Re: US Senate recommends $3 Billion dollar aid to Pakistan
The development of madrassahs in Pakistan is best explained in the article below
The Madrassa and the State of Pakistan
Religion, poverty and the potential for violence in Pakistan.
by Tariq Rahman
Jamia Haqqaniya Madrassa in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan.
Madrassas have come to be associated with the erstwhile Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, some of whom were students of these institutions. These Islamic seminaries have also been much in the news for sectarian killings and supporting militancy in Kashmir. They are considered the breeding ground of the jehadi culture–-a term used for Islamic militancy in the English-language press of Pakistan.
There was not much writing on the madrassas in Pakistan before the events of 9/11. JD Kraan, writing for the Christian Study Centre, had provided a brief introduction in 1984 and in 1988, AH Nayyar, an academic, had argued that sectarian violence was traceable to madrassa education. Both had used only secondary sources. Later, the present writer wrote a book on language-teaching in the madrassas (Language, Ideology and Power: Language-Learning among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India, OUP, Karachi 2002), which also contained a survey of the opinions of madrassa students on Kashmir, the implementation of the Sharia, equal rights for religious minorities and women, freedom of the media, democracy, and so on. The seminal work on the ulema, and also the madrassas in which they are trained, is by Qasim Zaman. He provides an excellent review of how the traditional ulema can be differentiated from the Islamists who react to modernity by attempting to go back to fundamentalist, and essentially political, interpretations of Islam.
The ulema or the Islamists in Pakistan have been writing, generally in Urdu, in defence of the madrassas which the state sought to modernise and secularise. Two recent books, a survey by the Institute of Policy Studies (patronised by the revivalist, Islamist, Jamat-i-Islami) of the madrassas and a longer book by Saleem Mansur Khalid, are useful because they contain much recent data. Otherwise the Pakistani ulema’s work is polemical and tendentious. They feel themselves besieged increasingly by Western and Pakistani secular critics and feel that they should defend their position from the inside rather than wait for sympathetic outsiders to do it for them (as done by Yoginder Sikand in Himal Southasian in 2001, “The Indian State and the Madrassa”).
Type and number of madrassas
There is hardly any credible information on the unregistered madrassas. However, those which are registered are controlled by their own central organisations or boards. They determine the syllabi, collect registration fees and examination fees. They send examination papers, in Urdu and Arabic, to the madrassas where pupils sit for examinations and declare results.
Central Boards of Madrassas in Pakistan
Name Sub-Sect Place Established
Wafaq ul Madaris Deobandi Multan 1959
Tanzim ul Madaris Barelvi Lahore 1960
Wafaq ul Madaris (Shia) Pakistan Shia Lahore 1959
Rabta-tul-Madaris-al-Islamia Jamat-i-Islami Lahore 1983
Wafq-ul-Madaris-al-Salafia Ahl-i-Hadith Faislabad 1955
At independence there were 245, or even fewer, madrassas in Pakistan. In April 2002, Dr. Mahmood Ahmed Ghazi, the Minister of Religious Affairs, put the figure at 10,000, with 1.7 million students. They belong to the major sects of Islam, the Sunnis and the Shias, but mostly the former, Pakistan being a predominantly Sunni country. Among the Sunni, there are three sub-sects: Deobandis, Barelvis and the Ahl-i-Hadith (salafi). Besides these, the revivalist Jamat-e-Islami also has its own madrassas.
The number of madrassas increased during General Zia ul Haq’s rule (1977-1988). During the war by Islamic Afghan groups in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, the United States sent in money, arms and ammunition through Pakistan which is said to have been used to support the madrassas. Later, presumably because religiously inspired and madrassa students infiltrated across the line of control to fight the Indian Army in Kashmir, they were supported by the Pakistan army (specifically the Inter Services Intelligence agency). However, both the ISI and the madrassas deny these links, and it is difficult to ascertain how many madrassas have increased due to financial aid provided by foreign donors or the Pakistan army.
In an analysis paper for the Brookings Institution in 2001, PW Singer gives the figure of 45,000 for madrassas in Pakistan but quotes no source for this number.
The Saudi Arabian organization, Harmain Islamic Foundation, is said to have helped the Ahl-i-Hadith and made them powerful. Indeed, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, an organization which has been active in fighting in Kashmir, belongs to the Ahl-i-Hadith. In recent years, the Deobandi influence has increased as the Taliban were trained in their seminaries. However, contrary to popular belief, it is not the Deobandi but the other madrassas that have either got registered in large numbers since 1988 or actually increased significantly.
Sect-Wise Increase in the Number of Madrassas
Deobandi Barelvi Ahl-i-Hadith Shia Jamat-i-Islami Total
1988 2002 1988 2002 1988 2002 1988 2002 1988 2002 1988 2002
1779 7000 717 1585 161 376 47 419 97* 500 2801 9880
Source: For 1988 see GOP 1988; for 2002 Report of Sindh Police in Dawn 16 Jan 2003. The other figures have been provided by the Central Boards of madrassas. *This figure in GOP 1988 was for ‘Others’ and not only for the Jamat-i-Islami madrassas. The figure for 2000 given in several sources is 6,761.
However, it should be remembered that the number of Deobandi madrassas is the highest to begin with and they are the ones who are associated with militant policies and revivalist fervour.
Sectarian Divide among Madrassas
Because of the disintegration of the Mughal empire and colonial rule, Indian Muslims felt threatened, disillusioned and frustrated. Some, like Sayyid Ahmed of Rae Bareilly (1786-1831), responded militantly but were defeated. Others, like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1808-1898) learnt English, entered the British bureaucracy and became junior partners of the British in the exercise of power. Still others, blaming Muslims themselves for their loss of power, tried to purify Islam in various ways. The Ahl-i-Hadith (also called Wahabis), the Deobandis, the Barelvis among the Sunnis as well as the Shias created madrassas to preserve and propagate what, in their view, was the correct interpretation of Islam (or maslak = creed). These madrassas are described below.
Increase in the Madrassas
(1988 -2000) (in percentages)
Deobandi 8
Barelvi 90
Ahl-i-Hadith 93
Shia 532
Others Not known
Total 136
Source: Saleem Mansoor Khalid (ed) Deeni Madaris Mein Taleem, IPS, Islamabad 2002.
