Naseem ur-Rahman, a young graduate of the Jami'at ul-Falah madrasa in Azamgarh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, which is associated with the Jamaat-e Islami. Presently, he is enrolled as a doctoral student at the Department of Islamic Studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia,
(Interviewed by Yoginder Sikand)
Q: Can you briefly describe your educational background and career?
A: I was born and brought up in a village in Madhubani, in Bihar, in eastern
Q: Having studied at both a madrasa and a regular university, how do you look at the madrasa system of education?
A: Madrasas are meant to train a class of religious scholars or ulema who can interpret and preach Islam. Now, it is for the community to decide how far the madrasas in the country, which number in their thousands, are actually achieving this goal. As I see it, in order for the ulema to provide proper guidance to the community, they must know about what is happening in the world outside the four walls of their madrasas. I don’t think this is quite the case with many, if not most, madrasas. In many madrasas, the teachers and managers forbid their students to even read books and magazines published by other Muslim groups, leave alone by non-Muslims. Naturally, this works to greatly narrow their vision and severely limit their understanding of the rapidly changing world around them. In turn, this only makes them appear as awkward aliens once they graduate from the madrasas and are forced to confront the outside world. In the madrasas, teachers constantly tell their students that they are being groomed to become leaders of the community, arguing that the right to leadership rests with them. Imagine the shock these students receive once they finish their studies and suddenly discover that no one wants to accept their leadership claims and, even worse, when they realise that they are regarded as irrelevant as they cannot relate to the wider society!
Q: What exactly do you mean when you claim that madrasa graduates find it difficult to relate to the world around them?
A: By this I mean that, by and large, and with some significant exceptions, madrasa graduates are ignorant of the problems of the real world. Hence, they come up with completely unrealistic solutions to the problems of the community. This owes, in great measure, to the sort of education that they receive in the madrasas, where they learn next to nothing about the realities of the contemporary world. Another reason why madrasa graduates are seen as irrelevant by many is that very few of them can speak English, which is today indispensable if you want to understand global and national developments and also if you want to relate to others and communicate your views to them. Since few madrasa students speak English, they often suffer from a sense of inferiority, which then adds to their frustration at not being recognised as leaders, contrary to what they are told in the madrasas.
Because of the sort of education that they receive in the madrasas, most madrasa graduates, who largely come from poor families, end up accepting any sort of grossly underpaid employment. As madrasa teachers they are dependent on madrasa managers, and as imams in mosques they depend on the goodwill of the mosque administrators. They cannot assert themselves for fear of losing their jobs. So, barring some exceptions, madrasa graduates, who were taught that they would become leaders of the community after leaving the madrasas, are really leading very vulnerable lives.
Q: What sort of reforms would you like to see introduced in the madrasas in order to make them more effective?
A: Before any practical steps are taken to reform the madrasas, I think we need to be clear, and to spell out, what precisely the rationale of the madrasa system is. If it is to train ulema, we need to be clear as to what sort of education the ulema require. I think that madrasas must also incorporate social science education, so that the students can relate what they learn in the classroom to the outside world. In formulating proposals for reform we must also take into account the employment possibilities of madrasa graduates, something that has not been seriously considered so far.
While on the question of reform, I think it is essential to challenge the deeply-rooted, but completely un-Islamic, notion of a radical division, indeed opposition, between ‘religious’ (dini) and ‘worldly’ (duniyavi) education. By making this distinction, in practice if not in theory, many ulema have actually contributed to Muslim educational backwardness, by arguing that madrasas need not teach what they describe as ‘worldly’ subjects. But, as I see it, true religion and the confirmed facts of science are not incompatible, and so Muslims, in order to be faithful to their religion, must combine both forms of knowledge.
In addition to the teaching modern science, madrasas must also introduce English. When
Madrasas must also make proper arrangements for some sort of vocational training for their students, so that they can go on to be self-sufficient instead of becoming a burden on society. Some madrasas have started such training programmes, for instance for computer applications, translation, journalism and so on, and I think this needs to be greatly expanded.
Q: What roles would you envisage for the new sort of ulema that you wish to see emerge from the madrasas?
A: As I said earlier, the ulema see themselves as leaders of the community, and constantly tell their students that they, too, are destined to lead the community, if not the whole wide world! I think there should be a drastic change of priorities and perceptions here. Instead of imagining themselves as ‘leaders’ (makhdum), they must think of them as servers (khadim), for their role is to serve Islam and to guide, in a spirit of humility, the community, as well as to serve the whole of humanity, irrespective of religion. In this regard, organised social work is really a vital task, which madrasas must incorporate into their curriculum. As I see it, serving humanity, not simply through preaching but through practical action, is one aspect of the social dimension of tauhid or monotheism, which is the central tenet of Islam. This, however, is not given much stress in the madrasa system.
I think there is a lot that the ulema could learn from the Catholics in this regard. In contrast to the madrasas, many Catholic, particularly Jesuit, seminaries teach religious as well as what are called ‘worldly’ subjects to their students. After a long course that lasts several years, Jesuit seminary students then go on to specialise in any one field, which could be Theology, or Law, Medicine, Social Work, Economics, other religions and languages or whatever. So, once they finish their course they have a solid grounding in their religion as well as in a particular subject or field, on which they build their career. In this way they can provide proper guidance to their community, as well as serve humanity at large. Because of this, they can earn the respect of people, and are able to communicate with others, free of the sort of debilitating sense of inferiority and incapacity that is so characteristic of many of our ulema.
Q: You just mentioned that while some Jesuit priests are encouraged to be socially engaged, this is not the case with the ulema. How do you think the ulema could be made more sensitive to, as well as engaged with, society at large?
A: Many Jesuit seminaries insist that their students should do some sort of social work or even work as social activists. This is quite in contrast to the madrasas, where students are carefully insulated from the wider society and the problems that afflict it. Given the great stress that Islam gives to helping the poor and the needy, irrespective of religion, madrasa students should be active in social work. Madrasas should have facilities to train their students in modern methods of social work. I don’t think any madrasa in the country makes any such arrangement, however.
But this is not all. Since Islam addresses itself to the whole of humanity, Muslims, particularly the ulema, must work for the needy among all communities, and not just the Muslims alone. This, however, is hardly happening. Our love and concern should not be limited to just Muslims. In our social engagement we need to be as concerned about our duties to others, to the country and to humanity as a whole, as we are of our rights. It is completely hypocritical to keep harping on our rights while not living up to our responsibilities. We should stop this habit of complaining only when Muslim rights are trampled upon, but remaining silent when others suffer, whether at the hands of Muslims or others.
Of course, by this I don’t mean that we should not demand our rights. As citizens, we deserve the same rights as others, but we should struggle for our rights in a proper manner. And this must be constantly balanced by living up to our responsibilities as well.
The age of polemics is now long past, and we should be thinking seriously about dialogue instead, both inter-sectarian dialogue among Muslims as well as dialogue between Muslims and others. However, hardly any madrasas and ulema are actually doing anything about this. Their heated polemics only serve to further solidify intra-Muslim sectarian differences and conflicts, and to further increase the gulf between Muslims and others. This, in turn, is related to simple greed for power and pelf. Even from the point of view of Islamic missionary work, this is simply counterproductive. How can you expect people of other faiths to listen to you if you do not respect them or relate to them in a spirit of love and friendship? For that you need dialogue and harmony, not strife. Likewise, intra-Muslim differences that are fanned by many ulema associated with rival sects and their madrasas leads to a tremendous waste of resources and energies, which could otherwise be channelised to help the Muslim community at large, particularly the poor.
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