Indian Muslim Education

Indian Muslim Educational Reform: Halting Efforts

Yoginder Sikand

The reform of Muslim education, in particular bridging
the gap between ‘religious’ and ‘worldly’ knowledge,
has been one of the main focuses of the efforts of a
range of South Asian Muslim reformists and revivalists
over the past century and more. Although bitterly
critiqued by sections of the traditionalist ulema for
some of his views, including what they saw as his
obsession with political power, Syed Abul Ala Maududi,
founder of the Jamaat-e Islami, was one of the most
forceful advocates of Muslim educational reform. This
aspect of his work is often overlooked in analyses of
his life. He wrote extensively on the subject, arguing
that Islam did not countenance any division between
‘religion’ and ‘this world’, including in the realm of
knowledge and education. This made him critical of
both the traditional madrasa system, which provided
little or no space for ‘modern’ subjects, as well as
of the Western-oriented ‘modern’ education system,
which had no room for religion. This was one crucial
reason for the fierce opposition that he faced both
from sections of the traditionalist ulema as well as
from ‘modernist’ Muslim quarters.

Following Maududi, the Jamaat-e Islami of India, with
branches in almost every Indian state, has played a
key, if somewhat limited, role in the reform of Indian
Muslim education. Its educational work is supervised
by an Education Committee, set up in 1990.
‘Admittedly’, says Muhammad Ashfaq Ahmad, Secretary of
the Committee, ‘we have not done as much work as we
should have, but you must also understand that Indian
Muslims and their organizations have been forced to
focus most of their energies on protection of Muslim
lives, properties, institutions and identity all these
years, because of which education has not received the
attention that it deserves’.

Ahmad explains to me the educational philosophy of the
Jamaat. ‘Since Islam covers every aspect of a
believer’s life, all subjects must be understood and
studied in the light of Islam, inspired by faith in
God and consciousness of one’s accountability to God
in the life after death. In this way, Islam opposes
the radical dualism that some people have constructed
to divide religious and worldly knowledge. All
subjects are Islamic and can be legitimately pursued
provided they fulfill God’s purposes.’ ‘Further’, he
adds, ‘our religious leaders must know what is
happening in the world around them if they are to
provide the community with proper leadership. Hence,
they, too, must learn the various different subjects,
albeit in a suitably Islamised manner’.

In terms of institution-building, the Jamaat has
registered few notable successes, however. Its first
initiative in this regard, the Darsgah-e Islami in
Rampur, a town in northern Uttar Pradesh, which it
intended to be a model institution combining Islamic
and ‘modern’ education, has, almost half a century
after it was founded, not progressed beyond being a
lackluster, mediocre junior Hindi-medium high school.
The Jamaat runs a few more such schools on its own,
particularly in Kerala, but now, instead of setting up
and administering educational institutions itself, it
encourages its activists and sympathizers to do so on
their own, all of them being governed by a broad
common policy framework. ‘People today are so heavily
influenced by the dominant system, so reluctant to
accept anything other than the regular, western-style
schooling, that we have been unable to achieve much in
terms of setting up our own educational institutions,
except at the lower levels, of the sort that Maulana
Maududi envisioned’, Ahmad rues. That might be true to
some extent, of course, but the argument does not take
into account the sheer apathy and a distinct lack of
professionalism that characterizes the management
boards of many Muslim educational institutions.

Today, the Jamaat’s educational work is largely
focused on producing textbooks for use in a fairly
sizeable number of Muslim schools across the country,
not all of them associated with the Jamaat. Most of
these, estimated by Ahmad at around 150, are located
in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, home to the largest
concentration of Muslims in India. Of these only a few
are traditional madrasas, the rest being regular
schools and a few madrasas that follow the Jamaat’s
understanding of Islam. Ahmad tells me that so far the
Jamaat has prepared and published textbooks for a
range of subjects, including ‘modern’ ones, that
reflect its ideology, till the sixth grade. These are
mostly in Urdu, although its Islamic Studies texts
have been translated and published in English and
Hindi as well. He admits, though, that these books
have not been updated for almost twenty years now.

Interestingly, many of the Urdu- and English-medium
schools that use Jamaat textbooks also use books
published by the Government’s National Council for
Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Ahmad
stresses that, as citizens of India, Muslims have as
much right to benefit from the Government’s various
educational schemes as other communities, but laments
that this is not so in practice, for a variety of
reasons. ‘It’s wrong to say that the Government does
not want to do anything at all for Muslim education’,
he stresses, but at the same time he argues that
various programmes announced by the Government of
India for Muslim educational development have often
been scuttled by reluctant state governments and
bureaucrats.

One area that Ahmad feels the urgent need for reform
is in how different communities, their beliefs and
histories are depicted in textbooks. He points out
that biases against Muslims are quite common in a
range of textbooks prescribed and used in schools in
numerous states. This is an issue that, he says, the
Government must address. He tells me that the
Karnataka unit of the Jamaat did a survey of
anti-Muslim stereotypes in textbooks in the state, and
that it was successful in getting the state government
to rectify it. He refers to a similar study, conducted
some two decades ago by the Uttar Pradesh Dini Talimi
Council, which also includes numerous Jamaat
activists. ‘The same sort of surveys should be done
for all the other states’, he advises, but when I
suggest that perhaps Jamaat activists in the different
states take upon themselves this task I receive no
reply but a gentle nod accompanied with a faint smile.

Ahmad is all for madrasa students to have at least a
basic exposure to ‘modern’ subjects. ‘Without this,
how can they effectively lead the community? How can
they properly interpret Islam? How can they
effectively explain to others what Islam is all about?
How can they meet the many challenges that we are
today faced with? How can they rebut allegations
against Islam?’, he asks. A litany of questions, and
Ahmad’s simple recipe is to let madrasas reform on
their own, without any external pressure or coercion,
including by the state. But, he adds, hopes for change
have been greatly dampened by the mounting, and
misplaced, propaganda against the madrasas, unfairly
branding them as ‘dens of terror’. This has forced
many of them to become even more defensive and insular
and to fear that any suggestions for change might well
represent a sinister hidden agenda.

To counter widespread misconceptions about madrasas,
Ahmad suggests that madrasas interact with people of
other faiths who live in their vicinity and even to
invite them inside. ‘Much misunderstanding about Islam
and Muslims owes simply to lack of interaction between
the communities’, he says. He cites a personal
example. He was once traveling in a train, and a
co-passenger, a Hindu woman, asked him, ‘Why do
Muslims take the name of the Emperor Akbar in the
azan, when they recite Allahu Akbar?’. He explained to
her that this was not the case, telling her the actual
meaning of the word which she had confused for the
Mughal potentate. And that, he says, ‘made the woman
happy’.

‘The point is’, Ahmad continues, ‘that Muslims in
general, and not just the ulema alone, have to have
more close and positive social interaction with others
so that we can explain to them what Islam and Muslims
actually are. And not just verbal interaction, but we
must also seek to help others, no matter what their
religion, when they are suffering and are in pain,
just as we would like them to help us too’. ‘After
all’, he concludes our hour-long discussion, ‘isn’t
that what real education is also about?’

Gentler Islam Schools

Turkish schools offer Pakistan a gentler Islam

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Turkish educators are offering an alternative approach to religious schools that could reduce extremists' influence.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

KARACHI, Pakistan: Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey.

He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard.
"Kill, fight, shoot," Kacmaz said. "This is a misinterpretation of Islam."

But that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public school system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable.

Kacmaz (pronounced KATCH-maz) is part of a group of Turkish educators who have come to this battleground with an entirely different vision of Islam. Theirs is moderate and flexible, comfortably coexisting with the West while remaining distinct from it. Like Muslim Peace Corps volunteers, they promote this approach in schools, which are now established in more than 80 countries, Muslim and Christian.

Their efforts are important in Pakistan, a nuclear power whose stability and whose vulnerability to fundamentalism have become main preoccupations of American foreign policy. Its tribal areas have become a refuge to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and the battle against fundamentalism rests squarely on young people and the education they get.
At present, that education is extremely weak. The poorest Pakistanis cannot afford to send their children to public schools, which are free but require fees for books and uniforms. Some choose to send their children to madrasas, or religious schools, which, like aid organizations, offer free food and clothing. Many simply teach, but some have radical agendas. At the same time, a growing middle class is rejecting public schools, which are chaotic and poorly financed, and choosing from a new array of private schools.

The Turkish schools, which have expanded to seven cities in Pakistan since the first one opened a decade ago, cannot transform the country on their own. But they offer an alternative approach that could help reduce the influence of Islamic extremists.

They prescribe a strong Western curriculum, with courses, taught in English, from math and science to English literature and Shakespeare. They do not teach religion beyond the one class in Islamic studies that is required by the state. Unlike British-style private schools, however, they encourage Islam in their dormitories, where teachers set examples in lifestyle and prayer.

"Whatever the West has of science, let our kids have it," said Erkam Aytav, a Turk who works in the new schools. "But let our kids have their religion as well."

That approach appeals to parents in Pakistan, who want their children to be capable of competing with the West without losing their identities to it. Allahdad Niazi, a retired Urdu professor in Quetta, a frontier town near the Afghan border, took his son out of an elite military school, because it was too authoritarian and did not sufficiently encourage Islam, and put him in the Turkish school, called PakTurk.

"Private schools can't make our sons good Muslims," Niazi said, sitting on the floor in a Quetta house. "Religious schools can't give them modern education. PakTurk does both."
The model is the brainchild of a Turkish Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gulen. A preacher with millions of followers in Turkey, Gulen, 69, comes from a tradition of Sufism, an introspective, mystical strain of Islam. He has lived in exile in the United States since 2000, after getting in trouble with secular Turkish officials.

Gulen's idea, Aytav said, is that "without science, religion turns to radicalism, and without religion, science is blind and brings the world to danger."

The schools are putting into practice a Turkish Sufi philosophy that took its most modern form during the last century, after Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founder, crushed the Islamic caliphate in the 1920s. Islamic thinkers responded by trying to bring Western science into the faith they were trying to defend. In the 1950s, while Arab Islamic intellectuals like Sayyid Qutub were firmly rejecting the West, Turkish ones like Said Nursi were seeking ways to coexist with it.

In Karachi, a sprawling city that has had its own struggles with radicalism — the American reporter Daniel Pearl was killed here, and the famed Binori madrasa here is said to have sheltered Osama bin Laden — the two approaches compete daily.

The Turkish school is in a poor neighborhood in the south of the city where residents are mostly Pashtun, a strongly tribal ethnic group whose poorer fringes have been among the most susceptible to radicalism. Kacmaz, who became principal 10 months ago, ran into trouble almost as soon as he began. The locals were suspicious of the Turks, who, with their ties and clean-shaven faces, looked like math teachers from Middle America.
"They asked me several times, 'Are they Muslim? Do they pray? Are they drinking at night?' " said Ali Showkat, a vice principal of the school, who is Pakistani.

Goats nap by piles of rubbish near the school's entrance, and Kacmaz asked a local religious leader to help get people to stop throwing their trash near the school, to no avail. Exasperated, he hung an Islamic saying on the outer wall of the school: "Cleanliness is half of faith." When he prayed at a mosque, two young men followed him out and told him not to return wearing a tie because it was un-Islamic.

"I said, 'Show me a verse in the Koran where it was forbidden,' " Kacmaz said, steering his car through tangled rush-hour traffic. The two men were wearing glasses, and he told them that scripturally, there was no difference between a tie and glasses.
"Behind their words there was no Hadith," he said, referring to a set of Islamic texts, "only misunderstanding."

That misunderstanding, along with the radicalism that follows, stalks the poorest parts of Quetta. Abdul Bari, a 31-year-old teacher of Islam from a religious family, lives in a neighborhood without electricity or running water. Two brothers from his tribe were killed on a suicide mission, leaving their mother a beggar and angering Bari, who says a Muslim's first duty is to his mother and his family.

"Our nation has no patience," said Bari, who raised his seven younger siblings, after his father died suddenly a dozen years ago. He decided that one of his brothers should be educated, and enrolled him in the Turkish school.

The Turks put the focus on academics, which pleased Bari, who said his dream was for Saadudeen, his brother, to lift the family out of poverty and expand its horizons beyond religion. Bari's title, hafiz, means he has memorized the entire Koran, though he has no formal education. Two other brothers have earned the same distinction. Their father was an imam.

His is a lonely mission in a neighborhood where nearly all the residents are illiterate and most disapprove of his choices, Bari said. He is constantly on guard against extremism. He once punished Saadudeen for flying kites with the wrong kind of boys. At the Turkish school, the teenager is supervised around the clock in a dormitory.

"They are totally against extremism," Bari said of the Turks. "They are true Muslims. They will make my brother into a true Muslim. He'll deal with people with justice and wisdom. Not with impatience."

Illiteracy is one of the roots of problems dogging the Muslim world, said Matiullah Aail, a religious scholar in Quetta who graduated from Medina University in Saudi Arabia.
In Baluchistan, Quetta's sparsely populated province, the literacy rate is less than 10 percent, said Tariq Baluch, a government official in the Pasheen district. He estimated that about half of the district's children attended madrasas.

Aail said: "Doctors and lawyers have to show their degrees. But when it comes to mullahs, no one asks them for their qualifications. They don't have knowledge, but they are influential."

That leads to a skewed interpretation of Islam, even by those schooled in it, according to Gulen and his followers.

"They've memorized the entire holy book, but they don't understand its meaning," said Kamil Ture, a Turkish administrator.

Kacmaz chimed in: "How we interpret the Koran is totally dependent on our education."
In an interview in 2004, published in a book of his writings, Gulen put it like this: "In the countries where Muslims live, some religious leaders and immature Muslims have no other weapon in hand than their fundamental interpretation of Islam. They use this to engage people in struggles that serve their own purposes."

Moderate as that sounds, some Turks say Gulen uses the schools to advance his own political agenda. Murat Belge, a prominent Turkish intellectual who has experience with the movement, said that Gulen "sincerely believes that he has been chosen by God," and described Gulen's followers as "Muslim Jesuits" who are preparing elites to run the country.
Hakan Yavuz, a Turkish professor at the University of Utah who has had extensive experience with the Gulen movement, offered a darker assessment.

"The purpose here is very much power," Yavuz said. "The model of power is the Ottoman Empire and the idea that Turks should shape the Muslim world."

But while radical Islamists seek to re-establish a seventh-century Islamic caliphate, without nations or borders, and more moderate Islamists, like Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, use secular democracy to achieve the goal of an Islamic state, Gulen is a nationalist who says he wants no more than a secular democracy where citizens are free to worship, a claim secular Turks find highly suspect.

Still, his schools are richly supported by Turkish businessmen. M. Ihsan Kalkavan, a shipping magnate who has built hotels in Nigeria, helped finance Gulen schools there, which he said had attracted the children of the Nigerian elite.

"When we take our education experiment to other countries, we introduce ourselves. We say, 'See, we're not terrorists.' When people get to know us, things change," Kalkavan said in his office in Istanbul.

He estimated the number of Gulen's followers in Turkey at three million to five million. The network itself does not provide estimates, and Gulen declined to be interviewed.
The schools, which also operate in Christian countries like Russia, are not for Muslims alone, and one of their stated aims is to promote interfaith understanding. Gulen met the previous pope, as well as Jewish and Orthodox Christian leaders, and teachers in the schools say they stress multiculturalism and universal values.

"We are all humans," said Kacmaz, the principal. "In Islam, every human being is very important."

Pakistani society is changing fast, and more Pakistanis are realizing the importance of education, in part because they have more to lose, parents said. Abrar Awan, whose son is attending the Turkish school in Quetta, said he had grown tired of the attitude of the Islamic political parties he belonged to as a student. Now a government employee with a steady job, he sees real life as more complicated than black-and-white ideology.

"America or the West was always behind every fault, every problem," he said, at a gathering of fathers in April. "Now, in my practical life, I know the faults are within us."