Untold Facts

Witch Hunting of Qaomi Madarasa 2009 Style

Witch hunting of Muslim elementary learning
Not anything different from earlier, much less anything desirable but in the old style of witch hunting by the Awami League government as they tried and failed before during the two other terms once again is on that may be termed witch hunting 2009 style. I would try here not of all genres but on the one only in the matter of Muslim children education at the elementary level.

Committee chief versus private citizen
The Parliamentary standing committee on education chief honorable National Assembly Member as his comment published in a national Bengali daily on the10th May that he did not consider Qaomi Madarasa learning anything of education. He had his own idea and view of things that he is free to hold. I may not say anything about his opinion in the matter, and so he could further hold on and assert his own power of the sovereign parliament in the matter. But I cannot ignore my honest feeling and so take this opportunity to express my own opinion about the matter.

British Parliamentary tradition
If we look back a bit seriously and think about the parliamentary tradition in relevance to the matter, we must have the British Parliamentary tradition for guidance. The British Parliament has not only sovereign power subject to the Sovereign power of the Crown but also as they maintain, ‘can do everything except a man a woman or a woman a man’. I would suppose that Bangladesh parliament has also the same level of power as that of the British Parliament as we follow the same model, at least, in facade though not, I am afraid, in quality of content of deliberations as at present, but could be, hopefully, in future.

Sovereignty and personal freedom
Let us ponder over about another point. British people are not the sovereign but the Crown. Sovereignty of the British people and of the British Parliament is subordinate to the Crown. Why this is still so, is a different matter. But the fact of the gamut is that allegiance of the people is divided between the Crown, the power of the Parliament, to the land and geography of Britain and to the rule of law. Despite so much of items of allegiance to, the personal liberty is no less a mean issue but almost equally big one.

Parents option first
One important personal liberty each individual enjoys and so the parents that each and every parents has exclusive option for education of his/her children. The underlying main reason is that it is the parents who gave life to each child and none else. That is why he/she reserves the right to what learning and education he/she would decide to offer to his /her children. The provision of parents’ option known as ‘opting in’ or ‘opting out’ in case of religious lessons is a proof of priority of parents’ choice by passing even the State prescriptions for curriculum. The so-called English Public Schools like Eaton, Harrow, Winchester, etc. but in fact, private schools of exclusive nature and high standard having almost no control of the State or the Government some organized about five hundred years ago by some elite conservatives and also for children of selected parents that also obviously implied parental choice for curriculum for one’s offspring. This is taken to be matter of exclusive personal liberty of the parents that none took away yet, not even the state or even the sovereign power.

Parents options and indoctrination
Although most of the liberal educationists do not accept indoctrination for the plea of socialization as anything of education but only simple brainwashing as it hinders full blooming of children’s potentials obviously in a narrower way that the regimented socialist education curriculum promotes; that could be a hindrance to liberal minded parental free choice of learning materials for his/her children.

One and a half millennium
Qaomi Madarasa keeps up the tradition of the Muslims developed over the one and a half millennium. Parents and communities all over the world, not alone in independent Muslim nations, have kept it going in the tradition. Parents willingly send their children to these institutions. It is a wrong impression that only the poor parents take to this learning for their children. There is no bar that the children sent to Qaomi Madarasa stick to this learning and not beyond. In many cases, after finishing the Qaomi system pupils go and enter even secular general schools. I had the same experience in 1940s, because my parents wanted that way. They disliked me going to secular school direct without making me go beforehand through learning of the Quran in the family run Qaomi Madarasa.

Seventh century initial model
That the Qaomi Madarasa system of the Islamic learning has survived in the Muslim communities since the beginning of the Medina days in the seventh century proves not only its acceptability and popularity but also self-sustaining ability. Parental preference did not lack but remained deep for the learning.

No inhibition for Improvement
It may be that the system may have scopes for improvement in curriculum to keep up with modern needs and for blooming of all inborn innate abilities but that does not mean that the system must be abandoned wholesale.

Atheists agenda and pluralism
It’s true that the agenda of few atheists holding high position is different. But if any such agenda is unpalatable to the Muslim psyche, how that could be imposed from the top? Bangladesh is a plural and democratic country and not a regimented one of any variety of the atheists that they reserved all rights to impose whatever they wished from the top.

Both secular and spiritual
To the Muslims, education is not only a preparation for vocational ends but also at the same time for spiritual goal of natural human life not arbitrarily adopted without any rationale but for inherent human urge and demand for it. No sovereign power of any level could do anything inhibiting this goal of human life that is essentially needed, if not for anything else but for the day today peaceful living of human souls in this world. The Qaomi Madarasas are neither burden of anybody nor their graduates someone’s burdens in the society. Be the real matters as briefly presented above one must wonder if the volleys of evil propaganda against the Qaomi Madarasas en-bloc is yet another witch hunting against the oldest institutional learning tradition of the good Muslims.

Author:M.T. Hussain