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Islamic education: Coming of age?
By Badar Alam Islamic education has taken a giant leap from its medieval version still surviving in Godhar Chowk to its post-modern version in Dera Ghazi Khan. (File Photo) In a small, half-dark, windowless room by the northern side of a desolate mosque, a heavily bearded, bareheaded, middle-aged man stretches on a cot reading a book. Outside the call for asr prayer is booming. A hoarding in Arabic hanging in the middle of the mosque’s façade announces that it is called Masjid Hussain bin Ali that also houses a madrassa for the learning of the holy Quran. The man, the imam here and also the teacher for the madrassa, calls out loudly and three children, all aged less than 10 years, appear: They are his students. ‘We have six children studying here,’ he tells me. ‘They are all learning the Quran by heart,’ he says, before adding that one of the students is his own son. There seems to be little arrangement by way of lodging for the students who he says are all resident scholars. A dilapidated single-storey building, on the southern flank of the mosque, with charred windows and smoked front doors is the only sign that some cooking might be going on here. ‘We do not have a good arrangement for feeding our students,’ says the imam. Instead, ‘we collect wheat and other grains during the harvest and give it to a local shopkeeper who, in return, extends us credit the whole year long for the food we cook and eat,’ he adds. Ahl-e-Hadith, the sect that the mosque owes allegiance to, are a minority in Godhar Chowk, a small settlement on the road between Muzaffargarh and Dera Ghazi Khan, where the mosque and the madrassa are located. The Brelvis are a majority here and that’s why their madrassa has more students and their mosque better attendance of worshippers, the imam points out. But the Brelvi establishment, less than 150 metres away from the Ahl-e-Hadit’s premises, is only relatively better off. Though the Brelvi madrassa has separate sections for girls and boys – about 75 in all - and a rudimentary mess that also has a refrigerator donated by a friend of the local imam, children as young as five and six study and sleep on bare floor in the same ill-lit, brick and mortar rooms. The administrator ‘boasts’ of a library housed in a small, damp and smelly room, but adds: ‘The followers of our sect, though more in numbers in the village, are mostly poor. They can donate only small amounts of money to keep the madrassa and the mosque running.’ A diminutive, ashen-faced young man with smallish thin beard and wearing an off-white turban, he wishes the sponsors of his mosque and madrassa realised how the lack of resources is having a very negative impact on the prospects of their sect. Half a kilometer further north from the Brelvi mosque and madrassa, the Deobandis have their own enterprise that in terms of attendance, finances and other facilities stands somewhere in the middle of the other two.
‘Most of the people who pray here and are our regular donors are
either Punjabi settlers or educated people who have salaried
employment,’ the imam there tells me. A plump man in his 60s, with a
bushy beard and a head covered in a white skull cap, he is confident
that soon the Deobandi mosque and the madrassa will be the biggest
in the area. ‘Our party (Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam of Maulana Fazlur
Rehman) takes a keen interest in promoting Islamic education in far
flung areas like this,’ he adds. The two sects are also the pioneers of a new trend in Islamic education in the district: Mega madrassa establishments that are increasingly coming into competition with private education system. Their enterprises are not just well-financed and well-managed, but they also operate from purpose-built campuses where a deliberate effort is visible to let the religious dominate the secular. Jamia Islamia Rehmania, a sprawling five-acre complex on the eastern outskirts of Dera Ghazi Khan city and a stone’s throw away from a Shia Imambargah that came under a ferocious terror attack in February 2009, comprises a five-storey madrassa, a beautiful mosque with a tall minaret, grand arches and opaque glass doors, playgrounds, residential buildings and a high boundary wall topped with razor-wire. Jamia is a favourite haunt for every VIP on a visit to the city including foreigners and it is the brainchild of Maulana Sattar Rehmani, a prominent local Deobandi activist. It provides Islamic learning to about 400 students, most of them living in hostels. With assistance from the government-run Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA), Jamia provides its students technical skills including operating computer programmes besides offering them classes for matriculation. Despite its modern architecture and approach, Jamia is still traditional in many respects. Its students are not allowed to shave beards, wear western clothes or sit on a table to have their meals. Their non-religious curriculum also makes only a small part of their study programme. ‘Giving prominence to non-religious education can happen only at the cost of the religious education,’ says Habibur Rehman, a teacher at Jamia. ‘That will defeat the very purpose of our efforts,’ he tells me.
The place where the Jamia people are experimenting with a departure
from tradition is a refurbished house inside the city. With shiny
white tiles on its floor and walls, see-through glass doors,
computers and carpeted classrooms, the Meezan school combines modern
education with big dozes of religious learning. ‘We realised that
madrassas have a problem with their image. People generally think
that only the poor and the disabled make up the large number of
students there,’ says Chaudhry Zahoor Ahmed, the general secretary
of Jamia who also heads Meezan’s administration. ‘Mainly because the
madrassa education is free, people who cannot afford the
government-provided education are believed to send their children to
madrassas. This keeps middle-class and upper-class students away
from religious education,’ he tells me. ‘So, we came up with this
idea of providing quality modern education at a plush campus and
mixing it with a strong focus on the Quranic learning,’ he adds. His
young charges, whose fee starts from Rs 1,000 a month, are as fluent
in English language as they are proficient in the Quranic verses and
other seminal Islamic texts in Arabic. ‘Most of the students here
come from middle class families who do not want their children to
learn dance and song, staple at most private educational systems,’
Ahmed explains. The other aspect of Karim’s project is Kulyatul Binat, a residential school for girls. It is housed in a fortress-like complex on one of the main roads in Dera Ghazi Khan and comprises a four-storey school-cum-hostel, administrative offices and a big mosque. Kulyatul Binat has ‘two sections: One meant for Islamic education and the other for modern education combined with the Quranic learning,’ says Rizwan Ali, a member of its administration. He says the Kulya, that is totally off-limits for men, is providing education to 1600 girls, most of them living in hostels where they pay for their lodging. ‘We wanted to remove this stigma from the Islamic education that it is meant only for those who are the poorest of the poor. We are charging a fee here and yet we have a long waiting list for students who want admission but cannot be accommodated for now,’ says Osama Karim, the young son of Hafiz Abdul Karim. Five kilometers outside the city on Jampur Road, they have set up what can easily be called their flagship operation: Ammar bin Yasir School. It began as a madrassa for boys back in 1990s but has now developed into a high school. Its two-storey brick building is part of a five-acre complex that also houses a mosque, a hostel and a mess. ‘Education here is paid for and 500 or so students here know fully well that they are in a religious school and not in any other English-medium educational institution,’ Karim says proudly. ‘Singing and dancing is the main ingredient of teaching at other private educational systems. Our main offering is Islam and Quran,’ he adds. While some traditional English-medium schools, according to local journalists, are struggling to maintain their enrolments, almost all institutions run by Karim and his men are brimful and yet much sought after. If nothing else, this proves that Islamic education is coming of age at least in Dera Ghazi Khan. Having started off mainly through mosque-based madrassas as an affordable alternative to inefficient government education system, it is now equipping itself to take on private education. And even when this development does not lend itself to easy analysis, it definitely poses serious questions: Will it translate into further religious radicalisation and that too among those sections of the society that have not been active participants in the battle of ideas so far? Will these mega madrassas give birth to a new generation of jehadis who by virtue of their modern education may be better placed to fight with and against modern gadgets? Or will these institutions create people who, being well-versed in modern polemical techniques and armed with an inside knowledge of the opposition’s line of argument, be able to engage their opponents in an intellectual debate? The answers to these questions are as vague as the parameters and the outcome of such a debate is uncertain. What is already apparent is that Islamic education has taken a giant leap from its medieval version still surviving in Godhar Chowk to its post-modern version in Dera Ghazi Khan. DAWN>Tuesday, 26 May, 2009 |
