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MADRASAH - AN ISLAMIC SCHOOL TO LEARN ŒIGNORANCE
By Sujit Das
Out of all the heinous crimes modern societies have ever witnessed, the
worst one obviously is crime against children. The barbaric violent
acts of brutality against children often leave scars in their soft
minds, which often never heals in their lifetime.
Islam is such a wonderful religion that legalizes many crimes in the
name of God. If there is any Œbeauty¹ in Islam, here it is. In fact
this is the main reason; many condemned criminals (who otherwise are
considered a burden on any civilized society) today are being attracted
towards this wonderful religion. Crime against children is one of such
many legalized crimes. There are many incidents where the keepers of
Islam have shown merciless and cruel treatment towards children child
suicide bombers of Palestine, camel jockeys in Middle East and Islamic
schools all over the world.
Madrasahs are Islamic schools to study pure Islamic ethics (is there
any?). The culprits are the religious teachers and the victims include
helpless innocent underage students. The sacred teacher-student
relation****p is given a new definition in these Islamic schools.
Following is the bitter experience of a 12 years old Madrasah student
from Kenya who was rescued during January 2003.
"It was a terrible place, they chain both legs and both arms, sometimes
hands and feet together, They beat us at lunch time, dinner time and
grab both legs and hands and give us lashes on the buttocks. We sleep
in chains, eat in chains, and go to the toilets in chains. Sometimes we
are hooked on the roof in chains and left hanging. We have to memorize
the Koran and get punished if we cannot recite the Koran in the
classroom".
This is the Œlegal punishment¹ for a student who cannot memorize Koran
in Arabic language. Like wife-beating; child-beating is also
religiously allowed in Islam. Though the prophet of Islam was an
illiterate village idiot and child rapist, he had given some Œvaluable¹
opinion on children¹s upbringing and education. According to Sunan Abu
Dawud Book 2, Number 0495,
Narrated Abdullah ibn Amr ibn al-'As:
The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) said: Command your children to
pray when they become seven years old, and beat them for it (prayer)
when they become ten years old; and arrange their beds (to sleep)
separately.
Prophet was very concerned about their religious upbringing. Ayatollah
Khomeini was even one step ahead of his Prophet. Khomeini said "A man
can have ***ual pleasure from a child as young as a baby² (Paz, 2006).
Like prophet, like follower. Anyway that is a different story.
Chaining incidents are comparatively rare in Banglade**** Madrasahs than
other backward Islamic nations. One major incident took place in
Chittagong, a busy sea****t-city of Bangladesh. More than 20 students
were chained and subjected to inhuman torture. All of them were under
the age of 14 years; some were as young as 11. One such child was
forced to carry a section of a steel railroad tie for at least
one-month continuation.
Child torture incidents in Madrasahs are re****ted mostly in Pakistan,
Afghanistan and Sudan. The first two countries are safe haven for
Islamic radicals, on top of their low economy. Bangladesh is in a much
better position than those countries. There are many Muslim nations
where very little state-fund education is available and the
Saudi-funded Islamic schools are only means of education available.
With the curriculum dominated by the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam,
often these Madrasahs particularly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, have
produced exactly the same type of Jihadis (Atwan, 2006)
In most of the Madrasahs of Pakistan, the only subject taught is Koran,
and that also in Arabic, which is a foreign language and unknown to the
students. By end of 2005, there are about thirty-nine thousands
registered Madrasahs in Pakistan, whereas during 1978, this number was
three thousands only (O'Rourke, 2005). The number of students are
estimated somewhere between eight hundred thousands to one million
(Dalrymple, 2005). They are often run by religious organizations and
lure young children mainly from poor families by providing free food
and lodging. Some of the schools even provide intensive political and
armed training. Recent estimates suggest that between 10 and 15 percent
of Pakistan¹s 46,700 Madrasahs (includes both registered and
unregistered) promote violence openly (Davis, 2002). In Taliban schools
of Afghanistan, often the first word children learn to spell is
³jihad², which means ³God¹s path to paradise². There are at least six
specialized Madrasahs in Pakistan which regularly supplies suicide
bombers to the Taliban. (Al Qaeda Training Manual, 2001). During their
heydays, Talibans had banned watching television, going to school, and
learning modern sciences. Even learning of history, geography, and
mathematics were totally banned and the only activities were the
recitation and the memorization of the Koran. Learning English was a
huge crime (Sohail, 2007). Many Taliban controlled Madrasahs are
sponsored from the outset of Pakistani ISI (Atwan, 2006). In Pakistan
and Afghanistan, still there are some orthodox Madrassh teachers, who
teaches that earth is flat and stationary and sun rotates around the
earth.
In addition to promotion of violence against non-Muslims, often there
are Madrasahs which promote sectarian violence (e.g, between ****a
Sunni etc). Several anti-****a militias such as the Sipah-i Sahaba (army
of Prophet¹s companion) and Lashkari Jhangvi (Jhangvi¹s army) hailed
from extremist Deobandi Madrasahs and maintain close ties with other
terrorist organizations in Afghanistan, Kashmir and elsewhere (Nasr,
2006). The results, we are seeing everyday in Iraq, where not a single
day p***** without sectarian violence and killing.
During 1994, human rights commission of Pakistan investigated the child
abuse incidents and results of the investigation shows that in many
Madrasahs, the children are often locked in iron chains to a heavy
wooden block in group of four or five. When one of them needs to go to
toilet, rest all needs to follow him. Several children were found to
have been continuously chained for up to one year. This prevents them
from escaping from the school to avoid the burden of memorizing the
Koran in Arabic.
During March 1996, police raided a Madrasah near Multan and rescued 64
such victims (Anon, 2004). They were held in strong ropes and chains.
The religious head teacher of the Madrasah said that the students had
fallen into bad habits of watching satellite television. In orthodox
Islamic society watching television is a big religious taboo. The head
teacher also said that, sometimes even the parents of the children
instructed the teachers to chain their children. These incidents not
only leave scars in their hands and feet but also in their soft minds.
In another incident in Pakistan, during September 1997, a 14 year old
student, Muhammad Azam Dogar, somehow managed to escape from the
Madrasah torture chamber with iron fetters still in his legs. It was
not easy for him to remove the heavy iron fetters. In a desperate
effort to remove them, he decided to put them on a rail track. Though
he was successful to escape from the Islamic religious jail, he lost
his life and was crushed to death under the on-coming train (Children
in the Community and family, 2005).
Pakistani government is aware of this kind of heinous crimes against
children. But there is hardly any effort on their part to stop this
barbarism in the name of education. There are laws, which prohibit
violence against children in the society. But when such crimes are
committed in the name of religion the law remains within the book only.
The political parties do not want to spoil their relation****p with
religious organizations that run such schools. Sometimes the
influential religious parties even threaten retaliation if there is
official probing and if they are closely controlled. The political
force of this Madrasah system cannot be underestimated. Hence there are
many cases of beating, chaining and other types of torture, which
remain unknown to the outside civilized world. Even when the abuses
become widely known, the authorities still appear unwilling to take
significant action to protect the innocent children. The situation is
that worse.
The children in Sudan are in even worse situation. There, the students
are forced to drink the water, which is left from wa****ng the dirty
chalkboards (Anon, 2005) where Koranic verses are written. Students are
convinced that, the holy wash-water will help them to memorize Koran! A
great way of memorizing Koran, indeed! Can anybody imagine, all these
things are happening in this 21st century?
The deep-rooted superstitious minds of Islamic teachers will take
another thousand years to change. The only requirement of a student for
the purpose of passing out from the school successfully is to be able
to memorize the entire Koran. Many students take as long as nine years,
whereas many others cannot complete the course and never pass out even
after chaining and drinking wash-water.
Child abuse cases in pure Islamic schools are nothing new. It is
traditional, but hardly few of these incidents come into limelight.
Madrasah is a place for brainwa****ng young minds just to destroy all
the future possibilities of the child to do something creative, and to
make him a Koranic zombie. All the humanities are nipped in the bud.
Countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and some Muslim
majority parts of India, these schools are just mushrooming. They
target children of poor Muslim families. Sometimes the families of the
children are paid handsomely for sending their children to these
schools.
Then, there are several cases of ***ual abuse against children in
Madrasah. Many of these teachers are hardcore paedophiles and
homo***uals. Their only purpose of opening a Madrasah is not spreading
Islamic education but to lure children from poor families for ***ual
pleasure, by providing them free food and lodging. There are re****ted
incidents, where students are forced to engage on oral and anal ***
regularly with their teachers. Though many helpless students suc***b to
such meanness, but occasionally, when a student is dare enough to
reject giving such an inhuman pleasure, the consequences are severe.
One horrible incident was re****ted on 11th December, 2004 in The Daily
Times of Lahore. A 14-year-old Madrasah student, Abid Tanoli, had acid
thrown on his face by his Madrasah teacher. This poor fellow had lost
both his eyes with more than 50 % burn on his face. Left side of his
face was horribly disfigured. This incident took place on 1st July 2002
in Karachi (Petit, 2004). His fault was that he rejected ***ual demand
from his Madrasah teacher. The Daily Times also re****ted that, during
the year 2004, there are total 500 complaints of child *** abuse in
Pakistani Madrasahs, but there was hardly any successful prosecution
(Khawaja, 2004). Presently, the teacher (who cannot be named for legal
reasons), and two of his accomplice are in prison awaiting trial for
attempted murder and rape. All three denied the charges. The fourth
culprit is still absconding. These incidents are increasing in number
every year.
Haroon Tanoli, the father of Abid, was threatened with harsh
consequences when he tried to take up his son's case with officials at
the school. The school authority initially tried to hush up the matter
by offering him a cash payment of one million Pakistani rupees
(£11,300), but Haroon refused to back down and took up the matter with
police (Ansari, 2004).
Haroon said to the journalist, ³I despise hypocrites who s****t huge
beards in the name of religion and hinder the passage of justice in the
name of Islam Š I had a beard, and all my four sons were studying in a
madrasa. However, following this incident, the first thing I did was to
pull my children out of the madrasa - and shave off my beard" (Ansari,
2004).
Even when Abid was receiving medical treatment, the religious
authorities pressed the hospital authority to discharge him. Haroon
managed to get him admitted to a different hospital for safety reasons.
The family is too poor and cannot afford an operation to save his
sight. The poor boy lost his sight forever.
As per BBC re****t on 10th December 2004, Aamer Liaquat Hussian, a
Minister in the nation¹s religious affair department is facing death
threats and denunciations from Islamic clerics for his insistence that
Pakistani government must confront the *** abuse at its Madrasahs
(Anderson, 2004). Hussain sticks by his point and re****tedly to have
said that he himself experienced attempted ***ual abuse at a religious
school when he was eight (Khawaja, 2004).
Zia Ahmed Awan, the president of ŒMadadgaar¹, a joint project of LHRLA
(Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid) and UNICEF, the United Nations
children's fund, said, "They [the *** scandal] are either hushed up and
sorted out within the confines of school, or parents are pressurised
not to re****t the incident to the media as it would give religion a bad
name," (Khawaja, 2004).
The Ulema, Imams and Maulanas and other religious teachers of Islam may
not have advanced the cause of human knowledge by a single inch since
the birth of Islam, but they should get some credit; they have done
enough research, developed many ideas and have Œdoctorates¹ in the
fields of torture and human exploitation in the name of religion.
Now these types of nasty incidents are being re****ted in United Kingdom
also. In UK, there are about 1000 such Islamic schools. As many as 40%
of teachers in these UK schools hit or scold children, and between 15
and 20 cases of ***ual abuse occur each year (Siddiqui, 2006; Anon,
2006). Because of the fear of child abuse, many UK parents prefer home
tuition instead of sending their children to Madrasahs.
One enlightened ex-Muslim lady wrote in FFI,
³My experience of Madrasah was like any other glorifying Muhammad,
chanting things we didn't understand all day long and showing absolute
disrespect to Christians and the other animists it was the thing to
do².( Rasheeda, 2004 )
Often the Madrasah pass out students are found to be less tolerant
towards other religions, less logical power and blockheaded, blissfully
ignorant of modern scientific developments, opposed to the social
rights of women and violent repression, prone to child abuse, hateful
towards non-Muslims, absolute theocracy, superstitious, prefer
aggressive way for resolving disputes between Muslims and non-Muslims
and sup****ting jihad in conjunction with terrorist groups. Their proper
thinking power is skilfully paralysed during the course of their
studies.
After so much torture, chaining, beating and wash-water drinking; the
market value of these students is utter disgusting in today¹s tough
professional competition. With a total lack of modern education and
knowledge of latest technology, these Madrasah students are not at all
useful to any modern day employer. They remain fit for manual
labourers¹ class jobs like sweepers and garbage removers, where no
education is necessary. Sometimes they are employed in the religious
sector as prayer leaders and so-called Islamic scholars or Madrasah
teachers. In fact I am not exaggerating if I say that they are even
unfit for conducting sophisticated terrorist operations their
uselessness is so perfect. The only jobs they are fit for in a
terrorist organization is a suicide mission, killing and torturing
non-Muslims and blindly follow the instructions of their leaders.
The irony of the situation is that many students outside Arab even do
not know what is written in Koran. They just recite the Koran in
Arabic, but they do not understand the contents. They don¹t even know
what they have studied even after pursuing for several years. Is not it
bizarre?
So, all the effort to pass out from schools remains useless for all
practical purposes in today¹s world. They cannot blend into an advanced
western nation. They are total failure in sophisticated operations,
where even basic minimum technical expertise is required. Some of them
even lack basic mathematical skills (Fair & Haqqani, 2005). They are
blissfully ignorant of the various developments and wallowed in a state
of nostalgia about the glorious feudal past of militant Islam. History,
if taught at all, would be Islamic history and not modern history or
world history. Some students may acquire good proficiency in Urdu and
Arabic languages at the best, but without other knowledge they find
themselves quite ill-equipped to transact business in present day
society (Shourie, 2004).
What stuns the educated people is that they do not blame themselves or
their educational-background for their misery; they just put the blame
on western world. ³Afghans suffer poverty because of America¹s
dispro****tionate wealth² this is what Madrasah teachers say in
Afghanistan.
This is the bottom line of Madrasah education. The basic essentials of
a successful education system are never fulfilled. Education involves
transference of knowledge and values ac***ulated by mankind from one
person to another. Humanity is inseparable from education. The best
process of education encourages the students to ask questions, which
propel them on the path of further learning. Without this, education
becomes a burden. Scientific enquiry also enriches mankind with
knowledge. Education improves the reasoning power of a person. Neither
memorization of a book nor physical punishment helps the students.
Students can learn not only through reading, but also by experience, by
watching others and also by observing the world in general.
Unfortunately, Madrasah education lacks all of the above. Education is
an im****tant area to advance the civilization further. If it is left in
the hands of some semi-literates, sadists, paedophiles and homo***uals,
this is bound to happen.
REFERENCE LIST
Books, Thesis, Journal and Newspaper
1. Lindsey A. O'Rourke, (2005) - A Sociobiological View of Palestinian
Suicide Bombers, (Undergraduate Philosophy Thesis) The Ohio State
University; submitted on 7th March, 2005.
2. Atwan A. B (2006), The Secret History of Al-Qa¹ida, pp 74, 152.
Second edition. Clays Ltd, GB.
3. Nasr V. (2006), The ****a Revival How conflicts within Islam will
shape the future, Chapter 5, pp 165. First Edition, Norton, London.
4. Davis C (2002) - ³A² Is for Allah, ³J² Is for Jihad; World Policy
Journal, Spring 2002 issue.
5. Shourie, Arun (2004), India under threat, Part-III, The ticking bomb
inside mosque and Madrasa , The Indian Express (daily newspaper) of
dated 17th December, 2004.
Internet
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release 7th December 2001;
<http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/www.usdoj.gov/ag/trainingmanual.htm>
2. Anderson Paul (2004), Madrasas hit by *** abuse claims, BBC News,
Islamabad, 2004.
<http://www.asiansinmedia.org/news/article.php/current_affairs/1271>
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Chains... <http://users.hubwest.com/prophet/islam/islam.htm>
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<http://www.newkerala.com/news2a.php>
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³Madrasas Are Terrorist Factories² pp-2 ,
<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/redirect/316.php>
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<http://www.secularislam.org/articles/khawaja24.htm#_edn1>
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<http://www.faithfreedom.org/Testimonials/rasheeda.htm>
13. Siddiqui Ghayasuddin (2006), Child Breaking the Taboo of Child
Abuse, Protection in Faith-Based Environments, A Guideline Re****t,
sponsored by The Muslim Institute Trust, Bait al-Mal al-Islami, March
2006.
<http://www.muslimparliament.org.uk/Do***entation/ChildProtectionRe****t.
pdf>
14. Sohail (2007), Reminiscing the Nights and Days of Talibans‹the True
Islam in An Afaghan's eye-witness account of Taliban, Part - 1(an
e-mail exchange with Abul Kasem, published at FFI on 25th June / 2007).
<http://www.news.faithfreedom.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1
375>
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The author can be contacted at counter.jihad@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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