Revitalising the Rationalist Disciplines of the Indo-Islamic Intellectual Tradition, ‘Madrasa Discourses’ Organised An Onsite Intensive Program in India
The Indo-Islamic
Intellectual Heritage Is Testimony To The Fact That The Madrasa Curriculum In
The Indian Subcontinent Was Originally Conceived As A Rationalist Intellectual
Project
Main
Points:
1. The
Indo-Islamic intellectual heritage is testimony to the fact that the Madrasa
curriculum in the Indian subcontinent was originally rationalistic…..
2.
Mughal Emperor Akbar took personal interest in Islamic divinity and
theology and thus Indian madrasas fostered Ma’qulat (rational disciplines) in
their textbooks…..
3. The
British colonialism resulted not only in the loss of Mughal power but also
adversely impacted the Muslim intellectual tradition in India…..
4. An
intensive program of the Madrasa Discourses titled as “South Asian Madrasa
Tradition: Exploring Neglected Histories and Unravelling New Possibilities” was
held in Gurugram with an effort of the Institute of Religious and Social
Thought, New Delhi.
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New
Age Islam Special Correspondent
20 July
2021
Photo of the program of
the "Madrasa Discourses" (MD) titled as “South Asian Madrasa
Tradition: Exploring Neglected Histories and Unraveling New Possibilities”
organised in Gurugram, Haryana on July 17 and 18, 2021
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An onsite
intensive program of the "Madrasa Discourses" (MD) titled as “South
Asian Madrasa Tradition: Exploring Neglected Histories and Unravelling New
Possibilities” was organised in Gurugram, Haryana on July 17 and 18 with an
effort of the Institute of Religious and Social Thought, New Delhi.
Some of the
regular visitors at the New Age Islam would be aware of a course with a
‘critical-traditionalist’ Islamic approach which was conceived to introduce
major reforms in the madrasas from a rationalist point of view. Launched in
2017 as part of the Contending Modernities of the University of Notre Dame with
participants, mostly young ʿUlamā and madrasa graduates from South Asia, the MD has now churned out three
batches of young theologians well-equipped with the tools necessary to engage
modern science, technological advances, pluralistic ideas, new philosophies and
a progressive theology. Guided by Ebrahim Moosa, Professor of Islamic Thought
and Muslim Societies at the University of Notre Dame ad primary investigator of
the programme, the MD initiative seeks to revitalize Islamic divinity (ilahiyaat)
from within through a transformative educational curriculum.
Photo of the program of
the "Madrasa Discourses" (MD) titled as “South Asian Madrasa
Tradition: Exploring Neglected Histories and Unraveling New Possibilities”
organised in Gurugram, Haryana on July 17 and 18, 2021
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Focused on
the conciliation or ‘re-conciliation’ of traditional Islamic thought with
contemporary scientific progression, the three-year MD course concerns its
contents more with the Muslim philosophy (Kalam), logic (Mantiq) and
other “rational disciplines” (Ma’qulat) in the Madrasa curriculum, and
less with the Manqulat such as the Hadith, Tafseer (Qur’anic exegesis),
Fiqh (jurisprudence) or Usul-ul-Fiqh (methodologies of jurisprudence).
These latter branches of Islamic knowledge tradition known as Manqulat
(disciplines based on oral transmissions) which are less theological and more
strictly “religious” disciplines are also incorporated in the “Madrasa
Discourses” but only at a peripheral level.
In fact,
the Indo-Islamic intellectual heritage is testimony to the fact that the
Madrasa curriculum in the Indian subcontinent was originally conceived as a
rationalist intellectual project. The earliest madrasas in Delhi, Farangi
Mahal, Jaunpur and in several parts of undivided India such as Sind, Dabel,
Mansura and Multan engaged with Mantiq and Falsafa (logic and philosophy) more
than fiqh and hadith. This scholastic tradition in madrasas of the Indian
subcontinent flourished in the 16th century when Mughal Emperor Jalaluddin
Akbar took personal interest in Islamic divinity, philosophy and theology and
thus Indian madrasas fostered Ma’qulat (rational disciplines) in their
textbooks and carried on with this rationalist legacy until the mid-19th
century when the British colonialism resulted not only in the loss of Mughal
power but also adversely impacted the Muslim intellectual tradition in India.
Photo of the program of
the "Madrasa Discourses" (MD) titled as “South Asian Madrasa
Tradition: Exploring Neglected Histories and Unraveling New Possibilities”
organised in Gurugram, Haryana on July 17 and 18, 2021
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Dr Waris
Mazhari, Professor
in Islamic studies at Delhi’s Jamia Hamdard University, who also serves as lead
faculty for implementing the Madrasa Discourses project in India, traced these
historical intellectual moorings of madrasas in the Indian subcontinent. In his
stimulating PowerPoint presentation followed by an engaging
question-&-answer session, he dwelt on how the rationalist disciplines or
Ma’qulat received great patronage during the reign of Muhammad ibn Tughlaq
(1351 AD), and how the arrival of Sheikh Abdullah and Azizullah in Delhi and
Sanbhal in the 15th century after the destruction of Multan, and especially the
advent of transcendental Ulama in India and the arrival of Iranian scholars
such as Mir Fatehullah Shirazi (1589 AD) in the era of Emperor Akbar played a
pivotal role. Dr. Mazhari categorises this ‘golden period’ of the rationalist
disciplines in the Madrasa curriculum into two phases—First phase begins with
Qazi 'Azud al-Din Iji (1355 AD) and the influence of his students and the second
phase with Jalaluddin Dawwani (1501 AD) and the impact of his disciples. Thus,
the main causes behind the prevalence of Ma’qulat-oriented madrasas in the then
Indian subcontinent, as pointed out by Dr. Mazhari, were primarily these:
gracious patronage of the Mughal rulers, detachment of the subcontinent from
the epicentre of Islam, role of the esoteric movement, the rationalist
intellectual heritage of the scholars of Iran and Transoxiana, Akbar's
inclination towards philosophy, and a mixture of philosophy in the Hindu
tradition and Sufism.
Photo of the program of
the "Madrasa Discourses" (MD) titled as “South Asian Madrasa
Tradition: Exploring Neglected Histories and Unraveling New Possibilities”
organised in Gurugram, Haryana on July 17 and 18, 2021
-----
Dr Usha
Sanyal, a prominent
American researcher on Madrasas and Islam in South Asia and a specialist in the
history of the Ahl-e Sunnat movement during colonial India, was invited to
share her reflections on the Banat madrasas (girls’ religious seminaries also
known as Niswan) titled as “Navigating Tradition and Modernity in Muslim Girls’
Education: A Tale of Two Institutions”. Usha, who is also an author of a widely
referenced book on the Barelwi movement (Devotional Islam and Politics in
British India: Ahmed Raza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870-1920), has
empirically studied the phenomenon of women-centric Indian madrasas especially
in Uttar Pradesh in her book “Scholars of Faith: South Asian Muslim Women and
the Embodiment of Religious Knowledge”.
Based on her ethnographic fieldwork and a case study of girls’ madrasa
in Shahjahanpur, western UP—Jami‘a Noor—Sanyal contended that the
female-oriented institutions of religious education in the early 21st century
were thoroughly ‘modern’ and that this modernity, reflected in both old and new
interpretations of religious texts, allowed young South Asian women to evaluate
their place in traditional structures of patriarchal authority in the public
and private spheres. Of late, new institutions of Islamic learning for women
and girls have emerged rapidly, not just in villages and qasbas but also in the
urban areas and in the diaspora. “There has been a marked growth of girls’
madrasas of all Sunni schools of thought (Maslaks) since the 1990s. This is the
result partly of increased rates of female literacy both in the country and
[especially] in UP (43% for girls in 2001, 59% in 2011, according to the
government census). Partly, it is also the result of the economic liberalization
of India, which led to reduced government investment in education. Muslims were
forced to fend for themselves”, she pointed out.
Some of the
important research questions that she put up in her purely academic
conversation with the MD participants were as follows:
Is the
Muslim religious education in South Asia “traditional” or “modern”?
How do
South Asian Muslim women navigate tradition and modernity in religious
institutions?
How does
their increased religious knowledge impact social relations with their families
and in society at large?
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In her
understanding, the modernity of Muslim girls’ madrasas today lies in their
social impact. “The way the girls interact with their families and how they
view themselves and their role in society changes as a result of their exposure
to Muslim religious texts, to their teachers, and to other students from
different parts of India”. Sanyal gave some examples from the Barelwi madrasa
Jamia Noor in Shahjahanpur—that she studied from 2012 to 2018—to show how their
religious education brings about small transformations in “everyday life.” At a
time when a vigorous debate has been taking place in the anthropology of Islam
about the role of “everyday life” in Islamic piety, Sanyal’s study finds that
religious and social change take place in the mundane, everyday world, in small
incremental ways. “Religion is not separate from the secular world, but the two
are interwoven in multiple ways” she said.
Dr Arshad Alam, regular columnist with the New Age
Islam and author of “Inside
a Madrasa: Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India” was also one of
the guest speakers in this onsite summer intensive. Revolving around his topic
“Madrasas and Muslim Identity in India”, he spoke mainly from a sociological
point of view and became critical in his reflections on the structural,
institutional and administrative problems in many Madrasas across the country.
Most established educational institutions around the world are running as
corporations, but Madrasas, even in this day and age, are running as
individual-centric institutions, not as corporations, something which prevents
them from internalising creativity.
Dr. Alam
also averred that the number of students enrolled in the Madrasas is often
underestimated. It is incorrectly believed that only 4% of the Muslim community
goes to study at madrasas, thanks to the reports such as the Sachar committee.
In his estimate, around 20 percent of the Muslim students in India are enrolled
in madrasas and maktabs. According to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, India
has 24,010 madrasas, of which 4,878 were unrecognised, in 2018-19. Unofficially
it is claimed that only one organisation, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind has over 20,000
Deobandi madrasas in north India.
Lamenting
the deeply-ridden internal issues and malaises such as the caste politics of
the Mohtamims (rectors of Madrasas), control of the Ashraaf (upper-caste
elitist Muslims) over these institutions and marginalisation of the Arzaal and
Ajlaaf (lower-caste Muslims) due to the casteist fatwas and writings of several
Ulama from Deobandi and Barelwi orientations, Dr. Alam tried to show the way
forward. But in the following Q&A session, he had to grapple with a set of
reactionary questions and criticism from a few Madrasas graduates. Someone from
Jamia Arifia of Allahabad asked him as to why the modernist scholars like him
only howl in pain at the sorry state of affairs in Madrasas and they themselves
take no steps. To this, Dr Alam averred that critics have their own role but
ultimately, it's up to madrasa authorities to bring out the desired positive
change. Responding to a similar question by another participant at the Madrasa
Discourses, Dr. Usha Sanyal had also pointed out that there should be an
organic reformation from within the Madrasa community with regards to the
internal affairs and education, and that it's a sole responsibility of the
Madrasas themselves, and is not the role of outside scholars or thinkers.
Dr.
Mahmood Kooria
of Leiden University, the Netherlands & Ashoka University India delivered
an in-depth online lecture titled, “Matriarchal Islam and Ulama: Discursive
Traditions in Malabar and Lakshadweep”. In this talk, Madrasa graduates—perhaps
for the first time— were acquainted with the matrilineal culture and customary
laws in a sharp contrast to the patriarchal conceptualizations of Islamic
Sharia, especially in the context of today’s Malabar and Lakshadweep.
Connecting the Indian Ocean and Islam, Dr. Kooria explained how those who live
by the sea follow Islam with an adherence to the Shāfiʿī school of law and with an
allegiance to specific Sufi orders, especially the Qādiriyya and Rifāʿiyya.
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-society/rationalist-disciplines-madrasa-indo-islamic/d/125105
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