Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam 181. Islamic Education – Modern Issues - 3
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

 

In the subcontinent, the large, industrially backward state of Uttar Pradesh in the Gangetic plain has served as the nursery for molvis. At one time, this area was the prosperous heart of the Mogul Empire. As such, the local seminaries received royal patronage from Delhi.

As the Empire disintegrated, and local centers of power emerged, patronage continued under regional nawabs, noblemen and wealthy landlords. The area also benefited from the fact that it was the home of the Urdu language, which became the language of instruction of Muslim India during the British period. Today, a large proportion of mullahs who lead the prayers in local mosques across the width and breadth of India come from Uttar Pradesh.

Uttar Pradesh is also home to some of the well-known higher institutions of Islamic learning, including Aligarh University, Nadvatul Ulema and Devband. These institutions have had a major impact on Islamic thinking in the subcontinent. Whereas, Aligarh University founded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan in the 1880s as a school for westernized education has thrived as a secular institution after partition, Nadvatul Ulema and Deoband have become major centers of orthodoxy, radiating their influence far beyond the borders of South Asia. While these academies have produced a large number of outstanding scholars, they have also produced a much larger number of molvis with a constricted vision of Islamic learning. Their approach is didactic. They do not teach the inductive method as applied to nature, history or the human soul.

While the syllabus of these institutions is outstanding in the disciplines of tafseer, fiqh, Kalam and hadith, it is pitifully inadequate in the natural, mathematical or historical sciences. And noticeably, it is weak in the sciences of the soul, commonly referred to as Sufism. It is for these reasons that while Deoband and Nadva have produced a large number of Maulanas, they have not produced a single noteworthy mathematician, logician, historian, man or woman of science, or Awliya.

Nadwa and Deoband have exercised an influence on the social and religious fabric of Muslim India far greater than Aligarh Muslim University. In the hierarchy of religious schools, Deoband and Nadwa occupy the same place as Caltech and MIT do for technical education in the United States. Graduates from lesser-known schools across South Asia attend Nadva and Deoband for advanced education and research and carry back with them the stamp and the orientation of these two academies. Conservative to the core, they focus on the exoteric religious disciplines disregarding both the esoteric aspects of religion as well as the inductive sciences of science, sociology and history. Both were orthodox institutions to begin with, but under Saudi influence, they have moved even further to the right. Both schools graduate hundreds of aalims each year. Trained only in the traditional disciplines, these aalims are ill-equipped to handle questions posed by the modern global materialist civilization, or relating to the rapidly changing South Asian political landscape. Indeed, their chief contribution has been to destroy and decimate the traditional Islamic culture in the subcontinent and replace the spiritual Islam that had developed on Indian soil for a thousand years with a dried version manufactured in Saudi Arabia.

Much of the influence of the molvis from Uttar Pradesh has been due to their fluency in Urdu. Urdu has been the language of qutbas in many parts of India since the demise of Farsi in the early part of 19 th century. However, this situation is changing in more recent years. In post-partition India, Urdu has steadily lost its importance and has ceased to be the lingua franca of Muslims. Many madrasas in the North have adopted themselves to Hindi and those in other areas are offering instruction in the regional languages. Thus Bangla is the medium of instruction for Bengalis, Marathi is taught in Maharashtra, and Tamil in Tamil Nadu. Even in the Gulf, where there is a large concentration of migrants from Kerala, and several well-to-do Kerala Muslims have established schools, Malayalese rather than Urdu is the preferred medium of religious instruction for expatriate Muslim children. These changes are bound to reduce the influence of the Urdu speaking belt on the further development of the madrasas.

There is almost always a worldly agenda behind the establishment of madrasas. The first thing that a mullah does when he moves into a town is to start a deeni madrasa, a product for which there is a ready market. The dissociation of deeni taalim from the dunavi ta’lim has been sold to the South Asian market for over three hundred years. The process is a predictable one. First, the mullah looks for and befriends the local rich, those who are capable of donating land and money. The legal framework in India allows the packaging of this not-so-selfless effort as a religious and charitable trust, owned by the Molvi, into which the local landlords and merchants are inducted. As the madrasa acquires property and is on its way to becoming established, the donors are slowly squeezed out. The Mullah becomes the owner of the trust.

The worldly agenda of the mullahs should not detract from the social service that they have provided. Many of the madrasas offer free education, boarding and lodging for orphans and the destitute. Sometimes, they offer the only opportunity for the children of the poor to learn to read and write. The illiteracy rate in the Muslim third of South Asia would be higher were it not for the service provided by the madrasas.

 

The Mullah and the Microphone

In the religious culture of Muslims, the Mullah occupies a position, which is the object of envy of any politician. Once a week, during the Friday Qutbah, the Mullah has the control of the pulpit and the microphone from where he can preach, sermonize, lead and coax the worshipers. The faithful are required to listen to him in rapt attention. It is not permitted to interrupt a sermon unless the Mullah says something against the basic tenets of religion such as idolatry or shirk. Thus the mullah has the ear of a captive audience. No politician can dream of a platform like this one which affords a speaker the unflinching attention of an audience. Unless the qutba (the Friday sermon) is co-opted by a repressive government, the Mullah is free to choose a subject of interest to him and the community. It is this unique access to the microphone that sustains the power of mullah. It can be broken, modified or controlled only at the expense of destroying the freedom of worship and freedom of speech as has been done in Saudi Arabia and some of the Middle Eastern countries.

 

Terrorism not in the Curriculum

Hard as you try, you will not find the madrasas teaching, even remotely, anything resembling violence or terrorism. Indeed, most of the teachers in the religious schools come from groups such as the Tableeghi Jamaat, which has turned its back on the affairs of this world and has confined itself to “matters of the other world”. How could one associate such escapist pursuits with violence?

The Taliban in Afghanistan are more a product of their culture than of the madrasas they graduate from. It is like blaming the American school system for the divorce rate in the United States. Neither in the syllabus nor in the tarbiat (training) is there even the slightest hint of violence or terrorism.

(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)