A Case for Government Funded Madrassas

Religion is a powerful tool especially for a predominantly illiterate populace and these arguments, which can now even be heard on local television channels, have started to gain traction with the public.
There is little if any public education infrastructure in many rural areas of Pakistan. With poverty widespread in these areas, people have little choice but to send their children to traditional madrassas that provide extra benefits of shelter and food along with the basic religious education. Extremists have exploited this poverty, lack of public education facilities, and the strong public demand for religious education to their advantage. They have used these unregulated madrassas to propagate their own brand of religion and further their agendas.
Central Darul Hafiz madrassa provides an interesting case-study and a model that is perhaps both culturally and financially feasible. As it employs existing infrastructure, minimal investment is required for rebuilding. The rebuilt madrassa also benefits from existing enrollment, little competition, and undermines the arguments that exploit religion to drive people away from modern education. On the other hand, new policies and measures will be required to regulate the rebuilt madrassa and to avoid losing its control again to some other group. It is also not clear how much a government-funded madrassa will be trusted by the public especially since they are bound to come under similar attacks by extremist groups as they lose their control.

The Madrassa Issue By Sarfraz Naeemi

A recent editorial in this paper has referred to the observation of a cleric, Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi, protesting against the unfairness of a situation in which the actions of a small minority give a bad name to Islam and the madrassa system of education that goes back centuries.

In the Mufti's view, it is a system that retains the capability of interfacing with the modern world. He makes the point that most madrassas, including the institution that he heads, are not training grounds for terrorists. And that if there are exceptions to the general rule, with some preaching violence or providing training in arms, it is the obligation of the government to find them and take appropriate action against the offenders.

There is much that is valid in what Mufti Naeemi has to say. The law of the land should be applied to any individual or institution that through what it propagates makes other citizens objects of hatred or encourages militancy and violence against them. The madrassa in this sense obviously cannot be an exception to the rule.

There is another dimension to the problem. Public sector schools may not be promoting sectarianism but they certainly appear to be doing very little to counter this menace. There is very little in the direction set by the curriculum, the textbooks provided to the schools (free but with the quality of the content leaving much to be desired) or the orientation and training of teachers that is geared to countering the message of hate and intolerance. This has to change even as a serious effort is instituted for madrassa reform.

Reedeming Pakistani Madrassas

In this article Author highlights the need of Madras’s for poor and negative reflection of Pakistan madras’s in foreign countries. In this article author also put light on the recruitment, educational, and training activities of student in abroad madras’s.
The author says some of the radical madras’s still need to be weeded out; embracing Islamic education with an integrated reform strategy is more likely to reduce militancy, rather than lamenting madras’s as mysterious institutions.
However, many of the suicide bombers in recent months have been traced back to madras’s, the pendulum has swung again, as now analysts discover that civil conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan can be just as dangerous for Western interests. Focusing on the core problem of curricular reform can provide us a path out of this ambivalence about madras’s. Similar concerns have existed in other religions as well, but Islamic schools in Pakistan have struggling with a host of circumstances that compounded these challenges. In other parts of the world, madras’s have served an appropriate educational purpose. For example in West Bengal, India, a survey of Islamic schools in January 2009 found that because of the higher quality education at madras’s, even non-Muslims were actively enrolling in them. This was remarkably akin to how in Pakistan many Muslim families send their children to Christian schools because of the high quality of teaching and discipline.Hindu enrolment in several Bengali madras’s, for example, was as high as 64 percent because many of these institutions offered vocational training programmes. Such examples can certainly be emulated in Pakistani madras’s as well. We should not give up on madras’s but rather help bring them back to their heyday of pluralistic learning.The only way to solve the madras’s problem is to engage in a process of reform that focuses on pluralism and conflict resolution skills that should be facilitated by the Pakistani government with the assistance of other Muslim countries and ulema.Careers as healthcare apprentices and disaster relief professionals are particularly appropriate in this regard.

Problem Facing By Pakistani madrassas and its possible reform

The problems Madras’s in Pakistan face, their history and background, the misconception of West and International media about them and reforms being carried out by Pakistani government to make them better. The author has honestly admitted that though few terrorists that have been caught were educated in Pakistani Islamic institutes, but labeling all Madrassas in Pakistan to be “breeding factories of terrorism” is unfair. Nobody could deny the fact he pointed out that Pakistani governments’ efforts to make Madrassas better and eradicate those who teach extremism or terrorism will only bear fruit if there would be international media’s will to change their perception about Madrassas and portray the true image of Madrassas.
Author has held media, especially American, responsible as a major source of spreading Islam’s bad image in West. One has to agree with the author that US government and their intelligence agencies have influenced the media to portray an exaggerated image of Islam and Madrassas and associate them with extremism and terrorism, to fulfill their own political needs and to get public support. They are portraying Madrassas as institutes where they teach how to explode bombs use automatic machine guns and to sacrifice their lives in the name of Jihad, which is all wrong.
These are institutes where true essence of Islam is taught, and Islam is the religion of peace and humanity. That continued for centuries and Madrassas produced some great scholars, researchers of that age. Muslim part of the world was a hub of knowledge. The work of Muslim scholars, scientists laid down the foundation of many new areas of learning.
Government started project that sought to introduce computer skills, science, social studies and English into the tremendously religious syllabus at thousands of madrassas across the country. As Author says that these afford would lead to Mainstreaming of Madrasas and they would become a part of the socio-educational mainstream. Graduates would be able to get jobs in the open market which means alleviation of poverty This would take Islam out of mosques and Madrasas and working of Madrasa graduates in public and private sector would lead to a balanced and constructive socialization leading to gradual Islamization of the society.
Written by :Khalid Khokar

Madaris .. an institution For Poors

There are about 12000 madras’s in Pakistan with more than 1.5 million students enrolled. Madras’s usually exist because the people of Pakistan do not have enough money to give their children the proper education. A madras’s is a place where they can send their children without giving much money and have them fed as well that is why most of the poor families have their children sent there.
Madrasssas are actually reducing poverty by providing education to poor families as modern education is also introduced in many madrassas in many part of countries, so that poor people also compete and spend life which every citizen right to spent the same pattern.
Like other rich students do actually. Government is also pressuring madras to give science knowledge. However Most of them still do not teach science or other subjects but they have installed computer in there lab. However Islam does not only restrict Muslims to get religious knowledge. One famous proverb of prophet is that “Seek knowledge even if it is in China”. This shows that no matter where you are getting knowledge is very important and not just knowledge about Islam but also worldly knowledge. The article states that madras’s are being violated by the local police because the government of Pakistan wants its madras’s modernized. Therefore in order to keep the police away from themselves they install computers to show that they are going towards modernizing there institutes. Islamic institutes are teaching what they think is the right way of teaching. They do not consider how and why should there be any changes. What the Quran says about gaining knowledge is being misinterpreted. Therefore in order to understand the true meaning of Islam and its teachings one has to learn more about what the Quran says about it.

Madrassas are spreading Islamic knowledge instead of terrorism.

In this article I have written about that all the people think about that the Madrassas are spreading terrorism instead of Islamic and other knowledge. But actually it spreads the knowledge of Islam as they have the proper degrees, courses and a scheduled class session. The degrees include Nazra, Hifz, Aliya, Tafseer, Dakhil, Alim, etc. Most of their degrees are equivalent to an MA degree. Now in some of the Madrassas, they are also providing the knowledge of computer, science, and other technological subjects. In recent months, many articles and reports have pointed out with alarm the increase in the number of Madrassas in Pakistan during the past 20 years. According to the 2007 International Report, the Ministry of Education estimated that in 2003 there were 5969 Madrassas, which increased to 10000 in 2007. The Ministry of Religious Affairs in Pakistan reported the number of registered Madrassas at 9000 enrolling about 1.7 million students and gets the education about the Islam. This report shows that approximately 90% Madrassas are registered by the Government itself which proves that the true face of Madrassas. The Madrassas are made for those people who are not well settled or not enough income to enroll their children in the schools so they enroll their children in Madrassas where they get education at cheap cost, so only due to this fact the people thinks that Madrassas are spreading terrorism instead of spreading the preaching of Islam.