Mullah of our mosque usually keeps a calm and humble tone on his Friday speeches and especially avoids hate-provoking remarks. It is the reason why, he hardly ever speaks about politics and when he does so, he keeps a good control on his emotions. But that Friday, the tone and words were both different when I was slowly walking to the Friday congregation. I soon realized that he may be one of the guest speakers who sometimes grace the community with their words of wisdom. I silently sat in a corner. Almost 15 minutes were remaining to the congregational prayers and people were slowly coming into the mosque. Usually I remain busy with my own thoughts or repetition of some verses as our mullah usually talks about the often-repeated things. But this man was different; he was absolutely on fire. He was talking in such anger as if he had come out of a serious fight with someone. He was criticizing the government and foreign forces and their governments for their efforts to steal the wealth of faith and Islam from the people. It is quite normal and is the often trademark pattern of speech of almost all the scholars. But I was startled when he directly started cursing and criticizing the general public. He was shouting, ‘Oh people, you are busy in your own luxurious lives and your most important asset is being silently stolen. Your laziness has so much encouraged the enemies of our religion that they are up against any small thing that can save your religion’. Now it was getting interesting for me as usually such fiery speeches end with a petty request. As expected, he slowly came to his point, ‘Your religion is in danger but madrasas are there to protect this religion. I also have a madrasa where hundreds of students are given free education. But they are all suffering badly; they have very less to eat, they don’t have books to read and I have come to my brothers with a hope that they would put their share in this good work and save this madrasa and preserve the future of students and enlighten the name of Islam forever and ever.’
With this, he concluded his speech and two of his men opened a big piece of cloth and started moving through the lines of worshippers and people started putting some money in it.
This is not a rare story. There are thousands of madrasas in our country and a number of other Muslim countries of region like Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Outside the country, these madrasas have been portrayed in a negative way and shown as breeding places of extremism and terrorism.
Inside the country, there are differing views about these madrasas. Before giving any kind of positive or negative opinion, it would be the most appropriate if a proper study of these madrasas is conducted. However, majority of the urban population regards them to be poorly managed, congested and inappropriate places of religious education from where students of very low caliber and skills enter the society. On the other hand, people in rural areas see them from the eye of obedient religious devotees and consider them the most important part of religion and hence, give them extraordinary respect, usually entering the levels of reverence.
People who like and dislike madrasa system have their own points and logic. Following are the points given against and in favor of madrasas by general public:
The biggest problem is the poor conditions in which these institutes of religious education are run and managed. As they don’t have any evident source of income so they try to cover their expenses in their meager resources and thus make compromises on a number of occasions. There are badly-lit, overcrowded rooms where at times students sleep and also learn their lessons. Majority of them don’t have proper system of water and sewerage and they are found to be stinking with smell of dumped water and other wastes.
Majority of them have the ‘zeerah’ system for collection of food for the students. As they cannot afford to cook their own food so some students are assigned with duties to go to the neighboring houses and collect the cooked food. Usually they use a big bucket in which they keep adding the variety of dishes from different houses and in the end, students are served with a mix of these dishes in which there can be vegetables, meat, pulses and many other things. In the same way, twice a day, these boys also go from door to door to collect bread (and of course, to the bread-selling shops). Unfortunately, with increasing terrorism and such events, majority of people in cities are against such collection and look at them with dislike. The mental and physical condition of boys receiving this food is also not so difficult to be imagined.
As majority of them are run like dormitory schools so large number of boys are given a small room to sleep. It is due to this reason that there were large complaints of sexual abuse of minors by their elder roommates or in some cases, their teachers. In general as well, parents mostly remain concerned about the sexual abuse of their children.
As mentioned, these madrasas mostly serve the educational requirements of boys and there is hardly any for girls. This is, in fact a grave ignorance of the half of the population of a society and against the sayings of our Prophet (PBUH) that seeking knowledge is compulsory both for men and women.
Another major complaint is the lack of well-trained teachers. As they don’t have enough resources, so they hire teachers on meager salaries who are both academically and methodically weak and ineffective. In the same way, the books taught are centuries old and no effort has been made to revise them. Except for a couple of them, most of them ignore modern sciences like mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry and others, terming them to be unnecessary for their students.
And the biggest accusation against them is to be the breeding places of terrorism and extremism. Personally, I have not noticed any madrasa to be training students for any war or terror activity. There are reports that many madrasas are given international funding for making a setup of recruiting and training young boys for terror activities but these reports are yet to be confirmed. As far as extremism is concerned, this is in fact a part of their existence. Their owners and administrators acquire public fund only by making people afraid of infidels and for this reason, they have to keep a constant air of talking against infidels. It is the reason why, there would be hardly any student of madrasa that should talk in favor of friendship with a Non-Muslim, should be willing to wear out of routine modern clothes and similar things.
Madrasas do exist because of a simple fact. They are free and are the only source for poor families (who are much abundant in the above mentioned countries) to educate their children. Majority of the families send their children as they cannot afford the expenses of private schools and they have become much disappointed of the poor performance of public schools. In most cases, poor families remain happy that their children are busy in getting education and they never come to know about the actual condition of their children. Then these children become absolutely vulnerable for any kind of utilization by their administrators and media reported many cases when a child admitted to a madrasa by his parents was later found to be a suicide bomber.
So until and unless government or private sectors fills this gap of good schools, these institutes will exist, in whatever form or condition maybe.
We should also not forget a number of very good madrasas that have become an example for others by bringing change with the time. In these madrasas, students are given all the good facilities, they also study computer, English and other contemporary subjects and later on, succeed in becoming an important part of their society.
The above points may be difficult for some to digest but unless we don’t remove our weaknesses, we would never be able to best utilize this important organ of our lives and society.