Untold Facts

Madarasa: Must be Closed Down for Attaining Vision 2021?

Romantic Professor

A University Professor in the presence of a Minister, some public representatives and academicians has predicted in course of a discussion in a posh hotel in Khulna on the 5th September (09) that all Madarasas must be closed down immediately for attaining ‘Vision 2021’. That was how a news item was published in a Dhaka Bengali daily on the 6th morning. The news item said further that there was some protests right then to the comment by some political activists of opposition parties of the Government, possibly, followers of enthusiastic Islamic faith.

Romantic Vision

The so-called Vision 2021 is nothing of the Professor’s own but of the Awami League Government now running the country since January 09. In this sense the comment he made for closing down the Madarasas for Vision 2021 is an agenda for implementation by the Government. It is thus crystal clear that he spoke for the Government both for the vision and for closure of the Madarasas, no matter if he is an active member of the Awami League or not. He seems to be nothing but a GOPALBHAR of the backward feudal Bengal’s silly past legacy.

Three ‘Secular’ governments

People in the know of things of the past two governments of the same genre have no hesitation to confirm that their earlier two versions of 1972-75 and the 1996-2001 had the same or exact intension in regard to the age old and historically one and a half millennium Madarasa learning and education in the Muslim world and so also for about 1000 years in the Bangladesh territory. But why the repeated romanticism and yet each time in the past ended in fiasco, if not this time.

What Vision 2021

Let us take first what Vision 2021 means? I have tried to know the details as a septuagenarian retired educator from all accessible sources including the Government but I must admit that I have not been able yet to specifically identify the bits and pieces of the Vision 2021. My experience as a life long educator ending the last life time decade in a private university education faculty as its head that development of the highest quality of manpower is the sine a qua non for any meaningful vision ahead of any society and country. There is as such no disagreement that we must employ all our available resources for development of manpower expertise through quality learning at all levels and meaningful youth education and training towards continuing life long education.

Comprehensive learning

Education of human child is not merely limited to training of physical natural instincts but also of all faculties commensurate with one’s inborn ability that mysteriously remains unequal. In addition, education must at the same time provide for human attitudes and qualities that are essential for corporate living in society with many others alongside. In other words, education means acquirement of cognitive knowledge, skill to face life from childhood to the end and positive attitude to life for useful social living. Secular education provides for the first two requirements but not for the third, that is, of attitude formation. That is where the controversy remains and continues between secular and non-secular religious education. The controversy is not only a matter of Bangladesh but of all civilized society. Western education is largely secular but even so they have kept religion in the system for essential need for attitude formation. Learning to live as a good law abiding citizen, an essential learning package at the early secondary education in all countries is nothing but curriculum implementation for right and positive attitude formation.

Learning of Muslims

Education of the Muslim children since the days of the Great Prophet in the early seventh century and continuing since then was designed for comprehensive personality building inclusive of the three main essentials and though known as Madarasa education in Arabic term but are both schools of elementary learning, on the one hand, and colleges and university of higher learning, on the other. The history and past proud legacy of the Muslims are that such comprehensive learning made them not only useful productive workers but also worthy citizens armed with spiritual powers. This is not to deny that there has been no depreciation in the system for various reasons, one being the fall in political power and the other in decline of learning areas. Thus the West, who borrowed from the Muslims learning in the middle ages despite crusades for two hundred years, thrived in but the Muslims declined. Lapsing into despair, on the one hand, and getting addicted to poorly perceived Sufism, on the other, made the things still worse for the Muslims all over their own places. The ill fate of colonialism made another big blow to their own self-confidence so much so that they took shelter to the mosques and age-old curriculum of learning in almost all Madarasa. Bangladesh remained no exception to the unfortunate reality despite ‘independence’ and self-rule of the Muslim majority people. The unending tussle of the so-called secularists and the non-secularists is on since about six decades now after the foreign colonialists left the land and the people enjoying self-rule since 1947. The tussle this time in 2009 sponsored and supported by the government of brute majority has reached a pinnacle when the Professor of Economics seems risen to lend support to the present government. There is nothing unusual in his lending support, but being an economist educator there are few riddles to reckon with.

Riddles

The first riddle is that as upholder of the theory of free market economics as the great teacher Adam Smith initiated and pursued by many others during the last two centuries, unfortunately abandoned ethics and morality from his noted thesis of Wealth of Nations (1776), amazingly despite the fact that he taught Ethics and Morality in his early career as a university professor in Britain. Unfortunately, when the ethics and morality was abandoned for greed, only material gain and heartless profit making as he did in propounding the free market economy, the teacher could not have been respected as any good and compassionate human being. Thus I would have thought that no economists should poke their dirty nose in educational curriculum making. After all economics is nothing of any original subject of learning as it only until recently remained a small part of political science (political economy). On the contrary Political Science along with Ethics and Morality remained essential learning materials of Philosophy itself considered as the original subject of learning since at least about two and a half millenniums. Islamic learning had the same feature from the very beginning and had mutual exchanges in the heydays of the Muslims based at Baghdad and Cairo in early middle ages, in particular, keeping full conformity with the basic Islamic learning of the Al Quran, Ahadis and pure monotheism or Tawheed for comprehensive learning for development of Muslim personality in both secular and spiritual matters.

Philosopher’s Job

Curriculum making need be almost an exclusive matter for the philosopher who sees life as a wholesome one just as Plato prescribed for his design of PHILOSOPHER KING (Plato, The Republic, Penguin, 1955, p.304). Making Philosopher King does not mean everybody to get training to become king but for indication of the apex only leaving others in the various levels and process as workers for various vocations and professions. In a way that would be both vocationalization of educational levels and for training in producing law abiding citizens imbued with loyalty based on ethics and morality for employment in needful socially productive jobs. To my understanding the Muslims in a way followed the Plato model for learning and education. In fact, the Muslims had interactions with the West in matters of learning and education, and so both benefited from each other. Tragedy followed latter due mainly to colonization of the Muslims by the West and gradual secularization of European education that they imposed them in the colony, and succeeded partly, not fully. The partial failure kept Madarasa education to survive in almost all Muslim lands though in depreciated form but not in full potential as that existed before. I am afraid what the present Government has been trying to do is to foster the British secular system otherwise known as the Macaulay prescription for producing ‘interpreters’ and not wholesome learned and trained balanced human personality.

Illusion and reality

There is still debate in the West and elsewhere if the West is one hundred percent secular or founded on Christian ethics, morality and values. In social reality, say Britain, the nursery of democracy and also of ‘secularism’ has no written constitution and mainly governed by Conventions and Usages that are all based on Christian Values, Ethics and Morality. But whatever amount of secularism is now practiced there that has been doing more harm than good. Their family values have eroded, institution of marriage is a despised thing, living together without marriage and wedlock is common thing there, illegitimate child is not considered anything bad as such. These have spread in the name of ‘freedom and secularism’ and hostility towards religious ethics and moral values. Or in other words, these are the widespread vices in the West; they cannot be anything other than serious vices for they have been destabilizing natural bondage of family values and human society and creating new chaos every day. Fortunately Muslim societies are still largely free from these social vices not for ‘benefit’ of secular education, much less for science and technology, but for integrated learning curriculum as the Madarasa education provides.

Dishonest History Professors

In Bangladesh there are some dishonest historians and professors of History who as well found taking recourse to mutilating Muslim history in the recent days, obviously by the sponsorship of the then ‘Secularist’ government in as much as in school-college secular textbooks against alone Muslim history and proud legacy. One example I came across is a textbook written by three History Professors that mentioned in the text that the Muslim women following the Hindu widows used to get self immolation in the funeral pyres of dead husbands (See, Classes XI- XII History Textbook, published by the Open University in 1998/2000, p.135)! Funeral pyre is a common system for well off non-Muslims and not for Muslims. Muslims religiously take such burning of dead bodies in open as inhumanly beastly and religiously HARAM or forbidden. How could such Professors of History be given charge for framing textbooks?

Identity Question

The romanticism for closing down the Madarasa by not only the Professor but by the present Government that had the same intention in 1996-2001 but failed and also tried in some blanket way in removing almost all Muslim and Islamic symbols and insignia from government institutions during 1972-75 remains there as self immolating so far as Islamic beliefs and values were concerned. They did not only scrap off the Quarnic inspirational Ayahs from the emblem of say, Dhaka University (RABBI JIDNEE ILMA- Oh Lord Creator, expand my knowledge), and from the Dhaka Education Board the previous emblem (IQRA BISME RABBIKAL LAZI KHALAQ- Read in the name of thy Creator Allah), apart from leaving off Quran Tilawat at the very onset of independence and outset of 1972 but modified later on due to public pressure the abandonment with reciting along with other religious books. These misdeeds of identity scrapping away of the Muslims alone and not of other religious people had all been prompted by the academicians as one renowned Professor (Later on died as national Professor and buried in national honor) frankly admitted to me sometime before his death that it was he who proposed the abandoning the term ‘Muslim’ from the appellation of the Jahangirnagar (Muslim) University (Savar), as the then Government did for the Salimullah Muslim Hall, Fazlul Haq Muslim Hall of Dhaka University, etc. To make the long story short it may safely be concluded that the game of sham secularization and so the intent to close down the Madarasa is thus fraught with grave danger against the long established identity of the Muslims who constitute 90% of the 150 million population of Bangladesh as in 2009.

Author:M.T. Hussain
11 September 2009