Have Pakistanis Forgotten Their Sufi Traditions? Part - 1
By
Rohan Bedi
April 2006
Contents
No.
Topic Page
1. Historical Shift in Approach 1
2. Pakistani Madrasas
2
• The Saudi Angle
• Quality of Education
3. Indian Madrasas
4
4. Sectarian Violence
4
• Geographical Concentration
• History of Sectarian Violence
• An Experts View
5. Fatwas – Controls Needed 6
6. Madrasa Graduates - Masterminds or Foot
Soldiers 7
• Not Masterminds
• Foot Soldiers
7. Religious Beliefs – The Barelvi Angle 9
• The Philosophy of Sufism
• The Barelvis versus Deobandis
• The Shias and Sufism
• The Best Bet
• The Governments Approach to Sufism
• The Governments Approach to Minorities
8. Other Key Issues
12
• Nationalism – Punjabi Domination
• ISI – A Key Player
• Islamic Army
9. However…History May Support Reform
13
10. Pakistani Education Reform Agenda
14
• Correct Direction?
• ICG Evaluation of Madrasa Reforms
• US Evaluation of Madrasa Reforms
• SDPI Islamabad 2003 Report on the Public Education
System
11. The Indian View of Pakistan and Pakistanis
18
12. Way Forward
20
Have
Pakistanis Forgotten Their Sufi Traditions?
The institution of Madrasas or Islamic schools have a
long history in undivided India going back to the sixteenth century as tolerant
progressive schools. Their degeneration is a reflection of historical events,
US foreign policy in need of reform, and also a lack of institutional
alternatives for free public education in Pakistan. Rohan Bedi i , author of
the PricewaterhouseCoopers Singapore publication Money Laundering Controls and
Prevention and senior AML implementation manager of a leading international
bank explains. ii
In the sixteenth century during the Mughal emperor
Akbar’s time the curriculum in Indian Madrasas blended the teachings of Islam
and Hinduism. Hindu and Muslim students would together study the Quran (in
Arabic), the Sufi poetry of Sa’adi (in Persian), and the philosophy of Vedanta
(in Sanskrit), as well as ethics, astronomy, medicine, logic, history and the
natural sciences. Many of the most brilliant Hindu thinkers, including, for
example, the great reformer Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), were the products of
Madrasas.
1.
Historical Shift in Approach
In 1858, after the deposition of the last Mughal
emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar, the self-confidence of the Muslim community in
India was shaken.
Disillusioned scholars founded an influential but
Wahhabi-like madrasa at Deoband, a hundred miles north of the former Mughal
capital in Delhi. Isolated and dejected, the founders reacted against the
perceived degenerate ways of the old elite and went back to Koranic basics. 2
The new madrasa rigorously purged all Hindu/ European influences from the
curriculum. Unfortunately it was these puritanical Deobandi madrasas that
spread throughout north India and Pakistan in the twentieth century. The
Pakistani madrasas particularly benefited from the patronage of General Zia
ul-Haq and his Saudi allies in the 1980s.
Ironically, the US also played an important part in
spreading these Deobandi madrasas in order to use the students as soldiers in
the Afghanistan jihad (Islamic holy war) against the Soviets. It is reported
that the CIA financed the production by the USAID (US Agency for International
Development) of some notably bloodthirsty madrasa textbooks filled “with violent
images and militant Islamic teachings.” Estimates suggest that the US spent
over US$7 billion to create an effective Mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla warriors
or jihadists) force. Osama bin Laden the Saudi Billionaire, and the United
States shared a common objective, in fighting the Soviets. While the Americans
were concerned only with winning the war in Afghanistan and defeating the
Soviet Union, the Saudis had ideological and sectarian aims. The seed for 9/11
had been planted by the US themselves.
1 The Week, 11 December 2005
2 The Week, 11 December 2005
In a sub-continent where most of the Muslim population
are converts from Hinduism, the mental and cultural gap between the two
communities was enhanced through the Deobandi madrasas. Fortunately, the Deobandi
school did not take a violent turn in India and evolved under the secular
traditions of India unlike Pakistan where the schools were used to recruit
anti-Soviet fighters.
2.
Pakistani Madrasas
The number of Pakistani madrasas has grown from 250 in
1947 to around 10,000 in 2002 with over 1,500,000 students attending them. 3
Currently there are 13,000-15,000 madrasas with the highest concentration and
highest rate of growth in number of schools in Southern Punjab.
The
Saudi Angle
The primary reason for the exponential growth of
Pakistani madrasas has been the access to foreign funding, primarily from Saudi
Arabia but other foreign sources such as the US have also been common. The
Saudi largess had more to do with domestic politics than altruism. The internal
regimes stability and legitimacy rests in part on supporting local Mullahs
(clergy) by funding their projects through the use of Islamic charities. The
regimes support rests on one key pillar - the support and propagation of
Wahhabi Islam, a fundamentalist form of Islam, both internally and externally.
After the oil price boom of the 1970’s the Saudis were able to support this
effort, spending between US$3 and US$4 billion a year to support radical
Islamic activities, The Saudis admit that the cumulative support has reached as
much as US$70 billion. 4 .
A fellow at the Center for Security Policy, suggests
that as much as three-quarters (75%) of all madrasa funding comes from abroad,
and points to Saudi Arabia as by far the largest foreign contributor. 5 The
support for radicals is not confined to Riyadh. Teheran has also been spending
its monies to spread its interpretation of Shiaism across the world, which has
lead to a virtual proxy war between Teheran and Riyadh in Pakistan. Funds have
also come from Libya, Iraq and several other Gulf countries, creating an
intricately nuanced web of conflict. A 2002 study by the International Crisis
Group (ICG) adds that Pakistani expatriates are another significant source of
cash.
Starting in the 1980's, the four largest Wahhabi front
organizations 6 - the World Muslim League (WML), the Al Haramain Foundation,
the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), and the International Islamic Relief
Organization (IIRO) - became the main sponsors of Deobandi seminaries and
jihadist organizations in Pakistan, as well as of the most extreme of the
Afghan resistance groups and later of the Taliban and al Qaeda (al Qaeda was
also funded by private donors). The growth in Wahhabi groups in Pakistan
continues today, at a very rapid pace. 7
‘In Pakistan, so much Saudi money poured in that a
mid-level Pakistani jihadist could make seven times the country's average wage.
Jihad had become a global industry, bankrolled by the Saudis. US intelligence
officials knew about Saudi Arabia’s role in funding terrorism by 1996, yet for
years Washington did almost nothing to stop it. Examining the Saudi role in
terrorism, a senior intelligence analyst says, was "virtually taboo."
Saudi largess encouraged US officials to look the other way, some veteran intelligence
officers say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries have gone
to a broad range of former U.S. officials who had dealt with the Saudis:
ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet secretaries.’ 8
3 Pakistan: Madrasas, Extremism and the Military, ICG
Asia Report No 36, 29 July 2002 as amended on 15 July 2005
4 ‘The Pakistani Time Bomb’, Alex Alexiev, Center for
Security Policy,Commentary, March 2003
5 "Education and Indoctrination in the Moslem
World" Andrew Coulson, Policy Analysis, March 2004
6 “Contrary to Saudi propaganda and Western reporting,
these foundations are not "private and charitable" but invariably
statecontrolled and-financed.” Reference – ‘The Pakistani Time Bomb’ (Foot Note
5)
7 ‘The Pakistani Time Bomb’, Alex Alexiev, Center for
Security Policy,Commentary, March 2003
Finally, the Wahhabi/Deobandi symbiosis extends beyond
Pakistan. With the help of Saudi money, Deobandi and Jamiat Ahle Hadith clergy
and supporters have increasingly taken over the mosques of Great Britain's
750,000 Pakistani Muslims and steered them in an extremist direction. As a
result, the United Kingdom has become a major source of funding for terrorist
Pakistani groups. 9 In Indonesia, the Bali bombings were the work of the
Lashkar-i Jihad movement that emerged from a group of Saudifunded madrasas.
Saudi-funded charities have been implicated in backing jihadist movements in
some 20 countries 10 .
While the Wahhabis make up only 2% of the worlds
population, they have used their oil revenues to suppress/eradicate the
moderate and tolerant Sufi philosophy. The Saudis now dominate as much as 95
per cent of Arabiclanguage media and 80 per cent of the mosques in the US are
controlled by Wahhabi Imams (clergy). Saudi oil wealth has both promoted the theological
environment that has allowed the ideas of groups such as al Qaeda to flourish,
while also funding them directly. 14
As a direct result of this Saudi influence, a growing
number of Muslims internationally have been taught a story of Islamic tradition
which completely excludes Sufism, justifies violence and breeds a strong
dislike towards nonMuslims.
Quality
of Education
The madrasas are today a parallel education system
catering for a significant proportion of Pakistani children. While there are
some madrasas in Pakistan that are well-run schools teaching both Western and
Islamic subjects side-by-side, a large number have an outdated curriculum. The
emphasis is on rote learning rather than a critical study of the Koran.
Considerable prestige is still attached to becoming a haiz ie, knowing the
Koran by heart. These madrasas do not teach the philosophy of Islam, nor the
literature but focus on the rules/traditions of Islam and the life/sayings of
the Prophet (the Koran, hadith (sayings of the Prophet and his companions) and
fiqh (Islamic law). In many the world view propagated is of a
Zionist-Christian-Hindu conspiracy to undermine the Islamic world. These
conspiracy theories are used to explain away problems without carefully
analysing the real roots of the problems, and thereby absolving Muslims of any
responsibility in the matter. Most ulema (Muslim Islamic jurists responsible
for interpreting the Sharia (Islamic law)) imagine that if a student
internalises the Koran and the teachings of the sect, all the personal and
social problems would be automatically solved. In some madrasas, the ulema may
be blindly translating the Fatwas of a Saudi cleric without taking the social
context into account, which would require different responses on a range of
issues. These factors, along with the lack of exposure to the social sciences
and to the sciences, allows these madrasas to graduate simple minded students,
unable to fit into a modern, plural society.
8 The Saudi Connection - How billions in oil money
spawned a global terror network, David E. Kaplan, U.S. News, December 2003
9 ‘The Pakistani Time Bomb’, Alex Alexiev, Center for
Security Policy,Commentary, March 2003
10 ‘Hearts, Minds, and Dollars’, David E. Kaplan,
U.S.News, 25 April 2005
11 The state of sectarianism in Pakistan, ICG, Asia
Report No 95, 18 April 2005
12 Around 10-15% overall preach violent Jihad/ a few
provide military training
13 The Sunni Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) avoids sectarian
tags; its madrasas are the pioneers of jihad
14 ‘The terror the West cannot face’, William
Dalrymple, 3 July 2004
Those that do teach some non-religious subjects rely
on ancient sources. In some Pakistani madrasas, for example, medicine is taught
through a text written in the eleventh century.
There are some Sunni-Barelvi madrasas – the Minhajul
Qu’ran schools that have dropped the emphasis on religious studies and students
can opt for this only after ten years of normal modern education. This is a
good model that the government should consider making other madrasas adopt.
After the events of September 11, President Musharraf
has commenced a reform process of the madrasas backed by US funding, albeit
this is a long-term project and for now the Pakistani government is not taking
the hard road on many issues.
3.
Indian Madrasas
While India was originally the home of the Deobandi
madrasas, such colleges in India have no record of producing violent Islamists,
and are strictly apolitical and quietist. The leader of the campus of Darul
Uloom in Deoband, India, said in a 2002 interview ‘We are Indians first and
then Muslims’ . However, their educational agendas are in need of reform and
the approach of the ulema in ‘looking at all questions and offering solutions
simply in terms of theology and jurisprudence, divorced from empirical social
realities’ 15 is very much prevalent in most of the puritanical Indian
madrasas.
Some Indian madrasas can be forward-looking and
dynamic. In Kerala, there is a chain of educational institutions run by the
Mujahid group of professionals and businessmen that aims to bridge the
differences between modern forms of knowledge and the Islamic worldview.
4.
Sectarian Violence
Sectarian conflict in Pakistan is the direct
consequence of state policies of Islamisation and marginalisation of secular
democratic forces 16 . Pakistan is a land of strife between the Shias (20%) and
Deobandi/Salafi Sunnis (19%) and also another small sect called the Ahmedis who
were declared non-Muslims in the 70s. The 9/11 Commission Report, July 2004
states “The Baluchistan region of Pakistan (KSM’s ethnic home) and the
sprawling city of Karachi remain centers of Islamist extremism where the U.S.
and Pakistani security and intelligence presence has been weak.” Other regions
include the NorthWest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Waziristan.
With 68 per cent of its population living in rural
areas, Pakistani Punjab is still an agrarian society. Except for some rural
pockets in southern Punjab and around industrial towns such as Gujranwala and
Faisalabad, militant sectarianism has not taken root in the villages.
15 ‘Madrassa Reforms in India’, The South Asian,
January 06 2005
16 The state of sectarianism in Pakistan, ICG, Asia
Report No 95, 18 April 2005
But urban areas are hard hit by sectarianism and awash
in jihadi movements. 17
Roughly 75% of all members of al-Qaeda captured by the
US and its allies since 2001 have been seized in the borderlands through a
series of Pakistani military operations.
Source:
http://www.pvtr.org/pdf/regionalanalysis/southasia/madrassa_idss_final_.pdf