Kashmir's Largest Madrasa: Dar ul-Uloom Raheemiyyah

By Yoginder Sikand

Established in 1979, the Dar ul-Uloom Raheemiyyah, located in the town of Bandipora, is the largest madrasa in Jammu and Kashmir. Founded by a graduate of the Deoband madrasa, Maulana Muhammad Rahmatullah, it currently has more than a thousand students on its rolls. Patterned on the Deoband model, it is one of the few madrasas in the state that provide Islamic education till the takhasus or specialization level.

The Trust that runs the madrasa also runs several other institutions, spread over three separate campuses. These include the Faiz-e Aam school for girls (till the fifth grade) and a similar school for boys (till the tenth grade). Both these institutions follow the curriculum prescribed by the Jammu and Kashmir State Board for Education, besides providing students with religious education. The madrasa is located on a separate plot of land, donated by a pious elderly woman, the late Aziz un-Nisa, who is said to have taught the Quran to hundreds of boys and girls in and around Bandipora. Adjacent to the madrasa is a four-storey technical institute which is scheduled to be opened this year, offering courses in computers, tailoring, painting and book-binding to students of the madrasa and others. Work on a mosque that can accommodate some six thousand worshippers is almost complete. A new library is coming up, whose collection includes numerous handwritten manuscripts in Persian and Arabic, some several centuries old. In addition, the Dar ul-Uloom runs some sixty part-time maktabs in and around Bandipora, most of whose teachers are senior students of the madrasa.

Mufti Nazeer Ahmed, aged 40, one of the elders at the madrasa, is a specialist in Islamic jurisprudence. His principal task is to dispense fatwas and hear disputes in the dar ul-qaza or 'house of justice' that is attached to the madrasa. Till date, the madrasa has received several thousand requests for fatwas.

When I enter his cell to meet the Mufti, I find him sitting in a corner on a carpet, surrounded by men and women who have come to him for advice. He asks an old woman, who cannot speak, to explain her problem. It relates, like many other cases that he hears daily, to marital and inheritance squabbles. He then hears out the others who are party to the dispute and eventually gives an opinion in the woman's favour.

As the crowd shuffles out of the room, he beckons me to sit next to him. I ask him if his madrasa's acceptance of modern education, as represented in the two schools that it runs, in addition to the madrasa itself, is unusual for the Kashmiri ulema community.

'Not at all', he replies. 'Many of our ulema believe that we need to have both modern as well as Islamic education, including even for girls'. 'Students with knowledge of both', he adds, 'can effectively communicate Islam, by their words and deeds, in a whole range of spheres, and not simply as religious specialists. A pious Muslim engineer or doctor is best suited for preaching Islam to engineers or doctors'.

Mufti Nazir offers added justification for this approach to education. 'If ulema acquire law degrees, they will be in a better position to offer fatwas. Or, if you want to establish an economic institution or system run on Islamic lines, a degree in Economics can be useful. Or, if a madrasa graduate studies journalism, he can use his skills to present a proper understanding of Islam to others and to counter anti-Muslim media propaganda. And for this, madrasa graduates must also study English and other languages, so that they can communicate with people who do not know Urdu'. The Mufti also refers to the need for technical training for madrasa students. 'This is important for those students who will not take up careers as ulema', he explains.

I ask the Mufti about the Kashmir dispute, but he brushes aside my question politely. 'We have nothing to do with politics', he says. He stresses, however, that allegations about madrasas in Kashmir being allegedly involved in promoting 'terrorism' are false. 'We are completely transparent, an open book, and have nothing to hide. Anyone can come and visit us and sit in our classrooms', he replies. 'Not a single madrasa in Kashmir has been identified by intelligence sources as engaged in that sort of activity'. To brand the madrasas as a whole as 'factories of terror' on the basis of the activities of a few stray students is unfair, he stresses.

We talk about inter-community relations and what Islam has to say about them. It is wrong, the Mufti tells me, to equate all non-Muslims as 'enemies of Islam', as some self-styled Islamists argue. 'You cannot generalize like this about any community. There are good people in other communities, just as there are bad people among Muslims. Our duty as Muslims is to approach others with kind words and a good heart and tell them about Islam and impress them with our good example'. For that, the Mufti says, peace is a must, so that others would be willing to listen to what Muslims say about their faith. Moreover, he adds, 'We must learn about each other's religions, not to condemn and denounce others, but to understand them'.

The Mufti tells me about a Hindu whom he met some days ago who had read about Islam and the stress it lays on ethical values. 'He told me that he appreciated Islam because of these values that it stands for, and not because of Muslims' behaviour. ‘So’, he says, ‘Islam must not be judged on the basis of the wrong actions of some Muslims'.

The call for the evening prayer comes floating in. As I get up to leave, the Mufti hands me a bunch of booklets that the madrasa has published. He asks me to spend the night if I want as it is getting late and I might miss the last bus to Srinagar. I would certainly have loved to—his cheerfulness, simplicity and hospitality have been so endearing, but I really must leave. I promise him that I'll try to return soon.

Read More...

Deoband's Rector on Central Madrasa Board

By Yoginder Sikand

The recent suggestion by Justice Siddiqui, Chariman of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions, that the Government of India set up a Central Madrasa Board has been welcomed by a section of the Indian ulema, but many influential Muslim clerics in the country have strongly opposed it. Although the press has highlighted this fact, it has not cared to seriously look at the arguments that these clerics make in this regard, thus reinforcing the deeply-held stereotype of the ulema being allegedly wholly opposed to madrasa reform.

Some months ago, the Dar ul-Ulum at Deoband, arguably India's largest and most influential madrasa, organized a massive public gathering under the auspices of the 'All-India Federation of Islamic and Arabic Madrasas' at Deoband to specifically discuss the question of the proposed Board. Expectedly, the convention concluded with a stern denunciation of the Government's plans.

The Deoband madrasa's opposition to the Board, which may be taken to reflect the opinion of several non-Deobandi clerics, too, was summarized in the inaugural address to the rally delivered by the rector of the Deoband madrasa, the ageing Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman, which has recently been published as a booklet. The Maulana sees the proposal of cnstituting the Board as aimed essentially at undermining the Islamic or specifically religious character of the madrasas and thereby to cause them to 'deviate' from their basic objective—that of producing scholars of the Islamic tradition. He refers to American imperialist offensives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the pressure that America is exerting on many Muslim states to 'reform' their religious education system to argue that behind America's demands for reform of the madrasas is the sinister motive of destroying their identity and, with this, their ability to challenge Western hegemony. At a time, he asks, when few governments choose to defy America's writ, 'Is it impossible that the proposed Board could be part of our own Government's expression of loyalty to global powers?'.

The Maulana claims that the opponents of Islam recognize the crucial role that madrasas play in sustaining the Islamic scholarly tradition and popularizing it among the Muslim public. They see the madrasas as being a major hurdle in their expansionist and imperialist designs. Hence, he claims, they are 'conspiring' to undermine the madrasas. However, instead of doing this directly, they are seeking to do this by another means—by converting madrasas from institutions of Islamic learning into 'employment training centres'. The proposed Board, he argues, is one such effort on the part of the Indian Government, for once madrasas begin to receive aid from the Government through the Board they will be under its control and their independent religious character would be seriously affected.

Evoking a central principle enunciated by the founders of the Deoband madrasa, the Maulana argues that madrasas must remain free of financial dependence on the state or rich and powerful people. So as to remain rooted among and responsible to 'ordinary' Muslims, they must depend only on donations by the Muslim masses. This would, he says, earn them the pleasure of God, being dependent only on His help for their finances. Pleading for madrasas to safeguard their autonomy from governmental interference, which is bound to happen if they receive government aid, the Maulana adds, 'The ulema of Bukhara mourned the decline of knowledge when the [Abbasid] government began funding the Nizamia madrasa in Baghdad', a reference to one of the earliest government-supported madrasas in the Muslim world. They 'expressed sorrow that religious education would be procured therein not for the sake of the Hereafter but to acquire worldly pomp and splendour'. He predicts that the same might happen to madrasas in India today in case they are affiliated to the proposed Central Madrasa Board and receive funding from it.

The Maulana notes that Justice Siddiqui defends his proposal by claiming that the Board would enable Muslims to adjust to 'modern demands' and overcome their 'backwardness' by combining religious and secular education and in this way help them 'gain success in terms of economic benefit and spiritual benefit for the Hereafter'. Siddiqui also argues, the Maulana points out, that the Board, while not interfering in the religious education of affiliating madrasas, will lay down the syllabus for secular studies therein and that it would also have the power to inspect the accounts of these madrasas to the extent that they receive funds from the state.

The Maulana dismisses these as seemingly benign but actually sinister proposals. The proposal of such a Board was, he points out, first made by the previous BJP-led coalition government at the Centre, which had appointed a working group on 'national security', led by the then Home Minister, that expressed concern about the increasing number of madrasas in India, seeing them as a security risk, and wrongly alleging links between madrasas in border areas and the Pakistani secret service agencies. In this context, the report had suggested the setting-up of a Central Madrasa Board to ostensibly promote madrasa 'modernisation' but actually to counter their alleged security threats. Hence, the Maulana says, the proposal itself is suspect since its origins themselves are suspect.

The Maulana further questions the wisdom of such a Board by noting that it has not been demanded by any representative Muslim organization. 'The question thus arises', he says, 'that while the Government consigns legitimate Muslim demands into the dustbin, how can it, in the absence of any such demand, establish a massive programme for madrasa welfare?'. Obviously, he argues, the intentions behind the proposed Board are not pious.

Further questioning the need for such a Board, the Maulana notes that, as the recent Sachar Committee Report on Indian Muslims reveals, less than 4 per cent of Muslim children in India study in full-time madrasas. The rest 96 per cent either study in regular private and public schools or not at all. 'The Government', the Maulana says, 'is not bothered about these 96 per cent children'. He asks, 'How come such sympathy for these 4 per cent?'. If the Government truly wishes to do something for Muslim education, he advises, it can 'do all it wants' to promote modern education among the rest 96 per cent

of Muslim children. However, here it has done precious little, if at all, and, instead, has adopted policies that make it increasingly difficult for minorities to establish their educational institutions. Is it not ironic, he asks, that 'Where Muslims need the Government's help the Government's policy is one of non-cooperation, while in the case of those institutions [madrasas] that think that remaining safe from Government help is the biggest help they can get, the Government insists that they should accept its aid?'. 'What meaning should be attributed to his?’, he questions.

Taking on Justice Siddiqui's argument that the Board is needed in order to enable madrasa graduates to secure better economic prospects, the Maulana argues that in Islam the aim of acquiring religious knowledge is to win the favour of God, rather than for using it for worldly ends. Hence, he says, the ulema have always stressed the need for 'pious intention' in pursuing religious education, and have insisted that it should not be had as a means for economic advancement. This being the case, he says, obviously this basic aim of the madrasas would be severely affected if the proposed Board comes into being. In this regard, he stresses the point that madrasas are not intended to promote the economic development of the Muslim community. Rather, he says, they aim to 'train such specialists who, indifferent to worldly pleasures, devote themselves to the protection and defence of Islam'. This objective, he claims, would be severely hampered if madrasa education were sought to be linked to the question of employment, as Justice Siddiqui envisages the proposed Board as doing.

Other crucial aspects of the madrasas, the Maulana goes on, might be similarly negatively affected if the Board comes into being. The ulema of the madrasas are required to propagate the message of Islam and even, if the need so arises, to speak up to 'tyrant rulers', but, the Maulana says, government-aided madrasas would lose this freedom. Their Islamic character can easily be undermined if the government forces them to study 'un-Islamic' material or sing 'polytheistic' songs, he says, referring to the practice in several BJP-ruled states making the singing of Hindu-inspired and 'un-Islamic' songs mandatory for all students in government schools. Justice Siddiqui promises that the religious curriculum of the madrasas will not be impacted upon by the Board, but, the Maulana asks, what if the Board structures the syllabus of secular education in such a way that the time and space devoted to religious study in the affiliating madrasas are greatly constricted? And when Siddiqui says that the Board will have the right to inspect the accounts of the affiliating madrasas to the extent that they take financial aid from it, what, the Maulana questions, is to stop 'communally-minded' government officers from creating problems for the madrasas in matters related to their other funds? Further, he adds, the performance of madrasas affiliated to state-level boards appointed by governments in some states has proved to be a miserable failure, and so there is every chance of this happening on a far larger scale if the Central Madrasa Board comes into being. Finally, he says, the Board will seriously impair the constitutional rights that minorities enjoy to establish and run educational institutions of their choice, free of governmental interference.

While countering the proposed Board, Siddiqui suggests that madrasas coordinate with each other, improve their functioning and the moral standards of their students, work more closely with their surrounding societies and also regularly submit their accounts to government-approved auditors so that they cannot be accused of financial impropriety. In this way, he suggests, the madrasas might be able to take the wind out of the sails of those who, he argues, seek to undermine them in the name of the proposed Board.

Of course, not all ulema would agree with everything that the Maulana has to say. Some of them have indeed welcomed the proposed Board on the condition that it guarantees the autonomy of the madrasas and that no decisions are thrust on them without the approval of their ulema. Many of them stress the need for inclusion of secular subjects in the madrasa curriculum to a certain level, with or without the help of a Board. The lively, often heated, debate on the Board, and on madrasa reforms more generally, thus continues to rage in ulema circles.

Read More...

A Deobandi Madrasa with a Difference

By Yoginder Sikand

Contrary to how the media generally portrays them, madrasas in India are not entirely opposed to reform. Indeed, the winds of change are being felt even in the portals of the more conservative madrasas, such as the vast network of Deobandi seminaries spread across the country. One such instance is the recently-established Jamia ul-Umoor, in New Delhi's Muslim-dominated Abul Fazl locality.

Set up in 2005, the Jamia ul-Umoor is the brainchild of two young graduates of the Dar ul-Ulum, Deoband, India's largest and most influential madrasa. Maulanas Khalid Saifullah Qasmi and Azmatullah Qasmi, the men behind this venture, are both in their mid-twenties and represent a new generation of Deobandi scholars eager to embrace and promote modern knowledge along with traditional Islamic learning. After having received their degree from Deoband they enrolled at the Dar ul-Umoor, a higher-leve madrasa in Srirangapatanam, near Mysore, for a year's course in a range of 'modern' disciplines.

Like their teachers, the twenty-odd students at Jamia ul-Umoor are all graduates of the Deoband madrasa. Having completed a rigorous eight-year course in Islamic Studies there, in the Jamia they are now being exposed to a whole new world of learning. The two-year course that they are undergoing consists of lessons in English, Computers, Economics, History, Geography, Mathematics, Management, Political Science, Physical Sciences, Journalism and Comparative Religions—all subjects that they have had little or no exposure to in their years at Deoband. Judging by the ease with which the students converse in English, despite having studied it for less than half a year, they seem to be fast and eager learners and their five teachers, zealous instructors.

The students, neatly dressed in spotless kurtas, pajamas and topis, sit in a circle on a large quilt. On being prompted by his teachers, Tauqir Qasmi, who has just turned twenty, stands up and delivers an impassioned speech in Arabic on the importance of modern education and on how Islam positively encourages it. His colleague, Aslam Rafiqi Qasmi, follows after him, with a remarkably clear speech in English on the problems of the Indian Muslims. He refers to the 'shameful and lamentable' Partition of India and the 'massive and most horrendous' killings of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs that ensued. The Indian Muslims, he laments, 'continue to pay a heavy price for the Partition', being 'wrongly branded as anti-national by many Hindus'. He refers to the thousands of Muslims who have lost their lives in hundreds of organized pogroms and riots in India since 1947, and of the discrimination that they continue to face in many spheres. He ends his speech by stressing the need for Muslims to take to both religious as well as modern education.

The welcome addresses over, I sit with the students and discuss their studies. One of them wants to know how to secure admission in the English department of the university I teach in. Another wants to know how he can get the articles he has written published in the Times of India. A third asks me, in impeccable English, 'Why are Muslims, especially the ulema of Deoband, thought of as terrorists by many people, while they had actually played a leading role in India's anti-colonial struggle?'.

The students and their teachers insist that the Deobandi elders are not against modern education per se, as is commonly imagined. Hasan, a young student from Bihar, argues, 'Islam says that all beneficial knowledge can be acquired and so our ulema have never opposed what is good in the modern educational system. What they were opposed to, however, is Western culture. We can and, indeed, should acquire knowledge of all the beneficial modern disciplines, provided this is done according to our culture and that it helps us become better Muslims'. Ali, another student, adds, 'In Islam, there is no distinction between religious and secular education. All forms of beneficial knowledge should be had'. His classmate Abdur Rahman adds, 'Learning English, Computer Applications and other modern subjects will help us in our task to telling others about Islam'.

Maulana Furqan, senior teacher, nods his head in agreement. He tells me that three graduates of Jamia ul-Umoor's first batch, who passed out last year, are now studying at a regular university, the Jamia Millia Islamia, in New Delhi. 'We want our graduates to go on to join universities and then take up a range of careers, not necessarily as maulvis or religious specialists', he says. 'In the past, madrasas produced both ulema as well architects, astronomers, scientists and so on', he informs me, 'and so we must go back to that holistic conception of education and bridge the gulf between the ulema and those who have studied in universities'. 'Working in various fields, and not just as maulvis, our students can play an important role in promoting social reforms as well as communicating the message of Islam to others', he adds. 'In today's world, you need to know English in order to tell others about Islam. Also, there is a wealth of useful knowledge in English', he explains. 'Hence', he stresses, 'it is important that maulvis, too, must learn the language'.

I ask Maulana Khalid Saifullah what he feels about the argument of some conservative maulvis that madrasa students should not enroll in colleges for fear that they might go astray.

'It depends on the individual student', he answers. 'If the students' moral and religious training is sound, there is no reason to fear that their faith would weaken if they join universities. In fact, they might have a positive impact on other students, who might, by witnessing their example, seek to come closer to religion'.

Maulana Saifullah, Maulana Khalid’s colleague, tells me about the 25 other students of the Jamia ul-Umoor, who are enrolled in the hifz course to memorise the Quran. In contrast to most other institutions that specialize in hifz, the students here must also study English, Mathematics and Science. He also refers to his plans to arrange for his students to simultaneously enroll for the tenth grade examinations, so that after they finish their course they can join various different departments in regular universities. 'Our ulema must keep themselves abreast of modern knowledge and contemporary developments', he stresses. 'That is essential for them to provide proper leadership to the community'.

Innovative madrasas like the Jamia ul-Umoor are increasingly visible today, although the media rarely, if ever, takes cognizance of them. These institutions indicate the possibility of bridging the rigid dualism that characterizes Muslim education, between the ulema and those who have studied in 'modern' institutions, this being crucial for promoting education among Muslims more generally.

Read More...

The State and Madrasa Reform: An Indian Deobandi Perspective

By Yoginder Sikand

In recent years, state authorities in several countries, particularly India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, in addition to the West, have been voicing the demand for what they call the ‘modernisation’ of madrasas. While some ulema have gone along with their governments and have secured state assistance for some half-hearted ‘modernisation’ schemes, many others are vehemently opposed to the offer of state largesse. As some of them see it, state assistance is aimed at interfering with their functioning, curtailing their autonomy and meddling with their curriculum so that, by introducing secular subjects, ultimately the madrasas would be ‘reformed’ out of existence.

For its part, the state typically sees the madrasas as ‘traditionalist’ and even ‘obscuranist’, and hence in need of ‘reform’. The autonomy of the madrasas is regarded by the state as a
challenge to its own hegemonic agenda, which explains the urgency with which it looks at the project of ‘reform’, which is intended to bring madrasa education under the firm control of state authorities. In India, the state’s agenda of madrasa ‘modernisation’ is also a reflection of the Hindu majoritarian underpinnings of the state and of the official nationalist narrative which reflects an ‘upper’ caste Hindu worldview, brooking little space for other cultural identities.

Numerous (though not all) Indian ulema have reacted strongly to suggestions by Indian state authorities that madrasas should ‘modernise’, and have turned down offers of assistance for this. As some of them view it, the state’s ‘modernisation’ agenda has ulterior motives, as being allegedly aimed at destroying Muslim faith and identity. This, for instance, is the confirmed opinion of a Deobandi scholar and a graduate of the Dar ul-‘Ulum Deoband, Maulvi Abdul Basit Hamidi Qasmi, author of a recently-published Urdu book titled Nayab Taqreerey (‘Rare Lectures’). The book contains short prefaces by several teachers of the Deoband madrasa, suggesting, therefore, that the author’s views are widely shared among many of his fellow Deobandis.

As Qasmi argues in his book, the state’s argument that madrasas must ‘modernise’ is not a novel development. Rather, he says, it is a continuation of the British colonial policy that was aimed at destroying Islam in India. This is why, he asserts, the British ‘consistently opposed’ the dars-e nizami, the syllabus employed in most Indian madrasas, albeit in somewhat modified forms. Despite the terrible tortures that he says the ulema had to suffer at the hands of the British for refusing to abandon the dars-e nizami, ‘they held on to it firmly’ and ‘refused to leave their intellectual treasure at the mercy of their enemies’. In this way, he claims, they ‘proved that students who had studied the dars-e nizami were far more capable than university-educated students’.

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, accusing of it being

similarly opposed to the dars-e nizami. The Government, he argues, ‘does not want the dars-e nizami to exist’, although ‘it is this syllabus that Muslims have been following from the very beginning’. Here, of course, Qasmi is patently wrong, because the dars-e

nizami, as it exists today, was formulated as a framwoek of madrasa education only in the eighteenth century during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, and so cannot be said to have been used by Muslims ‘since the very beginning’.

The government’s appeals for madrasas to ‘modernise’ and for Muslims to go in for modern education, Qasmi insists, is actually a ‘conspiracy’ because ‘by taking to modern

education Muslims will go far from the noble teachings of Islam, and, like students in modern educational institutions, will become useless’. Qasmi argues that 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’. It is precisely because of this, he alleges, that the Government ‘instigates some ignorant Muslims, telling them that in this modern age they need modern education and that, hence, the dars-e nizami should be reformed’. Consequently, he claims, ‘many gullible and innocent Muslims have fallen victim to this propaganda’. Qasmi appeals to them to realise 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 ulema, 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, he adds, the ulema are opposed to Muslims who want their children to study only modern subjects and ignore religious education. The ulema agree that Muslim children can indeed learn English but thus must begin only after they finish their religious education. English, he says, 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’. Instead of ‘reforming’ the madrasas, Qasmi argues, modern educational institutions should be reformed to include Islamic Studies for Muslims enrolled therein.

Reforming the madrasa syllabus, Qasmi insists, is none of the business of the government, because it is the ulema of the madrasas themselves, and not the
government, who shoulder the responsibility of managing them and arranging for their finances. 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 the Deoband madrasa, as
saying, ‘As far as the syllabus is concerned, it is totally satisfactory. This syllabus has produced great ulema. 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 noted early nineteenth century Deobandi scholar Ashraf Ali Thanvi as saying that the Arabic texts selected by the ulema 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-e nizami ‘are studied even by a person of medium intellectual capacity’, Qasmi refers to Thanvi 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-e nizami is a treasure house of knowledge’. To further back his argument that the dars-e 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-e nizami, is said to have ‘shouted out in excitement and declared that these books create strong mental capacity and should never be abandoned’.

Qasmi ends his lecture by declaring that the Muslims will not tolerate any change in the

dars-e nizami, because, he says, the fact that Islamic faith and identity are far stronger in South Asia than anywhere else in the world owes largely to the present syllabus and system of madrasa education followed in the region. 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 governmental ‘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 faced tests and trials.

Not all ulema would go to the same extent as Qasmi in defending the dars-e nizami. In fact, many of them, including some Deobandis themselves, are critical of some aspects of it and have been demanding suitable reforms while keeping its religious core intact. Likewise, not all ulema would view the ‘modernisation’ proposals put forward by the state in wholly negative and hostile terms. Yet, voices like Qasmi’s appear significant enough among the ulama to make dialogue between the state and the madrasas a difficult task.

Read More...