The Trappings Do Not A Democracy Make

Gulf News, November 28, 2002

Pakistan now has a parliament and a prime minister but it is far from being a democracy. General Pervez Musharraf still wields powers that he gave himself through the Legal Framework Order (LFO), which overrides the country’s constitution in several respects.

The intelligence-military complex, often referred to as ‘the establishment’, retains its ability to run the show behind the scenes. In fact, the ‘election’ of Zafarullah Jamali by the barest of majorities was facilitated by the establishment’s machinations.

Jamali owes his appointment to the defection of 10 parliamentarians from Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), six of whom have been rewarded with Cabinet positions, rather than genuine support among members of the National Assembly.

Although the establishment and its apologists always speak from a fictitious moral pedestal, they see nothing wrong in engineering defections from political parties within days of a general election.

The new set-up, if it can be called that, has got off to a poor start. It is clearly a house of cards that can be brought down by any number of factors. First among these are the contradictions of pretending to be a democracy without really being one.

To establish the credibility of the new parliament, Musharraf must allow it a degree of freedom. But the exercise of this freedom by independent-minded MPs could result in debates that the general wishes to sweep under the carpet.

The country’s constitutional scheme itself is far from clear. The LFO supercedes the constitution but the constitution has been partially restored. Most MPs consider themselves subject to the unadulterated 1973 constitution, while Musharraf does not want to subject the constitutional amendments decreed by him to a vote by the elected assembly.

In insisting that the amendments are a fait accompli, Musharraf has gone one step farther than General Zia-ul-Haq, who had negotiated and secured parliamentary approval of similarly decreed constitutional amendments.

Musharraf’s reasoning is that parliament can overturn the amendments by a two-thirds majority if it so desires. But that fails to explain the legal sanction behind the amendments. He is putting his own judgement above that of the elected institution he says he wants to see evolve as a sovereign body. A clash between ‘the King’ and parliament is thus inevitable.

Arguments to the effect that opponents of the constitutional amendments should seek redress from the judiciary are hardly very convincing. The present Supreme Court is itself a creature of General Musharraf’s Provisional Constitution Order (PCO). While its authority may not be in doubt, its legitimacy is subject to the same type of questions that relate to Musharraf’s presidency and his status as lawmaker.

Musharraf’s dilemma is that restraining parliament in its early days would make the institution seem less than sovereign, which would reduce his claims of having restored democracy to a greater farce than it already seems. The new prime minister, Jamali, also faces a similar dilemma.

If he toes the general’s line too closely, he runs the risk of not being taken seriously. If, however, he starts asserting himself and backs demands for parliamentary sovereignty, he could be sent packing sooner than he has bargained for.

The coalition that has been cobbled together for Jamali owes its loyalty to the establishment rather than to the prime minister. And he will soon have to wrest control of the Pakistan Muslim League-QA (PML-QA) from its kingmakers, in addition to keeping down the other prime minister wannabes who are part of the ruling group.

Having the barest of majorities in the national assembly, Jamali will be at the mercy of individual members of his coalition, each one among them able to threaten the government with collapse.

The opposition, on the other hand, starts with tremendous advantage. The Islamic Mutta-hida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) will control the provincial government in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), enabling it to dispense some patronage while remaining the opposition at the centre. Ideological cohesion and the prospect of further political gains in the future will make it difficult for the establishment to divide the MMA.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, a leading light of the MMA, is already most outspoken over constitutional issues. The PPP, on the other hand, remains a significant force in Sindh and can challenge the intelligence-military complex’s domination of Pakistan’s politics by raising issues the GHQ simply does not want discussed.

The perks of Pakistan’s military elite are coming under fire even in the international media. Once the PPP has been pushed to the wall by an establishment that refuses to let it form a government even in Sindh, it can fight back as an anti-establishment party.

Indeed, there are many that think Benazir Bhutto’s only mistake in the past has been her willingness to accommodate the establishment’s concerns and not pursuing a radical agenda. She and her party are at their best when in confrontation mode. The end of all hope of a reasoned settlement with Pakistan’s invisible masters could radicalise Bhutto’s stance and pave the way for revived left wing politics.

In its effort to keep the PPP out, the Musharraf regime is trying to revive the fortunes of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) led by Altaf Hussain. From the MQM’s point of view, it would be a blessing to be declared patriotic once again after having been painted as anti-Pakistan for several years. But while the MQM will not be averse to the perks of power and renewed respectability, its political support base remains deeply anti-establishment.

The MMA’s electoral showing in MQM strongholds of Karachi and Hyderabad has reinforced the rivalry between the Islamic parties and the MQM. This rivalry could come to a head again, once MQM reverts to its past pattern of exclusionary politics and violence. The better way of dealing with the MQM would have been to allow its political leaders and other political parties in the province to negotiate coalition arrangements themselves.

The role of behind-the-scenes fixers will only make the establishment the subject of constant political blackmail, forcing the establishment to spin new webs in the process of dealing with the old ones.

The artificial optimism of Musharraf and his team notwithstanding, Pakistan’s problems have multiplied rather than diminished under the ad-hoc arrangement of the last three years.

Improvements in the fiscal economy have not benefited the ordinary Pakistani, who continues to face the prospect of unemployment, poverty and lawlessness. By all accounts, more Pakistanis (between 34 to 39 per cent of the population) live below the poverty line today than they did three years ago.

The country’s role as a frontline state in the global war against terrorism is leading to closer scrutiny of Pakistan’s regional and international role. Investment and economic growth are at a standstill. These are certainly not times in which secretive decision-making and political covert operations can inspire the nation or win it friends around the world.

Pakistan needs predictability that can only be attained through return to rule of law, not by the whimsical system of governance that has spawned 125 decrees (ordinances) by Musharraf since the beginning of 2002 alone.

But the general and his colleagues seem unwilling to recognise their actions as part of the country’s problems. Jamali should try to persuade his mentors of the deadly effects of their political interventions. If he does that, he would earn a place in history much more significant than as Pakistan’s 16th prime minister.

The Limits of Enforced Secular Rule in the Muslim World

International Herald Tribune, November 15, 2002

The electoral victory in Turkey of a party with Islamic roots demonstrates the limitations of trying to enforce secularism in Muslim countries as an anti-religious ideology rather than a political system ensuring separation of church and state.

Turkey’s Justice and Development Party – the AKP – is not an Islamist group because it does not seek to enforce Islamic law. But its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a practicing Muslim who was once active in the Islamist movement. Erdogan is banned from running for office at the behest of Turkey’s military, which balks at all public manifestations of Islamic religion as anti-secular. The victory of the AKP, despite its leader’s disqualification, challenges the view of what a secular democratic Turkey must look like.

Erdogan has tried to reassure the world of his pragmatic credentials in every possible way, from supporting Turkey’s membership of the European Union to maintaining ties with Israel. From an international point of view, it is clearly desirable that Muslim Turkey integrate with Europe and serve as a bridge between the Israelis and the Palestinians while retaining its Muslim identity.

Most Turkish voters backed Erdogan’s AKP because they were tired of the corrupt and incompetent politicians that survived the Turkish military’s many attempts to pull strings. If the Turkish armed forces try to exclude Erdogan and his party from the political process, Turkey will have to forget its dream of joining the EU. Europe will not accept pseudo-secularism at the expense of genuine democracy.

Erdogan is likely to change the irrational aspects of Turkey’s anti-religious secularism, bringing it closer to the definition of secularism in the West. For example, a Muslim schoolgirl in the United States, a country that is secular even though it is predominantly Christian, can wear a head scarf to school if she so desires. But a schoolgirl in secular, predominantly Muslim Turkey is legally forbidden from doing so.

In Muslim states from Morocco to Indonesia, westernized elites have denied democratic change, arguing that it would compromise secularism. These fears are based on the history of attempts by religious groups to impose their narrow version of Islam by force. But promoting any set of beliefs by coercion does not last and almost invariably produces a reaction.

Authoritarian Muslim rulers in Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have tried but failed to build more pious societies by issuing decrees. Erdogan’s success amounts to a rejection of the Turkish establishment’s tendency to ignore popular sentiment and insist on imposing political and social solutions from the top.

There is no substitute for tolerance. Muslim societies must recognize this fact and political groups such as AKP, with Islamic roots but secular manifestoes, can help that realization provided a democratic structure remains in place and AKP fulfills its promises.

If governments in the Muslim world open themselves to democratic change, there might be other political movements like AKP, which combine tolerance with tradition. Otherwise, the Islamic world will remain embroiled in the power struggle between authoritarian westernizers and retrogressive Islamists.

Give Pakistan A Chance

Asian Wall Street Journal, November7, 2002

Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has learnt that there’s only one thing worse than fixing an election: fixing one without getting the desired results. Pakistan’s Oct. 10 election has resulted in a hung parliament, something Gen. Musharraf sought through re-writing the constitution and election laws. But unanticipated was the manner in which voters also enhanced the leverage of Pakistan’s anti-Western Islamic parties that had, until recently, been dismissed by Gen. Musharraf as representing a minuscule minority. Mainstream secular parties opposed to military rule also gained significant clout in the new national assembly, making it difficult for the president to secure approval of his constitutional amendments.

Gen. Musharraf has delayed convening parliament, originally scheduled for Nov. 1, to buy time to cobble together a pro-military coalition. When parliament chooses a new prime minister, a close race is expected between Gen. Musharraf’s candidate and an Islamic cleric backed by mainstream secular parties hoping to embarrass the military ruler. But a victory for the opposition candidate would result in a difficult coalition between the Islamists and Westernized social democrats, who do not see eye-to-eye on most social issues. Instead of trying to force his own choice on a reluctant parliament, Gen. Musharraf could withdraw his plans to institutionalize the military’s role in governing Pakistan, which are at the heart of his constitutional package. Opposition to these amendments is the main reason for the prospective coalition between secular democrats and Islamists.

Gen. Musharraf would also have to compromise with exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose Pakistan People’s Party is the second-largest group in parliament. The PPP has long been considered an adversary by the military, which executed Ms. Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar, after toppling his elected government in 1977. Ms. Bhutto and her husband have faced charges of corruption for the last six years after her government was dismissed on the basis of those allegations. Prosecution in the corruption cases has been painfully slow and so far there has been no final conviction. Ms. Bhutto was convicted under a decree issued by Gen. Musharraf for failing to appear in a special court, which is not the same as being convicted for graft or bribery. Election results show that the allegations have not discredited Ms. Bhutto and her party in the eyes of Pakistani voters.

Gen. Musharraf’s attempts to eliminate corruption through special courts and military-backed prosecutions are seen by Pakistani politicians as politically motivated persecution. Pakistan needs to deal with the problem of political corruption, but the military’s desire to act as the country’s anti-corruption authority is obviously not working. Instead of insisting on that role, Gen. Musharraf could leave the issue of corruption to the regular courts and the court of public opinion, as is the practice in all democracies.

Once the constitutional package and the military-inspired corruption prosecutions are withdrawn, the conservatives currently considered Gen. Musharraf’s political pawns would be free to negotiate a coalition arrangement with the opposition parties. A coalition between secular parties of the center-right and the center-left would then become possible, denying the Islamists an influence disproportionate to their electoral strength.

Islamists, who gained a significant number of seats in parliament with only 11% of the popular vote, will certainly form the government in the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. Their opposition to the presence of U.S. forces conducting the war against al Qaeda could complicate Pakistan’s role as an indispensable U.S. ally in the region. But Pakistani political parties, including the Islamists, are willing to maintain the alliance with the U.S. if Washington supports normal democratic politics instead of putting all its weight behind Gen. Musharraf.

This may not be a bad deal. A democratic regime, however flawed, is more likely to provide long-term stability to Pakistan. U.S. support for military rulers in the past has contributed to anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Military rulers, including Gen. Musharraf, have used Islamic extremism as a strategic tool in pursuing Pakistan’s traditional rivalry with India. With 29% of the national budget allocated for defense, the military inhibits Pakistan’s economic development. Its repeated interventions have undermined the evolution of democratic institutions, such as strong political parties.

Instead of appearing to support the military’s political role, the U.S. should firmly assert that a return to democracy in Pakistan is critical to the long-term health of the new U.S.-Pakistan partnership. It is hard to overestimate the powerful influence that the United States has in Pakistan today. That influence means unequivocal statements from the U.S. government will have real impact on the Pakistani political elite and the military. Additionally, the U.S. can add tangible incentives to the mix. The administration could suspend or delay disbursements for Pakistan’s law-enforcement machinery under the new U.S. aid package until there are clear signs that the Pakistani intelligence services are reducing interference. Given the circumstances, it may not be easy for Gen. Musharraf to secure a civilian government that simply acts as a front for the military’s decisions. But his efforts to maintain the military’s control over his country should not be condoned. It is time Pakistan’s civilian politicians, and the people, were given a chance to work things out themselves.

Give Pakistan A Chance

Asian Wall Street Journal, November7, 2002

Pakistan’s military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has learnt that there’s only one thing worse than fixing an election: fixing one without getting the desired results. Pakistan’s Oct. 10 election has resulted in a hung parliament, something Gen. Musharraf sought through re-writing the constitution and election laws. But unanticipated was the manner in which voters also enhanced the leverage of Pakistan’s anti-Western Islamic parties that had, until recently, been dismissed by Gen. Musharraf as representing a minuscule minority. Mainstream secular parties opposed to military rule also gained significant clout in the new national assembly, making it difficult for the president to secure approval of his constitutional amendments.

Gen. Musharraf has delayed convening parliament, originally scheduled for Nov. 1, to buy time to cobble together a pro-military coalition. When parliament chooses a new prime minister, a close race is expected between Gen. Musharraf’s candidate and an Islamic cleric backed by mainstream secular parties hoping to embarrass the military ruler. But a victory for the opposition candidate would result in a difficult coalition between the Islamists and Westernized social democrats, who do not see eye-to-eye on most social issues. Instead of trying to force his own choice on a reluctant parliament, Gen. Musharraf could withdraw his plans to institutionalize the military’s role in governing Pakistan, which are at the heart of his constitutional package. Opposition to these amendments is the main reason for the prospective coalition between secular democrats and Islamists.

Gen. Musharraf would also have to compromise with exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose Pakistan People’s Party is the second-largest group in parliament. The PPP has long been considered an adversary by the military, which executed Ms. Bhutto’s father, Zulfikar, after toppling his elected government in 1977. Ms. Bhutto and her husband have faced charges of corruption for the last six years after her government was dismissed on the basis of those allegations. Prosecution in the corruption cases has been painfully slow and so far there has been no final conviction. Ms. Bhutto was convicted under a decree issued by Gen. Musharraf for failing to appear in a special court, which is not the same as being convicted for graft or bribery. Election results show that the allegations have not discredited Ms. Bhutto and her party in the eyes of Pakistani voters.

Gen. Musharraf’s attempts to eliminate corruption through special courts and military-backed prosecutions are seen by Pakistani politicians as politically motivated persecution. Pakistan needs to deal with the problem of political corruption, but the military’s desire to act as the country’s anti-corruption authority is obviously not working. Instead of insisting on that role, Gen. Musharraf could leave the issue of corruption to the regular courts and the court of public opinion, as is the practice in all democracies.

Once the constitutional package and the military-inspired corruption prosecutions are withdrawn, the conservatives currently considered Gen. Musharraf’s political pawns would be free to negotiate a coalition arrangement with the opposition parties. A coalition between secular parties of the center-right and the center-left would then become possible, denying the Islamists an influence disproportionate to their electoral strength.

Islamists, who gained a significant number of seats in parliament with only 11% of the popular vote, will certainly form the government in the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. Their opposition to the presence of U.S. forces conducting the war against al Qaeda could complicate Pakistan’s role as an indispensable U.S. ally in the region. But Pakistani political parties, including the Islamists, are willing to maintain the alliance with the U.S. if Washington supports normal democratic politics instead of putting all its weight behind Gen. Musharraf.

This may not be a bad deal. A democratic regime, however flawed, is more likely to provide long-term stability to Pakistan. U.S. support for military rulers in the past has contributed to anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Military rulers, including Gen. Musharraf, have used Islamic extremism as a strategic tool in pursuing Pakistan’s traditional rivalry with India. With 29% of the national budget allocated for defense, the military inhibits Pakistan’s economic development. Its repeated interventions have undermined the evolution of democratic institutions, such as strong political parties.

Instead of appearing to support the military’s political role, the U.S. should firmly assert that a return to democracy in Pakistan is critical to the long-term health of the new U.S.-Pakistan partnership. It is hard to overestimate the powerful influence that the United States has in Pakistan today. That influence means unequivocal statements from the U.S. government will have real impact on the Pakistani political elite and the military. Additionally, the U.S. can add tangible incentives to the mix. The administration could suspend or delay disbursements for Pakistan’s law-enforcement machinery under the new U.S. aid package until there are clear signs that the Pakistani intelligence services are reducing interference. Given the circumstances, it may not be easy for Gen. Musharraf to secure a civilian government that simply acts as a front for the military’s decisions. But his efforts to maintain the military’s control over his country should not be condoned. It is time Pakistan’s civilian politicians, and the people, were given a chance to work things out themselves.

Islam’s Medieval Outposts

Publisher: Carnegie

Foreign Policy , November/December, 2002

Originally appeared in Foreign Policy , November/December, 2002

As a 9-year-old boy, I knelt on the bare floor of the neighborhood madrasa (religious school) in Karachi, Pakistan, repeating the Koranic verse, “Of all the communities raised among men you are the best, enjoining the good, forbidding the wrong, and believing in God.”
Hafiz Gul-Mohamed, the Koran teacher, made each of the 13 boys in our class memorize the verse in its original Arabic. Some of us also memorized the translation in our own language, Urdu. “This is the word of God that defines the Muslim umma [community of believers],” he told us repeatedly. “It tells Muslims their mission in life.” He himself bore the title hafiz (the memorizer) because he could recite all 114 chapters and 6,346 verses of the Koran.

Most students in Gul-Mohamed’s class joined the madrasa to learn basic Islamic teachings and to be able to read the Koran. Only a handful of people in Pakistan spoke Arabic, but everyone wanted to learn to read the holy book. I completed my first reading of the Koran by age seven. I was enrolled part time at the madrasa to learn to read the Koran better and to understand the basic teachings of Islam.

Gul-Mohamed carried a cane, as all madrasa teachers do, but I don’t recall him ever using it. He liked my curiosity about religion and had been angry with me only once: I had come to his class straight from my English-language school, dressed in the school’s uniform—white shirt, red tie, and beige trousers. “Today you have dressed like a farangi [European]. Tomorrow you will start thinking and behaving like one,” he said. “And that will be the beginning of your journey to hell.”

Hafiz Gul-Mohamed read no newspapers and did not listen to the radio. He owned few books. “You don’t need too many books to learn Islam,” he once explained to me when I brought him his evening meal. “There is the straight path, which is described in the Koran and one or two commentaries, and there are numerous paths to confusion. I have the books I need to keep me on the straight path.” He had never seen a movie and advised me never to see one either. The only time he had allowed himself to be photographed was to obtain a passport for the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the hajj. Television was about to be introduced in Pakistan, and Gul-Mohamed found that prospect quite disturbing. One hadith (or saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed) describes “song and dance by women lacking in virtue” coming to every home as one of the signs of apocalypse. Television, Gul-Mohamed believed, would fulfill that prophecy, as it would bring moving images of singing and dancing women into every home.

The madrasa I attended, and its headmaster, opposed the West but in an apolitical way. He knew the communists were evil because they denied the existence of God. The West, however, was also immoral. Westerners drank alcohol and engaged in sex outside of marriage. Western women did not cover themselves. Western culture encouraged a mad race for making money. Song and dance, rather than prayer and meditation, characterized life in the West. Gul-Mohamed’s solution was isolation. “The umma should keep away from the West and its ways.”
But these were the 1960s. Although religion was important in the lives of Pakistanis, pursuit of material success rather than the search for religious knowledge determined students’ career choices. Everyone in my madrasa class dropped out after learning the essential rituals. I remained a part-time student for almost six years but eventually needed to devote more time to regular studies that would take me through to college. Gul-Mohamed was disappointed that I did not seek a sanad (diploma) in theology, but he grudgingly understood why I might not want a degree in theology from a parallel education system: “You don’t want to be a mullah like me, with little pay and no respect in the eyes of the rich and powerful.”

And so it was for much of the four decades before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a period when policymakers were more interested in the thoughts of Western-educated Muslims responsible for energy policy in Arab countries than those of half-literate mullahs trained at obscure seminaries. But Taliban leaders, who had ruled Afghanistan since the mid-1990s, were the products of Madrasas in Pakistan, and their role as protectors of al Qaeda terrorists has generated keen interest in their alma maters. A few weeks after September 11, I visited Darul Uloom Haqqania (Center of Righteous Knowledge), situated on the main highway between Islamabad and Peshawar, in the small town of Akora Khattak. Taliban leader Mullah Omar had been a student at Haqqania, and the madrasa, with 2,500 students aged 5 to 21 from all over the world, has been called “the University of Jihad.” The texture of life in the madrasa still has elements that represent a continuum not over decades but over centuries. But at Haqqania, I saw that the world of the madrasa had changed since I last bowed my head in front of Hafiz Gul-Mohamed.

In a basement room with plasterless walls adorned by a clock inscribed with “God is Great” in Arabic, 9-year-old Mohammed Tahir rocked back and forth and recited the same verse of the Koran that had been instilled into my memory at the same age: “Of all the communities raised among men you are the best, enjoining the good, forbidding the wrong, and believing in God.” But when I asked him to explain how he understands the passage, Tahir’s interpretation was quite different from the quietist version taught to me. “The Muslim community of believers is the best in the eyes of God, and we must make it the same in the eyes of men by force,” he said. “We must fight the unbelievers and that includes those who carry Muslim names but have adopted the ways of unbelievers. When I grow up I intend to carry out jihad in every possible way.” Tahir does not believe that al Qaeda is responsible for September 11 because his teachers have told him that the attacks were a conspiracy by Jews against the Taliban. He also considers Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden great Muslims, “for challenging the might of the unbelievers.”

The remarkable transformation and global spread of Madrasas during the 1980s and 1990s owes much to geopolitics, sectarian struggles, and technology, but the schools’ influence and staying power derive from deep-rooted socioeconomic conditions that have so far proved resistant to change. Now, with the prospect of Madrasas churning out tens of thousands of would-be militant graduates each year, calls for reform are growing. But anyone who hopes for change in the schools’ curriculum, approach, or mind-set is likely to be disappointed. In some ways, Madrasas are at the center of a civil war of ideas in the Islamic world. Westernized and usually affluent Muslims lack an interest in religious matters, but religious scholars, marginalized by modernization, seek to assert their own relevance by insisting on orthodoxy. A regular education costs money and is often inaccessible to the poor, but Madrasas are generally free. Poor students attending Madrasas find it easy to believe that the West, loyal to uncaring and aloof leaders, is responsible for their misery and that Islam as practiced in its earliest form can deliver them.
The Madrasa Boom
Madrasas have been around since the 11th century, when the Seljuk Vizier Nizam ul-Mulk Hassan bin Ali Tusi founded a seminary in Baghdad to train experts in Islamic law. Islam had become the religion of a large community, stretching from North Africa to Central Asia. But apart from the Koran, which Muslims believe to be the word of God revealed through Prophet Mohammed, no definitive theological texts existed. The dominant Muslim sect, the Sunnis, did not have a clerical class, leaving groups of believers to follow whomever inspired them in religious matters. But Sunni Muslim rulers legitimated their rule through religion, depending primarily on an injunction in the Koran binding believers to obey the righteous ruler. Over time, it became important to seek religious conformity and to define dogma to ensure obedience of subjects and to protect rulers from rebellion. Nizam ul-Mulk’s madrasa was intended to create a class of ulema, muftis, and qazis (judges) who would administer the Muslim empire, legitimize its rulers as righteous, and define an unalterable version of Islam.

Abul Hassan al-Ashari, a ninth-century theologian, defined the dogma adopted for this new madrasa (and the tens of thousands that would follow) in several polemical texts, including The Detailed Explanation in Refutation of the People of Perdition and The Sparks: Refutation of Heretics and Innovators. This canon rejected any significant role for reason in religious matters and dictated that religion be the focus of a Muslim’s existence. The Madrasas adopted a core curriculum that divided knowledge between “revealed sciences” and “rational sciences.” The revealed sciences included study of the Koran, hadith, Koranic commentary, and Islamic jurisprudence. The rational sciences included Arabic language and grammar to help understand the Koran, logic, rhetoric, and philosophy.

Largely unchanged and unchallenged, this approach to education dominated the Islamic world for centuries, until the advent of colonial rule, when Western education penetrated countries previously ruled by Muslims. Throughout the Middle East, as well as in British India and Dutch-ruled Indonesia, modernization marginalized Madrasas. Their graduates were no longer employable as judges or administrators as the Islamic legal system gave way to Western jurisprudence. Muslim societies became polarized between madrasa-educated mullahs and the economically prosperous, Western-educated individuals attending modern schools and colleges.

But the poor remained faithful. The failings of the post-colonial elite in most Muslim countries paved the way for Islamic political movements such as al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin (the Muslim Brotherhood) in the Arab world, Jamaat-e-Islami (the Islamic Party) in South Asia, and the Nahdatul Ulema (the Movement for Religious Scholars) in Indonesia. These movements questioned the legitimacy of the Westernized elite, created reminders of Islam’s past glory, and played on hopes for an Islamic utopia. In most cases, the founders of Islamic political movements were religiously inclined politicians with a modern education. Madrasas provided the rank and file.

The Iranian Revolution and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, both in 1979, inspired a profound shift in the Muslim world—and in the Madrasas. Iran’s mullahs had managed to overthrow the shah and take power, undermining the idea that religious education was useless in worldly matters. Although Iranians belong to the minority Shiite sect of Islam, and their Madrasas have always had a more political character than Sunni seminaries, the image of men in turbans and robes running a country provided a powerful demonstration effect and politicized Madrasas everywhere.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolutionary regime promised to export its revolutionary Shiite ideas to other Muslim states. Khomeini invited teachers and students from Madrasas in other countries to Tehran for conferences and parades, and he offered money and military training to radical Islamic movements. Iranians argued that the corrupt Arab monarchies must be overthrown just as Iranians had overthrown the shah. Iran’s Arab rivals decided to fight revolutionary Shiite fundamentalism with their own version of Sunni fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries began to pour money into Sunni Madrasas that rejected the Shiite theology of Iran, fund ulema who declared the Shiite Iranian model unacceptable to Sunnis, and call for a fight against Western decadence rather than Muslim rulers.

In the midst of this conflict, and the madrasa boom it spawned, the United States helped create an Islamic resistance to communism in Afghanistan, encouraging Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich states to fund the Afghan resistance and its supporters throughout the Muslim world. Pakistan’s military ruler at the time, Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, decided to establish Madrasas instead of modern schools in Afghan refugee camps, where 5 million displaced Afghans provided a natural supply of recruits for the resistance. The refugees needed schools; the resistance needed mujahideen. Madrasas would provide an education of sorts, but they would also serve as a center of indoctrination and motivation.

General Zia’s model spread throughout the Muslim world. Maulana Samiul Haq, headmaster of the Haqqania madrasa, is a firebrand orator who led anti-U.S. demonstrations soon after the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. When I asked if he thought it appropriate to involve his 5- and 6-year-old charges in political demonstrations, Haq remarked, “No one is too young to do the right thing.” Later, he added, “Young minds are not for thinking. We catch them for the Madrasas when they are young, and by the time they are old enough to think, they know what to think.” Students and teachers carried militant Islamic ideology from one madrasa to another. On one of the walls of the madrasa of my youth, someone had written the hadith “Seek knowledge even if it takes you as far as China.” Across the road from the madrasa at Haqqania, some of Tahir’s classmates have written a different hadith: “Paradise lies under the shade of swords.”

The success of General Zia’s experiment led to the creation of similar free schools in places as diverse as Morocco, Algeria, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Muslim immigrants in Europe and North America established Madrasas alongside their mosques, ostensibly to teach religion to their children. Islam requires Muslims to set aside 2.5 percent of their annual savings as zakat (charity), and religious education is one area on which zakat can be spent. Madrasas do not need huge funds to run, though. Teachers’ salaries are low, the schools need no funding for research, and books are handed down from one generation to the next.

Madrasas have proliferated with zakat and financial assistance from the gulf states. (Some classrooms at Haqqania have a small inscription informing visitors that Saudi Arabia donated the building materials for the classroom.) Modern technology has also played a role, whether by creating international financing networks or new methods of spreading the message, such as through online Madrasas. Pakistan had 244 Madrasas in 1956. By the end of last year, the number had risen to 10,000. As many as 1 million students study in Madrasas in Pakistan, compared with primary-school enrollment of 1.9 million. Most Muslim countries allocate insignificant portions of their budgets for education, leaving large segments of their growing populations without schooling. Madrasas fill that gap, especially for the poor. The poorest countries, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Yemen, and Indonesia, boast the largest madrasa enrollment.

Classes at Haqqania are free, as are meals, which are quite basic. Tahir, the seventh of nine children, likes being at the madrasa because it provides him an education without costing his parents anything. He lives in a crowded dormitory of 40 to 50 students, sleeping on rugs and mattresses on the floor. He spends most of the day memorizing texts, squatting in front of a teacher who memorized them in a similar fashion as a child. “God has blessed me as I am learning His word and the teaching of His Prophet,” Tahir told me. “I could have been like others in the refugee camp, with no clothes and no food.”

Tahir’s teacher carries a cane and can often be brutal. One madrasa in Pakistan has resorted to the practice of chaining students to pillars until they memorize the day’s lesson. But compared with life in a squalid refugee camp, the harshness of the madrasa probably is a blessing. Tahir’s day begins with the predawn prayer and a breakfast comprising bread and tea; it ends with the night prayer and a dinner of rice and mutton. And if Tahir does well at the madrasa and earns a diploma, he can expect to find a job as a preacher in a mosque.

No Turning Back
An estimated 6 million Muslims study in Madrasas around the world, and twice that number attend maktabs or kuttabs (small Koranic schools attached to village mosques). An overwhelming majority of these Madrasas follow the quietist tradition, teaching rejection for Western ways without calling upon believers to fight unbelievers. The few that teach violence, however, drill in those beliefs firmly. The militant madrasa is a relatively new phenomenon, the product of mistakes committed in fighting communism in Afghanistan. But even the quietist madrasa teaches a rejection of modernity while emphasizing conformity and a medieval mind-set. The Muslim world is divided between the rich and powerful, who are aligned with the West, and the impoverished masses, who turn to religion in the absence of adequate means of livelihood. This social reality makes it difficult for the Madrasas to remain unaffected by radical ideas, even after the militancy introduced during the last two decades disappears. Cutting off outside funding might help, but because of their modest expenses, Madrasas can survive without assistance from oil-producing states.

Legitimizing secular power structures through democracy might reduce the political influence of Madrasas. But that influence is unlikely to wane dramatically as long as Madrasas are home to a theological class popular with poor Muslims. And the fruits of modernity will need to spread widely before dual education systems in the Muslim world will come to an end.

Muslim states are now calling upon Western governments to support madrasa reform through financial aid. The proposed recipe for reform is to add contemporary subjects alongside the traditional religious sciences in madrasa curriculum. But Madrasas will probably survive these reform efforts, just as they survived the introduction of Western education during colonial rule. Can learning science and math, for example, change the worldview shaped by a theology of conformity? I asked Tahir if he is interested in learning math. He said, “In hadith there are many references to how many times Allah has multiplied the reward of jihad. If I knew how to multiply, I would be able to calculate the reward I will earn in the hereafter.”