Re: We should not assume.
cricketplaya good post but a little confusing, a few points
No person is worthless, but what people turn up their noses at is that many children studying in madrasses come from poor families and could not get regular education. In some cases madrassas basically pay for all their expenses and the kids are not a financial drain on the family.
The other group is kids who go to regular schools and attend madrassa to learn to read quran and religious education.
Then you have the people who could have really gone for anything but chose to study religion, and got o higher institutions of learning where they really learn a lot. They are a different category.
Now as far as kids in madrassas go, an avg madrassa does not have a computer, does not teach comparative religion or world cultures or even world history, arts and sciences or mathematics (some teach very basic math)
If someone is unhappy with general state of madrassas or has concerns over what is being taught there, does not automatically mean that the person is anti deen.
One group 1 I will say that the children being taken care of in madrassas are there because there are very few other options for these kids. If families cant really afford to take care of them, either they end up in a bonded labour situation (yes it still happens), or they just join the family trade, or go do odd jobs, anything to survive, but not get any sort of education.
When ppl like you or I criticize madrassas, we must realize that they are filling a gap, an unmet need that our govt, and our society at large failed to do anything about. Why are there not many state or charity funded regular schools where kids can live and study, like they do in madrassas? Its our failure as a nation. As much as I scream against clergy and mullahs, atleast they are doing something about it. In this area forces with specific agendas have used these kids to become violent, narrow minded, warriors of faith… but remember they were kids, with no one to take care of them, and sadly they ended up in the arms of forces who wanted to use them as their foot soldiers.
Aside from madrassas being supported and run in a way to create wave after wave of zealots, the rest of the madrassas try to do their best in the limited view of their organizers, and the limited resources that they have. I think that madrassas are a grassroots type of movement that instead of abolishing, if we just expand their scope, regulate them, and support them more from govt and private sources, they can be pretty good. It will also provide us more balanced, productive citizens.
Its sad, many of us at one time or another (I am very guilty of it) noted the narrow minded zealots coming out of many of the madrassas, but you know what, just a handful of years ago these were kids without a future, without a direction and without anyone who was going to do jack for them. So someone took them under their wings, and knowingly or unknowingly there were results as the extremists, or ill informed clrgy who would then go and keep this vicious circle going.
We failed these kids, they were not our problem or so we thought. The problem remained, it just vanished from our radars for a bit and now we are posed with a different problem.
We need to wake up.