1: INTRODUCTION
Jamal Malik
When debating Islam and its political role in South Asia and especially in Pakistan, the role of the religious schools (in Arabic: madrasa, plural madaris=place of learning) is often central to the public imagination. There are three categories of religious schools: the madrasa teaches from first to tenth grade, the dar al-ulum (dar al-’uulum) the eleventh and twelfth, while the jamia (jami’a) has university status. For a variety of reasons, madrasas have acquired significance, attracting increasing interest from secular political actors and organizations, not only since 11 September 2001.
The popular literature concerning madrasas in South Asia has expanded enormously in recent years, especially in policy-oriented journals and the press. But, even when this literature has appeared in peer-reviewed journals (as very few books have emerged yet), most of that literature has been written from a point of view of securitization. Usually, a connection between religious education and religious extremism is made, then madrasas are connected to the notion of religious education, and the task becomes one of counting up the number of madrasas (or madrasa students) in order to “measure” the (Islamist) extremist “threat”. More sophisticated studies then go on to note that, owing to the problem of sectarianism, the threat of extremism is a problem not only for “the West”, but also for the individual countries of South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and so on.
Few of these studies are well grounded in empirical research – in fact, most of them, lack such research altogether (however, for well-researched studies of the subject, see Metcalf 1982; Grandin and Gaborieau 1997; Robinson 2001; Zaman 2002; Hartung and Reifeld 2006). And of course, most are prone to sensationalized over-generalizations that obscure far more than they reveal about the history of religious education, the forces that have led to various changes in the supply of, and demand for, religious education, and the link between religious education and religious violence. In effect, they pile assertions on top of assertions in an effort to frame and “support” their exceedingly thin, or dubious, “arguments”.
The chapters in this volume are nothing like this general trend. Assumptions regarding the link between religious education and religious extremism, or terrorism, for instance, are extremely few and far between. Assumptions regarding “Islamic” education as a “monolithic” form of education are also noticeably rare. In fact, the reader is generally provided with an opportunity to see the terms of Islamic education take shape along several different dimensions – class dimensions, gendered dimensions, sectarian dimensions, urban/rural divisions, and so on. The result is a picture of Islamic education that amounts to a comprehensive and illuminating picture, at least in the context of South Asia.
It is hoped that no one who reads this book will emerge with an understanding of Islamic education that is one-dimensional and cast within an exceedingly narrow rubric defined by the United States’ ongoing “war on terror”. Indeed, it is hoped that the reader will emerge with a sense that Islamic education is an integral – some might say indispensable – feature of modern Muslim life in South Asia, one that has been (or become) associated with violence under very specific conditions.
In fact, much of the current talk on madrasas has been associated with the emerging geo-political order which has sought to link these institutions to global terrorism. More often than not, the assertion has been that they have become something like a factory for global jihad and a breeding ground for terrorism; it is being increasingly argued that madrasa pedagogy produces fanaticism and intolerance, which are detrimental to pluralism and multicultural reality. Thus, in Pakistan and Afghanistan it has been linked to the rise of the Taliban. In India it has come under attack from Hindu nationalists who charge them of producing and harboring “terrorists”. In Bangladesh we witness similar problems.
The increasing research on madrasas then coincides with the events of 9/11, when the state saw fit to subject civil rights to severe restrictions. This has enabled governments across the world to push through restrictive policies in ways previously unknown. This linking of madrasas to terror seems to have brought “relief” to the “world of governments”, the event of 9/11 itself being turned into an excuse for asserting much more control and surveillance over what has been called the non-modern or traditional sectors. However, while the ferocity of the state in subjecting madrasas to scrutiny may be new, its suspicion of these institutions has a much longer precedent, as can be read into the efforts of various governments under the guise of streamlining madrasas into the national educational systems.
The problematique
This streamlining is often dictated by the postulates of a “global modernization” assuming that there is a “universalizing code” through which modernity unfolds itself. Such a paternalistic and arrogant assumption is at the same time informed by a calculated expansion of the state-domain to previously untouched areas. It is interesting to note that Islamists apologetic towards the state, as well as some orthodox scholars struggling for politicalrecognition,
have repeatedly supported such homogenizing attempts to domesticate religion, rather than presenting proper alternatives fit for fragmented societies that are predominantly organized on agrarian and tribal lines.
State policies, serving to extend the process of globalization and homogenization and seeking to impose transcultural values, look for recognition and acceptance of this process as a “de-cultured” one. However, this globalization, presented as “induced misrecognition” encounters various reactions and meets resistance or even “counter-globalizations”, in a process of interrelating the external global pressures and distinct local struggles. Hence, the recent expressions of religious “resistance” in the context of local madrasas – as a space of autochthonous cultural articulation, as it were – can be seen as a response to the political economy of globalization and state penetration proceeding “from above”.
At the same time, madrasas have developed their own dynamics vis-à-vis the ever encroaching state responding to local skirmishes between local factions competing for scarce resources “from below”. Their engagement in homogenization and contestation in the pursuit of agencies over their and others’ constituencies is the case in point. Hence, madrasas are focused on, or affected by, global as well as local concerns. In fact, there is interplay between these two levels of analysis, when madrasas are situated in ways that merge both levels.
Thus, one may distinguish two equally viable but largely competing approaches. One approach stresses the terms of political economy – what might be called the “objective” approach to an understanding of specific changes in the landscape of contemporary religious education. The other stresses the role of ideas – what might be called the “intersubjective” approach. In the course of the argument it becomes evident that these different approaches are entangled. How do these approaches then fit with the different contributions in this volume?
Against the backdrop of the state’s tendency to expand its homogenizing notion of “global modernity” and the levels of resistance which it faces, we need to appreciate the role of madrasas in non-colonial, but not necessarily precolonial, traditional societies, in which they command a high degree of autonomy. Madrasas offer free education, often for students with meager provisions, and provide learning which seems to be tailored to the surrounding culture. They traditionally earn their income from the local or regional environments, for example from neighboring tradesmen, notables and farmers, but also politicians and foreign donors. With this income they then offer financial help to their students, who usually hail from adjoining regions but who can also come from farflung areas. At present, police sources estimate about two million madrasa students in Pakistan, considerably more than a World Bank report of 2005, which counts less than half a million, as has been argued by Christopher Candland in this volume. The difficulty in providing sound figures is that most of the students in madrasas are not officially registered, though most of the madrasas are affiliated to one or another umbrella organization of religious schools set up since the 1960s. Nevertheless, a considerable number of their graduates, especially those of the higher Islamic education institutions, go on to take up important political and religious leadership, such as in religio-political parties.
It is evident that there is a variety of educational institutions in Muslim culture ranging from mosques, khanaqahs (Sufi hospice) and maktabs (primary schools) to madrasas, and even to some other informal modes of Islamic learning and practices. All of them have a long tradition in Muslim contexts, often sponsored and patronized by the ruling classes and notables through waqf (religious endowment). Madrasas especially were of utmost importance both for the cultural and imperial and later national integration processes, and can be regarded as continuation of the Nizamiyya tradition in Baghdad (inaugurated in 1067) (cf. Sourdel 1976; Sourdel-Thomine 1976; Makdisi 1981; Leiser 1986). This institution became prominent under the Saljuq wazir in ‘Abbasid caliphate, Nizam al- Mulk al-Tusi (d. 1092), in the eleventh century, as a means, among others, for countering the rising Ismaili mission and the spread of Shiite and the Mu’tazila “heresies”. Sciences taught at the madrasas provided for trained service elites, and it is said particularly jurists, as the second form of the verb darasa, i.e. darrasa, used without a complement, originally meant “to teach law”, while tadris, its verbal noun, meant “the teaching of law”. Based on the pious endowment (waqf) and stipulated by the pious deed, the ideal was to receive a license to teach law and issue legal opinions.
While jurisprudence stood at the forefront of Muslim teaching, at the same time, secular law (qanun) promulgated by the politically powerful – siyasa – became an alternative authoritative source to the sharia (shari’a), prompting religious scholars to face and challenge secularization (on the tussle between sharia and siyasa see Muzaffar Alam 2004).
At the same time, Islamic law taught in the madrasas encouraged pluralism, so much so that a science of disputation (’ilm al-khilaf) developed and became part of Islamic legal training. This went so far that a doctrine of concession to disputed doctrine (mura’ah al-khilaf) was demanded from the jurists to accommodate opposite views (cf. M.K. Masud 2000: 237). Hence, law and jurisprudence, rather than theology, claimed a central position in the tradition of teaching and learning. In fact, there were “no separate madaris exclusively for religious education. .Theology became a regular subject in the madrasah curriculum in later periods” (ibid.), eventually highlighting religious and sectarian identity, an issue that is of some concern to the present volume.
The historical context
Since the focus of this book is on modern and particularly contemporary South Asia, we briefly need to introduce the madrasa and its subject matters in the backdrop of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the Dars-i Nizami, the name given to the old as well as current system of subject matters, evolved. That was the time when the country was dotted with madrasas (Leitner 1971). It was also the time when new territorial lords, supported by wealthy merchants and bankers, emerged at the margins of the Mughal court. This complex process resulted in what may be called the “regional centralization” of Mughal power leading to the establishment of territorial princely states. The emerging new identities, through ethnic or sectarian grouping, were informed by real as well as invented genealogies, local patriotisms, devotional religions, centralized revenue systems, and the creation of standardized languages. Every principality claimed its own religio-cultural “variety”. Knowledge was sought to be transmitted as uniformly as possible, ideally through a set package known as Dars-i Nizami (named after its founder, Mulla Nizam al-Din of Lucknow, who died in 1748). The dars supported Muslim scholastic philosophy and law, both of which were based on logic and were most congruent with state domination.
It seems that the Dars-i Nizami was part of what might be called a wider standardizing endeavor – the compilation of al-Fatawa al-Alamgiriyya; the writing of autobiographies, lexicons and encyclopedia, etc., were other such attempts. In these and similar endeavors the aspiration of the time for intellectual universality is manifestly visible, as is an inclination to summarize the accumulated knowledge systematically and popularize it.
At the same time, it must be stressed that the Dars-i Nizami was/is as little monolithic as is Islamic law or Islamic “orthodoxy”. Instead it was and still is highly pluralistic and divergent. There are personal differences among scholars in the ways to teach. Similarly, the scholarly ideas change from person to person and from group to group, depending on their contexts, functions and patronage as stipulated in the waqfiyyat, the deed constituting a domain, i.e. madrasa, into a pious endowment.
In fact, the local differences are noticeable such as those between Lucknow and Delhi, Allahabad and Khairabad, Bareilly and Deoband. Putting it simply, one region was known for its mystical inclination, the other for precisely the opposite, yet another for its rational or transmitted approach, and so on. While the impact of a certain school was not necessarily restricted to one single place, local styles could change through contact with other influences. In the face of these differences, cleavages and varieties in the Dars-i Nizami, it seems difficult to generalize about its foci and developments, but later generations of scholars have always tried to classify the scattered testimonies of their ancestors, thereby rationalizing their own experiences (see for a prototype of Dars-i Nizami Malik 1997: 522ff.).
The “science of the classification of the sciences”, divided – according to the medieval scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) – the sciences into transmitted (naqliyya) and rational (aqliyya or tabi’iyya), sacred (diniyya) and profane (dunyawiyya). The first comprises all branches of knowledge which owe their existence to Islam based on a divinely inspired law, such as Qur’an, the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (hadith), law and the principles of law, theology and auxiliary sciences such as grammar and syntax. The latter is believed by some scholars to be fashioned on the Hellenistic, Judaic and Nestorian scientific traditions, consisting of logic, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, mathematics and metaphysics.
The essential difference between these two branches of science is their ultimate source, i.e. divinely and human inspired knowledge. Together with the concept of the “unity of being” (wahdat al-wujud) elaborated upon by the wellknown Spanish mystic theorist Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), the so-called rational sciences soon became a powerful aspect of Muslim education and knowledge, particularly in the context of empire-building and processes of cultural integration (Alam 1993; Robinson 1993; Malik 1997).
In all probability, the distinction between rational (ma’qulat) and transmitted sciences (manqulat) was overplayed by later, nineteenth-century Muslim generations in order to prove their rational approach vis-à-vis colonial – orientalist – polemics, though it is not to deny that the stage for this distinction had long been set before the advent of colonial rule, as is evident from Ibn Khaldun’s division of sciences. Moreover, if we believe Muslim historiographers, the study of ma’qulat acquired considerable importance during the Mughal Era, when Persian scholars were attracted to the South Asian imperial courts in great numbers. Hence, the madrasa witnessed several changes in the subject matters reflecting the political and social orders of the day. As can be found in many nineteenth-century Muslim sources,ma’qulat were
designed particularly for the functionally diversified service elites and the networks surrounding them. Yet, the study of jurisprudence (manqulat) was at the focus of madrasa education even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was acquired by scholarly elites for almost similar reasons, as can be gleaned from many biographies on the learned. Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762), for example, not only argued against the prominence of ma’qulat but strove to establish coherence between both (manqul and ma’qul), in order to strengthen faith through rational proofs and to call for unity among Muslims against the Maratha assaults. According to him, rational sciences were merely a means to establish the authenticity and inimitability of the sharia, which was more complete than (temporally limited) human rational deductions because of its divine inspiration. Hence, he drew a distinction between revelation and reason, and at the same time related and harmonized them to each other. We may therefore provisionally conclude that in the politically uncertain times leading up to the disintegration of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth century, manqulat seemed to have regained importance – at least in the cultural memory and public imagination of the people concerned – as they were often propagated by reformers based in the declining imperial Mughal city (cf. Malik 2003).
In the wake of the colonial penetration – that is, in the second half of the nineteenth century – with the introduction of new systems of education, the madrasa largely lost its function as a general training institute and turned into an institution exclusively for religious education. It has been argued by many scholars that this trend was informed by the colonial division between “religious” (dini) and “secular” (dunyawi), i.e. public and private spheres, a division premised on experiences peculiar to contemporary Europe. Modernization and the notion of “useful education” (i.e. natural sciences, mathematics, economics, philosophy, ethics and history) became catchwords in the colonial civilizing mission, which eventually transformed a European Enlightenment tradition into a “global ethic”. Institutions which did not subscribe to this process of authoritative epistemological homogenization were marginalized and compelled to with- draw to the private realm.
Nevertheless, they still continued to provide knowledge to a majority of Muslims. It is probably in this context that the term dini madrasa surfaced,
that is, an institution designed exclusively for religious learning.
In the fermentation process brought about by colonialism, some groups made use of Islamic symbolism to mobilize against colonial power, others tried to change, reform or conserve religious education which aimed at providing the Muslim community with a (Islamically) legal basis for action, the urgency of which was informed by the loss of the so-called “Islamic Empire” to the British once and for all. Various Sunni schools of thought emerged, including the Deobandi, the Barelwi and the Ahl-i Hadith (on these movements and groups, see Metcalf 1982).
They appealed to specific social groups and were tied to particular regions, thereby adding to the religious and societal complexity of South Asia. Law, mysticism and prophetic tradition were the main orientations of the new religious consciousness.
The political economy of madrasas
This process led to a societal split in Muslim societies, a split that was comfortably accepted and reproduced not only by the representatives of post-colonial states, but also by the guardians of madrasas. They seemed to accommodate themselves with this notion of fragmentation of life-spheres into private and public, profane and sacred, quite easily – most likely because similar divisions of sciences had already been existent before the advent of colonialism. Religion, it was said, was privatized; the rest was to be governed by secular logic. In contestation with the postulates of later Islamists or “peripheral ulama”, the ulama eventually came to try to hold sway over this privatized realm, thereby implicitly accepting and cementing the colonial dichotomization (Zaman 2002). In contemporary times the contest over this “private” realm has taken dramatic shape. In this context one has to take the post-colonial state intervention into account, since it is the state that has had a major impact on traditional institutions. In fact, as long as the state did not try to colonialize hitherto virgin areas, the ulama were more or less docile with this neat division of labor. But the increasing infiltration by the state into non-colonialized traditional society, through a rationale to curb the ulama’s power and thereby become the sole interpreter of religion in the public as well as the private sphere, threatens the authority of ulama and further restricts their scope.
They either have to be pacified, by means of privileges, or marginalized through legal restrictions. Both these strategies, however, evoke reaction among the ulama and the institutions which they control. And it should come as no surprise that due to their increasing economic and social pauperization, they tend to become increasingly radical.
The considerable local popularity of madrasas further aggravates the situation, and this leads to the second – inter-subjective – argument (see below). It is not only the madrasas that cater for the majority of state-school drop-outs, but also mosques, on their part, allow themselves to be important centers for rallying large sections of the population. There are more than one million mosques in Pakistan alone, of which approximately half are not registered. The sermon at the Friday prayer gathering (khutba) provides an important venue for such mobilization, for it often includes socio-political information and often appeals to political agitation. Religious specialists may frequently use these gatherings to question the legitimacy of the state.
For the government, then, the khutba has become a very difficult issue, which has, in the current “war on terrorism”, led to harsh restrictions on dissident preachers both in mosques and madrasas, in order to de-politicize the Friday gathering, for example (on khutba in the Arab context, see Mattes 2005).
This radicalization is obviously not inherently Islamic let alone typical in the course of Muslim history. The current increasing path of resistance is rather home-grown in the first place, resulting from the encroachment of post-colonial states into arenas hitherto dominated by old established lineages and categories of social organization such as family, tribes, religious endowments, charities and networks of learned tradition.
These traditional patterns had developed their own mores and regulations necessary to function in a larger context. Moreover, they could “renew” themselves by means of a global Islamic discourse, and they produced public spheres with particular civic cultures. These non-state forms of social organization and ideas stand apart from the rather “limited” ones introduced by the state. Tensions between these two patterns become virulent if both contest each other. This is particularly the case when the state incompletely diffuses into society, because of its being transient, half-legitimate or even parasitic. Lacking legitimacy, it is not capable of becoming the prime source of authority and justice. Tensions increase since there is no central religious authority which would neutralize competing claims, and also because religious education is not supervised by the state, especially in Muslim minority states.
Religious education and its practitioners thus become intellectually and financially independent from the state. Funds flowing from abroad and contributions from the public make them ever more distant from the state, while at the same time embedding them ever more into the affairs of their local community. The fact is, that limited market and job opportunities for the ulama have led to a growing radicalization, as the increasing number of sectarian or communal outbreaks exemplify. These organizations become more efficient in responding to the needs of the local community as compared to the rather anonymous state structures. Seen from the state’s perspective, it is hardly possible to rule out these culturally rooted lineages and forms of social organization. In fact, couched in Islamic repertory, the latter can and have served as a source of limitation and regulation of state power, as has been the case in Muslim history.
In such a seemingly uncontrollable situation the state becomes paranoiac. Contested from within, it takes to even more authoritarian means. As an effect of unsatisfactory and failing state alternatives, the non-state contesters have since the 1990s become increasingly radicalized to the extent that they have been made responsible for terrorist assaults. They have also increasingly been making use of the option of shifting across confessional and sectarian affiliations in order to renegotiate and expand their positions, thereby arriving at virtuous alliances. The result is a flexibility of ideas and divergence over time and space when faced with social reality. Theological and political conflicts between traditional enemies such as the Barelwi and Deobandi have been largely laid aside in the Muttahida Majlis-i Amal (United Action Council) governing the North Western Frontier Province in Pakistan.
In the face of these developments, the semantic of obscurantism is initiated and dramatized by state agents as well as their Islamist supporters. This semantic is informed by an obligation of reform and change of what is considered “uncivilized” space. The desire to “enlighten” and reform (islah) the masses with “true” Islam for the sake of the common good (maslaha) is part of the postcolonial civilizing missions. Akin to the various nineteenth-century reform movements which targeted the hinterland of garrison and market towns (qasbas), contemporary Islamists, in collaboration with state agents, again seek to impose an urban global Islam on rural areas, attempting to replace local heteropraxy by universal orthopraxy, factual feudal oppressiveness and corruption by potential empowerment and a global set of ideas, practices and ethics. However, these civilizing missions are experienced by target groups in an increasingly sectarian imagination. Madrasas often provide the loci for dissemination and proliferation of such ideas. Mostly they are led by laymen/Islamists/peripheral ulama but are provided with ideological nutrition by well established ulama themselves.
Support for these endeavors comes mostly from the middle classes and local commercial bourgeoisie, who are often of rural background themselves. Increasingly, returnees from Arab countries become part of this rejuvenating scenario. They participate in these sectarian movements because it helps the re-migrants in their quest of social and economic mobility. The riots between Shia landowners and Sunni merchants in the Punjab provide a striking example.
From
the cities they increasingly infiltrate the countryside where they provoke regionalisms, thereby endangering further the (post-) colonial state’s attempt to reorder society in its own image. Eventually, this leads to an expansion of the ulama’s influence to the extent that they even come to dominate the Islamist discourse
leading to an Islamization from below. This accounts for divergent and competing ideas primarily in the context of struggle against the homogenizing language of secular modernity. Religious schools therefore increasingly play an important role in interior politics.
In terms of foreign affairs, madrasas also play a part: their role in Afghanistan, when they were used and supported by certain intelligence services and foreign governments; their role post-Afghan civil war, when once again they were caught up in power politics supported by different secret services; and then in the post-Taliban era, when some of them took sides with groups who resist using what has been called terror in the mind of God (Juergensmeyer 2000). The revolution of rising expectation often pushes the graduates of religious schools into the hands of more or less dubious players. This led to the emergence of newer identities and several branches of madrasas, enhancing the state of sectarian fights. To be sure, these branches and forms of socialization do interact in a variety of channels of understanding and reciprocal obligation, which are often built on the resilient framework of informal networks of trust and responsibility.
For analytical purposes, however, we may distinguish several groups: first, the students of religious schools in general; second, the mujahidin or freedom fighters; third, the Taliban; and fourth, the jihadi groups.
According to this taxonomy, the first group has been subject to several reforms from within and without, and has played a quietist role. However, because of their traditional ties with Afghanistan and other neighboring countries and as a result of the use of jihad rhetoric, some of them were used as footsoldiers in the Afghan civil war. A sub-sect of this first category therefore became the second group – the mujahidin.
In order to keep these rather diverse and contesting and ethnically organized groups under control, and to maintain a grip on the region for economic and political purposes, yet another version was established by interested parties: the Taliban.
As far as the fourth category of jihadis is concerned, many of them can be traced back to the Taliban and mujahidin themselves, others to groups returning from battlefields such as Kashmir, Afghanistan and Chechnya. Their leaders usually hail from the middle class and are secular educated men, rather than madrasa students, though madrasa students also join the militant and radical groups in the global rise of religious violence. Hence, it is true that the struggle for victory over a superpower and an alleged affiliation to some global network enhance the radicals’ feeling of Islamicity, no matter how blurred and intangible it may be. Yet, it is the objective material conditions coupled with the symbolic power of regional conflicts, such as Palestine andKashmir, that
make up for the explosive mixture because these conflicts represent the suppression of whole nations. However international and global these organizations may be, they have risen as a result of internal problems caused by political mismanagement, and they have subsequently been exploited by external powers. The government of Pakistan now tries to control this rather gloomy scenario through the centralized Model Dini Madaris Ordinance 2002, the Dini Madaris Regulation and Control Ordinance 2003 and the Pakistan Madrasa Education Board 2004 introducing yet new institutions for this purpose. However, its success has proved rather limited so far.
This rather grave picture in Pakistan is certainly different from the Indian scene where the government has started to launch similar reform programs which were met by severe reactions by the ulama, fearing a profound change in their – sometimes flourishing – madrasas and hence a loss of Islamic identity.
In Bangladesh the situation is quite similar where the madrasas are witnessing a boom.
It
must be reiterated though that religious schools in these areas provide at least some kind of education and survival. What is more important perhaps is that they use a variety of religious symbols – both homogenizing and localizing – to articulate the predicaments which people face in highly fragmented societies which have become increasingly subjected to unilateral globalization through its prime agent, the post-colonial state. The growing presence and visibility of religious power in the public sphere represents this struggle between state and religious scholars and their institutions that have been exploited by different groups but at the same time been denied their share. In the context of these developments read in terms of resistance, the making of an epitomizing prophet is easy: the “Ladinist” savior, who would lead the campaign against suppression. But the basis of this Islamic radicalism still has very profane reasons: social conflict, poverty, political suppression.
This paradigm of globalization incarnated through the post-colonial state may be helpful for some theoretical argument. As it stands, state-led globalization is met with counter-globalization(s) which at the same time takes recourse to the imagined concept of the umma and also indigenizes global Islamic knowledge. It is debatable, though, whether this can be seen as a challenge to globalizing Western epistemological hegemony, which is still prevalent among educational elites in Muslim majority societies (cf. Adas 1993). But there are globalization processes from without and from within, occurring simultaneously and benefiting immensely with the unprecedented technologies of transportation, information and communication. On the one hand, there is an intensification of a universal Islam and movement towards a more or less uniform, global civilization similar to the one proclaimed by the policies of post-colonial states. On the other hand, one can discern different positions Muslim communities take vis-à-vis various types of contemporary globalization as (co-)actors, reactionary forces, or as affected, such as is the case with Islamic scholars and the madrasa.
At the same time there are many instances of reciprocity which renders postcolonial processes into complex encounters of local and global factors. Hence, Islamic scholars and their institutions “share external [global] pressures, but represent distinct domestic [local] struggles” (Schäbler and Stenberg 2004: xx).
Therefore, both these facets of globalization have to be taken into account in their mutual encounters which lead to new processes of self-authentification.
There seems to be a systemic combination of continuity and change, of transformation and permanence.
From the above discussion it becomes obvious that changes in the religious landscape proceed, in the final analysis, from changes in the distribution of global (or state) resources and in the power structures thereof. In effect, the forces of globalization, combined with the penetration of the modern state, seek ever more efficient forms of local control, and, insofar as this is the case, they search relentlessly for ways to standardize, or homogenize, the intricacies of their social, economic, political and demographic environment. This, in turn, produces a reaction on the part of local forces – forces that draw upon a wide range of local resources, including not only radical but also eclectic forms of religious expression, to “resist”. Hence, madrasas have become more and more influential as disgruntled young Muslims turn to religion in protest at the economic injustice and political marginalization of the “modern” era, a view echoed, to a certain extent, in some chapters, notably those by Tariq Rahman and Saleem H. Ali in this volume (Chapters 4 and 5).
The ideational resistance
Beyond this argument for a struggle for scarce resources in response to the political economy of globalization and state penetration “from above”, there seems to be enough evidence that the recent expressions of religious “resistance” in the context of local madrasas are a response to local skirmishes between local factions competing for scarce resources “from below”, or even a combination of both.
Here the ideational or inter-subjective argument comes to the fore. In fact, most of the chapters’ point of departure lies in an account of divergent or competing responses in terms of ideas, arguing that the source of emerging forms of religious resistance is not “economic” but “ideational”, not a struggle for scarce resources, i.e. a fair deal in the context of the global economy or the modern state, but a struggle against the homogenizing language of secular “modernity”. Not “Islam” versus “the West” in a struggle for economic and political control but divergent approaches within the specific terms of Islam itself – monolithic expressions of religious identity, for instance – are pitted against diverse expressions of religious or sectarian alternatives. Hence, it seems that the homogenizing and essentializing assumptions of secular modernity are counteracted by two very different forms of religious resistance, both of which take shape in the context of the modern madrasa.
In the first form of resistance, homogenizing notions of secular modernity are challenged by (similarly) homogenizing notions of Islam articulated in the language associated with specific Muslim sects or groups; for example, the Barelwis insist that “the only true Muslim is an Ahl-i Sunnat/BarelwiMuslim”,
or the Jama’at-i Islami propagates a universal, de-cultured and de-territorialized Islamic identity.
In the second form of resistance against the homogenizing terms of secular modernity, both the homogenizing notions of secularism and homogenizing notions of Islam are challenged by an appreciation for pluralism and diversity even within the specific terms of Islam. This pluralist form of resistance is spelled out as a desirable option by different contributors. But for the most part, the individual chapters examine the link between “modern” colonial and postcolonial trends favoring secular homogeneity or conformity and the first (ironically quite “modern”) form of religious, anti-pluralist, singularizing resistance.
Usha Sanyal and Arshad Alam, for instance, describe Barelwi efforts to homogenize the Islamic community, while Irfan Ahmed describes Jama’at-i Islami efforts to accomplish the same thing. Nita Kumar discusses a similar process in the conformist pressures associated with the religious education of young boys and girls. And Christopher Candland criticizes recent madrasa reform efforts because they merely seek to add “modern” mathematics and science subjects to the existing madrasa curriculum, all the while ignoring the “real” problem, which Candland describes as a lack of appreciation for the diversity of the Muslim community as a whole and a certain aversion to the diversity of the modern world.
The struggle, at any rate, between competing approaches to Islam and Islamic education, particularly at the level of ideas, is obvious, though reciprocating the political economy argument: homogenizing notions of secularism versus homogenizing notions ofIslam,
all pitted against a countervailing appreciation for religious and sectarian “diversity”. Zakir Hussain Raju’s Chapter 8 draws out this theme quite effectively, when revealing the extent to which these homogenizing forms of state-formation are not the only options.
The arrangement of contributions
Keeping this underlying “framework” in mind, the sequencing of the chapters has been arranged in the following way:
The chapters by Usha Sanyal and Arshad Alam (Chapters 2 and 3, respectively), both of which focus on Ahl-i Sunnat (Barelwi) madrasas in India, fit together quite well, as their special historical aspects also make for a very nice opening pair. Even beyond this, however, both Sanyal and Alam do a fine job in terms of foregrounding the ideational aspects of sectarian rivalry and then configuring these aspects as a driving force in the work of the madrasas that concern them.
Usha Sanyal portrays two madrasas of the Ahl-i Sunnatwa
Jama’at, i.e. the Barelwis in independent India: the Madrasa Manzar-i Islam, the first madrasa of the movement, founded by Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi (1856–1921) in 1904, and the Jamia Ashrafiyya in Mubarakpur which is currently the biggest school of the movement in India. Both schools are called dar al-ulum. While these madrasas follow the Dars-i Nizami syllabus like other groups, different texts are adopted by each madrasa and there are differences in the interpretation of the basic texts (for example specific hadiths; the Ahl-i Sunnat do not regard the study of philosophy as important as other schools do). In recent years, the Ahl-i Sunnat madrasas expanded and modernized their syllabi to gain state recognition of their certification and thereby make their students eligible for entry into the modern university system. Many former students become teachers in other madrasas or muftis and seem to be in high demand; the best of them go to work abroad.
Two topics are crucial to this chapter: first, the constant struggle for financial support for the madrasas and second, the continuous competition/rivalry and conflict of the Ahl-i Sunnatwa
Jama’at with other Sunni groups, especially the Deobandis. Financial needs are met primarily by donations and some financial assistance from the government. Because of its symbolic importance the Madrasa Manzar-i Islam is now also strongly supported by members of the Ahl-i Sunnat from abroad. In the case of the Ashrafiyya, much money for the construction of school buildings came from locals who seem to sympathize with the Ahl-i Sunnat movement. However, in terms of visibility, the rival madrasas dominate, because since the 1980s they have been benefiting from Saudi Arabian support. In contrast, the Ahl-i Sunnat have been excluded from such funding because of their strong denunciation of all forms of “Wahhabism” and their association withsufi
rituals and beliefs.
Arshad Alam’s chapter attempts to analyze the process of identity formation within madrasas, focusing on an Ahl-i Sunnatwa
Jama’at madrasa in North India but occasionally mentions a Deobandi madrasa for comparison. This Barelwi madrasa aims at the propagation oftheir own
school of thought, the maslak. In doing so it defines a Sunni (or “true believer”) as someone who believes in every word written by Ahmad Riza Khan, the founder of the movement, and who struggles against rival interpretations of Islam such as those of the Deobandis and the Ahl-i Hadith. Teachers and other staff members usually belong to the Ahl-i Sunnatwa
Jama’at, fully wedded to its ideology. Even in terms of organizational matters, it insists on having members of its own maslak, providing for a social space with a well-defined value system towards which all the different constituents of madrasa are supposed to conform.
Though all madrasas follow the Dars-i Nizami (or a modified version of it devised by the ulama at Deoband), emphasis on and interpretation of subjects vary. But the madrasas focus on the study of hadith. Hence, madrasa classes are important spaces for the transmission of the maslak’s ideology and the constitution of identities (of “us” and “them”). The “Islam” of other groups is depicted as false and perceived as a threat to “true Islam”. Thus, in these places of Islamic learning sectarian differences are created and internalized by the students. Furthermore, debating courses instil the students with confidence to publicly present their ideology. Strategies of identity formation include the teaching of books which are formally part of the syllabus. This ideological construction is actively reproduced by madrasa students, who hail from different social and cultural backgrounds. They acquire a common identity of being members of the community of Ahl-i Sunnatwa
Jama’at in their routine, through teaching, learning and other allied processes. According to Alam, madrasas are primarily concerned with teaching what is “true” and “false” Islam rather than with the “othering” of Hindus and Christians. The debate is an internal one, which rarely exceeds the Muslim community.
Turning to Pakistan, the chapter by Tariq Rahman follows on quite meaningfully from the chapters by Sanyal and Alam, particularly insofar as it sustains the focus on sectarian difference. But Rahman also provides a neat bridge to many of the themes addressed in the next chapter by Saleem H. Ali – for example, the political economy of Shia landownership and the Sunni resentments that appear to flow from it. In fact, following on Sanyal and Alam, Rahman and Ali draw special attention to the different, competing “approaches” described above:
Sanyal and Alam stress inter-subjective issues; Rahman and Ali rely on the spe- cific terms of political economy. The chapter by Christopher Candland, in turn, wraps up this section on Pakistan with a focus on recent efforts to promote specific madrasa “reforms”, reforms that have failed so far because their emphasis lies on building parallel new institutions without addressing the issues of curriculum, content and pedagogy prevalent in madrasas in general.
The main points in these three chapters can be summarized thus: Tariq Rahman argues that madrasas are not inherently militant. The madrasas of the various sects all use the Dars-i Nizami, though they use different texts. The basic books on the subjects are canonical texts sometimes dating back to the tenth century. They are rather irrelevant to contemporary concerns, their syllabus tending to disengage one from the modern world. Moreover, the traditional orthodox ulama teach it in a way which is not amenable to contemporary political awareness. In addition to these texts, madrasas usually use contemporary works of ideologues of their own school of thought which very often discredit other groups. When one is searching for the source of sectarianism, militancy and anti- Westernism, it is here rather than in the old texts that one must look. What is even more concerning to the author is that in the madrasa students are taught the art of debate – they learn the rhetoric, polemic and arguments of their sub-sect.
The graduates use these skills in public discussions and sermons which are more and more politicized. Non-madrasa students also adopt such political perspectives.
However, Rahman emphasizes that the source of or reason for such politicization lies not within the madrasa. In his opinion, anti-Western and jihadist ideas result from contemporary international and local conflicts and economic inequalities (e.g. Western domination and exploitation).
Rahman mentions the internal problems of poverty, underdevelopment and inequality in Pakistan. Both students and teachers of madrasas are of poor background and the madrasa offers them not only spiritual comfort but food and accommodation, performing the role of the welfare state in the country. There is a correlation between the increase of poverty and the increasing influence of the madrasas, to the extent that Islamic militancy has an element of class conflict, a reaction of the have-nots against the haves. Rahman considers this to be a dangerous trend because madrasa students are taught to be intolerant of religious minorities. In this context, ulama have been drifting more and more from conservatism to revivalism and activism in recent decades. But this is not a problem of madrasasonly,
militants are also trained in secular institutions. The Pakistani state as well as the United States contributed to this when they supported religious and non-religious institutions to train fighters for the Afghan–Soviet war, for example.
In his final analysis Rahman opines that essentially Muslim militancy is a reaction to Western injustice, violence and a history of exploitation and domination over Muslims.“This can only be reversed by genuinely reversing Western militant policies and a more equitable distribution of global wealth” (Rahman, Chapter 4, this volume).
Saleem H. Ali discusses the role of madrasas in sectarian conflicts specifically. His findings are based on an empirical study conducted in Punjab which particularly focuses on the linkage between madrasa-attendance, conflict dynamics and social (development) indicators. The author describes the positive as well as negative impact of madrasas on Pakistani society as follows: the important positive contribution is that the madrasa provides not only for religious education, it also caters for other needs of the poor and is therefore widely supported by the Pakistani masses. Particularly in areas where there is no proper infrastructure (electricity, drinking water supply, roads, etc.), madrasas are of central importance.
However, madrasas strongly promote their own religious perspective and genealogy and seem to engage in violent conflict with rival Muslim groups. The region studied by Saleem H. Ali experiences considerable sectarian violence, especially between Deobandis and Shias. “However, Barelwi madrasas which were traditionally very tolerant . have also started showing violent and sectarian tendencies. In many instances this is a response to violent and aggressive attitudes of some Deobandi institutions and their managers” (Ali, Chapter 5, this volume).
Sectarian groups have the greatest following in areas where there is a high degree of economic inequality, the overall living conditions are low and feudal landowners are also politically powerful. It is precisely in this context that madrasas have challenged the legitimacy of the ruling families and gathered a strong following. The author emphasizes that this sectarianism is an internal problem of Pakistan which is not linked to international terrorism. Although madrasas are contributing to sectarian violence in Pakistan, they should not be perceived as training camps of al-Qaeda.
Since madrasas as a social movement have received legitimacy particularly on account of the existing economic inequalities and daily hardships of the poor, it should therefore be a priority to improve the living conditions in poor areas.
Ali opines that conversion of madrasas into conventional schools is not viable.
Instead, “there should be an attempt made to expose madrasa leaders to alternative voices of Islamic learning and facilitating dialog between various sects” (Ali, this volume) Christopher Candland argues in Chapter 6 that the attempts to reform undertaken by the government in recent years have been unsuccessful because they do not tackle the main problem. Model madrasas were established but their impact has been very limited since they do not receive sufficient financial support from the government. They have no permanent space, the facilities are sub-standard.
Moreover, most of the reforms aim at the surveillance and control of existing madrasas by obliging them to integrate parts of the National Curriculum – a product of the government of General Zia al-Haq (1977–1988) – into their curricula.
According to Candland, this coercive approach is counter-productive because the contents of this curriculum are biased against religious minorities and against the Indian state. Furthermore, they tend to glorify the military and the use of violence for political ends.
Most of the present Pakistani madrasas were established during the tenure of General Zia al-Haq and became militant and sectarian because of the then militaristic politics. Candland argues that – just as the US government used madrasa students to fight the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan and supplied texts to glorify and sanction war in the name of Islam – moderate interpretations of Islam could be promoted through the madrasas to counterbalance this approach.
However, there seems to be a lack of funding and interest – neither the Pakistani government nor international policy makers apply such an approach.
While some madrasas promote militancy, and many even politicize their students to a particular sectarian organization or religious political party’s perspective, the problem does not lie with Islam. Indeed, Islamic education is important in “secular education” as well as in madrasa education.
According to some ulama, the Islamiyyat [study of Islam] taught in government and private schools focus on those portions of the Qur’an and hadiths that might be interpreted in line with intolerant and militant ideologies while the passages which clearly invoke tolerance and enlightenment are ignored. . Just as militant prayer leaders in the armed services and militant teachers in government schools were promoted in the 1980s, it is possible to promote moderate prayer leaders and teachers today. (Candland, this volume) In any case, each of these five chapters – Sanyal, Alam, Rahman, Ali, and Candland – is clearly focused on madrasas, drawing illuminating comparisons between madrasas in India and madrasas in Pakistan. In the next three chapters, madrasas remain important, but the terms of “religious education” are also more broadly defined. In other words, the last three chapters focus on madrasas, but they place these schools within a much larger universe of “religious education” broadly defined – again, showing that, when it comes to spelling out the role of the madrasa in contemporary South Asia, ideas do matter.
Indeed, if the first five chapters leave the reader with the impression that local madrasas have emerged as a homogenizing site of Muslim resistance in the face of homogenizing global/state forces, the last three reveal that, although this type of homogenizing “resistance” is extremely common, alternatives do exist.
Nita Kumar, for instance, writing about India (Chapter 7), considers the terms of gendered education both in the context of local madrasas and in the home.
Zakir Hussain Raju, writing about Bangladesh (Chapter 8), notes that, although those with a modern religious education may be associated with their local madrasa, this is not always the case. They may be associated with the terms of “religious education” for other reasons, for example, their status as a hajji. And Irfan Ahmed, focusing on Pakistan, traces the ways in which Maududi situated the terms of religious education in opposition to the education provided in traditional madrasas. To give some details: in her chapter on gender and madrasa training Nita Kumar argues that there are two main problems with the educational system in India – both related to the colonial experience: first, there is an inadequate infrastructure of pedagogy, and second, there is a mental or psychological attitude which hinders educational progress.
The introduction of a modern education system with colonialism took place in a climate of mutual hostility between the public and the state, which resulted in a hostile family–school relationship. The British opined that the school’s job was to reform the backward public and it praised those who supported the new colonial schooling. In this picture the school/teacher emerges as reformer on the one side and the family as backward and rooted in its local culture on the other.
By the same token, nationalist schools aim at erasing the religious and cultural identity of the traditional communities.
Instead of integrating into the new education system, many castes and communities in India founded their own institutions with the aim of synthesizing the dini and the dunyawi to allow the groups to stick to their vocational and cultural traditions.
Today modernity is the privilege only of those families who cooperate with the nationalist schools. The corollary of this cooperation is the neglect of local culture and histories, often also of ethics [the ethics of being a well adjusted member of his society] (Kumar, this volume)The
dilemma for many people is that one decides to be adjusted to the own community (traditions) or to become a well-educated person. However, it is not up to the child to decide – the community and the madrasa has decided already.
The traditional communities aim at securing their identity and fulfilling the goals of the community which does not necessarily provide the children with a good (modern) education. This affects girls even more than boys. Hence, madrasas in India are pedagogically underdeveloped and the teaching in school is ineffective compared with the teaching at home (and the teachings/interests of the community).
Even where modern teaching material is available, teachers lack the ability to transfer the contents (knowledge) to their students. According to Kumar, colonialism is responsible for these problems:
Colonialism has produced a separation between what is “ours” no matter however injurious tous,
and what is “foreign” such as supposedly many philosophies and practices associated with modernity. This also correlates to the foreign as abstract and theoretical, and the indigenous as practical. (Kumar, this volume) Therefore, madrasa education as well as education at home serves to integrate children into “the larger gendered society” which more often than not means that good/modern education is not seen as necessary, or that it is even seen as an obstacle (or threat) to securing the community and family values.
Zakir Hossain Raju analyzes the conflict between cultural nationalist and pro- Islamic conceptions of Bangladeshi identity and its cinematographic representation.
In this context Islamic learning plays a central role in a dual sense: as the everyday practice of Islamic teaching among Bengali Muslims and through Islamic educational institutions (madrasas). The cultural nationalist Bengali- Muslim middle class considers Islam to be alien to Bangladesh, as backward and restricting. In this view, Islamic learning and Bengali cultural practices are opposites. Reversely, the syncretistic or shared approach sees Islam as part of the Bangladeshi identity. However, in this conception Islam is not understood as an orthodox monolithic religion; rather it is the indigenized Bengali Islam, popular Islamic practice in Bangladesh, which is a marker of the local national identity.
This perceived conflict between Islam and Bengali identity is a relatively new phenomenon. It started only in the late nineteenth century when the British contributed to the formation of a political Muslim community. A sense of a Muslim identity was thus constructed.
This identity put emphasis on the affiliation of Bengali Muslims with the “original” version of Islam and considers the Islamic education including the learning and practice of Arabic as much more important than the learning of English and indigenous Bengali cultural practices. (Raju, this volume) The expansion of Islamic learning and education was a means to promote Muslim identity in Bangladesh. This enforced the view that Bengali-ness was incompatible with Muslim-ness. Islamic learning was thus seen as something not quite in conformity with Bengali cultural practice.
Against the backdrop of these developments, cultural-nationalist Bengali Muslims started a Bengali film industry as a medium to define and promote a modern cultural-national identity of Bengali Muslims from the 1950s onwards, in terms of a Bengali-Muslim counter-discourse against the Calcutta-produced Bengali-Hindu modernity and pan-Indian Muslim identity advocated by the pro-Pakistan elite through Urdu and Bengali print media.
Later, the opposition to Muslim identity propagated by the middle classes acted as the driving force for the establishment and development of a national art cinema in Bangladesh. These films however, address the Westernized middle classes, not the majority of rural Bangladeshis. They reinforce the Bengali–Islam dichotomy and depict Islamic learning as anti-modern and primitive. Hence, most art cinema films are simultaneously engaged in constructing and opposing a monolithic perception of Islamic orthodoxy. The author analyzes a contemporary film that advocates the multiplicity and pluralism of Islam and its attachment to Bengali identity. It does not draw a binary opposition between Islam and Bengali identity but rather argues that Islam has become indigenized in rural Bangladesh.
Irfan Ahmad’s Chapter 9 discusses the Jama’at-i Islami’s (or rather Maududi’s) ideas on Muslim education. He argues that it is misleading to say that Islamists stick to traditions and refute “modernity”. In the case of Abul Ala Maududi (1903–1979) and his party it is rather the opposite, because he was neither trained in a traditional madrasa, nor did he appreciate such traditional education. Rather, he critiqued the Islamic system of learning prevalent in India and called for a change along the pattern of Western education – however, without openly adopting Western values. Maududi believed that political power results from the superiority of the education system of a group/civilization; that is, whoever possesses the most superior knowledge would become the leader.
Therefore in the ideology of the Jama’at-i Islami, education has a central role for the aspired Islamic revolution and the creation of an Islamic state. Hence, traditional ulama were attacked for their “blind imitation” or taqlid and the lack of ijtihad, independent reasoning. Modernists like Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1899) were denounced because their education system lacked Muslim character and did not aim at a sharia-based state. In his attempt to re-invent tradition, Maududi conceptualizes ilm and promulgation of law (zabta) as being based on the superior command over the former by the latter, which radically departed from Islamic traditions. His ideas of Allah’s Government on earth, and true Muslims being a party of the vanguard to lead that movement towards its ultimate goal, are inherent parts of his argument. Hence, Maududi aimed at a purely Islamic education which would bring Muslims to power (again). This, however, could only be accomplished by “total revolutionary reforms” and the overhauling of the entire education system. Thus, he complained about the partial and half-hearted reforms which were undertaken in many madrasas of the time. Instead, he wanted modern subjects to be introduced to the curriculum. In this new system all subjects should be taught in conformity with Islam and with emphasis on religion; a distinction between religious and secular sciences would not prevail. In short, all subjects have to be Islamized and the education must intend to lead to the establishment of an Islamic state, to bring about an Islamic revolution. “[N]o other sect or ideological group shared the sine qua non of Jama’at’s ideology according to which education was an instrument of heralding an Islamic revolution/state” (Ahmad, this volume).
Hence, it is this variety and variation of madrasas in South Asia that transgresses the boundaries between resistance and homogenization, terror and Islamic normativity, between radicalization and Islamic learning, and which provides for a variety of cultural articulations and institutions important for old and new identities. The chapters display the entanglement of discourses of resistance against and challenges to the homogenizing notions of secular modernity and homogenizing notions of Islam. By the same token, new processes of selfauthentification in the context of modern madrasas are grounded in a systemic combination of continuity and change, of transformation and permanence. As such, madrasas provide for specific local needs as well as for the articulation of needs of a major part of society.
As a consequence, religious specialists and their institutions might well play a crucial role in the adaptation of globalizing and modernizing developments to specific local needs and situations in the sense of glocalization,
thereby providing a variety of embedded cultural articulations and potentially the much needed national and cultural integration. Institutions of religious education can in this way offer alternative solutions in their capacity of adaptive agents of indigenous structures, solutions which the post-colonial states would hardly be able to offer with their authoritative means alone. It is this potential which needs to be cherished and appreciated, and which seems to be the only way to come to terms with the wider sections of societies that are deprived of basic human – political, socio-economic and cultural – rights, and to give voice to these alternative discourses.
“Teaching terror” and religious violence can be endowed with different meanings if seen in their specific contexts, whether as Islamic resistance to secular modernity and its homogenization/globalization or as localized challenges to both Islamic and modern secular homogenizations/globalizations. How difficult the misuse of concepts such as “holy war”, “war on terror” or “infinite justice” would be, if one knew about their cultural meaning and embedded varieties.
It is high time to realize these issues.
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Author: Jamal Malik
