www.alhassanain.org/english

From Madrasa to University; the Challenges and Formats of Islamic Education

Dietrich Reetz

SAGE Publications Ltd

www.alhassanain.org/english

The SAGE Handbook of Islamic Studies

Edited by Akbar S. Ahmed and Tamara Sonn

Editorial arrangement © Akbar S. Ahmed and

Tamara Sonn 2010

Introduction © Lavra Thomas

Chapter 1 © John Obert Voll 2010

Chapter 2 © Bryan S. Turner 2010

Chapter 3 © Camilo Gomez-Rivas 2010

Chapter 4 © Qaiser Shahzad 2010

Chapter 5 © Lawrence Rosen 2010

Chapter 6 © S.M. Ghazanfar 2010

Chapter 7 © Dietrich Reetz 2010

Chapter 8 © Charles E. Butterworth 2010

Chapter 9 © Asma Afsaruddin 2010

Chapter 10 © Walter Denny 2010

Chapter 11 © Amineh Ahmed 2010

Chapter 12 © Haldun Gülalp 2010

Chapter 13 © Earle H. Waugh 2010

Chapter 14 © Ayatollah Seyed Mostafa

Mohaghegh Damad 2010

Chapter 15 © Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2010

Chapter 16 © Robert Sampson 2010

First published 2010

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

[PREFACE] 7

EDUCATION IN ISLAM 8

THE MADRASA SYSTEM 12

THE DEOBAND MADRASA AND ITS SCHOOL OF THOUGHT 14

THE INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITIES AND THE ‘ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE’ PROJECT 25

THE INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF ISLAMABAD 29

ISLAMIC EDUCATION – WHERE IS IT GOING? 38

NOTES 41

REFERENCES 43

[PREFACE]

The transmission of religious knowledge is an integral part of Islam. It derives from Islam being a revealed religion and pursuing missionary goals. Nevertheless, these are not the only functions religious education fulfills in Islam. This chapter will highlight its role in the transfer of knowledge, the spread of the faith, the formation of character and the mobilization of followers. First, an overview of the emergence of education in Islam will be given, explaining its system and major forms. Then, two contrasting networks of education, their concepts and institutions will be discussed. The first includes the relatively traditional Deobandi madrasas centering on the Darul Ulum of Deoband in North India. They have got branches not only all over South Asia, but also in Southeast Asia, South Africa, Britain and North America. The second is the rather modern group of International Islamic Universities (IIU). It has no explicit administrative or theological center, but the universities in Islamabad (Pakistan) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) play a key role. Although less numerous than the Deobandi schools, these modern Islamic universities have expanded significantly with units dotting sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North America. In many ways, these two networks demonstrate the challenges and changes affecting Islamic education today. It is assumed here that despite of their disparity of character, these two networks of Islamic schools have gone through similar phases of adaptation, albeit with varying degree of success. At the same time, their ideological commitment has hardly weakened.

EDUCATION IN ISLAM

The very act of the revelation where God conveyed the message of Islam, its doctrines and practices to the Prophet could also be seen as the first act of teaching the religion of Islam. The act of revelation in a way informed the whole process of transmission of religious knowledge in Islam. The Qur’an and its memorization have ever since played a key role in it. Before it became a scriptural religion, it was a religion of principles, concepts and practices which had to be communicated. The essence of any religion is to win over adherents and followers. They would become adepts only to the extent and at the time, they observe the established ritual and share the recognized doctrine. Winning over new followers presupposed the formation of a system of transfer of religious knowledge. To a large extent, Islamic education has therefore been synonymous with preaching. Converting the world to the ‘true’ religion was inseparable from educating others in the ways of Islam.

Following the same logic, Islamic educational institutions see themselves still fulfilling the primary task of spreading the ‘truth’ about Islam, of preaching. Every student and teacher is per se willing and obliged to see the acquired knowledge as a means to go out into the world and spread Islam.

A theological view of Islamic education would focus on the model character of the Prophet and his companions. The Prophet and his companions, and later his successors(khulafa’) as head of the Islamic state, would answer queries from followers and nonbelievers on Islamic doctrine and practice thereby providing a model for informal Islamic education (Hillenbrand, 2003).

A historical perspective would emphasize the steady emergence and consolidation of the Muslim community and of this first Islamic state led by Muhammad. With its evolution, Islamic education was geared to serving this very community. It was meant to shore up knowledge of religious traditions, ritual, dogma, and first of all of the Qur’an, among Muslims. It was soon understood that not all Muslims could be expected to have sufficient knowledge of the foundations of the religion. Another service to the community was to reproduce and train religious specialists and functionaries. While Islam did not develop a church, standing in for God or mediating his powers, over time a separate group of religious specialists came into being. The ‘ulama’, scholars of religion and law, emerged as a professional class widely supported by state patronage. They shaped and increasingly controlled religious knowledge and its application. Religious specialists were leading prayers(imam) , interpreting Islamic law(muftı) and administering justice(qad.ı) , memorizing and chanting the Qur’an(h.afiz., q ¯ari’) . The Law of Islam had been given by God, but it had to be interpreted and applied by men to the human condition. These specialists fulfilled religious duties, but they also worked in state offices. This applied to the Medinese Islamic state, but also to later Muslim Empires and their bureaucracies.1

A functional view will have to explore the professional parameters of religious education. The Muslim community was far from homogeneous. Dissent and divisions appeared, reflecting different political pulls and power interests. The various lands that were occupied by Islamic armies or the inhabitants of which had converted to Islam on their own contributed different cultural traditions, languages and interpretations. Islamic education became necessary to ensure the consistency of God’s message. This diversity of Islamic lands in turn created a range of educational standards and traditions in the name of Islam. They were guided by various sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shi’a Islam and the many minority sects. Education in Sunni Islam, for instance, reflected diverse geographical traditions ranging from ancient Iraq to the Arabian Peninsula, from Egypt to the Maghreb, from Moghul India to the Ottoman Empire (Makdisi, 1981; Berkey, 1992; Demir, 2005; Kaur, 1990).

Yet, Islamic education has never focused on texts, principles and concepts alone. Ritual knowledge, piety, morality and character pursued and embodied by Sufi saints and Shaykhs were highly valued goods that Islamic education was equally supposed to transfer, build and instill. With the emergence and spread of mystical orders, or Sufism, with its growing success in spreading the message of Islam, these values became even more important. The literal and the ritual strands in Islamic education have never been mutually exclusive, but rather interpenetrating. The Sufi hospices(kh¯anq¯ah) that sprang up around the world on the path of various orders imparted their own kind of informal education stressing piety and ritual where they also used texts. At the same time, these moral values were by no means absent from formal Islamic education that privileged the classical writings, although Sufism(tasawwuf) is taught selectively there according to the doctrine prevailing at the school (Lapidus, 1988).

A similar ambivalence marks the distinction between private forms of learning and collective teaching constituting another important perspective on Islamic education. Islamic teaching for a long time had followed the format of a private meeting between a knowledgeable person, a prayer leader or scholar, and students gathering in a circle at the local mosque after prayer. This pattern supposedly emulated the Prophet’s relationship with his Companions. Their replies to queries on normative behavior in Islam are said to have laid the foundation of specialized studies of the Qur’an and later of the Traditions(Hadith) . It found its major expression at the time in the scriptural compilation of the Qur’anic text and the Traditions attributed to the Prophet and his Companions.

Beginning with the Islamic state in Medina, the mosque as the joint prayer place was at the center of Islamic teaching. In many countries, religious scholars still instruct groups of students at the local mosque forming a circle(halqa) around the teacher. Collective and formal teaching emerged at a later stage. The first institutional Islamic schools, or madrasas, are reported from twelfth-century Iraq (Makdisi, 1981; Berkey, 1992; Hillenbrand, 2003; Demir, 2005). While private teaching is largely adopted by Sufi orders and related movements to the present day, it has also been and is still being used for literalist or formal education of the reformist variety(is.l¯ah.) .2

At the same time, Islam was not only a religion but also a politics and a form of social organization. It governed the community of adherents of Muhammad and the early Muhammadan state. Islamic education was therefore right from the beginning expected to produce results that would help in running the Islamic state of Medina. It was particularly legal functionaries of the imperial administrations of the various Islamic dynasties who went through Islamic education of one form or another. When competing interpretations of Islam emerged as with the Shi’a the politics of education also aimed at mobilizing followers and adherents for political action. The mobilization impact of education must also have been important in preparation for war and during conquest of non-Muslims and their territories. Clans and elites used madrasas to control territories and local society, to gain prestige and legitimacy (Chamberlain, 1994).

Thus, Islamic education has shown a strong diversity and historicity from its very inception. While most were agreed on the relevance of the Qur’an and the Sunna, the oral and written practice of the Prophet and his companions, all other aspects were a matter of interpretation, application, needs and resources, both material and cultural. Because many scholars argued that Islam was indivisible, they aspired to rule both the secular and the sacred realm. Yet the worldly knowledge provided had to conform to selective principles applied by religious scholars. Worldly knowledge incorporated into the religious curriculum was often dated and circumscribed by very limited topics: Geometry, Algebra, Philosophy of the ancient Greeks, some contemporary Arab history and literature.

In terms of institutions, Islamic education was equally marked by a great variety of forms. They extend from the preschool age right up to the university and postgraduate level. For the purpose of this overview, we leave out the preschool and elementary level and will focus on the secondary school and college/university level. When contemporary figures of Islamic schools are quoted, they are often inflated by the large number of those of the preschool and elementary level(maktab) . Many of them are small size, not more than study circles of the local Imam. As they form a vast share of the overall number of institutions in many Muslim countries, the picture can easily confuse the uninitiated.

The paper will limit itself to contemporary institutions of formal Islamic education. By this, we mean regular institutions set up for this purpose and conducting education in specialized buildings. These would be generally separate from the mosque. They would have a fixed curriculum and a regular group of teachers and paid staff. Students at larger schools would have access to special hostel accommodation.

The examples in this chapter are mainly drawn from the non-Arabic speaking world, from South and Southeast Asia, but also from South and East Africa. One reason for that is that contrary to public perception, those are the dominant Muslim majority areas. In South and Southeast Asia alone, there live at least 700 million Muslims, more than four times the number of Arabic-speaking followers of the faith. Another reason is the strong relevance of Islamic schools in these regions and their continuing impact on public and private education. Although Shi’ite Islam developed similar institutions and centers of religious learning, the emphasis here is on Sunni Islam adopted by the vast majority of Muslims in these regions.

The Deobandi institutions and the International Islamic Universities demonstrate how Islamic education adapts to changing circumstances and varying cultural, social and economic conditions.

THE MADRASA SYSTEM

Historically speaking, there appear to have been three distinct phases of the establishment and expansion of madrasas. The first phase included the organization, reproduction and transfer of knowledge in the service of dynastic Muslim empires such as the Safawids in Persia, the Moghuls in India and the Turkish Ottomans (Robinson, 2001).

The next phase was marked by the multiplication of Islamic schools in response to the penetration of Western education and colonial rule into the lands under Muslim governance. Particularly in colonial India where Muslims were in a minority, a ‘madrasa movement’ spread across the subcontinent since the middle of the nineteenth century to strengthen the religious foundations of the Muslim community which religious scholars felt were under threat by British rule, Western secularization and Christian missionary activity.

The third phase seems to have set in during the seventies of the twentieth century when Muslim scholars, politicians and militants started pursuing the politics of Islamic revival. In several Muslim countries, not only efforts but also resources multiplied to create new Islamic institutions. They aimed at reviving Islamic teaching in order to strengthen knowledge and practice of the religion (cf. Grandin and Gaborieau, 1997). Their expansion partly replaced the ascendance of nationalist and socialist thought that had marked Asia and Africa during decolonization as those could not deliver the desired results of development and political emancipation vis-à-vis the West. This was made painfully clear to Muslims in particular during the 7-day war in 1967 when Israel occupied Palestinian territories for a long time to come. Most Muslim activists held the West collectively responsible for Israeli actions in the region, which supposedly threatened also the historical centers of Islam nearby. This tension revived political antagonism between Islamists and the West, the foundations for which had been laid during the colonial era.

The madrasas tend to follow a particular sect or legal school. In South Asia, they differ by formal or informal affiliation with a head seminary standing for a certain doctrinal interpretation of Islam. As such, they form vast networks of Islamic schools stretching across the subcontinent and extending often to other countries and regions. They are bound together by graduates, teachers and Sufi Shaykhs moving within these networks. The focus of this chapter will be on the Deobandi madrasas following a reformist and purist interpretation of Islam. It is named after the location of its head seminary in the small town of Deoband in North India. In South Asia, this school of thought and its madrasas have faced strong competition from rival interpretations of Islam. The largest network among them follows the Barelwi interpretation of Islam named after the town of Bareilly located not far from Deoband. It was founded by Ahmad Raza Khan (1856–1921) who defended the popular practices of shrine and saint worship strongly denounced by the Deobandis (Sanyal, 1996). Their mutual relationship has often been marked by rivalry, bitter argument and occasionally tension.

However, in Islamic teaching, the Barelwis have moved closer to the Deobandis’ style and format of schooling over the years. While formal madrasas had been absent in the beginning, they have now been established by the Barelwis across the subcontinent and beyond. With some modifications, these schools largely follow the same traditional curriculum of the dars-e niz.¯am¯ı on which the Deobandis based themselves. Major differences pertain to the role of the Prophet and related rituals at these schools, such as singing poetry in praise of the Prophet(n¯at) or celebrating his birthday(mil¯ad-un-nabi) and the birthday of saints(urs) at their shrines. Although the size of their following in the subcontinent is roughly equal, it is the Deobandis who capture the media headlines and the limelight as Western and non-Muslim observers – often mistakenly – regard them as instigators of radical Islam. On political matters, the Barelwis have also come to share in the Deobandis’ positions. They fully supported Taliban rule in Afghanistan. They host their own, mostly local militias that are involved in sectarian conflict with Shi’as and Ahmadis, but also in Kashmir and Afghanistan (Rana, 2004: 354, 378ff). They thus share radical sectarian Sunni sentiments typical of the subcontinent. Another prominent example of a rival madrasa network that emerged from South Asia and is now criss-crossing the Muslim world relates to the Ahl-i Had¯ıth (AH; for Pakistan: ibid. 295ff). It professes no allegiance to any law school but in practical matters is rather close to Deobandi teaching. Occasionally some of its followers even attend Deobandi schools. In political matters, it is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia. On a larger scale, the Saudi-affiliated Islamic schools dotting the Muslim world constitute their own educational, ideological and cultural ‘universe’ often known by the additional attribute ‘Salafi’. The Shi’a institutions affiliated to Iran are yet another example of a globalized network. As compared to the Deobandis, internal cooperation may be more streamlined and formalized, particularly in financial matters, but also on political issues.