THERE is a misperception in Pakistan
that the threat from the madrassas can be eliminated if the students
there get a dose of modern education. In other words, the madrassas would
turn out better, non-militant students if in addition to the traditional
curriculum the students were taught modern subjects like science, mathematics,
economics, IT, etc. Not only is this a superficial view, it could be
counterproductive, even dangerous.
The ability to operate a computer
does not change one’s attitude to life. If one is a militant, then the computer
only makes one more well equipped; it does not make one a pacifist. This point
needs to be understood.
Madrassas in the subcontinent
have traditionally performed a useful and vital function. They have taught
students traditional courses in Islamic subjects and helped produce Imams and
muezzins for mosques. At a higher level, some of South Asia’s great Islamic
scholars were madrassa products. They had nothing to do with politics of
violence.
The US-led resistance to the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan turned out to be seminal, for the madrassas
started serving both as recruiting centres for the army of mujahideen
(Muslim warriors) and as ideological motivational and training centres.
Today not all madrassas are
controlled by parties and groups having a militant, anti-western "ideology".
Most madrassas still perform a traditional and useful function. It is the
madrassas preaching militancy that are the subject of this discussion.
In his remarkable book, Islam:
Chund Fikri Masael, Dr. Manzoor Ahmad, a former vice chancellor of the
Hamdard University, bemoans the fact that Islam has been turned into an
ideology. Since by its very nature every ideology is totalitarian, it rejects
whatever is outside it. So because Islam is now an ideology, says Dr. Ahmad, it
must reject everything modern, even if it is for the good of the people and does
not violate Islamic values.
Can the madrassa students be
"de-ideologised", and if so how? Under the present system – given the nature of
the curriculum and the restricted mental horizons of those who teach – the
madrassas have turned into ideological schools where students are
brainwashed into becoming indoctrinated robots lacking a will and an intellect
of their own.
They may be taught the traditional
courses but what they are not taught are values that go into the making of a
refined human being – an individual who is a citizen of planet earth, who abhors
hate and revenge, and who has an abundance of love that looks at all human
phenomena, including individual and social conflicts, with understanding. He
respects every human being and considers human life sacred. He loves both the
wronged and the wrongdoer. He may hate sin but he does not hate the sinner. He
believes in salvaging the sinner rather than in punishing him and making a
spectacle of punishment. These are values higher than those that modern
education promotes.
Teach a brainwashed madrassa
student a subject like aerodynamics or marine biology, and he would still remain
beholden to Mullah Omar, because he would continue to view the world through the
prism of the "ideology" as taught by teachers who themselves have had no
exposure to humanities.
One reason for this tragedy is the
absence of literature from the syllabi of most madrassas. Indeed, he has
a poor understanding of the purpose of education and its effect on society if he
does not understand the impact of literature on the development of the human
mind, outlook and personality.
Our elders were aware of this truth
and made literature, especially poetry, an essential element of home education
for all. That was the reason why Islamic learning and poetry went hand in hand
in South Asia. Most Islamic scholars were themselves poets. As for those parts
of the subcontinent which now constitute Pakistan, Sufi poets thrived,
especially in Sindh, and they still have millions of adherents and admirers.
That was the reason why, in our parents’ time, a person not well versed in Urdu
and Persian poetry was considered uncouth.
In middle class families, a child’s
traditional education began with a dose of Persian poetry. Hafiz, Saadi, Jami,
Nizami, Baydil and Amir Khusrau, if not Rumi, were compulsory reading. As for
Saadi’s Gulistan and Bostan, one remembered most of these verses
by heart. (Incidentally, Gulistan was part of the curriculum at the
Deoband school, and Arab students seeking admission to Deoband were supposed to
have learnt Persian up to the Gulistan.)
Seen against the humanistic
traditions of Islamic education in South Asia, today’s madrassa
curriculum is a tragedy, for the madrassa products are unable to interact
with the educated middle class on a footing of equality. Not just because they
do not know English, but also because they have missed out on a vital part of
middle class upbringing in the subcontinent.
Those who teach at madrassas
must themselves be well read in poetry, drama and fiction, besides history – not
just Islamic history. History is a continuous process, and no nation or people
has, or ever had, a monopoly of knowledge. Babylon and Egypt, Greece and Rome,
Cardoba and Baghdad, and modern Europe and America are names that indicate the
continuation of a process that began with the dawn of civilisation and shall
continue.
Nations received a legacy from the
past, improved on it and passed it on to the next before departing from the
scene. But their contributions last. Paper and block printing invented by the
Chinese, "Arabic" numerals by the Hindus, algebra by the Arabs, and the
combustion engine and nuclear energy by modern western civilisations will
forever remain part of human heritage.
Ask a madrassa teacher what
Islam’s role in history has been, and in all probability he will find it
difficult to say anything beyond references to Muslim conquests. According to
this view of history, Muslims have done nothing besides being locked in
perpetual conflict with non-Muslims. This is in stark contrast to historical
facts.
As author Fred Halliday points out in
his 100 Myths about the Middle East, "...the overall history of the
Muslim world has been one of interaction through trade and cultural exchange
with the non-Muslim world: east to India, south to Africa and west and
northwards to Europe".
Knowledge that makes one view peoples
of other cultures and civilisations as perpetually hostile to Muslims and
destructive human beings is anti-knowledge. A man with such "knowledge" is to be
pitied because he lives in a world of his own in which others are perpetually
engaged in a plot to destroy him and the values he believes in. He suspects
others for no other reason than that he does not know and understand them.
As Iqbal said while presenting his
idea of Pakistan to the 1930 Allahabad session of the All India Muslim League,
"A community which is inspired by feelings of ill will towards other communities
is low and ignoble. I entertain the highest respect for the customs, laws,
religious and social institutions of other communities."
Today’s world has not come into being
through science; it is the liberation of the human mind from the shackles of
church and political despotism that has unleashed forces which developed the
sciences and the arts.
Reformation and renaissance were not
scientific revolutions; they were revolutions in human relationships. The
developments that followed have shaped our world.
Those developments in some cases were
destructive, such as the two world wars, but other movements – the consolidation
of democracy, the age of enlightenment, the socialist movements, the colonial
powers’ rivalries, the rise of communist power, the Afro-Asian peoples’ fight
for freedom and the collapse of communism – have given the individual the
freedom he was long denied. To view modern societies which have come into being
through this historical process as infidel societies against which one must be
at war is as ridiculous as it is suicidal. The madrassa needs the modern
teacher more than a modern curriculum.