Madrasas and Militancy: The Tragedy of Peshawar Has Once Again Brought the Issue of Madrasa Reforms into Sharp Focus
By Mumtaz Ahmad
February
15, 2015
The
tragedy of Peshawar that resulted in the death of students of the Army Public
School has once again brought the issue of Madrasa reforms into sharp focus.
The National Action Plan, announced by the prime minister to combat extremism
and terrorism in the country, makes two points about Madrasas: to register and
regulate them and to introduce curriculum reform. While very few people will
disagree with the first point — the imperative need for the registration of Madrasas
and transparency of their funding sources — we are not quite sure about the
causal relationships between Madrasa curriculum on the one hand and extremism
and terrorism, on the other.
The
debate on Madrasa curriculum before the 9/11 attacks focused mainly on issues
of pedagogy — its intellectual orientation; the structure of its content;
methodology of teaching; and the relevance of the Madrasa curriculum to the
educational needs of a modern Muslim society. Most critics of Madrasa education
contended that Madrasa curriculum was outdated, narrowly focused on issues of Fiqh
and its most literalist interpretations, and based on religio-intellectual
formulations and controversies that are no longer relevant.
In the
context of South Asian Islam, the debate on the continued relevance and
efficacy of Madrasa education became more intense in the wake of the
introduction of modern institutions of secondary and post-secondary education
by the British. Muslim reformers and modernists, starting from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan,
found Madrasa curriculum doctrinally rigid, intellectually superficial,
organisationally archaic and socially cliquish. They considered the entire
curriculum as retrogressive, reactionary and antithetical to the needs of
modern times.
While
the earlier critiques of Madrasa curriculum focused on its out-datedness, its
lack of socio-political concerns and its failure to provide
religio-intellectual leadership for Islamic revival, the primary emphasis of
the post-9/11 debate has been on its alleged relationship with the rise of
extremism and militancy. It has become conventional wisdom among a circle of
scholars, journalists and policymakers to believe that there is an inherent
relationship between Madrasa curriculum and religious extremism, militancy, Talibanisation
and terrorism.
The
core curriculum taught in Madrasas of the South Asian subcontinent, known as
Dars-e-Nizami, consists of about 80 books in 20 subject areas, broadly divided
into: 1) “received” or revealed knowledge (the Quranic exegesis, Hadith, and
Fiqh); and 2) rational sciences (Arabic language and literature, grammar,
prosody, rhetoric logic, philosophy, dialectical theology, mathematics and
medicine). It is important to note that out of the 20 subject areas of the
Dars-e-Nizami curriculum, only eight can be considered as solely ‘religious’.
The remaining subjects are otherwise ‘secular’ subjects intended as aids to the
understanding of religious texts.
A
close scrutiny of Madrasa curriculum does not, in any way, indicate anything
that can even remotely be considered as inciting to, or inculcating, violence
and militancy in students. However, like all curricula in religious seminaries
— whether Christian or Jewish — madrasa curriculum remains exclusivist and does
not entertain the possibility of any doubt in the truthfulness of its
theological claims. It is in this sense, at the most, that one can describe Madrasa
curriculum as ‘extremist’, that is, its emphatic and absolute affirmation of
the truth of its own claims. To expect Madrasas to subscribe to the ideas of
‘pluralism’ or ‘relativism’ in the context of the belief in the essential truth
of Islam would be a sheer anathema to the ulema. What we can expect — and
demand — from the ulema is to inculcate a spirit of tolerance for other faiths
and different interpretations of religious texts among their students.
In
many respects, the current debate on the relationship between Madrasa
curriculum and militancy is reminiscent of a similar debate among Middle
Eastern scholars on what caused the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. At the
time, it was argued by a number of scholars that the root cause of the
revolution was Shia theology and the political theory that inculcated among the
ulema and the faithful the spirit of revolution and the desire for martyrdom.
But, as Leonard Binder has argued, it was the same Shia theology and political
theory that existed in “good times and bad times”. The important question that
needed to be addressed was: why and how a particular theological system that
sustains political quietism at one time becomes a source of revolutionary
upheaval at another?
It is
precisely this question that needs to be raised with regard to the role of Madrasas
and their curriculum in radical politics and militancy. Our contention here is
that it was the constellation of several domestic, regional and international
political developments that created conditions that became conducive for the
radicalisation of the religious sector in Pakistan which, in turn, employed all
of its normative (religious texts) and institutional (mosques and Madrasas)
resources to advance its religio-political goals. It was in this context that a
politically pacifist and religiously conservative Madrassa curriculum was
pressed into the service of radical political goals. In other words, militancy
did not emerge from within the madrassa tradition; it was brought into
madrassas by extraneous forces, especially the Afghan Jihad of the 1980s.
It is
true that the exclusivist religious discourse in Madrasa education draws clear
boundaries between what is the truth and what is falsehood. But in ‘ordinary’
times, this exclusivist orientation remains quiescent and is invoked only in
scholarly disputations. However, given the ‘right’ configuration of political
circumstances, this exclusivist orientation may lead to sectarian violence and
hostility towards the followers of other faiths. Scholarly discourses in the
exclusionary tradition, therefore, may translate, in certain specific
circumstances, into much more sinister religious and political choices by
interested actors.
It is
also important to note that madrassas belonging to different schools of thought
inhabit the same theological-legal space as defined by the Dars-e-Nizami
curriculum, and yet madrassas belonging to one particular school of thought
have rarely, if ever, been involved in extremist politics, militancy and what
has come to be known as jihadi activism. If it is the curriculum and pedagogy
of the madrassas alone that produce religio-political extremism, militancy and
anti-Western attitudes, then the ‘exceptionalism’ of madrassas belonging to
this particular school of thought becomes problematic.
Mumtaz Ahmad is the Executive Director of Iqbal
International Institute for Research & Dialogue at the International Islamic
University, Islamabad
Source:http://tribune.com.pk/story/838890/madrassas-and-militancy-2/
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/madrasas-militancy-tragedy-peshawar-once/d/101579