Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam 180. Islamic Education – Modern Issues - 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

 

The colonial period introduced a historical discontinuity into the evolution of the madrasa. The injection of foreign and alien interference scuttled the natural evolution of this institution. The discontinuity may be illustrated by examining the syllabus followed before and after the colonial period. In the table below, we have summarized the syllabus as it was during the period of the Great Mogul Akbar (circa 1600) and as it is today.

Subjects taught during Mogul Emperor Akbar’s reign (circa 1600): Akhlaq; Arithmetic; Astronomy; Tareeq; Mantiq; Tib; Falahat; Masahaat; Fiqh; Hindsa; Languages; Literature; Tazkiya; Tadbeer; Manzil; Ramal; Siasat e madani; Riazee; Ilahiyat; Qur’an; Hifz; Hadith.

By stark contrast, the subjects that are today are: Quran; Hifz; Hadith; Fiqh; Arithmetic.

India was the first great non-Western civilization to fall to Europe and it was here that the colonists perfected the mechanism of dismantling the traditional educational systems and replacing them with systems that served the colonial administrative machines. The Indian experience illustrates this observation.

Until 1824, the East India Company maintained the pretense that it was ruling in the name of the Mogul emperor in Delhi. In 1828 the company abandoned the use of Farsi in the Indian courts and replaced it with English. With the Anglicization of the judicial system, there was an immediate need for lawyers who could represent Indian clients. This encouraged the growth of English-medium schools. Convents and seminaries initially ran these schools. Gradually, English was introduced into the public school systems. In 1832, the Company abandoned the pretense that it was a proxy for the Mogul emperor, relegated him to a pensioner of the company and took over direct rule of the subcontinent. The madrasas, which taught Arabic and Farsi, took a direct hit. They were marginalized to teaching Gulistan and Boostan, classics of the Eastern languages, but which had no utilitarian value in the new colonial order.

The Muslims who had lost the power struggle with the British for control of India, had a deep distrust of the foreigners, whom they called Firangees (a derogative term derived from the term Frank). This distrust did not stop at the English language and culture but extended to philosophy, science and mathematics. Isolation set in and the old system of education was marginalized and retreated into a corner. Even the rudimentary exposure to philosophy and mathematics that was offered in the Nizamiya syllabus was abandoned because the Firangees were much better at these subjects than the mullahs. For survival, the mullahs had to introduce product differentiation into religious education and give it new branding. This was done by attaching the label “deen” to the madrasa to differentiate them from the secular schools which taught subjects related to “duniya”. The bifurcation of education into deeni talim and dunawi talim was now complete. As the prospects of the graduates from madrasas finding jobs in the government evaporated, the mullahs drew an ever-tighter circle around the madrasa syllabus so as to guard the religious turf. Even the application of the Shariah did not escape this marginalization. Where once the Shariah embraced all aspects of life, it was now confined to “Muslim personal law”. Any subject that would open the society up to Western influences was summarily abandoned. The air was taken out of the educational balloon and where once teachers and students alike would soar high and take in vast vistas, they were now grounded and could only gaze at the dirt below.

 

The Influence of Oil Money

While a great majority of the madrasas in South Asia are poor, and are located in rural or remote areas, there are some that are well endowed with land and money. Thanks to the largesse from Saudi Arabia, and donations from the Gulf, some madrasas are opulent even by international standards. While some are literally run from thatched huts, some have vested properties of millions of rupees. The Molvis in these madrasas live in comparative opulence, move about in expensive cars, own mobile phones, and dine on nothing less than the highest quality basmati rice.

The injection of oil money into the madrasa has been a mixed blessing. Money taints the natural growth of culture much in the same way as foreign political dominance. While oil money did help build the infrastructure of some schools, the price paid was the abandonment of the spiritual Islam that had grown up in the subcontinent over a thousand years, and its replacement by a largely ritualistic Islam prevalent in Arabia and the Gulf. Without the spiritual glue to hold the community together, there has been an increase in fragmentation along narrow, legalistic lines.

A visible result of this fragmentation is the proliferation of the jama’ats in the subcontinent, each one declaring that it possesses the exclusive map to salvation and the maps owned by the other jama’ats are only partially correct. Up until the time of partition, Islam in India and Pakistan had a strong spiritual content. The eloquence of Allama Iqbal would lose its lofty grandeur if it were stripped of its spiritual content. That “traditional” Islam has disappeared and has largely been replaced by a “Salafi” Islam wherein rules, regulations and arguments dominate.

This paradigm is beginning to change. The first Gulf War of 1991 drained the resources of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. More recently, after 9/11, with “terrorism” becoming a household world, many governments have clamped down on the international transfer of funds. Money transfers from America come under microscopic scrutiny. These developments have placed a financial crunch on the madrasas. With sources of foreign funds drying up, the madrasas have had to fall back on local resources. Notwithstanding the decreasing external financial support, most of the madrasas in the subcontinent continue to look to the Saudi universities, such as the University of Medina, and to the established academies at Nadva and Deoband, for guidance on their curriculum.

 

The Academic Hierarchy

The religious schools in the India-Pakistan Subcontinent show a definite hierarchy. At the top of the academic ladder are the academies at Deoband and Nadwa. In the Islamic landscape of South Asia, Deoband and Nadwa occupy a position similar to Caltech and MIT in the technological landscape of the United States. Established in the late 19 th century during the British period, their influence on the social, political and religious landscape on Muslim India is far greater than of Aligarh University which was founded about the same time by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. Many of the students who graduate from the madrasas as “aalims” (learned men) go on to study at Deoband and Nadwa for their graduate studies and obtain the diploma of fazil (equivalent of a doctorate). Both of these academies have a conservative leaning, more so since the Saudi version of Islam hit the subcontinent along with petrodollars. Their influence, through their alumni, radiates all over Asia and beyond. These schools have led the way for the demolition of traditional Islam and its replacement with a more rigid Islam close to the Wahhabi brand from Najad. On the positive side, there is no question that both of these institutions have produced many scholars of the first rank.

The vast majority of madrasas are located in small villages. Run by a lone teacher or a Molvi, who doubles as the “pesh-imam” of the local mosque, the village madrasas are financially poor often to the point of destitution. They teach elementary Arabic, memorization of a few passage from the Qur’an, and a few basics about religious rites and obligations. They receive local patronage from the subsistence farmers and petty traders. They are valued for their social utility because they help develop the moral character (tarbiat) of the students. Even parents who send their children to government run secular schools ensure that their children attend a madrasa on a part time basis. The network of these madrasas is so large and they are so interwoven into the fabric of society that there is very little a government can do to change them, except with a tremendous investment in infrastructure and manpower, or through outright coercion.

At the next higher level are the well-established schools that are run by professional ulema. Some of these schools are old and date back to the Mogul period. Others are new and sprang up as Saudi money became available to the Indo-Pak religious market. Our research led us to eleven such schools located in Southern India and some patterns emerged from our observations:

• The older schools, established in the seventeenth and 18 th centuries are run by ancient waqfs. They do not solicit funds from outside sources. They offer a traditional Nisab (curriculum), which includes a study of the Qur’an, Sunnah of the Prophet, early Islamic history, elementary philosophy and arithmetic, and emphasize tazkiyah and purity of heart. They are often attached to a zawiya or a qanqah. An example is Jamia Lateefia in Vanambadi.
• The newer schools were established during the late British period. Some sprang up in the nineteen sixties when Saudi money became available to the Indian religious market. These schools actively solicit local as well as international funding. Some are very well off and own substantial properties. The teachers are mostly a product of the schools in Northern India (Nadwa, Devband). Some have studied at Medina University. Their Nisab (curriculum) places a heavy emphasis on Hadith and less so on other aspects of the Sunnah. These schools are popular with the more established jama’ats, such as Jamaat e Islami and the Tableegi Jamaat. The graduates of these schools become Molvis in the masjids in the larger towns. The dropouts settle in the villages and become teachers at the local mosque-madrasa.

(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)