Madrasas In A Morass

'Centres of Obscurantismand Superstition'

With the march of modernity and secularisation, western-style developmentplanners in much of the post-colonial Muslim world had hoped thattraditional Islamic centres of education -- the madrasas -- would be rapidlyreplaced by western schools, training a new generation of educated Muslimswho, while rooted in their own cultural traditions, would imbibe the bestthat the West had to offer.

Madrasas were seen as centres of obscurantismand superstition, and as one of the principal causes of Muslim decline atthe hands of the West. In different Muslim countries the attack on themadrasa system took different forms.

In Turkey, for instance, a governmentdecree in 1925, soon after the Republicans under the staunchly secular KemalAttaturk took power deposing the last Muslim Caliph, ordered the closingdown of all madrasas in the country with a single stroke of the pen.

Thispolicy was followed in several Muslim countries that had come undercommunist rule in the aftermath of the Russian revolution in 1917, such asAlbania and the vast Muslim belt in Central Asia.

In other countries, suchas Morocco and Algeria, while the state continued to base its legitimacy onIslamic appeals, Islamic education was sought to be 'modernised', withdepartments of Islamic studies in modern universities taking the place oftraditional madrasas.

In 1961, the socialist and Arab nationalist JamalAbdul Nasser, in his impatience with the traditional Muslim 'ulama, whom hesaw as a major challenge to his modernisation efforts, transformed theworld-renowned Al-Azhar in Cairo, the oldest, largest and most respectedmadrasa in the world, into a modern university. 

South Asia 

South Asia, where over halfof the world's Muslim population lives, followed a slightly differentcourse. While the madrasas were left largely untouched, the effectivedelinking of madrasa-education from the job market led to the decliningpopularity of traditional Islamic schools.

The 1980s witnessed a rapid revival of the madrasas in much of South Asia,in terms of numbers as well as power and influence. In India, the number ofmadrasas is now estimated at some thirty to forty thousand, with a similarfigure in Pakistan and probably a slightly smaller number in Bangladesh.

InPakistan and Afghanistan, madrasas today play a crucial role in nationalpolitics. Pakistan has several 'ulama-based political parties with millionsof supporters. The Taliban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan is entirely'ulama-based, products of Deobandi madrasas in Pakistan's North-WestFrontier Province and Baluchistan.

In India, the 'ulama and their madrasaswield less direct political influence. While there are few 'ulama active inIndian politics, they, however, exercise an enormous influence on Muslimpublic opinion.

The massive agitations that India witnessed against what wasseen to be an attack on Muslim Personal Law in the 1980s were ledprincipally by the 'ulama. The Muslim Personal Law Board, which sees itselfas the key spokesman of the Indian Muslims, is also largely in the hands ofmadrasa leaders.

Early Muslim History

Although the power of the 'ulama among the Muslims of South Asia is todaysubstantial, it is interesting to note that early Muslim history knew nosuch separate class of clerics as the 'ulama or of an institution ofspecialised religious training as the madrasa.

Islam is probably uniqueamong the world's religions in its radical disavowal of any intermediariesbetween God and ordinary believers. The Qur'anic assertion that Muslimscould approach God directly obviated the need for a professional class ofpriests. Every Muslim was seen as, in a sense, his own priest.

Prayers couldbe led by any believer, for God was believed to be equally accessible to allMuslims. Further undermining the institution of priesthood, acquiringknowledge of the scriptural tradition was seen as a duty binding on allMuslims, men as well as women, and not as the prerogative of a specialclass.

While some people were recognised as more learned or pious thanothers, early Islamic history saw no professional class of 'ulama asreligious specialists. Islamic knowledge could be had by all, generallyprovided freely in mosques and, later, in Sufi lodges.

The Caliphs and The Ulamas

The emergence of the institution of the madrasa and the 'ulama as a classof religious specialists coincided with the spread of Islam outside theArabian peninsula, in the years after the death of the Prophet.

By theeighth century, large parts of West and Central Asia, in addition to almostthe whole of North Africa, had been brought under Muslim rule. A de factodivision between political and religious power, foreign to pristine Islam,now came into being.

Under the Umayyad, and, then later, the Abbasid rulers,while political power rested with the Caliphs, religious authority graduallybegan being exercised by a special class of men -- the 'ulama -- set apart fromthe general body of Muslims as experts in Islamic theology and law. The twoclasses worked in tandem with each other, the Caliphs providing the 'ulamawith protection and official patronage, and the 'ulama seeking to interpretthe Islamic tradition in order to legitimise the rule of the Caliphs, which,as the historical records tell us, rarely, if ever, accorded with theprinciples of Islam.

It was in this period that madrasas as specialised institutions for thetraining of 'ulama emerged, first in West Asia, and then, as Muslim rulespread, in Africa, southern Europe and South Asia.

Motives, Money & Metamorphosis

Madrasas were subsidisedwith permanent sources of income, such as land grants by the state or byendowments (awqaf) by rich Muslims. Although madrasas, as distinct frommosque-schools, were known before the tenth century, the first major madrasadates to 1065, when Nizam-ul Mulk ordered the construction of the grandNizamiah madrasa in Baghdad.

The Nizamiah school, like the madrasas which,following it, were set up in other parts of the Muslim world, was intendedto train bureaucrats for the royal courts and the administration, as well asjudges (qazis, muftis), who were appointed by the state. Typically, teachersas well as students were drawn from the elite, while there seems to havebeen little provision for the education of children from the poorer classes.

Since one of the primary aims of the madrasas was to produce a class ofbureaucrats and, particularly, judges, as employees of the state, theteaching of Islamic law (fiqh) came to occupy a major position in themadrasa curriculum.

Among the Sunnis, who now account for some ninety percent of the world's Muslim population, four schools of jurisprudencedeveloped-the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shaf'i, and each of these schoolshad its own chain of madrasas, wherein its own system of jurisprudence wastaught.

In addition to law, Arabic grammar and prose, logic and philosophy,subjects that a prospective bureaucrat would find indispensable, were alsotaught. Theology (kalam) and mysticism (tasawuf), subjects that one wouldhave expected religious seminaries to specialise in, received littleattention.

In South Asia, Muslim rulers made elaborate arrangements for the setting upof madrasas to train a class of 'ulama attached to their courts. Inaddition, most mosques had schools (maktab) attached to them whereinchildren were taught to recite and memorise the Qur'an, a pattern thatcontinues till this day.

The Teaching Material

No standardised syllabus was employed in themadrasas, however, and each school was free to teach its own set of books.These consisted, largely, of commentaries on classical works on Islamic law.

With the general consensus of the 'ulama that the 'gates of ijtihad', orcreative understanding of the law in the light of changing conditions, hadbeen 'closed' following the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate in the latethirteenth century, the madrasa curriculum lost its earlier dynamism,degenerating into a seemingly timeless warp.

New books, attuned to the verydifferent context in which Muslims found themselves in India, ceased to bewritten and read, and a blind conformity to the classical works was soughtto be rigidly enforced.

The Indian Experience

Signs of change emerged in the late seventeenth century, when the MughalEmperor Aurangzeb Alamgir commissioned a team of 'ulama to prepare acompendium of Islamic law, named after him as the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri. TheEmperor granted one of the 'ulama associated with this project, MullaNizamuddin, an old mansion owned by a French trader, the Firanghi Mahal, inLucknow, where he set up a madrasa, which soon emerged as the leading centreof Islamic studies in north India.

Mulla Nizamuddin prepared a freshcurriculum for study here, which came to be known after him as theDars-i-Nizami or the 'Syllabus of Nizami'. The focus of the Dars was onwhatwere called the 'rational sciences' (ma'qulat), subjects such as law,philosophy and grammar that would befit prospective bureaucrats.

Threecenturies later, the Dars-i-Nizami continues to be the syllabus of mostmadrasas in South Asia today, although an increasing number of books on the'revealed sciences' (manqulat), such as theology and the traditions of theProphet (hadith) have been added.

The British Impact

While in Mughal times the madrasas served the purpose of training anintellectual and bureaucratic elite, leaving the poorer classes largely outof their purview, things began to change with the onset of British rule.

Bythe early nineteenth century, the British had replaced Persian with Englishas the language of officialdom and Muslim qazis and muftis with lawyers andjudges trained in English law.

The eclipse of Muslim political power in theregion now meant that the 'ulama and their madrasas were now bereft ofsources of political support and patronage. In many cases, the vast grantsthat Muslim rulers had provided the madrasas were resumed by the British.

Inthis rapidly changing context, the 'ulama now began to turn to ordinaryMuslims for support. It is striking to note that it was only in theaftermath of the failed revolt of 1857 against the British that a vastnetwork of madrasas was established all over north India.

In the absence ofMuslim political power, it was the ordinary Muslim who was seen as the'defender of Islam', and, for this, every Muslim, it now came to bebelieved, must be armed with a knowledge of the principles of the faith.

Deoband: Dar-ul 'Ulum Madrasa 

The most important event in this regard was the setting up in 1867 of theDar-ul 'Ulum madrasa at the town of Deoband in the Saharanpur district ofthe present-day Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, not far from Delhi. TheDar-ul 'Ulum is today the largest Islamic seminary in the world afterAl-Azhar in Cairo, and has several thousand smaller madrasas attached to itall over South Asia as well as in countries in the West where South AsianMuslims live.

The Deobandis are a politically influential force in much ofSouth Asia -- the Taliban in Afghanistan belong to this school as do powerfulpolitical parties in Pakistan.

The Dar-ul 'Ulum was envisaged as a centrefor mass Islamic instruction, and its founders saw as their principalmission the spread of 'reformist' Islamic doctrines, crusading against whatthey condemned as 'Shi'a' and 'Hindu' practices and beliefs among theMuslims of the subcontinent.

They enjoined a strict adherence to their owninterpretation of Islamic law (shari'at), and while not opposed to Sufism assuch, sought to purge it of what they believed were un-Islamic accretions.

The Deobandi attack on popular Sufism brought in its wake a sharp reactionfrom Muslim scholars who saw the Deobandis as a thinly-disguised version ofthe sternly anti-Sufi Wahhabis, followers of the eighteenth century Arabpuritan, Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab.

Bareilly Madrasa and the Barelwi Divide

This led to the establishment of a largemadrasa in the early twentieth century at Bareilly, in eastern UttarPradesh, by the Qadri Sufi, Imam Ahmad Reza Khan, which later led to thesetting up of numerous madrasas all over India owing their inspiration tothe Bareilly school.

Khan saw the Deobandis as 'enemies of Islam' and didnot hesitate to issue fatwas of disbelief (kufr) against the founders of theDar-ul 'Ulum. The Deobandi-Barelwi divide continues to be sharp in southAsia, and incidents of violent clashes between the two groups are notunknown.

The Ahl-i-Hadith

Opposed to both the Deobandis as well as the Barelwis were the Ahl-i-Hadithor the 'People of the Tradition of the Prophet'. The Ahl-i-Hadith sawthemselves as the only true inheritors of the legacy of the Prophet. Forthem all forms of Sufism, even the 'reformist' Sufism of the Deobandis, wasanathema, and they preached a strict literalism.

They set up numerousmadrasas, particularly in cities in northern India, such as Delhi, Amritsarand Bhopal. Unlike the Deobandis and the Barelwis, the Ahl-i-Hadith,probably owing to their opposition  to Sufism, remained a marginal forcewith little popular appeal.

Political Involvement

The political involvement of the madrasas as an oppositional force, whichis today such a prominent feature in Pakistan and Afghanistan, can be tracedback to the early nineteenth century, coinciding with the decline of Muslimpolitical power in South Asia.

The forerunners of the Ahl-i-Hadith, forinstance, led what they called a jihad against the Sikhs in the Punjab,which ended in 1831 at the famous battle of Balakot, wherein their principalleaders, Maulvi Ismail and Sayyed Ahmad, were killed.

While these'Wahhabis', as they were styled by the British, continued to stage minoruprisings in the Pathan borderlands till the late nineteenth century, theyturned their energies to intra-Muslim polemics in the years later. It isonly recently, from the 1980s onwards, that the Ahl-i-Hadith madrasas onceagain began being actively involved in political affairs.

The Lashkar-i-Tayyeba, said to be the most well-trained and deadly militantoutfit active in Kashmir today, is a branch of the Ahl-i-Hadith based inPakistan. In India the Ahl-i-Hadith has its main centre at Benaras, and itsenergies, as the voluminous literature that it has produced in recent years,seem to be occupied with condemning other Muslim groups as heretics.

For their part, the Deobandis seem to have accommodated themselves well to British rule, not hesitating to accept British patronage. However, bythemiddle of the first decade of the twentieth century leading Deobandis hadjoined the nationalist struggle, appealing to the Muslims of India to joinhands with the Congress Party against the British.

But for a section of theDeobandis led by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi and Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani,the Deobandis were vociferously opposed to the Pakistan movement and its'two-nation' theory. Instead, they advocated a united India, based onHindu-Muslim cooperation, which they saw as entirely in keeping with theteachings of Islam.

The Prophet Muhammad, they argued, had established a'united nationalism' (muttahida qaumiyat) in Medina, where Muslims, Jews aswell as others were accepted as members of the same 'nation' (qaum).

It is astriking mark of the diverse and often mutually contradictory ways in whichthe same school of religious thought can be interpreted that while theDeobandis in India today still speak the language of Hindu-Muslimcollaboration and 'united nationalism', their brethren in Afghanistan -- theTaliban -- are advocates of an aggressive pan-Islamism.

Reforms

Today, all over South Asia, barring probably Afghanistan, Muslims areincreasingly advocating reforms in the madrasa system to make it morerelevant to modern times. Some see reform as the only way to prevent themadrasas from emerging as breeding grounds of Taliban-style militants.

Secular, westernised elites are not alone in demanding such reforms, though,numerous 'ulama being among the most vocal in pressing for change. Suggestedreforms relate to matters of curriculum, methods of teaching andadministration of the madrasas.

A small, yet increasing number, of madrasashave now begun teaching modern disciplines, such as English, mathematics,science and history. Several have begun teaching books written by modernMuslim thinkers, though the overwhelming majority carry on with theeighteenth century Dars-i-Nizami and its compendium of medievalcommentaries.

Few, if any, madrasas, have dared to depart from thetraditional focus on jurisprudence or have even attempted to come up withnew ways of understanding Islam in the light of modern conditions. Nor isthere any indication of a widespread desire to break the shackles of 'blindconformity' (taqlid) to medieval Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), itself aproduct of the medieval Arab world, and to revive the tradition of ijtihad.

If other religions are taught, it is merely for polemical purposes and toprove them 'false', there being no serious engagement with the pluralisticpredicament and with the need for inter-faith dialogue.