Madrassa and Education in Pakistan

28 Feb, 2002    ·   709

Tayyaba Tanvir emphasizes the need for the state to regulate the madrassas and restructure the existing education system
Madrassas and Islamic militancy or Jihad have become synonymous. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan and its ongoing struggle in Indian part of Kashmir are the battleground for these madrassa students. The post-September 11 developments have brought their role into debate. The purpose here is to deal with the reality of “Madrassas” in Pakistan .

 

 

Pakistan ’s active role in the post-Soviet Afghan politics and later in making or breaking various Afghan regimes institutionalized the role of the madrassas also. President Zia-ul-Haq’s domestic policy of sectarian fragmentation of society and its militarization developed these traditional schools on violent lines rather than for educating the masses.

 

 

Madrassas provide a traditional system of education in the Muslim world. However, in the new emerging world where state assumed the role of welfare state, majority of Islamic states remained ignorant and failed to change their character. While the welfares states assumed responsibility for providing the basic necessities of life to the people, the Islamic states deprived their masses of the right to education. Hence their societies got two or more education systems; one, where students were taught and trained in religious schools traditionally known as madrassas, and the other teaching both religious and secular subjects to befit their students for market oriented societies.

 

 

Pakistan unfortunately is an underdeveloped society where education is not the state’s important priority and remains neglected. Its inability to provide education to the masses contributed to the proliferation of madrassas. This has social implications and the state has to share responsibility in this regard; it spends more than 75-80 percent on defense and debt repayment, ignoring social services. The result is that education is only a state symbol.

 

 

Pakistan today has three education systems. One, state controlled or state administered state run schools. The others are those only accessible to the elite class with little or no state control, and the last being madrassas that only offer religious insights. These madrassas have no direct state influence and remain impervious to the state directed curriculum. The state is thus unable to monitor the type of education these institutions provide to students, which makes it difficult for the state to monitor them. They are often run by single persons or by groups having strong sectarian linkages and involved in spreading sectarian hatred and violence. The state’s monitoring of these institutions can help control the rising level of intolerance and sectarian hatred generated by these institutions for their political ends and motives.

 

 

The state needs to bring these institutions into the mainstream educational system and make sure every student goes to schools registered with the government. There is a dire need for restructuring the education system. The government should make matriculation compulsory with secular subjects in the curriculum.

 

 

The madrassas also provide for the economic and social uplift of the families whose children are enrolled there; so the government should make sure these students are provided technical education to earn a respectable living for themselves and be a productive part of the society. The social and psychological gap, and the communication barrier between the students of these madrassas and the students of other institution needs to be bridged over. The political use of madrassas also needs to be monitored and checked by the government.

 

 

In brief, madrassas need to be brought into the mainstream, and the state must provide equal and indiscriminate education in the future. The state’s engagement must depoliticize the role the madrassas have so far played. The government of Pakistan has taken steps in the right direction, but they need to be consolidated as part of a long term policy to restructure the entire education system of the state. 

 

 

 

 

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