ADOPT A MADRASSAH

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2019/01/01/adopt-a-madrassah/

• Good, although these ‘business enterprises’ will need to be monitored

The PTI manifesto states as part of a promise to transform education that it will ‘map out and register all seminaries across Pakistan including information on finances and introduce literacy and mathematics teaching as formal subjects within the madrassah curriculum’.

It is one of the PTI’s many promises that is yet to be acted upon, but if the promise is made good it would have far-reaching consequences, becausemadrassahs are the breeding ground from which terrorists are picked.

Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski along with several Muslim countries funded those very same terrorists via Pakistan, to help drive out the Soviets. ‘Foreign money helped establish hundreds of madrassas in Pakistan’s cities and frontier areas. These turned out thousands of Taliban who joined the mujahideen in the anti-Soviet campaign’. (BBC July 2010)

Since the end of the cold war, the Taliban and their ilk have been acting on their own agendas and have grown into a scourge for the world, and definitely for their host, Pakistan.

Madrassahs are the ‘schools’most accessible to the public in Pakistan and other Muslim countries, and with exceptions, theyare at the root of a dangerous riftin society that leads to terrorism.That rift is a chasm between the haves and have nots, the‘good’ guys and the ‘bad’ ones who dress in Western clothes and adopt the ‘Western’ or ‘worldly’ curriculum. Recreation for madrassah students appears to be stints at the local mosque where with mikes turned on high they test the range of their fledgling male vocal cords, their voices rising on Allah and falling flat on Akbar followed by a desperate squeal from the mike. It would be funny if it were not a manifestation of such a serious problem.

The manifesto also promises to promote sports by providing playing grounds sports complexes and gymnasiums

Learning mainstream subjects is considered ‘bad’ in the madrassah stream of education. The attitudeturns out a large number of students who, to their resentment and anger, spend several years being ‘educated’ to find themselves still unqualified to compete for jobs in a market composed of young people with a more all-round learning. It is these young men who become imams at mosques or carry on as teachers in madrassahs with the greatest exposure to vulnerable young persons. Or they get other low paid jobs.

In a recent initiative to facilitate their pulling out of Afghanistan, and therefore“eager to persuade the Tailban to join the Afghan peace process, the United States is offering them a safety network that includes job opportunities (Anwar Iqbal).”

American foreign policy is best viewed askance. Yet in honest hands this initiativemay well be the only thing to turn the extremists away from violence, even though it sounds like offering the sphinx a cookie. It is hard to imagine the Taliban queueing at job centres, so one presumes the idea involves some other, more creative, approach.

Still, somethings need to be kept in mind. Such as whoever is disseminating this particular brand of religion will resist change if prevented, because their role as fount of this brand of wisdom bring them power, and they will resist all efforts to take that away. The clergy in every religion has been prey to this weakness.

This brand of religiosity is taken on board as easily as it precisely because poverty encourages it. Unless something is done to break the poverty its hold upon people will remain. It takes little effort to visualise persons, even large groups of persons being persuaded to commit acts of violence in return for support for their familiesand/or for a twisted conviction of the rewards offered for such acts in the afterlife.

People need jobs, but all young peoplealso need access to recreation. In the absence of recreation youngsters play on the street, or mess around ‘one wheeling,’ or teasing girls. Because that too is ‘recreation’, and so is joining a groupcalled the ISIS or the Taliban. When it comes to losing their lives the desperation of poverty kicks in and forces them to commit violence and even destroy themselves.

In their manifesto the PTI have also said that they will focus on restructuring syllabi and mainstreaming madrassas by providing them with proper educational facilities. This, as the manifesto points out would entail teacher training, including the establishment of special Islamic teaching academies (good, unless it turns out to be more of the same thing) with diplomas for teaching. ‘Another component of mainstreaming madrassas’ the manifesto says ‘would be a public private “adopt a madrassah scheme” where the business enterprises in the local area are given tax benefits etc for adopting a madrassah, upgrading it, and offering apprenticeships to its graduating students’. Once again good, although these ‘business enterprises’ will need to be monitored.

The manifesto also promises to promote sports by providing playing grounds sports complexes and gymnasiums.

Let’s hope that if this ever materialises students from the madrassahs are able to work off steam right there instead of becoming part of the violent juggernaut otherwise known as violent extremism.