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Pakistan's madrassa troubles
July 14: President General Pervez Musharraf told the nation Thursday that
his government would not allow any madrassa like the Lal Masjid complex to
exist. He pledged that seminaries spreading militancy, extremism and terrorism
in the country would be crushed. He also referred to his old stance on the
subject, saying that not all madrassas were seats of defiance and revolt against
the state, and lamented that his defence of the seminaries to the outside world
was undermined by Lal Masjid.
It is unfortunate that many Pakistanis,
however well meaning, still think that unless a madrassa declares its defiance
of the state and mobilises its acolytes as vigilante groups, it is actually
making a positive contribution to the task of educating the poor population of
Pakistan. The argument is that since the state is unable or unwilling to provide
for the poor, the madrassas fill this void and thereby perform a useful
educational function.
Yet it is clear to all that a madrassa is not the
place where our children can be made ready for the job market. We also recognise
the truth, albeit unwillingly, that the proliferation of the mosque in Pakistan
has taken place because the madrassa graduate, rejected by the job market, has
to build or acquire his own mosque to become a breadwinner. So crucial is the
mosque as an adjunct of the madrassa that many "empowered" madrassas of the
Deobandi variety have been seizing the Barelvi mosques to "settle" their new
graduates. In Karachi, there is a major Deobandi-Barelvi battle over mosques
thus grabbed.
The fact is that few scholars have examined the psychology
of the madrassa acolyte. Most people simply scrutinise the dars-e-nizami
syllabus taught there and find it harmless, even though it is unrelated to the
contemporary environment. But one reliable study done by Pakistani scholar Dr
Tariq Rehman has revealed that madrassa students have more hardline views on
such subjects as non-Muslims and women in Pakistan than Urdu and English medium
schools geared to the job market. The extremism of the sermons issued from the
mosque on a daily basis reflects the worldview imbibed in the "regular"
madrassas.
Pakistan's moderate scholar of Islam, Mr Javed Ahmad Ghamidi,
a member of the Council of Islamic Ideology, says that the induction of the
madrassa clergy and students into the Afghan war in the 1980s and the 1990s has
empowered them to a point where they can set their own agendas and challenge the
state. In an interview with Business Plus TV channel, the girl students of Jamia
Hafsa clearly echoed the clerical view of the doctrine of amr (encourage the
good) and nahi (oppose the bad) as grounds for vigilante action "because the
state doesn't end activities banned in Islam". They also said that the Quranic
verse la ikrah fi din (no coercion in religion) meant freedom is allowed before
Islam is embraced but not afterwards.
The clerical consensus on Lal
Masjid was based on a rejection of the state-within-the-state created by the
Rashid-Aziz duo, not the "banned activities" that the two were attacking. The
tendency to prejudge "activities" without first challenging them at the Federal
Shariat Court points to the tendency of the clergy of the "good" madrassas under
Wafaqul Madaris Arabiya to forgive the pious trespasses of their acolytes.
Vigilante action is rampant in the country. Any incident of pages of the Quran
found lying on the ground immediately leads to the burning of public property,
something that never happened before the clergy was hugely empowered through
jihad.
There may be 40,000 registered and unregistered madrassas in
Pakistan. According to the minister for religious affairs, Mr Ijazul Haq, almost
15,000 have been brought under the new regime of imparting "worldly subjects" to
enable the graduates to get absorbed in the job market. Yet the statements made
by the clerics of Wafaqul Madaris do not reflect any desire to make the seminary
graduates good for any job other than a khateeb of a mosque. So the truth is
that the seminary fundamentally performs the task of isolating the children
through a "sealing process" represented by dars-e-nizami, then brainwashing them
with doctrines no longer practised by the state, and then pushing them to a
rejectionism whose high point is vigilante action under the doctrine of amr and
nahi.
The president thanked Wafaqul Madaris in his speech. The Wafaq has
struck back by announcing a campaign against him. The campaign - in which the
acolytes will be used in their vast numbers - will be exploited by the MMA whose
religious parties defend the madrassa system as its hinterland of street power.
Under President Musharraf the madrassas in Pakistan have doubled in number. It
is because his policies have threatened those that the state empowered in the
past 20 years. Therefore the madrassa is actually hitting back, not being
defensive. Daily times
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| Education News | | Updated: 24 May, 2012 |
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