हम सौ करोड़ रूपये मैं मदरसों का आधुनिकीकरण कर यह सोच रहे हैं की हम उग्रवादी या आतंकी सोच को बदल लेंगे . पिछले छह सौ वर्षों मैं तो यह संभव नहीं हुआ . अकबर ने भी कहा जाता है यही असफल प्रयास किया था . पर वह बात बहुत पुरानी हो गयी .टर्की मैं कमाल अत्ता तुर्क ने एक रात मैं सारे मदरसे बंद कर दिए इसलिए टर्की आज अफगानिस्तान या ईरान नहीं है .
मिस्र मैं अब्दुल गमाल नासर ने सबसे बड़े मदरसे अल अजहर को एक विश्व विद्यालय बनना दिया जैसे देव बंद को ए एम् यु बना दें . यह वह हिम्मत वाले शासक थे जो समझ गए थे की देश के विकास के लिए किस अड़चन को रास्ते से हटाना है . और हम हैं की मदसों की दुम कंप्यूटर से सीधी करने का ख्वाब देख रहे हैं .
हमारे पड़ोस मैं जिस देश मैं मदरसे पनपे उसका सत्यानाश हो गया . अफगानिस्तान पहले बर्बाद हुआ फिर पाकिस्तान हुआ बांग्लादेश भी उसी राह पर है . वास्तव मैं मदरसों और आतंक को अलग नहीं किया जा सकता. अमरीका ने अफगानिस्तान से रूस को निकलने के लिए मदसों का सहारा लिया फिर उन्हीं की गिरफ्त मैं आ गया . जिया ने भुट्टो को मरवाने के लिए मदसों का सहारा लिया और आज भी पाकिस्तान उसकी कीमत चुका रहा है .
इसलिए ऐसे सपने देखें जो साकार हो सकें .जिन मदरसों को बादशाह अकबर नहीं सुधार सके उनका आधुनिकीकरण करना आतंक का आधुनिकीकरण करना ही होगा .आऊट लुक का यह लेख सोचने योग्य है .
Madrasas In A Morass
Yoginder Sikand
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?213261-2
‘Centres of Obscurantism and Superstition’
With the march of modernity and secularisation, western-style development planners in much of the post-colonial Muslim world had hoped that traditional Islamic centres of education — the madrasas — would be rapidly replaced by western schools, training a new generation of educated Muslims who, while rooted in their own cultural traditions, would imbibe the best that the West had to offer.
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Madrasas were seen as centres of obscurantism and superstition, and as one of the principal causes of Muslim decline at the hands of the West. In different Muslim countries the attack on the madrasa system took different forms.
In Turkey, for instance, a government decree in 1925, soon after the Republicans under the staunchly secular Kemal Attaturk took power deposing the last Muslim Caliph, ordered the closing down of all madrasas in the country with a single stroke of the pen.
This policy was followed in several Muslim countries that had come under communist rule in the aftermath of the Russian revolution in 1917, such as Albania and the vast Muslim belt in Central Asia.
In other countries, such as Morocco and Algeria, while the state continued to base its legitimacy on Islamic appeals, Islamic education was sought to be ‘modernised’, with departments of Islamic studies in modern universities taking the place of traditional madrasas.
In 1961, the socialist and Arab nationalist Jamal Abdul Nasser, in his impatience with the traditional Muslim ‘ulama, whom he saw as a major challenge to his modernisation efforts, transformed the world-renowned Al-Azhar in Cairo, the oldest, largest and most respected madrasa in the world, into a modern university.
South Asia
South Asia, where over half of the world’s Muslim population lives, followed a slightly different course.
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While the madrasas were left largely untouched, the effective delinking of madrasa-education from the job market led to the declining popularity of traditional Islamic schools.
The 1980s witnessed a rapid revival of the madrasas in much of South Asia, in terms of numbers as well as power and influence. In India, the number of madrasas is now estimated at some thirty to forty thousand, with a similar figure in Pakistan and probably a slightly smaller number in Bangladesh.
In Pakistan and Afghanistan, madrasas today play a crucial role in national politics. Pakistan has several ‘ulama-based political parties with millions of supporters. The Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan is entirely ‘ulama-based, products of Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan.
In India, the ‘ulama and their madrasas wield less direct political influence. While there are few ‘ulama active in Indian politics, they, however, exercise an enormous influence on Muslim public opinion.
The massive agitations that India witnessed against what was seen to be an attack on Muslim Personal Law in the 1980s were led principally by the ‘ulama. The Muslim Personal Law Board, which sees itself as the key spokesman of the Indian Muslims, is also largely in the hands of madrasa leaders.
Early Muslim History
Although the power of the ‘ulama among the Muslims of South Asia is today substantial, it is interesting to note that early Muslim history knew no such separate class of clerics as the ‘ulama or of an institution of specialised religious training as the madrasa.
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Islam is probably unique among the world’s religions in its radical disavowal of any intermediaries between God and ordinary believers. The Qur’anic assertion that Muslims could approach God directly obviated the need for a professional class of priests. Every Muslim was seen as, in a sense, his own priest.
Prayers could be led by any believer, for God was believed to be equally accessible to all Muslims. Further undermining the institution of priesthood, acquiring knowledge of the scriptural tradition was seen as a duty binding on all Muslims, men as well as women, and not as the prerogative of a special class.
While some people were recognised as more learned or pious than others, early Islamic history saw no professional class of ‘ulama as religious specialists. Islamic knowledge could be had by all, generally provided freely in mosques and, later, in Sufi lodges.
The Caliphs and The Ulamas
The emergence of the institution of the madrasa and the ‘ulama as a class of religious specialists coincided with the spread of Islam outside the Arabian peninsula, in the years after the death of the Prophet.
By the eighth century, large parts of West and Central Asia, in addition to almost the whole of North Africa, had been brought under Muslim rule.
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A de facto division between political and religious power, foreign to pristine Islam, now came into being.
Under the Umayyad, and, then later, the Abbasid rulers, while political power rested with the Caliphs, religious authority gradually began being exercised by a special class of men — the ‘ulama — set apart from the general body of Muslims as experts in Islamic theology and law. The two classes worked in tandem with each other, the Caliphs providing the ‘ulama with protection and official patronage, and the ‘ulama seeking to interpret the Islamic tradition in order to legitimise the rule of the Caliphs, which, as the historical records tell us, rarely, if ever, accorded with the principles of Islam.
It was in this period that madrasas as specialised institutions for the training of ‘ulama emerged, first in West Asia, and then, as Muslim rule spread, in Africa, southern Europe and South Asia.
Motives, Money & Metamorphosis
Madrasas were subsidised with permanent sources of income, such as land grants by the state or by endowments (awqaf) by rich Muslims. Although madrasas, as distinct from mosque-schools, were known before the tenth century, the first major madrasa dates to 1065, when Nizam-ul Mulk ordered the construction of the grand Nizamiah madrasa in Baghdad.
The Nizamiah school, like the madrasas which, following it, were set up in other parts of the Muslim world, was intended to train bureaucrats for the royal courts and the administration, as well as judges (qazis, muftis), who were appointed by the state.
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Typically, teachers as well as students were drawn from the elite, while there seems to have been little provision for the education of children from the poorer classes.
Since one of the primary aims of the madrasas was to produce a class of bureaucrats and, particularly, judges, as employees of the state, the teaching of Islamic law (fiqh) came to occupy a major position in the madrasa curriculum.
Among the Sunnis, who now account for some ninety per cent of the world’s Muslim population, four schools of jurisprudence developed-the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shaf’i, and each of these schools had its own chain of madrasas, wherein its own system of jurisprudence was taught.
In addition to law, Arabic grammar and prose, logic and philosophy, subjects that a prospective bureaucrat would find indispensable, were also taught. Theology (kalam) and mysticism (tasawuf), subjects that one would have expected religious seminaries to specialise in, received little attention.
In South Asia, Muslim rulers made elaborate arrangements for the setting up of madrasas to train a class of ‘ulama attached to their courts. In addition, most mosques had schools (maktab) attached to them wherein children were taught to recite and memorise the Qur’an, a pattern that continues till this day.
The Teaching Material
No standardised syllabus was employed in the madrasas, however, and each school was free to teach its own set of books. These consisted, largely, of commentaries on classical works on Islamic law.
With the general consensus of the ‘ulama that the ‘gates of ijtihad’, or creative understanding of the law in the light of changing conditions, had been ‘closed’ following the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate in the late thirteenth century, the madrasa curriculum lost its earlier dynamism, degenerating into a seemingly timeless warp.
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New books, attuned to the very different context in which Muslims found themselves in India, ceased to be written and read, and a blind conformity to the classical works was sought to be rigidly enforced.
The Indian Experience
Signs of change emerged in the late seventeenth century, when the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir commissioned a team of ‘ulama to prepare a compendium of Islamic law, named after him as the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri. The Emperor granted one of the ‘ulama associated with this project, Mulla Nizamuddin, an old mansion owned by a French trader, the Firanghi Mahal, in Lucknow, where he set up a madrasa, which soon emerged as the leading centre of Islamic studies in north India.
Mulla Nizamuddin prepared a fresh curriculum for study here, which came to be known after him as theDars-i-Nizami or the ‘Syllabus of Nizami’. The focus of the Dars was on what were called the ‘rational sciences’ (ma’qulat), subjects such as law, philosophy and grammar that would befit prospective bureaucrats.
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Three centuries later, the Dars-i-Nizami continues to be the syllabus of most madrasas in South Asia today, although an increasing number of books on the ‘revealed sciences’ (manqulat), such as theology and the traditions of the Prophet (hadith) have been added.
The British Impact
While in Mughal times the madrasas served the purpose of training an intellectual and bureaucratic elite, leaving the poorer classes largely out of their purview, things began to change with the onset of British rule.
By the early nineteenth century, the British had replaced Persian with English as the language of officialdom and Muslim qazis and muftis with lawyers and judges trained in English law.
The eclipse of Muslim political power in the region now meant that the ‘ulama and their madrasas were now bereft of sources of political support and patronage. In many cases, the vast grants that Muslim rulers had provided the madrasas were resumed by the British.
In this rapidly changing context, the ‘ulama now began to turn to ordinary Muslims for support. It is striking to note that it was only in the aftermath of the failed revolt of 1857 against the British that a vast network of madrasas was established all over north India.
In the absence of Muslim political power, it was the ordinary Muslim who was seen as the ‘defender of Islam’, and, for this, every Muslim, it now came to be believed, must be armed with a knowledge of the principles of the faith.
Deoband: Dar-ul ‘Ulum Madrasa
The most important event in this regard was the setting up in 1867 of the Dar-ul ‘Ulum madrasa at the town of Deoband in the Saharanpur district of the present-day Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, not far from Delhi.
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The Dar-ul ‘Ulum is today the largest Islamic seminary in the world after Al-Azhar in Cairo, and has several thousand smaller madrasas attached to it all over South Asia as well as in countries in the West where South Asian Muslims live.
The Deobandis are a politically influential force in much of South Asia — the Taliban in Afghanistan belong to this school as do powerful political parties in Pakistan.
The Dar-ul ‘Ulum was envisaged as a centre for mass Islamic instruction, and its founders saw as their principal mission the spread of ‘reformist’ Islamic doctrines, crusading against what they condemned as ‘Shi’a’ and ‘Hindu’ practices and beliefs among the Muslims of the subcontinent.
They enjoined a strict adherence to their own interpretation of Islamic law (shari’at), and while not opposed to Sufism as such, sought to purge it of what they believed were un-Islamic accretions.
The Deobandi attack on popular Sufism brought in its wake a sharp reaction from Muslim scholars who saw the Deobandis as a thinly-disguised version of the sternly anti-Sufi Wahhabis, followers of the eighteenth century Arab puritan, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab.
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Bareilly Madrasa and the Barelwi Divide
This led to the establishment of a large madrasa in the early twentieth century at Bareilly, in eastern Uttar Pradesh, by the Qadri Sufi, Imam Ahmad Reza Khan, which later led to the setting up of numerous madrasas all over India owing their inspiration to the Bareilly school.
Khan saw the Deobandis as ‘enemies of Islam’ and did not hesitate to issue fatwas of disbelief (kufr) against the founders of the Dar-ul ‘Ulum. The Deobandi-Barelwi divide continues to be sharp in south Asia, and incidents of violent clashes between the two groups are not unknown.
The Ahl-i-Hadith
Opposed to both the Deobandis as well as the Barelwis were the Ahl-i-Hadith or the ‘People of the Tradition of the Prophet’. The Ahl-i-Hadith saw themselves as the only true inheritors of the legacy of the Prophet. For them all forms of Sufism, even the ‘reformist’ Sufism of the Deobandis, was anathema, and they preached a strict literalism.
They set up numerous madrasas, particularly in cities in northern India, such as Delhi, Amritsar and Bhopal. Unlike the Deobandis and the Barelwis, the Ahl-i-Hadith, probably owing to their opposition to Sufism, remained a marginal force with little popular appeal.
Political Involvement
The political involvement of the madrasas as an oppositional force, which is today such a prominent feature in Pakistan and Afghanistan, can be traced back to the early nineteenth century, coinciding with the decline of Muslim political power in South Asia.
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The forerunners of the Ahl-i-Hadith, for instance, led what they called a jihad against the Sikhs in the Punjab, which ended in 1831 at the famous battle of Balakot, wherein their principal leaders, Maulvi Ismail and Sayyed Ahmad, were killed.
While these ‘Wahhabis’, as they were styled by the British, continued to stage minor uprisings in the Pathan borderlands till the late nineteenth century, they turned their energies to intra-Muslim polemics in the years later. It is only recently, from the 1980s onwards, that the Ahl-i-Hadith madrasas once again began being actively involved in political affairs.
The Lashkar-i-Tayyeba, said to be the most well-trained and deadly militant outfit active in Kashmir today, is a branch of the Ahl-i-Hadith based in Pakistan. In India the Ahl-i-Hadith has its main centre at Benaras, and its energies, as the voluminous literature that it has produced in recent years, seem to be occupied with condemning other Muslim groups as heretics.
For their part, the Deobandis seem to have accommodated themselves well to British rule, not hesitating to accept British patronage. However, by the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century leading Deobandis had joined the nationalist struggle, appealing to the Muslims of India to join hands with the Congress Party against the British.
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But for a section of the Deobandis led by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi and Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, the Deobandis were vociferously opposed to the Pakistan movement and its ‘two-nation’ theory. Instead, they advocated a united India, based on Hindu-Muslim cooperation, which they saw as entirely in keeping with the teachings of Islam.
The Prophet Muhammad, they argued, had established a ‘united nationalism’ (muttahida qaumiyat) in Medina, where Muslims, Jews as well as others were accepted as members of the same ‘nation’ (qaum).
It is a striking mark of the diverse and often mutually contradictory ways in which the same school of religious thought can be interpreted that while the Deobandis in India today still speak the language of Hindu-Muslim collaboration and ‘united nationalism’, their brethren in Afghanistan — the Taliban — are advocates of an aggressive pan-Islamism.
Reforms
Today, all over South Asia, barring probably Afghanistan, Muslims are increasingly advocating reforms in the madrasa system to make it more relevant to modern times. Some see reform as the only way to prevent the madrasas from emerging as breeding grounds of Taliban-style militants.
Secular, westernised elites are not alone in demanding such reforms, though, numerous ‘ulama being among the most vocal in pressing for change. Suggested reforms relate to matters of curriculum, methods of teaching and administration of the madrasas.
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A small, yet increasing number, of madrasas have now begun teaching modern disciplines, such as English, mathematics, science and history. Several have begun teaching books written by modern Muslim thinkers, though the overwhelming majority carry on with the eighteenth century Dars-i-Nizami and its compendium of medieval commentaries.
Few, if any, madrasas, have dared to depart from the traditional focus on jurisprudence or have even attempted to come up with new ways of understanding Islam in the light of modern conditions. Nor is there any indication of a widespread desire to break the shackles of ‘blind conformity’ (taqlid) to medieval Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), itself a product of the medieval Arab world, and to revive the tradition of ijtihad.
If other religions are taught, it is merely for polemical purposes and to prove them ‘false’, there being no serious engagement with the pluralistic predicament and with the need for inter-faith dialogue.
Leading South Asian Muslim scholars who do not identify themselves with any particular school of fiqh, such as Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, Nejatullah Siddiqui and Asghar Ali Engineer, have argued for the need for a thorough revamp of the madrasa curriculum to make it consonant with modern demands, but their voices remain muted and barely heard.
Leading Muslim educationists are also now insisting that the rote method of teaching must give way to modern techniques and that students must be allowed to exercise their own critical reasoning in approaching texts.
Some madrasas have taken to introducing computers as a means of imparting knowledge, and several of them have their own web-sites. Efforts are on to develop a standarised syllabus and evaluation procedures for the madrasas, but given the sharp sectarian divisions this seems to be an uphill task. Few madrasas seem to have turned their attention to training their students for the job market.
Given the sort of education that they receive, madrasa products may be equipped to work as imams in mosques and teachers in madrasas, but little else, and even these positions are limited.
On a visit to the grand Dar-ul Ulum, Deoband, a few years ago I was appalled to discover that all that this biggest of all South Asian madrasas had by way of vocational training were classes for book-binding, calligraphy and watch-repairing, all three declining trades with little or no scope for large-scale employment.
Not surprisingly, unemployed madrasa graduates go on to become fertile grounds for militant Islamist groups, as the case of Pakistan and Afghanistan so tragically demonstrates.
Changes in the madrasas are slow in coming, and given the rise of Islamist militancy, on the one hand, and growing Islamophobia, on the other, the hopes of the reformists seem grim.
The best hope for a new, liberal understanding of Islam that steers clear from the likes of Bin Laden, the Lashkar-i-Tayyeba and their kin, lies not with the traditional ‘ulama, who seem impervious to the need for radical change, but with ‘lay’ Muslims who are seriously concerned about the need for a positive engagement with people of other faiths or of no faith at all and who can see the Islamist dream for the nightmare that it is.
For their part, non-Muslims who seek to prevent the much-talked of impending clash between Islam and the rest would be well advised not to tar all Muslims with the same brush.
Constructive dialogue with moderate Muslims — who form the vast majority of the community — and assisting them to develop a relevant understanding of their faith is the only way we can be spared the horrors of global conflict.
Allies can be found among Sufis, in particular, with their stress on justice, peace and the unity of all humankind, the very core of the authentic Islamic tradition that Islamists seek to deny.
This must, of course, go alongside with the struggle to redress many genuine grievances that Muslims do in fact face and for which the West is rightly seen as the prime culprit — the continued oppression of the Palestinians, Western support for unpopular dictatorships in much of the Muslim world, for instance, as well as Western neo-colonialism more generally, of which Muslim countries are not the only victims.
The need for a new politics of religion — one based on dialogue across confessional boundaries and centred on issues of universal justice — has never been greater than it is today.
