Press Interpreter

10/22/05 -- Islamism. There are close to 100 000 koran-schools in the three countries of the Indian sub-continent. All are not extremist, but many cultivate intolerance.

How do fundamentalist Muslims form their ideology, which rejects other religions, lives in a mentally autistic universe, and which rejects modernity? The phenomenon has touched almost 700 million believers in the world, reproduces itself earliest in Koran-schools (madrassas), which have hardly evolved their education for three centuries. To understand this mind closing education we have visited fifteen madrassas in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Madrassas have existed since the birth of Islam. They have been part of the social landscape in the Muslim world, from Indonesia to Chad. Like our religious schools in the West, they are also diverse in the type of education they dispense. In the large majority of cases, they are small schools in the villages, small market towns or in crowded districts of cities, welcoming children from poor families or orphans. These madrassas are financed by well to do businessmen. Other large and prestigious madrassas can have up to 3,000 students. The Pakistani Minister of Religious Affairs, Iyaz Ul-Haq (the son of the dictator Zia Ul-Haq), told us that there are 1.5 million students, “in 11,000 madrassas, of which 4,000 deliver a modern curriculum (with courses in English, Mathematics and Geography). Most of these students are orphans (note: making up 15% of the workforce). The madrassas are the best NGOs in the world� he proclaimed.

At the Darul Ulum de Tongi madrassa, for example, 25 km from Dacca in Bangladesh, the building has nothing luxurious. The children, who do not pay (120 out of 400) live in the surrounding neighbourhood, a district made up of breeze block hovels. The adolescents inside the three story building are all occupied in reciting passages from the Koran, or are sleeping. We have confirmed that a few lessons in Mathematics, Bengali, and English are given out after eight years of studying the Koran. The 21 teachers are paid from the donations of the parents (the school costs 370 euros per month). The classes are scheduled to the rhythm of their daily prayers, beginning at 9.45 in the morning until 12.20, then starting again from 2-4pm.

The heads of these madrassas always say the same thing, “We do not have any ties with islamist organizations! Islam does not authorize terrorism and we protest against it!�

The government of Bangladesh, like that of Pakistan, has been the target of attacks from fundamentalist movements; 450 bombs exploded in half an hour last 17th August, across all of Bangladesh. “These bombs are a conspiracy against the madrassas and the students� repeats the director of the Darul Ulim madrassa, to the agreement of all his colleagues. In Indonesia, the head of the Muslim activists go as far as to repeat, with their heads of madrassas, that bombs did not kill hundreds of tourists, but that it was by missiles launched from “foreign submarines.�

[Full Article]

By F.H.

[Note: This article does represent the views of the translator or pressinterpreter.org]

--Translated by Katherine Apps

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