PukhtunWomen

Can Madrassas Save Pakistan’s Failing Education System?

By Alex Stonehill

Older students like these study for high degrees in Islamic Law or Arabic Literature, but job opportunities in these fields are scarce.

Peshawar, PAKISTAN--Rows of adolescent boys kneel in an open marble courtyard, dwarfed by the oversized, yellowing Arabic texts opened before them. Murmuring under white knit prayer caps, their small bodies sway in rhythm with their hafiz (memorization of the verses of the Koran by rote). The entryway is adorned by a faded poster of Mulana Sami al-Haq, the owner of the sprawling grounds of the Dar al-Haqqania Madrassa and Principle Administrator to its 3000 students. Shrouded in green, he holds a Koran in one uplifted arm and a Kalashnikov in the other.

Scenes like this one strike fear into the hearts of local and Western politicians alike, who fear that madrassas in this troubled country are the breeding grounds for the next generation of Islamic terrorists.

“Madrassas are a permanent problem in our society” says Afrasiab Khattak, General Secretary of Pakistan’s Awami National Party, “As long as they exist they will produce terror.” Secular leaders like him know al-Haq as a key supporter of the Taliban and accuse him of sending thousands of boys only a few years older than these over the border to Afghanistan to meet their destiny in battle against American soldiers. They see the thousands of Islamic religious schools here in North West Frontier Province and throughout the country as a threat to Pakistan’s future and the possibility of stability in the region.

But madrassas have a long history in Pakistani society, even prior to the recent emergence of radical strains of Islam, and today close to 70% of children receive at least some part of their education in a religious setting. In a country with a literacy rate that barely scrapes in at 20% by some estimates, and where few families have the money to send children to private or government schools, the free education that madrassas offer is often the only option.

Dar al-Haqqania’s opulent grounds stand in stark contrast to the poverty of the surrounding area. Though some funding is raised locally, a large portion comes from wealthy donors in the Gulf States.

But it is more than just economic need that draws students to madrassas. In this highly religious society, where the government is often seen as unstable and corrupt, mullahs and religious leaders like al-Haq have a reputation as more reliable providers of social services like education. While only a tiny percentage of Pakistanis actually pay their income tax, all practicing Muslims – more than three quarters of the population- pay zakat, 2.5% of personal income that must be devoted toward alms. Zakat produces almost 70 billion rupees ($1.16 billion) a year in private philanthropy, much of which goes toward the funding of madrassas like Dar al-Haqqania.

“Mosques and madrassas are the key stakeholders in Pakistan’s civil society” says Tahseen Ullah Khan, the Chief Coordinator of the National Research and Development Foundation “they are the institutions that must be used to promote social development.”

With this goal in mind, Khan has spearheaded the Salaam Project, which aims to reform the religious sector from the inside out. The goal of the project is to build new mosques and madrassas, starting in areas devastated by last year’s earthquake, and use these religious institutions to promote social development and provide civic education through a human rights-based curriculum.

“If we were to open secular schools, no locals would contribute to them – all the money would have to come from outside and the institutions would not be trusted locally,” says Khan, who was partially educated in a madrassa himself, “Religious institutions are the only way we can reach the people who are most vulnerable to manipulation by extremists.”

Khan’s office is piled high with booklets with titles like Islam and Women’s Rights, Ulama (Islamic Scholars) and Development and The Religious Foundations of Jihad, all written and published by Khan himself. These tracts go directly to the source, quoting the hadith (recorded sayings and actions of the prophet) and the Koran in an effort to show how the true messages of Islam have been manipulated to suit the private agendas of extremists. He hopes to engage established religious scholars and teachers into the efforts of the Salaam Project using personal ties in the community, and to provide them with trainings on how to use Islam to approach crucial social issues and break down prejudices against non-Muslims.

While religious scholars command great influence in Pakistani society, interpretations of basic texts vary widely. Khan hopes his publications will become regular curriculum in religious schools.

Although the Salaam Project still exists mostly in the mind of Khan and a small cadre of supporters, it is already proving to be a dangerous undertaking for him. He says his home has been attacked twice in recent years, aggression which he believes was a direct reaction to his work for religious reform. In the most recent attack his two year old son was held at gunpoint for over two hours while the house was ransacked. Though the assailants were Afghani, Kahn says he suspects that they were hired by the ISI, the Pakistani army’s intelligence service.

Whether or not his suspicions are true, the ties between religious extremists, the Pakistani Military and the Musharaf government seem to be common knowledge in Pakistan.

“Ever since the Seventies under [General Zia al-Haq] these jihadis have worked under the guidance of the military,” says Dr. I.A. Rehman, Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “They have not disappeared under Musharaf. Even now they act as an auxiliary force in the war in Kashmir.”

After 9/11, when Pakistan was first engaged as an ally in the War on Terror, Musharaf took public steps to regulate madrassas, introducing a plan to register all of the country’s religious schools and channel funding toward reforming their curriculum. Khan believes this was a hollow political move meant only to appease the West, and says it only succeeded in superficial gains.

“Musharaf’s own ministers publicly refused to implement these policies, and they ended up giving this funding to the same old religious leaders without backing it up with any oversight,” he argues. “The same old ideas were there, but now maybe they had a computer in the school to help them execute it.”

Back at the Dar al-Haqqania Madrassa, thirty kilometers outside of Peshawar, Sami al-Haq’s son Rashid, a teacher at the school and editor of its newspaper, denies claims that his students are being taught extremism. He says he resents the steady stream of journalists that have visited, who he says unfairly paint Dar al-Haqqania as a fundamentalist madrassa. But a talk with one of the younger students here reveals opinions that most Americans would describe as extreme.

Tahseen Khan plans to publicize the Salaam project just before next year’s elections in hopes that the added spotlight on Pakistan’s politicians will create public pressure to support it.

"When an Islamic government was imposed in Afghanistan there was peace, justice and equality" says Hassan, age 15, fresh from his hafiz class, who says he hopes to become an engineer, “I would like to see a Taliban style government here in Pakistan.”

Although Rashid admits that study of secular subjects is important if graduates hope to secure a job outside the religious sphere, he believes that madrassas are only responsible for training Islamic scholars or providing the religious dimensions of a well rounded education. He adds that many of his students also attend secular schools to learn worldly subjects – though this option is only open to those who can afford it – and he claims that his school follows the government curriculum when they do teach non-religious subjects.

“We are already doing more than we are supposed to do here,” he argues, “secular education is the responsibility of the government, and they aren’t living up to that responsibility.”

But with the Pakistani government firmly in the hands of a military which saps the vast majority of the budget for its own purposes, it seems unlikely that it will take up this responsibility in the near future. With almost half of the country living below the poverty line, even nominally free government schools-- which are rare and exist mostly in wealthy Punjab province-- remain out of reach for many students who can’t afford the hidden costs of books and uniforms. Secular private schools are an even more costly option generally reserved only for the small middle and upper classes.

Hassan says he has no hope for peace between the Muslim world and the West.

Despite all of their practical shortcomings and limited prospects for post-graduation employment, madrassas remain an attractive option, even if only for the economic relief the free room and board offers to an overburdened family.

Given the grim realities of the Pakistani education system, an innovative project like Salaam may be the only workable solution. But bringing aboard religious leaders like Sami al-Haq – who Khan is already building a relationship with – is going to be a tough first step.

“Mosques and madrassas are the only effective institutions we have in our society,” Khan explains at a late night gathering of secular academics, religious scholars and businessmen who are all backing the Salaam project. “The fact is that Islam is not going away—our only hope is to reform it.”

© 2006 The Common Language Project