CS: The Myth of Madrasas

Easy targets of prejudice and witch-hunts, linking madrasas to terrorism is an entrenched conspiracy theory

Arshad Alam Delhi

A few years ago, sociologists Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey published a study ('The Madrasa myth', New York Times, June 13, 2005) on the social background of terrorists. Profiling 75 terrorists, they found that 53 per cent had college degrees. Of the most famous ones, 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had studied engineering in North Carolina and Mohammad Atta had a degree in, of all things, urban preservation!

In their study, the authors pointed out that there were two PhDs who had joined the call for jehad. In fact, only nine had madrasa education, the ones behind the Bali bombings. And even in this case, the masterminds were college-educated, including two university professors.

Closer home, most members of SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) invariably have modern education. SIMI was formed within a modern institution, the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), and not in a traditional madrasa. This empirical de-link between madrasas and terrorism, however, has had no effect on 'security experts' for whom madrasas remain the breeding ground for terrorism. To their disappointment, even the Muslim-bashing BJP government, while in power, could not establish any link between madrasas and terrorism. However, despite evidence to the contrary, the Deoband madrasa felt the need to hold an anti-terrorism conference and publicly claim that madrasas do not produce terrorists.

The argument that Indian madrasas produce terrorists is partly due to an insufficient and simplistic understanding of this school system and the reluctance to question the political economy of madrasas. It is argued that since madrasas are not open to wider scrutiny, there must be something fishy going on within its walls.

This conjecture is partly valid since madrasas do not open up easily to outsiders. There are two reasons for this. Madrasas have come under negative spotlight since 9/11, making them wary of interacting with the outside world as they do not trust what might be reported about them. The second reason is much more secular. Most madrasas are run like family businesses. Often, the founder of a madrasa also manages the finances of the institute without any transparency. Questions about sources of funding and other such topics are thus most unwelcome.

It is argued that since madrasas are theological institutions, they teach hatred and violence against other religions, which gets imprinted on the impressionable students, making them more susceptible to committing violence against people of other faiths. This argument is deeply sectarian and Islamo-phobic and rests on a constructed 'historic unconscious' of Islam as a violent religion. Indeed, the reality is entirely different.

Like other religions, Islam is theologically plural, which means that even within the religious domain, interpretations of what constitutes 'Islamic' varies to a considerable degree. In the Indian context, this sprectrum of religious pluralism within Islam is manifested by the presence of various schools of thought such as the Deobandis, Barelwis, Ahl-e-Hadis and others. Each of these schools of thought consider their interpretation of Islam to be the correct one.

Madrasas invariably belong to a certain school of thought and tradition. They act as institutions of religious transmission. Although they claim that they teach 'Islam', what they really mean and do is that they teach their version of Islam. Thus, for the Barelwi madrasa, the 'other' is not a Hindu but the Deobandis against whose teaching it cautions its students, lest they stray. Madrasas neither have the time nor the inclination to teach hatred towards other faiths; as of now they are consumed by a debate which is internal to Muslims.

As long as there is evidence produced that there exists a programmatic linkage between the two, it is unfair to talk of madrasas and terrorism in the same vein. Terrorism is a modern phenomenon and is only amenable to fruitful understanding through the cognitive structures of modernity. An average madrasa student does not have the sophisticated technological knowledge required for terrorist activities. More importantly, madrasas do not share the Islamic worldview of terrorist organisations. The truth is that jehadis blame the madrasas for inculcating passivity among its students. Crucially, madrasas sustain themselves on the basis of traditional authority patterns while one of the objectives of terrorism is precisely to break such a system of authority.

Despite such conflicting interests, madrasas get mixed up with any form of discourse on terrorism. To get a sense of why this happens, it is important to understand the political economy of madrasa education in India. Wrecked by the dilapidated school system, madrasas in India are basically schools of extremely poor Muslims where their children can at least learn to read and write. As the system evolved, madrasas recruited their students from among lower castes and poor Muslims while the levers of power continued to be in the hands of upper caste Ashraf Muslims, who, interestingly, don't send their own children to the madrasas controlled by them.

Since political mobilisation among Muslims is mostly done on religious and symbolic issues, access to a decent education has never been an agenda in Indian Muslim politics. Worse still, the State and 'secular establishment' bought the Muslim elite argument that madrasa education was an internal affair of the Muslim community, overlooking the fact that not talking of educational rights of children studying in madrasas is itself a violation of their fundamental right to basic, primary education.

Such a state of affairs was broken by events after 9/11 and the negative publicity that the madrasas drew. However, instead of talking about substantive issues such as the relationship between poverty and madrasas, the debate became dubiously polarised between those accusing the madrasas of terrorism and their passionate defenders. This debate is functional for all sides: for the Islam-bashers for obvious reasons, for the State since it is not being hauled up for not providing educational access to poor Muslims, and for the Muslim leadership which is not being questioned for its myopic and narcissistic politics. And till the time this false debate is on, there is no hope for poor low-caste Muslim students. They have no option but to carry the burden of Islam on their oppressed and tired shoulders.    

 The writer is Lecturer, Centre for Jawaharlal Nehru Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi