{"id":110212,"date":"2020-12-29T18:40:01","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T01:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=110212"},"modified":"2020-12-29T18:40:01","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T01:40:01","slug":"dealing-with-islamist-madrasas-to-mainstream-or-to-ban-them-altogether","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/12\/29\/dealing-with-islamist-madrasas-to-mainstream-or-to-ban-them-altogether\/","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with Islamist madrasas: To mainstream or to ban them altogether?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

According\nto a news item carried in The Island\/December 28, 2020, Russian Ambassador in\nColombo Yuri Materiy forewarned Sri Lanka\u2019s Minister of Public Security Retired\nRear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera that extremist Islamic terrorist organizations\nmay channel funds to their Lankan counterparts on the pretext of extending\nCOVID-19 aid. \u2018In response the Minister said that after the war a new strategy\nhad been formulated by the then Sri Lankan government to increase the\nintelligence battalions from 3-7 and deported nearly 160 madrasa scholar\nleaders who under the guise of religious studies were spreading hate and\nextremist propaganda\u2019. He also told the Russian diplomat that the previous\nyahapalanaya dismantled that intelligence network, and that the present\ngovernment is engaged in remedying the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\npopular Qatar newspaper Gulf Times, quoting Reuters\/Islamabad,  reported\nApril 30, 2019 that Pakistan was planning to take over a network of over 30,000\nmadrasas as part of a drive to \u2018mainstream\u2019 the Islamic schools by bringing\nthem under state control. This information was provided by a Pakistani military\nspokesman. The madrasas mentioned were often accused of radicalising Pakistani\nyoungsters. Groups of madrasa-educated young men were held responsible for\nterrorist attacks in India and Afghanistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nwas global pressure on Pakistan to control this trend. But it was a complicated\nissue as, according to the news report, these madrasas are the only schools\navailable for millions of poor children to obtain any education at all in the\ndeeply conservative Muslim country. Anyway, the new government under Prime\nMinister Imran Khan decided to introduce reforms to madrasa education; PM Khan\nvowed not to tolerate extremist groups operating in his country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nmadrasa education system in Pakistan was criticised for reasons including the\nfollowing: children spend most of their time memorising the Quran; it is ill\nequipped for the modern world; some madrasas have become nurseries for breeding\nmilitant outfits. This seems to be why, as General Asif Ghafoor said, the\ngovernment had decided to \u2018mainstream\u2019 the madrasa system (i.e., incorporate it\ninto the regular state controlled school system, which is what some politicians\nhave suggested in relation to the same problem in Sri Lanka – RRW).  \u2018An\nIslamic education will be provided, but there will be no hate speech\u2019, Gen.\nGhafoor added. Religious schools would be brought under the ministry of\neducation and other subjects would be incorporated into their syllabuses. \u2018The\nbenefit will be that when children grow and leave these institutions, they will\nhave the same career opportunities that those coming from a private school\nhave,\u2019 Ghafoor said. \u2018We want to end violent extremism in Pakistan and that\nwill only happen when our children have the same education and opportunities.\u2019\nSo much for the Gulf Times news report about the issue of madrasa education in\nthe Muslim majority Pakistan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But\nwhile thus tackling the domestic issue of controversial Islamist madrasas, PM\nImran Khan, had trilateral talks at UN New York with his counterparts in Turkey\nand Malaysia in September 2019 to jointly launch an anti-Islamophobia TV to\ncounter \u2018misperceptions\u2019 of Islam, according to the Voice of America (VOA). No\ndoubt, these and other possibly well meaning leaders of Islamic nations have a\ndaunting task defending their religion to the rest of the world amidst growing\nglobal concerns generated by Islamist extremism.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incidentally, \nthe Arabic word madrasa means  any type of school, an institution of\neducational instruction, secular or religious. However, in Sri Lanka where the\nMuslims are a minority of about 9.7% of the population, the term is understood in\nthe exclusive sense of \u2018a school for Islamic religious instruction\u2019. In the\npresent context in Sri Lanka, the word madrasa carries connotations of\nreligious extremism, intolerance and violence towards the vast majority of\nmultireligious Sri Lankans including mainstream Muslims who do not subscribe to\nIslamic fundamentalism. It must be stressed that this negative perception is\nnot due to any intrinsic fault of the mainstream  Muslims or of the rest\nof the non-Muslim Sri Lankans; it is because of the relatively recent emergence\n(say, during the past 50 years) of unmistakeable signs of Islamic\nfundamentalist activity in the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pakistan\nhas always stood by Sri Lanka as a steadfast friend in critical situations. Her\nexperience with Islamist madrasas and the unconservative leadership of \nprime minister Khan  provide great inspiration for Sri Lankan leaders in\ndealing with Sri Lanka\u2019s own Islamist extremism, which has grown with the\nconnivance, and probably the cooperation of opportunistic politicians. However,\nthe Pakistan government\u2019s policy of dealing with madrasas cannot be duplicated\nin Sri Lanka because there are important differences between the two mutually\nfriendly countries that far outnumber any similarities we might think of, in\nterms of geography, history, total population, demographic composition,\nliteracy rate, religio-cultural diversity, mode of governance, and the rest.\nWith its roughly 212 million (2018 estimate) population living on its nearly\n882,000 square kilometre area, and its population density of 244.4\/km2<\/sup>, Pakistan is the fifth most populous country in the world and has\nglobally the second largest Muslim population (which is 96.28% of the country\u2019s\ntotal). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nstatistics dwarf Sri Lanka in comparison: its population is only about 21.8\nmillion (2019 estimate) with a population density of  327\/km2<\/sup>. Very nearly 75% of the\npopulation are ethnically Sinhalese and over 70% of the population profess\nBuddhism (which is not actually a religion in the sense that Christianity and\nIslam are religions, though most ordinary Buddhists are harmlessly or\ninnocently ignorant of the fact). In terms of access to education, children of\nSri Lanka – irrespective of ethnicity, and the economic and social background\nof parents – have enjoyed  free education provided by the state from\nkindergarten to university since 1944 (that is, since four years before\nindependence). The government school system largely consists of secular\nunsegregated  (10,000+) schools, in addition to many institutions of\ntertiary education including sixteen public universities. These are common to\nstudents from all racial and religious backgrounds. The pre-university school\ncurriculum includes religious instruction according to the students\u2019 specific\nreligious identity: Buddhist students study Buddhism, Christian students\nChristianity, Hindu students Hinduism, and Muslim students Islam. It is likely\nthat, at present, school children are taught, in the barest outline, the very\nbasic doctrinal elements of other belief systems than their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over\nthe past four decades, in addition to the government school system, there has\nalso been an expanding network of fee levying English medium \n\u2018international\u2019 schools teaching UK and US syllabuses. No formal teaching of\nreligion features in them, as far as I know. Local students who enroll in these\nschools usually belong to the monied class.  They gain access to the\ngenerally much coveted English medium education provided by international\nschools. A larger proportion of students attending these schools are naturally\nchildren of parents who work in business and the professions (doctors,\nengineers, lawyers, accountants, etc.) Now, historically, Muslims started\ncoming to Sri Lanka as traders at least eight hundred years ago, mainly looking\nfor spices  and  later some of them settled in Sri Lanka, having got\nmarried to local Sinhalese women. Even today the Muslim community is strongly\nassociated with commerce, and is considered economically better off than\nothers, though the lot of ordinary Muslim citizens is the same as that of their\ncounterparts in the other communities, who together form the common masses.\n(Ironically, the two brothers Imsath Ibrahim and Ilham Ibrahim who blew\nthemselves up on Easter Sunday in 2019, respectively, at  Shangrila and\nCinnamon Grand hotels in Colombo, are sons of the fabulously rich spice\nmerchant Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim; the two young men in their early 30s were well\neducated, and were themselves well established in their own businesses, but\ndeeply and dangerously radicalized by the Jihadist ideology. They had undergone\nthe sort of ideological brainwashing that the mushrooming Islamist madrasas are\naccused of providing.)     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\nare also schools that are supposed to usually cater to children from specific\nreligious backgrounds, namely, Buddhist, Catholic\/Christian, Hindu, and Muslim.\nBuddhist schools, being inclusive, usually accommodate children from minority\nreligious backgrounds as well; so do Christian schools; in some of the latter\nthe majority of the students are Buddhists as they are in the majority. Hardly\nnoticed divisions based on religion and language are not subjects that excite\nlittle enthusiasm among ordinary Sri Lankans but for the predatory interest\nthat politicians take in them.  Just to mention the number of Muslim\nschools for the purpose of this esay,  there are 749 Muslim schools and\n205 madrasas, with an Islamic University (the Jamiya Nalimeey at Beruwala). All\nthis is to show that there is no need for Islamist (not Islamic) madrasas for\nthe education of the children of the Muslim minority in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Although\nSri Lanka\u2019s Constitution confers the foremost place to Buddhism considering\ncertain important historical reasons and existing ground realities that cannot\nbe overlooked without violating the human rights of the majority community, it\nis by no means the official or state religion of the country (unlike Islam in\nPakistan). The uniqueness of Buddhism as a practical, profoundly ethical but\na-religious spiritual teaching is today taken for granted, especially among\nintellectuals. However, in mundane practice, it assumes the normal attributes\nof an ordinary religion, with a religion\u2019s inherent \u2018worship\u2019 element (= the feeling or expression\nof reverence and adoration for a deity); \u2018deity\u2019 element is replaced by the\nTriple Gem (Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha), a kind of an impersonal Buddhist Sacred\nTrinity. Buddhism therefore is highly compatible with principles of modern\nsecular democracy, which is arguably the best form of government so far\nevolved, provided it is followed true to its letter and spirit. Islamic\nfundamentalists do not believe in such things as \u2018man-made\u2019 democracy (and the\nhuman rights it defines) as opposed to what is \u2018divinely decreed\u2019 in their\nsacred book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For\nPakistan, as it appears, its madrasas can only be a problem because of their\nnegative impact on that country\u2019s relations with non-Muslim majority countries.\nWithin the country itself, it can create problems for the religiously diverse\n3.72% minority, which it is the duty of the government to manage, because\nreligious freedom is constitutionally recognized in that country. However, the\nreligiosity of the Muslim majority and the ignorance of some minority members\nregarding, for example, the blasphemy law that is adopted in the sharia-based\nPakistan can bring trouble to the latter, as in the \u2018notorious case\u2019 (BBC) of\nAsia Bibi, pauperised Christian mother of two daughters, who was condemned to\ndeath by hanging on blasphemy charges in 2010, but was lucky enough to be\nacquitted for lack of evidence, and managed to migrate to Canada with her\nfamily in 2019 after nearly ten years in prison in solitary confinement. She\nwas held in solitary confinement allegedly to protect her from other inmates,\nwhich was sensible given that it was her bigoted Muslim neighbours who for days\non end cried for her blood for committing the crime of blasphemy (by insulting\nthe founder of their religion) and terrorised her family until she was\narrested. Two politicians who were prominent among those who actively\nsympathised with the woman were assassinated before the Supreme Court of\nPakistan acquitted her in October 2018 on the basis of \u2018insufficient evidence\u2019;\nabout six months later she was helped to migrate to Canada. The relevance of\nthis story to the madrasa issue goes without saying. A book dealing with her\nordeal titled \u2018Free at Last\u2019 jointly authored by Asia Bibi  and\nAnne-Isabelle Tollet was published just three months ago in September 2020 by\nAmazon.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nthe rapid emergence of increasingly sophisticated digital communications\nsystems and the exponential growth of internet telecommunication based social\nmedia platforms, people across the globe, predominantly the young, are gaining\naccess to all forms of knowledge including that about traditional religions,\nmost of which have so far been regarded as infallible divine revelations beyond\nthe human capacity to question. Free exchange of views both in support of\nreligious beliefs and against them is the norm. Instead of blasphemy laws,\nwhich could differ from religion to religion, there are common social media\nguidelines that guarantee rational civilized healthy construction of various\ntypes of human knowledge and cultural expression. This is a challenge to\nfundamentalists of all descriptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now\nthe criticisms that the Pakistani authorities recognised concerning the madrasa\neducation system under fire in that country are the same as or very similar to\nthose raised by the Buddhist monk activists against the Islamist \nmadrasas: children studying in them are subjected to a very narrowly religion\nbased type of instruction, that is not equipped for the modern world; the\nchildren learning in them are not allowed to interact with non-Muslim children;\ntheir mode of dress is different; girls go about completely covered from head\nto foot in black, which is very inconvenient in hot weather that is normal in\nthe country; their appearance in public causes fear and suspicion in others;\nthe young madrarasa boys and girls cannot indulge in any recreational\nactivities including listening to songs and music, or watching films.\nIncidentally, Abdul Razik, secretary of Ceylon Thawheed Jamaath (CTJ), told the\npresidential commission on Easter Sunday attacks that music and dancing and\neven listening to a song on the radio is contrary to the Islamic teaching. He\nhad previously formed the Sri Lanka Thawheed Jamaath (SLTJ) organization with\nZaharan Hashim who led the Easter Sunday suicide bomb attacks. Razik left SLTJ\nto form the CTJ. (The monks point out that extremist Islamist groups only\npretend to break up into splinter groups as a strategy to deflect the attention\nof the authorities away from their central objective to which they are\ncollectively committed and severally contribute in secret.) Abdul Razik\u2019s\nrejection of music and dancing as contrary to Islam is in conformity with his\nextremist religious ideology.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ironically,\nit is already more than six years since American Muslim hip-hop artist Hisham\nD. Aidi started exploring\n\u2018the significance of music for transnational Muslim consciousness, asking his\nown question: What happens when American musical traditions, infused with the\nunique history of American Islam as a voice of resistance, find new audiences\nin Muslim-majority societies?\u2019 The answer to this question is emerging now in\nsome majority Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia where young people who\nare getting fed up with the restrictions imposed on them by their conservative\nrulers. According\nto G\u00fcney Akg\u00fcl, a lawyer-turned-Lindy Hop teacher, \u2018Istanbul is a chaotic city\n<\/p>\n\n\n

[of 15 million people]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

and there aren’t a lot of places to relax, but in Lindy\nHop, you can express yourself at the fullest level\u2019. In Indonesia, recently, a\nSinhala music video titled \u2018Adambarai\u2019 produced by local pop musician Iraj\nWeeraratne went viral after being played in a pub there, and it received more\nthan 5 million hits within a short time and dozens of young Indonesians\nteenagers of both sexes have turned out Tik Tok videos featuring themselves\nsinging and dancing in various indoor and outdoor settings. With a population\nof over 267 million, and nearly 87% of it Muslim, Indonesia is the most\npopulous Islamic country in the world, but Islamism is not popular in that\ncountry.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Children\nand youth are the most precious wealth just as much as the most productive\nresource of a country. They are the most creative, and the most forward looking\nsection of any community. The hip hop or rap music craze that is sweeping\nacross some Islamic countries is both a non-violent protest against the\noppressive religious conservatism of their parents and a celebration of a life\nthat is getting increasingly free from it. This is comparable to something that\nhappened in our country recently. There was a spontaneous  resurgence of\nyouth creativity in two departments  in Sri Lanka inspired by new hope in\nthe wake of the election of a non-politician as president in November 2019: a\nwave of wall painting by volunteering young amateur artists whose central\nthemes included celebrating the victorious assertion of national identity and\nunity just shown, environmental preservation, memorable moments of history,\nindustrial development, etc.; almost paralleling this, a self-motivated\ncooperative movement emerged, initiated by a young man (Nalaka Senadheera of\nDedigama near Kegalle, himself a dramatist, poet and writer) that started\nrecultivating rice paddy lands lying abandoned and fallow in various parts of\nrural Sri Lanka; it caught the enthusiastic attention of young Sri Lankans at\nhome as well as abroad. It is doubtful whether our jaded old politicians took\nsufficient notice of these manifestations of youthful\npatriotism.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five or six weeks ago,\nmedia reported that Minister of Education Prof. G.L. Peiris indicated in\nparliament that the madrasas would be brought under the country\u2019s normal\neducation system, and that he had a responsibility to bring it under his\nministry\u2019s supervision. He probably didn\u2019t understand that he was biting more\nthan he could chew. This sort of cloud cuckooland palliative response to the\nissue of Islamist madrasas is simply astonishing (but again, not surprising\ngiven his past record) from a senior politician in the aftermath of the Easter\nSunday suicide bombings that caused such mayhem, for which all politicians who\nmade it to parliament in recent times (including before 2009) up to the end of\nYahapalanaya bear some responsibility. There is no doubt that madrasa type of\neducation was responsible for the indoctrination of those young Jihadist\nsuicide bombers. A few days later, minister Wimal Weerawansa, in an obvious\nallusion to his cabinet colleague\u2019s  ill conceived suggestion regarding\nthe madrasa issue, expressed the opposite view that the Islamist schools should\nbe banned within Sri Lanka, for they are a hotbed of dangerous religious\nmonomania and terrorism, enough evidence for which has been revealed at the\ncommissions of inquiry appointed by the government. Wimal Weerawansa\u2019s proposal\nis sure to go down well with the majority of ordinary mainstream Muslims who\nare themselves victims of Islamist extremism and who are not represented by the\nold time-servers that they have for politicians.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala According to a news item carried in The Island\/December 28, 2020, Russian Ambassador in Colombo Yuri Materiy forewarned Sri Lanka\u2019s Minister of Public Security Retired Rear Admiral Sarath Weerasekera that extremist Islamic terrorist organizations may channel funds to their Lankan counterparts on the pretext of extending COVID-19 aid. \u2018In response the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}