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THE news about the ECNEC meeting the other day gave a refreshing feeling for its emphasis on education. Pleasant still was the decision to allocate a whooping sum of Rs. 5.7 billion for the madrassahs. The amount, the statement says, is meat to bridge the gap between the formal and the religious education. We took this decision after waiting for 56 years, but it is never too late. Even if the best time to plant a tree was a hundred years ago, then the second best is now, goes the French saying.

The madrassah comes from the word ‘dars’ meaning lesson or lecture. The madrassah is thus any place where lectures are given and lessons are received. But for quite a time the word has ceased to be applied for the formal colleges and schools. Instead, it is used specifically and exclusively for the religious seminaries. The mushrooming of the madrassahs in the past two decades owes to the combination of political, social and economic realities of our country.

The madrassahs have become much controversial after the religious and sectarian violence in recent years. Whenever a criminal is apprehended, fingers are inadvertently pointed out at his background and grooming. If one is involved in a case of sectarian terrorism, it is but natural that his brought up and training at a madrassah comes under scrutiny and debate. The influence of an educational institution over a person’s personality can hardly be gainsaid. Since many educated persons also commit crimes, the closure of schools as a whole is never demanded. But the madrassahs, being a different genre, come under flak and are considered directly responsible for any that goes amiss from the religious right.

All over the world, urban ghettos are the hotbeds of extremist movements. This is a truism that the ultra-right religious movements (be it the Islamist hardliners, the Hindu extremists or the Zionist Jews) or the ultra-left Communist outfits, find fertile recruitment grounds amongst the lower middle class and the poor. It is not that the madrassahs only teach extremism, but it is true that the social and economic class that constitutes the madrassah population is precisely that which is most vulnerable to radical influence.

The rate of population growth is disproportionately greater amongst the poor, owing partly to the lack of awareness and education, and partly to the technicalities and finances involved in most of the birth control methods. Many people send one of their children to a religious seminary, not necessarily in the long term interest of making him a cleric who would earn his living himself. Mostly it is the short term incentive of not having to feed one mouth anymore. Most of the madrassahs do not charge any fees and even the lodge and board is also provided gratis.

The madrassahs run purely on public donations and alms. The people give generous donations to the madrassahs and the shrines to atone for the sins and to suppress various types of guilt consciences. But it is clear from the condition of the madrassahs that the alms are never too much for the students of the seminaries to give them an iota of decent living. There is no furniture in the class rooms and no beddings in the hostels of the madrassahs. In fact, the bare floor of the same large room acts as a class room, the dining hall and the dorm, depending upon the time of the day. The mostly dingy and smelly rooms have an extremely unhygienic common toilet across the mud compound of the countryside mosque. As for the textbooks and reading material, the madrassahs are dependent on donations from foreign countries, local organizations and various interest groups, and are obliged to follow the agendas of their benefactors. There is no free lunch in this world even when the lunch consists of the same poor quality pulses twice a day everyday fed to the students.

The scene inside a madrassah is way off from what one would consider a healthy environment. The living conditions are a slight to human dignity and a living mockery to the very notion of a welfare State. The students are then kept alive on the hopes penned to the paradise with flowing streams of honey, milk and liquor. In a single-sex environment where human instinct of sex is made synonymous with guilt and sin and what not, the houres of paradise are described with such minute details as if the maulana explaining them has been a medical practitioner in the heavens. The last thing a student is allowed to express is his doubts. The convoluted and suppressed desires result in a high proportion of bullying and sodomy in the madrassahs. Especially so, when there is no other entertainment at the place. In fact a moral stigma is attached to any facility that the madrassah cannot purchase from the market. Little wonder, it is not difficult to find many volunteers who would like to get martyred in the name of Islam to go to the heaven. The State has offered them nothing they might fear to lose. The madrassah has promised them everything to gain, provided they die.

Many questions keep boggling the mind of a madrassah student like why people are so rich and prosperous, why they travel in cars and why do their children consume burgers and ice-creams. “The grapes are sour”, he is told. All well-off people are bad guys who read western books in the schools and then adopt serious un-Islamic habits like for instance, consuming coke which is funding Israel’s economy. The reaction of the have-nots against the haves take religious undertones. When I cannot afford a cycle, why not set ablaze the cars of those who can afford to flaunt traveling in it. The quality of education in the madrassahs is so pathetic that not all students necessarily know whether Prophet Mohammad struggled against Israel or against India, or whether these countries existed 1400 years or not. It is not ideological indoctrination that makes them kill since Islam does not sanction murder. It is a simple violent reaction against the economic inequities and inequalities.

Even if a student who wants to become a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer, is never taught Urdu, English, Social Studies, Geography and Maths and is imparted instruction in his principal subject only right from nursery to graduation, what would be his outlook, exposure and grooming. Imagine a doctor, who can diagnose and treat cholera but cannot write his name, cannot calculate his salary, does know nothing about driving and is taught to hate every professor and every medical college but his own. Horrific, isn’t it?

Yes, some seminaries do teach English and Maths. But the curriculum reminds of the one taught at the schools at the Palestinian refugee camps in the 1970’s where simple arithmetic was explained by “If three Zionists are killed from five, two are still left”. It is good that the government has already introduced madrassahs registration act. It has also decided to bring the madrassah education at par with the formal one. Just like the difference between the F-Sc and FA, ICom and ICS, is just three of the seven subjects, while the four core subjects remain the same. To have equivalent standards aat the school, college and university levels education in other disciplines, it would be better to introduce a Matric (Islamic Studies Group), an IIS (Intermediate in Islamic Studies) and a BIS (Bachelor in Islamic Studies) in our education system. The standards and structure of this last degree should be uniform and at par with the BSc, BA. BCom, BBA, LLB, BCS and various other graduation degrees.

Initially, the government has decided to introduce formal education in 8,000 madrassahs (primary 4000, middle 3000 and intermediate 1000), but it should be the aim to merge all madrassahs with the mainstream schools within five years. The separate identity of the madrassahs should be done away with in phases. The curriculum must be devised by the Government run textbook boards, whereas the publishing houses of sectarian hate literature must be banned. In Matric (IS Group) and the IIS, no sectarian instruction should be imparted. Instead, emphasis be placed on the fundamentals of Islam like prayers and fasting where the schools of thought agree, instead of the jurisprudential details where they disagree. Themes of Islamic History, Culture and especially Art be emphasized. The History be taught and the moral ethics be inculcated.

One concluding point: The madrassahs should have more open spaces, sports grounds (for preparations of all-Pakistan inter-madrassah sports championships) and minimum of furniture. And Yes, a few windows facing the bazaar to give fresh air inside the classrooms.

The author is a Quetta-based freelance researcher on international relations and politics with two books to his credit.
E-mail: saadskhan@yahoo.co.uk
© 2004 Saad S. Khan