Interview: Naseem ur-Rahman Falahi

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, New Delhi and also works at the Markazi Maktaba Islami, the publishing house of the Jamaat-e Islami.

(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 India. As a child, I was sent to the village madrasa, where I memorised the entire Quran. After that, in 1985, when I was around thirteen, my parents sent me to the Jamiat ul-Falah madrasa in Azamgarh. This madrasa is associated with the Jamaat-i Islami Hind, and, in contrast to most other madrasas in India, it provides both religious as well as a modicum of secular education. After training to become a maulvi there I came to Delhi, where I did a BA and then an MA in Islamic Studies at the Jamia Millia. Presently, I am registered as a doctoral candidate at the Jamia's Islamic Studies Department.

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 India was under British rule, some ulema feared that learning English would lead Muslims to abandon their faith and convert to Christianity. The situation has drastically changed today, however. For the task of tabligh or communicating the message of Islam to others they must know English, as well as local languages, without which how can they communicate with other people?

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.

Read More...

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.

Read More...

Interview: Zafarul Islam Khan

Zafarul Islam Khan is a noted Indian Muslim intellectual. He is the editor of the Delhi-based fortnightly English magazine Milli Gazette, one of the few Indian Muslim periodicals that focus on Muslim social, as distinct from religious, issues.

(Interviewed by Yoginder Sikand)

Q: What do you feel about the propaganda campaign against madrasas in India today?

A: As I see it, there are some people who will not spare any opportunity to attack Muslims, using any excuse, and for them the issue of madrasas comes as very handy. Then, there are others who are simply misguided, who have been wrongly led to believe that the madrasas in India are similar to those madrasas in Pakistan that have been involved in militant activ­ity. They do not know that there are some very basic differ­ences between madrasas in India and in Pakistan. In Pakistan, in contrast to India, many madrasas have gradually become politicised, with several of their ulema joining politics, becom­ing Members of Parliament and even ministers. Thus, these madrasas have a very different role and perspective from the Indian madrasas. Furthermore, several Pakistani madrasas were actively engaged in training fighters for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, but this was not true for the Indian madrasas. Hence, to equate the Indian madrasas with madrasas in Pakistan which are active in politics or which have trained mil­itants is completely incorrect and entirely misleading.

Q: But what about the allegations that have been levelled against some madrasas in India of being involved in militant activities?

A. These allegations are utterly, totally fictitious. There is no evidence to suggest any such activity on the part of a single madrasa. A maulvi here or a madrasa student there might have been arrested on some charges, but how can you blame the madrasa to which he belongs, or the madrasas as a whole, for that? Until now, government authorities have not been able to identify a single madrasa in the country providing any sort of military training. The newspapers or the authorities some­times ambiguously claim, ‘Some madrasas are spreading terror’, but why don’t they clearly name these madrasas if they have the evidence?

Q: There have been some allegations about madrasas on India’s interna­tional borders being engaged in what are called ‘anti-national’ activities. What is your opinion?

A: They is today much talk of the India-Nepal border being ‘infested’ with madrasas and where the Pakistani secret services agency, the ISI, is alleged to be active. Some years ago, when the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition was in power in India, Mr. Banatwala, a Muslim Member of Parliament, questioned this thesis and demanded to know exactly which madrasas these were. The Home Minister crypti­cally replied that these madrasas were located on the other side of the border, on the Nepalese side! We sent a team of reporters from Milli Gazette to the Indo-Nepal border to investigate, and they found no truth in the allegations about the madrasas in the region.

Some time ago there was another report in a leading newspa­per claiming that Muslim ‘militants’ were very active in Manipur, in India’s North-East, and that they were conspiring to establish an ‘Islamic state’ there. I asked a friend of mine there to verify the story. He travelled through the area, and even met the District Inspector of Police, who told him that there was no truth in the story. I believe that fake reports such as these that appear regularly in newspapers are generally fabricated by intelligence agents to please their political bosses.

Q: What are your views on allegations that madrasas are receiving enor­mous amounts of petrodollars from Arab countries?

A: There is no doubt that petrodollars did come in, but that was a short-lived phenomenon and the flow of such funds have now considerably declined. It all started after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The Saudis, fearing internal opposition by Islamic groups to their monarchical rule, were advised by the Americans, by the CIA to be precise, to splurge money on madrasas of the conservative sort all over the Muslim world so as to prevent Muslim communities from getting radicalised. And so, funds came to some madrasas in India, in addition to other countries, and these were mostly used for setting up buildings and mosques. But now this has stopped as the Saudis have come under American pressure.

One must also remember that not all Muslim groups were beneficiaries of Saudi largesse. Most of the funds from the Saudis went to the Ahl-e Hadith sect, whose understand­ing of Islam is similar to that of the Saudi ‘Wahhabi’ state, although oth­ers also did receive some of it. Now, because the Ahl-e Hadith got much more than the rest, it caused considerable friction within the Muslim community, as the Ahl-e Hadith starting behaving as if they were the only true Muslims or the greatest Muslims! But, of course, this is not true, because historically, at least in India, they have always been on the fringes of Muslim society. This strategy of supporting the Ahl-e Hadith seems to have backfired on the Saudis, for many Muslims in India now think that the Saudis and the Ahl-e Hadith have divided the community, creating intra-Muslim conflicts by defaming other Muslim groups.

Q: How do you account for the increase in the number of madrasas in India today?

A: One reason is, of course, the natural population increase, because of which the number of madrasas has also increased. There are said to be some 35,000 madrasas in India now, big as well as small. These must be seen as efforts by Muslims to educate themselves. These madrasas are often the only means through which poor Muslim boys and girls can get edu­cation, because they provide free teaching, and often boarding and lodging as well. Interestingly, in recent years there has been a growth in the number of girls’ madrasas in various parts of the country. This has to do with a host of factors, such as the increasing difficulty that parents’ face in marrying off une­ducated daughters, as well as the influence of experiments in Arab countries, where girls’ madrasas are now quite a well-established phenomenon.

Q: The government says that it is keen that madrasas should be ‘modernised’ and that it is willing to help out. What do you feel about this?

A: I believe that the state does have the responsibility and the right to intervene and see that certain subjects are taught in the madrasas. The state should make it compulsory for madrasas to also teach modern subjects, and Muslims must obey this, for there is nothing in Islam which says that Muslims should not study these disciplines. And then, Muslims are also citizens of this country, and they have as much of a right as well as a duty to study these subjects as others do.

Now, as for how these subjects should be introduced in the madrasas and how they should be taught, that is a separate question that needs to be debated. But, then, many madrasas might be opposed to this, because the managers of the madrasas have their own vested interests, which they think might be affected if the state steps in to intervene.

Q: What do you feel about government proposals to fund madrasas to employ teachers of modern subjects?

A: In principle that sounds fine, but in practice it is very dif­ficult to get funds from the state. Funds will only be given to a madrasa if it receives a prior security clearance from the state government, but you know how difficult this is. Even to get a simple birth certificate one has often to pay a bribe. So, these hurdles often make it impossible for many madrasas to access funds from the state.

Q: What do you feel about the standard of teaching in the madrasas? How could this be improved?

A: The entire madrasa system in the country is badly in need of a total reappraisal, of a revolutionary change in methods and scope. Most madrasas are certainly not serving the purpose for which they were intended. In the case of many madrasas, what they teach is of little use to the wider society. They are churning out vast numbers of maulvis, only some of whom can be absorbed into the system. The others turn into a bur­den on Muslim society, because they have not been trained in such a way as to be an asset to the community. So, at most madrasa graduates can aspire to become teachers in madrasas, imams in mosques or else open another madrasa of their own. If you ask me, I think we do not need so many madrasas as we have today.

I also think that the syllabus of the madrasas needs a radical overhaul. Most madrasas in India use some form or the other of the dars-e nizami, a syllabus developed in the eighteenth cen­tury by Mulla Nizamuddin of Lucknow. In Mulla Nizamuddin’s time, madrasas functioned as schools for training clerks and officials for the Mughal state, and the books they taught were meant for that purpose. However, most madrasas today still continue to use those very same books! The dars-e nizami today has become irrelevant to our needs. I think we can gain a great deal from the experiments in modern Islamic education being conducted in other countries. For instance, in Egypt, al-Azhar, the great centre of Islamic learning, now teaches Islamic as well as modern subjects, and there is no reason why the Indian madrasas should not do so.

Q: But some Indian madrasas are already doing that, is it not?

A: That’s true. Some madrasas have introduced new books, and are also teaching modern subjects. Most madrasas now teach basic English and Hindi as well. Some larger madrasas also have facilities for teaching computer applications. But the pace and scope of change and reform is not as impressive as it should be. An ideal madrasa should teach all the regular modern subjects plus the standard Islamic disciplines. Then, at the high school level students should have the choice of going in for higher education at a regular college or else carrying on studying in a madrasa and specializing in religious studies, in a particular branch such as the Quran, Hadith or Islamic jurisprudence.

Read More...

Interview: Asghar Ali Engineer

Asghar Ali Engineer is the director of the Mumbai-based Centre for the Study of Secularism and Society and the Institute for Islamic Studies. He has written extensively on Muslim and Islamic issues and has been in the forefront of the struggle against fascism and communal conflict in India.

(Interviewed by Yoginder Sikand)

Q: Right-wing Hindu groups and influential sections of the Indian press portray madrasas, branding them as centres of ‘obscurantism’ and as breeding grounds for ‘terrorists’. What do you have to say about this?

A: This propaganda against the madrasas in India is unfair and unsubstantiated. It is nothing short of motivated political propaganda. It is a complete travesty of truth to say that all or even most madrasas in India are centres of pro-Pakistani elements or agents of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). If there is any truth in the allegations against the madrasas, then why does the government not publish a white paper on the subject? I think this propaganda against the madrasas is calculated to deliberately create communal tensions and fuel anti-Muslim prejudice. Madrasas only impart basic education of Islam to children. How on earth can these children be agents of the ISI? As for the larger madrasas, these are basically centres of higher Islamic learning. One can differ with them on their syllabus and methods of teaching, but one cannot accuse them of engaging in any sort of political activity.

Q: But the Deoband madrasa, the largest in South Asia, does have a long history of political involvement.

A: That is true, but it is important to note that the vast majority of the Deobandi scholars were fierce opponents of the Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan. Instead, they strongly supported a united India. In the 1940s, the then rector of the Deoband madrasa, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani, wrote extensively against the Pakistan movement. In his book Muttahida Qaumiyat Aur Islam (‘Composite Nationalism and Islam’), he argued that the Muslims and Hindus of India were one nation, and that religion alone could not be the basis of nationalism. Hence, he stressed, Muslims must work along with Hindus for a free, united India, where all communities would have equal rights.

Q: How do you see the question of reforms in the madrasa system?

A: I have been consistently critical of the dars-e nizami, the syllabus which is used, although in some modified forms, in most of the Indian madrasas. This syllabus is, in my view, outdated and needs to be revised. Madrasas still teach subjects like ancient Greek philosophy and Ptolemian astronomy, which they wrongly consider to be somehow part of the Islamic tradition. At a certain stage in history perhaps these subjects were useful, but are no longer so and so should be done away with. I am not alone in saying this. Many ulema hold the same position. In place of the old and outdated ‘rational sciences’, modern social and natural sciences and humanities should be taught, as well as comparative religions. In this way, the graduates of the madrasas would be better informed about the conditions of the modern world and hence would be in a better position to give their legal opinions or fatwas on matters related to Islamic jurisprudence. Christian seminaries are doing this sort of thing today. Catholic priests are studying, besides their own religion, subjects like history, economics, sociology, political science and comparative religions, and so are better equipped to handle the challenges that modernity places before us all.

In medieval times, leading Muslim ulema did likewise. Faced with the challenge of Greek philosophy, they mastered it, and medieval madrasas produced leading Muslim philosophers, sci­entists, logicians and mathematicians, who were also pious Muslims themselves. So, there is no reason why the ulema of today shouldn’t do the same and learn modern subjects. But to promote this sort of reform, instead of blindly opposing the madrasas I feel one should think of ways to creatively work with them for change. After all, for many Muslims, especially the poor, madrasas serve a valuable function of providing free education and literacy.

Q: Why do you think Indian madrasas today give so much stress to the intricacies of jurisprudence, to the relative neglect of many other subjects?

A: The reason for this perhaps is that Islam first spread among peoples who had had no well-developed tradition of law. The Arab tribes had no regular system of government. That is why the early Muslim scholars paid such close attention to developing a system of jurisprudence. However, today, most tradi­tional ulema insist on the need to blindly follow past jurisprudential precedent , what is called taqlid in technical parlance, while ignoring what the many early ulema were so particular about—the need to exercise independent judgment or ijtihad based on a thorough understanding of the principles of fiqh, which, unfortunately, is not much stressed in the madrasas today So, you have ulema today who talk about the great rewards of using a tooth-brush made of the twig of a particular tree, because the Prophet used this to clean his teeth. They write entire books on the how long the tooth-brush should be and from which tree it should be made and so on, while they ignore the fact that the world has moved on to the age of toothpaste! Or, for that matter, many ulema have penned tracts on the amount of zakat (poor-due) that should be paid on a camel or a goat, while they forget that pastoral societies are fast disappearing from off the face of the earth!

The point is that many traditional ulema, by remaining wedded to past jurisprudential precedent or taqlid, have ignored the need for ijtihad and the need for approaching the question of fiqh through a study of its basic principles.

Q: But surely there are many ulema who do stress the need today for ijtihad in order to come to terms with the challenges of modernity?

A: Such ulema, in India at least, are few, and the vast majori­ty still insists on the need for taqlid of the particular school of law to which they belong. Forget about ijtihad-e mutlaq or free-ranging ijtihad, many of them would not even allow for ijtihad-e muqayyad or choosing opinions from other estab­lished schools of Islamic jurisprudence or from among the different views within a particular school. I agree that there is no need for ijtihad as far as basic beliefs and ritual practices are concerned, but surely in other matters, such as social relations, Islam does allow for the exercise of ijtihad to some degree.

Unfortunately, we are yet to see the emer­gence of ulema brave enough to talk of ijtihad in these mat­ters, which is really the need of the hour today. Instead of blind adherence to the existing legal schools, I say there is no reason why there should be no new schools of thought and jurisprudence attuned to today’s conditions.

Read More...