ing, it is also profoundly anti-Islamic. The Quran repeatedly exhorts the believer to exercise his or her reason, to ponder on the wonders of nature, to use God’s gifts for the benefit of all. But the traditional ulema of the madrasas turn a complete blind eye to all this, and are obsessed with the intricacies of jurisprudence and external rituals and symbols, having forgot­ten the spirit of Islam, which is based on social justice, equal­ity and the use of reason.

This is why I say there is no reason why Muslims should stick to the jurisprudential opinions of the established schools of Islamic jurisprudence. There could well be a thousand schools, for we need newer and newer interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith as times change.

Q: Do you see that sort of change in the understanding of jurisprudence taking place among the Indian ulema today?

A: I don’t see this happening today, however, at least not on the scale that it should. There is such a climate of suffocation in the Muslim world that we are not able to find solutions to even small things like the sighting of the moon for Eid. Decades after man has landed on the moon, the traditional ulema still insist that you cannot rely on the telescope for sighting the moon or use modern astronomical data for fixing the Islamic lunar calendar, while they don’t hesitate to use spectacles to read their books! And so, as a result, you have Eid being celebrated on three different days by Muslims living in the same city.

What I mean to say by this is that there is a pressing need to reinterpret many traditional concepts in the light of the times, on a wide range of issues, from the status of women to economics and organ transplants, on most of which the traditional ulema have totally outdated views. By this rigid approach we have made ourselves-the laughing stock of the world.

Q: What, then, is the solution? Is to do away with the class of ulema as religious professionals altogether?

A: Islam is one religion that does not recognize any priest­hood, for it insists that there can be no intermediaries between the individual and God. The institution of quasi-priesthood entered Muslim societies only much later. And now respect for them has become so deeply ingrained in the Muslim psyche that many believe that by keeping the ulema happy they can earn for themselves a place in heaven, although this is totally against the teachings of the Quran. This feeling is further reinforced by the ulema themselves, who see their role as indispensable.

While the misuse of sci­ence and technology for wrong purposes might account for some of the opposition on the part of the ulema to modern education, it is also the case that many ulema fear that with the spread of modern education among Muslims their own leadership would be threatened.

Q: How do you think the issue of the shariah should be approached by Muslims living as minorities, such as in India?

A: One-third or more of the world’s Muslim population live as minorities, and the question of how the shariah should be interpreted in their own particular context is a very important and crucial one. Most of these Muslim minorities live in democracies, where they are, at least in theory, equal citizens, being neither the rulers nor the ruled. In addition, in most of these states Muslims are granted full freedom of religion. In such a situation, it is ridiculous to seek to apply the classical concept of the dar ul-harb or ‘abode of war’ to them, a term which is itself not mentioned in the Quran, interestingly enough.

For Muslim minorities, the question of to what extent they should insist on the implementation of the shariah in the public domain is thus of central concern, but the traditional madrasas don’t seriously deal with this issue at all. Many traditional ulema also wrongly mistake Arab culture for Islamic culture and seek to impose it on Muslims living even in Muslim-minority countries, which brings Muslims into unnecessary conflict with people of other faiths. At the risk of sounding pessimistic, let me say that Muslims, as a whole, are sticking to old, worn-out formu­las, having forgotten the way to formulate new formulas in accordance with the demands of the changing times.