September 2, 2005
The madrassah has failed to produce educated men and women who can exercise administrative and moral authority. This is certainly the case in much of the Sunni polity where men and women educated in secular educational institutions have replaced the madrassah-educated men in all affairs of state and society. The failure of the madrassah to produce graduates who can take leadership positions in society is obvious, but it needs to be viewed in relative and not absolute terms, for it is a failure in reference to the apparent success of the state-sponsored secular educational system left behind the colonizers. It is true that madaris have not produced men and women who can compete with the graduates of secular universities in many areas of public life, but what these universities have produced is nothing to be proud of. These educational institutions, supported by the state on tax payers’ money, are, in fact, a greater failure. They are churning out young men and women who are enslaved by the worldview of the colonizers who implanted these educational systems and whose greatest ambitions in life are no more than to become a white man in brown skin. This is a much greater calamity than the failure of the madrassahs running on charity.
A closer look at what is being taught at the state-sponsored secular educational institutions, which have of late been taken over by the private sector which runs them as ludicrous businesses, is simply appalling. It is a curriculum fit for creating a consumption-driven polity, living in total forgetfulness of the higher purposes of life. As instruments of colonization of the minds of the peoples of the former colonies, these educational institutions are based on a thoroughly secularized worldview. They produce men and women who become alienated from their own culture and values and try to ape those whose ideas are instilled in them through the curriculum used in these educational institutions and taught by men and women who have already been co-opted.
The failure of the secular education is, however, no compensation for the failure of the madrassah, though it makes the latter’s failure relative and allows a certain degree of realism in understanding its predicament. The madrassah has failed, but it has failed in its own way. A reform of the madrassah is needed, but if it is to survive the current onslaught, it has to undergo a process of reform based on its own objectives, values, and goals.
Those advocating a whole-sale “modernization” of the madrassah curriculum will simple kill the institution. Such people neither understand the raison d’etre of madaris nor the real nature of modernization. If they succeed in imposing on madaris a curriculum similar to the one being taught in universities and colleges, they will simply choke this old institution that has preserved certain aspects of Islam for centuries. This conclusion is based on two centuries of experimentation with modernization in various parts of the Muslim world. This process has clearly established one basic fact: Islamic polity cannot import products of the Western civilization in a piecemeal fashion, hoping to take the good and leave the bad. A civilization as aggressive as the modern West does not come in small parcels; it arrives with all its accompanying baggage, lifestyles, and values. This civilization is simply incompatible with the revelation-based civilization of Islam.
Of course, the madaris should teach science and technology as well as various Western languages, but they need to do this within their own framework and based on an Islamic worldview. True, the graduates of these institutions need to understand the complexities of the modern world and have qualifications for participating in it, but they need to understand this world from within an Islamic perspective. Only such a process of reform will produce a new generation of graduates who can remain rooted in the vision of Islam while simultaneously be capable of functioning in a world shaped and governed, to a large extent, by technology.
In concrete terms, what the real reform of the age-old institution of the madrassah will entail is none other than the restoration of the purpose and goal of Islamic education, which is concerned with producing men and women who can take leadership roles in society because of their learning, building of excellence of character and expertise. These are the people of discernment (al-ulul-absaar of the Qur’an), who exercise moral authority in society and whose education creates moral excellence. Thus, the graduates of a reformed madrassah would not only understand the working of microchips, they will also be able to critically evaluate its impact on the moral and spiritual fabric of Islamic polity. To be sure, they will have to master technology and the complex workings of technologically-driven economies, but at the same time they will have to be able to correct the disastrous impact of technology-driven and consumer oriented cultural values that are inseparable from these technologies.
The madrassah is a product of Islamic civilization. Islamic civilization as a whole is now faced with a grave challenge stemming from its encounter with modernity which has its home in the West. Thus the present assault on madaris is not an isolated act, but one that is part of a series of steps designed to destroy Islamic civilization and let the Western civilization and all its components become the fate of all humanity. To be sure, it is a fatal encounter. Its range extends from abstract values to the real world of technological products such as the cell phone which has spread like wildfire throughout the Muslim world. Those who are advocating a whole-sale modernization of the madrassah on the pattern of Western-style secular education either do not understand the full implication of this action or have been co-opted; in both cases these latter-day modernists are agents of a change that will destroy yet another aspect of Islam as it is lived in the real world of flesh and bones.
(Concluded)
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