Editorial: Getting madrassa reform wrong
A survey funded by the Washington-based US Institute of Peace (USIP) says 64 percent of Pakistanis who were questioned wanted a reform of the madrassa system by the government. At the same time, however, the respondents preferred an Islamic state even as they thought that Al Qaeda was a critical (41 percent) or important threat (21 percent), thus making up a two-thirds majority who fear Al Qaeda. A similar majority also expressed the same hostile opinion about the Taliban activity in Pakistan even as it approved it against American troops in Afghanistan. The sample comprised 907 individuals examined in 19 cities.
If you want confusion, there is more. Sixty percent wanted Sharia and thought that Pakistan was not run on Islamic principles and gave the state a poor four out of ten marks on this point. Yet when Talibanisation wants to deliver real Islam, over 60 percent want the state to prevent it from spreading across the country. One can therefore say that the people have no alternative to Islamic government in their mind and will hopelessly judge all governance against a utopia they have in their imagination. But one thing is proved by the survey and that is they dont want the Islam spread by the madrassas and they dont want the version being enforced under duress by the Taliban and their patron, Al Qaeda.
The verdict against the madrassa is clear enough. Yet expert opinion on the subject is divided in Pakistan and abroad, even at the level of the United Nations. Seminaries examined by experts concluded there was no jihadi seduction practised by them. The basis of this conclusion was the textbooks read there and depositions made by the vested madrassa administrations. Clearly this was an unsatisfactory method. Then the government promised reform but failed to carry it out because it did believe in the correction, constantly saying there were good madrassas too and they were in a majority. The madrassas were registered and that was that, they said. But the violence never stopped and the seminarians came out again and again to defend their teachers, as in the case of Lal Masjid in Islamabad.
The confusion stems from the false separation everyone makes between the seminary and the mosque. The fact is that a mosque is a branch of the madrassa where its imam has been educated. Not finding normal employment, a madrassa graduate builds his own mosque and is helped by his institution, and this help is supplemented by the jihadi organisation affiliated with the madrassa through its leader. An Islamabad psychiatrist who has produced a competent study based on the Afghanistan returnee prisoners after 2001 has found that most recruits were engaged from the mosques and knew nothing about any madrassa. Yet the minders who hooked them for jihad belonged to the community of madrassa graduates that have led Pakistans covert war through jihadi militias.
Religious radicalisation in Pakistan has occurred through madrassas generously funded by the Arab governments and private individuals from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. This has happened since 1980 when the Arabs of the Gulf began fearing the rise of Revolutionary Iran. The centre from where this radicalisation radiated across the globe was the university system in Saudi Arabia presided over by radical Wahhabi clerics who propounded a faith akin to what Al Qaeda and the Taliban are spreading in Pakistan these days. Youth from Pakistani madrassas were taken to Saudi Arabia and trained in a new tough faith. In Karachi, the big Deobandi seminaries were plied with funds and persuaded to change their syllabi.
Pakistan provided the most important ingredient to this radicalisation. It enlisted the madrassa-based jihadi militias to achieve its strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir. That led to the proliferation of lethal weapons and the creation of centres of power in the country other than the state. State employees who handled these outfits were reverse-indoctrinated because of the personal empowerment their charges bestowed on them. So today the state is more vulnerable than the madrassa. President Musharraf has many failures to his name, but his biggest failure was his inability to rein in the madrassas after having used them. The chief of the militia that tried to kill him twice was the favourite student of a madrassa in Karachi which Islamabad kept pampering. He is still around as are some leaders of other Saudi-supported militia-madrassas.
The reform of the madrassa is not possible because there are no texts to abrogate in them. But madrassa can be made less attractive for our youth if the state can gear up to producing alternative places of learning. However, that would be useless unless the writ of the state is established in a large part of the country and away from the big cities of the normal areas. Today, the madrassa is wining and the state is losing because of radical Islams power to intimidate. Maulana Fazlullahs mushroom growth of madrassas in Swat was backed by coercion. Now that he is gone the people wish to return to their tourism-based economy. But will the state hold on to Swat? Will it clean up the madrassas in Swat now that it has the opportunity?
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan
