OTR Dispatches - April, 2004

DEOBAND, INDIA -- Darul Uloom, India's largest and most conservative madrassa, or Islamic seminary, rises like a beacon out of this dusty and impoverished town in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Founded almost 140 years ago by a group of clerics espousing an austere and literal form of Islam, the school has educated thousands upon thousands of men in the Koran and the "religious sciences" in its arcaded classrooms and glittering marble mosque and has helped spawn the hugely influential Deobandi movement across the region.

These days, however, the clerics who run Darul Uloom seem to be concerned with only one thing: dispelling the notion among their Hindu compatriots that their school is a breeding ground for terrorists. It's an unenviable job -- religious students from Deobandi-influenced madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan formed the backbone of the Taliban (the word talib means "religious student"), fought against the United States in Afghanistan, and have been recruited by Al Qaeda since the early 1990s. "Welcome to the dangerous world of Islamic militancy," was the ironic greeting of Adil Siddiqi, Darul Uloom's beleaguered public relations officer, when I visited the madrassa in February. "Have you seen Osama yet?"

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan have achieved global notoriety for producing thousands of young men dedicated to holy war. But in India, which is home to 140 million Muslims, the world's second largest Muslim population, madrassas have never been associated with a militant jihadist movement. For decades, Muslim political leaders in India have generally advocated a politically quiescent sort of Islam. "In Pakistani madrassas, the emphasis is jihad," explains Manzoor Alam, head of the Institute of Objective Studies in New Delhi, which conducts independent research on Islam in India. "In Indian madrassas, the emphasis is the Koran and education."

Nevertheless, madrassas in India face a challenge today that goes to the heart of their identity. In recent years, both the Hindu-dominated Indian government and secular-minded Muslims have pressed for curriculum reform and modernization in an effort to curb the isolation, poverty, and social conservatism they believe are bred by the schools. In a community where many view madrassas as a bulwark of a besieged Muslim identity, such efforts have encountered stiff resistance. But if Muslims are to overcome their social disadvantages, others say, they will have to move beyond the madrassa.

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At its founding in 1866, Darul Uloom (House of Learning) brought together Muslims who opposed British rule and its cultural influence. But unlike the Saudi Wahhabism of Osama bin Laden, the Deobandi school in India condemns violence except in specific circumstances: resistance to a foreign occupier if there is some chance of military success, and defense against an invasion or imminent threat of invasion. Though many Deobandis fought for India's independence from Britain, they for the most part chose to remain in secular India rather than migrate to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan when it was established more than half a century ago. The Deobandi madrassas of India and Pakistan have since diverged dramatically in their approach to Islamic militancy.

Today, Deobandi clerics run several thousand of India's some 30,000 madrassas. Most of these schools are just a room in the back of a local mosque with fewer than 100 students. But many Muslim parents see a free madrassa education, funded largely by religious donations, as the only option for their children. Though education between the ages of 6 and 14 is compulsory in India, and largely free, government schools are often severely underfunded -- and often unavailable in impoverished Muslim neighborhoods, where literacy lags well behind the national average of 55 percent. Madrassas, on the other hand, are pervasive in Muslim areas, and always free.

Yet the madrassa education has its limitations. The languages of instruction in madrassas are not Hindi, India's national language -- much less English, the lingua franca of India's globalizing economy -- but Urdu, the language traditionally spoken by Muslims on the subcontinent, and Arabic, the language of the Koran. Students spend their first three years learning the Koran by rote. Thereafter they study the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) and Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence, usually to the exclusion of other subjects.

In 1986, the Indian government initiated a project to modernize madrassas by bringing in subjects like science, math, English, and Hindi. But many madrassas refused to cooperate, wary of the state's interference. (Their Hindu equivalent, the Sanskrit schools, have been gradually folded into the state education system.) The government has continued its efforts, with limited success, but in 2002 it drew criticism from Muslims when a secret memorandum came to light in which all state education officials were ordered to ensure that madrassas applying for government funding "are not indulging, abetting, or in any other way linked with anti-national activities."

Like many Indian madrassas, Darul Uloom is caught between the conflicting pressures of tradition and modernity. Students rise at 5 a.m. and spend the day praying and studying. Their only recreation is an hour of sports in the evenings. Clerics say the madrassa is "modern," because they teach subjects beyond the Koran, but are quick to emphasize that even a "classic madrassa education" that includes only religious subjects creates disciplined and law-abiding citizens.

All 3,500 students at Darul Uloom are boys. Girls are educated separately, in a nearby girls' school. All students live at the school, and television, newspapers, and music are prohibited. Students at Darul Uloom have the option to take English, Hindi, science, and even computer training courses, but these are clearly not the emphasis. Few students speak fluent English, and on a recent visit, the computer room was in dusty disarray.

Independent studies have found that madrassas in India have a higher dropout rate than government schools. Most attribute it to the poverty of Muslim students, but Inayat Zaidi, head of the history department in New Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia University, believes it is also because they are bored. "There should be some games, and professional training in some skill, some craft -- people think like that," he says.

Certainly, madrassa graduates have fewer options than those from government schools. Most Darul Uloom students become religious leaders or write textbooks for the madrassa system. That's why few middle-class Muslims send their children to madrassas, and why many educators believe that if the Muslim community is to move up the economic ladder, their children have to move out of the madrassa system.

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At Darul Uloom, students tell me that Islam is not political, but they demonstrate a striking unanimity on political matters. When 20-year-old Mohammed Razi states that America has declared war on Islam, the crowd of boys gathered around him in the madrassa courtyard agree. Razi also believes that the World Trade Center attack was a conspiracy between "the Jews and the CIA."

Razi's views are echoed by the leading clerics of Darul Uloom. Although they fiercely disavow terrorism, they do support the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, who they say is being persecuted for a crime he didn't commit. And yet, unlike some madrassas in Pakistan, which encourage taking up arms, Darul Uloom forbade their students from going to fight with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The clerics draw an important boundary line between theologically conservative views and political violence.

Mohammad Aslam Parvaiz, an ecologist at Delhi University, believes that for just that reason Indian madrassas can be educationally reformed -- as long as the state works with conservative clerics to make it happen. Ever since he realized that his local madrassa did not teach science courses, Parvaiz has been writing courses and lecturing in madrassas. Now he devotes his spare time to convincing madrassa teachers that science is not inimical to the Koran, as many conservative clerics believe. Hundreds of madrassas now distribute his Urdu-language practical science magazine to their students.

For Parvaiz, the big success story of Muslim education in India is Darul Umoor, a one-year institute for madrassa graduates in the southern state of Mysore. There, religious students supplement their education with English literature and comparative religion before returning to their communities to teach in madrassas and preach in mosques. Many observers agree that local, Muslim-run projects like this one are essential if Muslims are to genuinely integrate into the Indian mainstream.

Even as Hindu-Muslim tensions continue to simmer, many say that Indian madrassas could never become the terrorist incubators that they are sometimes accused of being. Muslims here point out that for many reasons, not least the protections written into India's democratic constitution, the political climate could never approximate Pakistan's, let alone Afghanistan's. And the sense of having to survive as a minority in a hostile environment, say some Muslim intellectuals, prevents Muslims from stepping too far outside the bounds of the law.

"Indian madrassas are often religiously conservative, so obviously there is a chance some students will become fundamentalist in their beliefs," says Inayat Zaidi. "But there's no evidence that any Indian madrassa student has ever become a terrorist. It's just a perception that suits the current political climate." Indeed, Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani has boasted that there is not a single Indian among the Al Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Still, observers say that the hardline attitude of India's Hindu nationalist ruling party, the BJP, is itself prompting a hardening of theological positions in the country's Muslim institutions. "As the ulama [religious leaders] of the madrassas see it, Muslim identity is under grave threat in India today," says Netherlands-based political scientist Yogi Sikand, whose book on madrassas will be published by Penguin India later this year. "The preservation of a distinct Muslim identity is one of the principal concerns of the madrassas."

So far, this theological hardening has not led to an embrace of militancy. In addition to forbidding participation in holy war abroad, Indian Deobandi leaders specifically condemn violent jihad at home, saying Muslims have a compact to live in peace and harmony with others that cannot be broken unless they are actively persecuted in matters of faith. Deobandis here insist that it is possible, within a pluralistic India, to practice rigorous Islam and send their children to religious schools without being opposed to the state.

Last August, two car bombs exploded in Bombay, killing 52 people and injuring 150, and police currently hold four Indian Muslims believed to be responsible for the attack. They are members of a group called the Gujarat Muslim Revenge Force, allegedly formed to avenge the deaths of at least 1,000 Muslims at the hands of Hindu mobs in Gujarat in 2002. Human rights groups say police stood by and watched.

At Darul Uloom, Siddiqi says he understands Muslims' anger over Gujarat, though he explicitly condemns their violent actions. "You must note," he adds, "that these terrorists did not come out of a madrassa."

This report originally appeared in the Boston Globe's Sunday Ideas Section. Miranda Kennedy is a journalist based in New Delhi. She reports frequently for National Public Radio from across South Asia.