| The Madrasas in present-day South Asia
are bearers of the remarkable revival that Islamic religious education
witnessed in colonial India during the late nineteenth century. This renewal
began in particular earnestness with the establishment of the Dar-ul-Uloom
Madrasa at Deoband in 1867. However, women were not part of this revivalist
project in formal religious education, although on the level of informal
religious education, they were taken into serious consideration by some
Ulama who sought to promote individual piety, to re-Islamize household
rituals and daily cultural practices, and to facilitate individual knowledge
and observance of Qur’an- and Hadith-based religious injunctions
as opposed to folk customs (Gail Minault, 1998, Secluded Scholars: Women’s
Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India, Oxford University
Press). One of the most well known among these reformist Ulama who showed
significant concern for enhancing women’s informal/household religious
knowledge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the
Deoband Madrasa-trained scholar Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanavi (1864-1943).
His encyclopedic work, Bihishti Zewar (The Ornaments of Paradise), was
primarily aimed at women (although Maulana Thanavi strongly encouraged
men to follow it as well) and contained a vast amount of extremely detailed
religious prescriptions for conducting numerous daily religious and household
activities and for purifying bodily, mental, and emotional states. Maulana
Thanavi’s emphasis on both Muslim men’s and women’s
EQUAL obligations to seek knowledge and education was remarkably egalitarian
for contemporary society, particularly the then worldview of many Indian
Ulama and the Muslim elite (Barbara Metcalf, 1982, “Islamic Reform
and Islamic Women: Maulana Thanawi’s Jewelry of Paradise”
in Moral Conducted and Authority, edited by Barbara Metcalf, pp. 184-95).
However, despite Maulana Thanavi’s reformist emphasis on the egalitarian
message of Islam, like most Ulama of his time and of many many decades
later, the Maulana was opposed to women’s access to public space
and possibly could not therefore imagine women’s access to even
the most basic levels of Madrasa education, let alone women’s access
to higher levels of formal religious scholarly capacities.
The historical neglect of women’s formal religious education continues
to shape the sphere of women’s access to religious scholarship in
present-day South Asia, even though some changes are under way in the
margins. The neglect of women’s religious education in South Asia
(and possibly elsewhere) is evident today not only in the abysmal gaps
between the numbers of male and female Madrasa students and traditional
religious scholars but also in the dearth of scholarship on women’s
Madrasas in South Asia. Thus, for instance, neither of the two most comprehensive,
recent, and otherwise illuminating and timely scholarly articles on Madrasas
in South Asia (see Mumtaz Ahmad’s and Yogi Sikand’s respective
chapters in Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia, eds. Satu
Limaye et al, Honolulu, Hawaii University Press, 2004) mentions female
Madrasa students women even in passing. This essay will briefly discuss
and analyze the current situation of religious education of Muslim women
in Bangladesh and adjacent areas from a historical perspective.
Gaps Between Islamic Canonical Teachings and Muslim Historical and Cultural
Practices
Even though Islam has emphasized access to knowledge for all, the education
of Muslim girls and women, particularly in the areas of religious scholarship
and authoritative expertise, has been seriously marginalized in most parts
of the Muslim world historically. The Prophet of Islam (sm) said that,
“Securing education is an obligation for all Muslims (………).”
The Quran has emphasized education unequivocally. The revelation even
began with the word ‘Iqra’ meaning read, recite.(Quran:96:1)
The Quran asks “Are those who know and who do not know equal?”
(Sura Zumar, Ayat 9)
The Muslim community failed to implement its obligation to educate all
its members, male and female. Studies of the Muslim history of various
countries reveal that in the establishment of educational institutions,
equal opportunities were not created for boys and girls. Of course, rudimentary
religious education was imparted to all at home, such as recitation of
the Quran, the formal and technical rules of Salat and Siam, and fundamental
religious values of modesty, honesty, respect for elders (adab), duties
towards one’s parents, etcetera. But higher education and the realm
of religious scholarship and authority became the preserves of men alone.
Furthermore, despite the Qur’anic emphasis on the equality of all
human beings and on the Prophetic stress on access to knowledge for all,
discriminatory practices were found even with regard to men, let alone
women. Thus, prior to the nineteenth century, access to Madrasa teaching
and education was largely restricted to the communities of elite Muslims—the
ashraf nobility who were mostly migrants from Central Asia, Iran, and
Arabia, and their descendents. The indigenous Muslims—the ajlaf—were
expected to remain satisfied with the most elementary knowledge of Islam
(Yogi Sikand, 2004, “ Reforming the Indian Madrassas: Contemporary
Muslim Voices” in Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia:
120).
However, sociopolitical changes began to sweep across the Muslim world
during the 19th and 20th centuries. With the establishment of British
colonialism, the Dar-ul-Uloom Madrasa at Deoband was established in 1865.
This remains the largest traditional Madrasa in South Asia till this day.
In the absence of Muslim rulers as patrons of Madrasa education, and concerned
with the threat colonialism and intensifying Christian missionary work
in the region posed to the production, sustenance, and enhancement of
Islamic knowledge and sensibilities, Ulamas began to establish small and
large Madrasas which increasingly turned to the ranks of ordinary ajlaf
Muslims, with whom Ulamas and Madrasas had had little contact until then.
The ordinary Muslim came to symbolize the survival and well-being of Islam
and to serve as the repository of Islamic knowledge and moral reform.
In the wake of these changes, Muslim girls did not remain untouched by
such reforms for too long. But it would not be till the late nineteenth
century and early twentieth century that Muslim girls began to gain access
to higher education. At least, this was the case in former Bengal.
Women’s Religious and Formal Education in Bengal
The eminent lady who played the greatest role in mobilizing for formal
and higher education for women in Bengal specifically, was Begum Rokeya
Sakhawat Hussein, who against numerous personal/familial, cultural, and
financial odds, established an Urdu-medium school for girls in Calcutta
in the year 1911; by then Urdu had come to dominate the elite Muslim culture
in Bengal, to be gradually replaced by Bengali in later decades. Named
the “Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School,” this school opened
at 13 Waliulla Lane in a tiny classroom, with only 8 girls in attendance.
In 1917, it became a middle English school. Begum Rokeya added a class
every year till her school became a high school in 1931 (Sonia Nishat
Amin, 1996, The World of Muslim Women in Colonial Bengal 1876-1939, E.
J. Brill, pp. 156-7).
While this was the first stable beginning of modern education among Muslim
girls in this region, there were other and even earlier efforts in various
parts of Bengal and in certain parts of India to make modern education
accessible to girls. Thus, for instance, a primary school for girls from
strictly purdah observing families were founded in 1873 in Comilla by
another pioneering Bengali woman, Nawab Faizunnessa Chaudhurani who herself
had received a good education at home in Urdu, Bengali, Sanskrit, and
Persian. This school became a Junior High School (till the 8th grade)
in 1889 and a regular High School in 1931. It operates today as Nawab
Faizunnesa High School for Girls (Amin 1996: 149-50). In 1897, on the
request of Nawab Shamsi Jahan Firdaus Mahal of Murshidabad, Lady Mckenzie,
the wife of the governor of Calcutta, Muslim Girls’ Madrasa was
inaugurated at Calcutta. Begum Firdaus Mahal funded the construction of
the building. She also provided a monthly grant of Rs. 150 while Nawab
Ahsanullah of Dhaka contributed Rs. 1000. In 1898, 46 girls enrolled at
the Madrasa (Amin 1996: 147). However, not much is known about the exact
contents of the Madrasa curriculum. The firs formal school for girls in
Dhaka, Eden Female School, was established in June 1878. This was the
first government secondary school for girls in the region and remained
thus for many years. A college section was introduced in 1926, making
the Eden Girls’ School and College the first institute for higher
secondary education for women in Eastern Bengal (Amin 1996: 151-3).
However, there was no effort in the area of Bengal to create opportunities
for women to obtain higher RELIGIOUS education. Women traditionally received
some basic Islamic education at home. In certain ashraf or upper aristocratic
families, the quality of Islamic education that girls received at home
could be quite remarkable and as high as the quality of the education
received by the boys in those families. In many middle and upper class
families, a girl would be introduced to the Qur’an at the age of
5 through a lesson in Arabic letters taught by female tutors from modest
backgrounds called “ustadnis.” These female tutors would also
teach some Persian, Urdu, some basic accounting skills, a little sewing
and embroidery, and later Bengali and English as well (Amin 1996: 136).
Once women began to attend non-religious public schools, they began to
be instructed in subjects such as mathematics, history, and geography,
but some basic religious instruction continues to this present day in
the form of the course “Islamiyat,” which is a compulsory
course for Muslims in state schools in Bangladesh. However, a Muslim woman
did not have any opportunity to become an Alim (religious scholar) through
education at an elite Madrasa (a religious seminary with 16 years of coursework
and training).
Only during the last 2-3 decades did the Ulama finally open the doors
of formal, elite Madrasas to women. Separate women’s Madrasas, both
of the Kamil/Alia variety (that is the Madrasas which follow the govt.
approved course curriculum of a few modern subjects and a revised form
of the Dars Nizami syllabus) and the Kaumi variety (which follow the Deoband
and most traditional/standard Dars Nizami) have been established. However,
as far as traditional Islamic courses are concerned, the courses are essentially
the same in both the Kamil/Alia and Kaumi systems of religious education.
The Kawmi Madrasas are private. They do not receive any financial support
from the government and are supported by religious endowments or by zakat
and sadaqa. While most of the Alia Madrasas, except the five fully state
controlled major Ali Madrasas, are privately owned and administered, the
Government of Bangladesh pays 80 percent of the salaries of their teachers
and administrators. To varying extents, Madrasa education, by virtue of
its charitable spirit and affordability, has made possible some degree
of social mobility for thousands of lower and lower middle class people
throughout modern South Asia (Mumtaz Ahmad, 2004, “Madrassa Education
in Pakistan and Bangladesh” in Religious Radicalism and Security
in South Asia).
The number of Madrasas for girls which followed Alia courses (in 2005)
is as follows:
Level Course Duration Numbers
Dakhil 10 yrs 952
Alim 12 years 77
Fazil 14 years 22
Kamil 16 years 5
(Source: Dr. Muhammad Abdus Satter, senior official of Madrasah Education
Board and author of Bangladesh Madrasah Shikkha (Madrasah Education in
Bangladesh), published by the Islamic Foundation Bangladesh).
There are several Kawmi Madrasas for girls. In Dhaka, there are 2 such
Madrasas which award the Dawra degree to girls. Dawra degrre is the highest
degrree in Qaumi Madrasah and this degree is equivalent to Kamil in Alia
Madrasas and Masters in the universities . The students go through 16
years study to get this degree.
The course syllabi used in girls/boys Madrasahs in both Alia and Kawmi
systems are the same. There is a shortage of female teachers. However,
the problem is not a serious one since male teachers in many cases teach
in these Madrasas. Male and female Alims tend to be equal in knowledge
and abilities. In fact, a senior Alim, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad informed
me that the girls tend to perform better as students than the boys since
the former appear to take their school duties more seriously. In my view,
women Alims can be deployed, as in Turkey, as Muftis wherever their services
are required. However, it must be stated that as things stand currently,
in order to be compatible with present socioeconomic demands, the Madrasa
curriculum requires significant improvement and diversification in coursework,
while sustaining a focus on the core religious courses. A serious inclusion
of modern disciplines would not only help bridge increasing gaps between
Madrasa-educated and lay-educated Muslims but would also help produce
Muslims who are religious scholars, able to effectively administer the
increasingly diversifying and specialized public and private sectors,
and able to establish needed dialogues both within the Muslim community
and between Muslims and non-Muslims of different faiths and persuasions.
A Muslim, educated in this manner, would truly embody the Islamic ideal
of a comprehensive person and system where any separation of one area
of life (such as “religion”) from another (such as “politics”
or “economy” or “society” or “culture”
of “education”) is not recognized. Every dimension exists
as a part of a whole just as every organ and part of a human body operates
as an integral part of a whole.
Madrasa Education in Bangladesh
Let me briefly discuss the development of Madrasa education in the Bangladesh
region over the last 200 years. Warren Hastings, the Governor General
of British India,on the request made by the Muslims in 1780, asked Maulana
Majduddin, an accomplished scholar of the traditional Islamic Sciences
to prepare a course curriculum and to launch a Madrasa. The Madrasa took
off in 1780 according to a variant of the Dars Nizamia curriculum. This
curriculum, which historically served as a model for many Madrasas throughout
the world, was developed in its original form for the Nizamia Madrasa
in Baghadad, founded by the eleventh century Seljuq Vizier Nizam-ul Mulk
Hasan ibn ‘Ali during the Abbasid period. The 1780 Madrasa in Bengal
was launched in a rented building in Kolkata (Calcutta). The original
Nizamia syllabus had represented a blend of naqli ‘uloom (revealed
sciences), including the Quran, the hadith, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence)
and tafsir(Quranic commentary), on the one hand, and the aqli ‘ulum(rational
sciences), including Arabic language, grammar, logic, rhetoric, philosophy,
astronomy, medicine, physics and mathematics, on the other. However, the
Nizami syllabus, as adopted in colonial South Asia and as shaped by cultural
and political forces, came to distinguish between “religious”
and “worldly” knowledge and to stress the “deenie”
sphere of knowledge to the neglect and virtual exclusion (until very recent
decades) of areas of modern “duniyavi” knowledge (Sikand 2004).
Thus the first Madrasa in Bengal followed traditional courses in Arabic
grammar, Arabic language, philosophy, logic, Fiqh, usul-al-fiqh, theology
(kalam), Tafsir, and Hadith, all largely based on classical texts. This
was the beginning of the Alia Madrasa system (Dr. Muhmmad Abdus Satter,
2004, Bangladesh Madrasa Shikkha [Madrasa Education in Bangladesh], Islamic
Foundation Bangladesh, 1st edition, pp. 120-129).
Many commissions and committees have been formed since then to deal with
the various aspects of public education and Madrasa education, but the
courses basically remained the same and the Madrasa text books in Fiqh,
Usul-al-Fiqh, Tafsir and Hadith have all remained essentially the same.
Virtually no significant changes have been effected with the passage of
time and significant shifts in socio-political and economic conditions
both locally and globally. Contemporary texts and disciplines have not
been included in any significant way in the Madrasa curriculum although
the subjects of English, Science, Bangla, History, Geography, and Mathematics
have been included in the lower stages of Madrasa education (Dr. AKM Azharul
Islam and Professor Shah Muhammad Habibur Rahman, Bangladesh School and
Madrasa Shikkhaniti o Karjokrom [Curriculum and Education Policy of Schools
and Madrasas of Bangladesh], The Islamic Academy, Cambridge, UK, Chapter
4). Thus, for instance, texts used for the core religious subjects date
back to the seventeenth century at the latest and the eleventh century
at the earliest. However, this Alia system of Madrasa education in Bangladesh
is quite unique in its five distinct sub-divisions: ibtedai (elementary),
dakhil (secondary), alim (higher secondary), fazil (B.A.), and kamil (M.A.)
(Mumtaz Ahmad, 2004, “Madrassa Education in Pakistan and Bangladesh”
in Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia).
Until recent decades, we find Madasa education in Bangladesh and possibly
in South Asia to be characterized by the following features:
1. The method of instruction was Urdu.
2. No reference whatsoever is made to female education.
3. Strict dependence on extremely dated and classical texts.
4. Initially separate books were prescribed in Fiqh, Usul al Fiqh and
Kalam for Sunni and Shia students even though these students used to study
in the same Madrasa (Dr. Muhammad Abdus Satter, ibid, pages 172-199.).
However, as I said before, the Ulama in the course of the last 20-25 years
have become aware of the need of higher religious education for women.
Below, I note some of the figures related to the female student community
following the Alia system of religious education:
| Year |
Course |
Number of male students |
Number of female students |
| 2000 |
Dhakil |
101,414 |
50,835 |
| 2000 |
Alim |
51,127 |
14,743 |
| 2000 |
Fazil |
20,732 |
3,256 |
| 2000 |
Kamil |
13,158 |
833 |
Now I turn to the Islamic Studies Department in colleges
and universities. This degree is open to both men and women. The course
curriculum has been patterned on the key elements of the syllabus followed
at the Dars Nizami Madrasas, where the subjects taught include Arabic,
Fiqh, Usul al Fiqh and Hadith, history, and Islamic Philosophy. However,
the course coverage of the Islamic traditional sciences is less here than
in the Kamil or Dawrah Madrasa courses. A serious student can develop
into an Alim if he or she undertakes advanced personal study. However,
my conversations with scholars revealed that completion of the Islamic
Studies course currently prevalent in the universities can hardly be said
to transform one into an Alim (This is the opinion of Prof. Mustafizur
Rahman of Dhaka university, Arabic Department, a former Vice-Chancellor
of Islamic University, Kushtia, and Nasima Hasan,an M.S. in Islamic Studies
from Dhaka University, now a teacher at the International Islamic University,
Chittagong, Dhaka Campus).
Let me add that in recent times, some women are taking part in television
programs in Bangladesh. These women are largely university educated and
trained in general subjects, but have pursued the informal study of Islam
on a personal level. A few hold degrees in Islamic Studies or Arabic.
The emergence of modern, self-styled religious thinkers or scholars, who
secure religious knowledge through informal and personal or Islamic organizational
study of Islam, is evident throughout Muslim communities today notably
in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. This culture of self-styled
religious authority is particularly evident in the sphere of electronic
communication. This phenomenon speaks to the gaps in traditional religious
education and to the inability of many traditional religious experts to
respond satisfactorily to the issues increasingly central to the experiences
and needs of younger generations of non-Madrasa educated Muslims in the
present-day world.
In conclusion, I will say that Islamic education among women is increasing
and diversifying both at informal and formal levels even though the standard
of religious education in most of these cases leaves much to be desired.
Most female students of religious scholarship today are becoming traditional
Alims, as deficient as male Alims in responding to the needs of the rapidly
growing numbers of Muslim recipients of modern/non-religious mass higher
education, those ranks of Muslims from which the leaders of contemporary
Muslim societies and states continue to emerge. Voices for reforming the
Madrasa system grow stronger every year and these voices are diverse,
but the pace of any real reform has been painfully slow for a number of
reasons that scholars have discussed (see, for instance, Yogi Sikand in
Religious Radicalism and Security in South Asia, 2004).
The atmosphere of distrust created by the US-led war against “terrorism”
is certainly not helping the cause of Madrasa reform since many orthodox
ulama, who have always resisted reform, now feel more certain than ever
that under the guise of liberalizing and modernizing Islamic education,
the West and its secular allies are bent on gradually eradicating the
force of Islam altogether from the educational and cultural spheres. However,
I feel that despite various difficulties and legitimate doubts and concerns,
Muslims must move beyond a RE-ACTIVE politics which is often unproductive
and harms Muslim interests in the end. While one must learn from history
and study it carefully, one should not be determined by it. Muslims and
the Ulama in particular, must become PRO-ACTIVE instead and take whatever
initiatives necessary to sustain, improve, and enhance Islamic education
such that it impacts life positively all over the world, not only in Mulim
majority societies. The Qur’an, after all, was revealed as guidance
not only for Muslims, but for “humankind.” We should not allow
our fear of the uncertainties of the future and the formidable strength
and ploys of our adversaries to prevent us from determining, with clarity,
the priorities of the Muslim ummah, however diversely constituted. We
allowed colonialism to paralyze our advancement for many precious decades.
It is no secret, for example, that nineteenth and twentieth century nationalist
efforts to define Indian women strictly in terms of the domestic sphere
were in large part a reaction to the colonial project of domination and
imposed transformation in the Indian subcontinent. Today, we must not
allow the current age of imperialism or neo-colonialism to freeze our
progress as Muslims for the next hundred years. If Madrasa reforms are
undertaken effectively, substantially, and thoughtfully, with an emphasis
on the OVERALL kind of Muslim person, scholar, scientist, and leader we
want to produce for the twenty-first century and beyond, then it is my
belief that both men and women of this generation and the generations
to come would benefit from these reforms immensely. |