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Getting madrassa reform wrong
Jan 09, 2008: A survey funded by the Washington-based US Institute of Peace
(USIP) says 64 percent of Pakistanis who were questioned wanted a reform of the
madrassa system by the government. At the same time, however, the respondents
preferred an "Islamic state" even as they thought that Al Qaeda was a "critical"
(41 percent) or "important" threat (21 percent), thus making up a two-thirds
majority who fear Al Qaeda. A similar majority also expressed the same hostile
opinion about the Taliban "activity" in Pakistan even as it approved it against
American troops in Afghanistan. The sample comprised 907 individuals examined in
19 cities.
If you want confusion, there is more. Sixty percent wanted
Sharia and thought that Pakistan was not run on Islamic principles and gave the
state a poor four out of ten marks on this point. Yet when Talibanisation wants
to deliver "real Islam", over 60 percent want the state to prevent it from
spreading across the country. One can therefore say that the people have no
alternative to Islamic government in their mind and will hopelessly judge all
governance against a utopia they have in their imagination. But one thing is
proved by the survey and that is they don't want the Islam spread by the
madrassas and they don't want the version being enforced under duress by the
Taliban and their patron, Al Qaeda.
The verdict against the madrassa is
clear enough. Yet "expert" opinion on the subject is divided in Pakistan and
abroad, even at the level of the United Nations. Seminaries examined by experts
concluded there was no jihadi seduction practised by them. The basis of this
conclusion was the textbooks read there and depositions made by the vested
madrassa administrations. Clearly this was an unsatisfactory method. Then the
government promised reform but failed to carry it out because it did believe in
the correction, constantly saying there were "good" madrassas too and they were
in a majority. The madrassas were registered and that was that, they said. But
the violence never stopped and the seminarians came out again and again to
defend their teachers, as in the case of Lal Masjid in Islamabad.
The
confusion stems from the false separation everyone makes between the seminary
and the mosque. The fact is that a mosque is a branch of the madrassa where its
imam has been educated. Not finding normal employment, a madrassa graduate
builds his own mosque and is helped by his institution, and this help is
supplemented by the jihadi organisation affiliated with the madrassa through its
leader. An Islamabad psychiatrist who has produced a competent study based on
the "Afghanistan returnee" prisoners after 2001 has found that most recruits
were engaged from the mosques and knew nothing about any madrassa. Yet the
"minders" who hooked them for jihad belonged to the community of madrassa
graduates that have led Pakistan's covert war through jihadi
militias.
Religious radicalisation in Pakistan has occurred through
madrassas generously funded by the Arab governments and private individuals from
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. This has happened since 1980 when the Arabs of
the Gulf began fearing the rise of Revolutionary Iran. The centre from where
this radicalisation radiated across the globe was the university system in Saudi
Arabia presided over by radical Wahhabi clerics who propounded a faith akin to
what Al Qaeda and the Taliban are spreading in Pakistan these days. Youth from
Pakistani madrassas were taken to Saudi Arabia and trained in a new tough faith.
In Karachi, the big Deobandi seminaries were plied with funds and persuaded to
change their syllabi.
Pakistan provided the most important ingredient to
this radicalisation. It enlisted the madrassa-based jihadi militias to achieve
its strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir. That led to the
proliferation of lethal weapons and the creation of centres of power in the
country other than the state. State employees who handled these outfits were
"reverse-indoctrinated" because of the personal empowerment their charges
bestowed on them. So today the state is more vulnerable than the madrassa.
President Musharraf has many failures to his name, but his biggest failure was
his inability to rein in the madrassas after having used them. The chief of the
militia that tried to kill him twice was the favourite student of a madrassa in
Karachi which Islamabad kept pampering. He is still around as are some leaders
of other Saudi-supported militia-madrassas.
The reform of the madrassa
is not possible because there are no texts to abrogate in them. But madrassa can
be made less attractive for our youth if the state can gear up to producing
alternative places of learning. However, that would be useless unless the writ
of the state is established in a large part of the country and away from the big
cities of the "normal" areas. Today, the madrassa is wining and the state is
losing because of radical Islam's power to intimidate. Maulana Fazlullah's
mushroom growth of madrassas in Swat was backed by coercion. Now that he is gone
the people wish to return to their tourism-based economy. But will the state
hold on to Swat? Will it clean up the madrassas in Swat now that it has the
opportunity?
Second Editorial: Talking peace in
Waziristan
A "peace committee" in South Waziristan has been attacked and
decimated. Those who insist that Talibanisation can be resolved through friendly
parleys should take a close look at the culture of "spread of creed through
violence" and see if they get anyone to talk peace without accepting terms from
the radicals.
The "peace committee" of nine belonged to Maulvi Nazir,
considered pro-government because he fought and drove out Al Qaeda's Uzbek
militia from the precincts of Wana. The killing of his peace committee is
clearly an act of revenge. The revenge is tribal too. Maulvi Nazir is a "Wazir
Taliban" whereas the big warlord of the area Baitullah Mehsud is a Mehsud. The
government may have helped in the split but the truth is that Pakistan's tribal
society is based on the principle of fragmentation and functions fitfully only
under threat of violence. If Al Qaeda wins, it will have to be in the fighting
mode constantly to keep the population in check. But if it wins in the rest of
Pakistan, it will gain a firmer foothold. Those who go to "parley" with Al Qaeda
will then have to accept terms under Al Qaeda's "universal caliphate", after
which all may not be well again. * Daily Times
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| Education News | | Updated: 24 May, 2012 |
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