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Computers gather dust as government project to modernize Islamic
education hits snags
Mitch Potter Toronto Star
November 24, 2007
KABUL
One Afghan madrassa has computers but no electricity, another has
occasional electricity but no computers. Between them, there is one
generator for solving the problem but not a drop of fuel or money
to buy more.
Welcome to the harsh reality of the fledgling Afghan government's
project to modernize Islamic education across the nation, a work-in-
progress intended to staunch the flow of impressionable young minds
to madrassas in Pakistan, where many fear a process of Talibanization
awaits.
On paper at least, President Hamid Karzai's education ministry
planners speak highly of the transformation of Islamic learning
throughout Afghanistan.
Over the past year, they say, each of the country's 34 provinces has
seen the establishment of at least one Darl al-Aloum de facto mega-
madrassas, where as many as 6,000 Afghan students pore over a
curriculum that marries Islamic tradition with contemporary studies,
all under the watchful eye of government inspectors.
"The old curriculum was 500 years old, consisting of purely Islamic
studies taught by mullahs with no knowledge of the modern world,"
said Daiul Haq Abid, head of the government's Islamic Education
project.
"The new curriculum is based on the concept of 40 per cent religious
instruction, 40 per cent maths and sciences, plus 20 per cent English
and computer studies.
The dream is to create madrassas that graduate students who are
connected to the modern world, rather than isolated from it.
Pivotal to the project, which involves $70 million of investment for
infrastructure alone, is a tripling of the paltry salaries for
instructors, with the pay grade now topping out at 15,000 afghanis,
or $300, a month.
But even at Kabul's flagship mega-madrassa, Darl al-Aloum Arabi,
those paper plans have yet to be lifted out of the box, according to
principal Abdul Salaam Abid.
"I know when I speak to the media I am supposed to be enthusiastic
about all of this. That is what you want to hear, isn't it?" Abid,
36, told the Toronto Star in an interview this week.
"Sorry, I cannot do that. The truth is we have been waiting eight
months for the salary increase and it has not arrived. We received 10
computers, but we were only able to turn them on to see that they
functioned before the electricity supply died.
"We have a generator but no fuel or funds to buy fuel, so the
computers just gather dust."
Abid reaches across his desk for the new curriculum, crafted after a
fact-finding mission to Jordan last winter involving more than 40
Afghan educators, with the support of UNESCO and USAID, the foreign
donation branch of the American government.
He has yet to receive any textbooks to support it, so his 750
students still consume the tried-and-true diet of old a purely
Islamic syllabus based on what Abid describes as "good Islamic
personalities" of the past.
In conversation with Abid and other Islamic scholars in the Afghan
capital, it is clear the problem is not strictly a question of
resources.
It also involves deep suspicion of the Karzai government and by
extension, the international community.
If they are peripherally worried about the danger of Afghan students
drifting across the border to become radicalized in Pakistan, they
are far more concerned about the overall demonization of the word
madrassa.
"The old curriculum emphasizes peace, love and proper behaviour on
both sides of the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan," said
Abid.
"We resent this violent image that has been painted. If there are a
very small number of schools that are being used for political
purposes in Pakistan, it has nothing to do with Islam. It is too easy
to point fingers this way."
Such sensitivities are no surprise to Western diplomats stationed in
the capital, who note that the Karzai government is continually
buffeted by accusations it is working in cahoots with foreign donors
to dilute the deep-seated cultural conservatism that binds the
country's disparate mix of ethnic Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara
populations, 99 per cent of which is Muslim.
A case in point arose this week when the government was prompted by
opposition anger to issue a warning to Tolo Television station after
the independent outlet broadcast a concert by the Colombian pop
starlet Shakira.
Although the station took the extreme measure of "pixillating," or
blurring, Shakira's plunging neckline, the televised grinding of hips
was no match for the outraged grinding of axes that followed.
"You can understand the fears of Afghans because they already lived
through the Soviet occupation, which tried to impose a wave of social
engineering," a Western diplomat told the Star.
"So it is easy for them to see the foreign effort today as
representing a new wave of social engineering, especially when it
involves messing with the madrassas and particularly when Karzai's
critics are pouring out the propaganda, painting him as a patsy for
Western cultural influence."
Government officials acknowledge the challenge, but insist that
madrassa reform is a critical element of the project to stabilize
Afghanistan.
"It is true we still have huge challenges in our madrassas: a lack of
books, a lack of facilities, a lack of quality instructors, a lack of
overall management," said Abid, the education ministry overseer.
"But we are making progress and the best evidence of that is that the
Taliban is jealous of what we are doing. To them, everyone involved
in a government-sponsored madrassa is a non-Muslim and in the past
year they have attacked us viciously, killing 35 instructors and
injuring another 34 in various attacks across Afghanistan.
"That is a terrible toll. But it means we are having an impact. Every
student we maintain in our system is a student removed from the reach
of the Taliban."
Sayed Noorullah Murad, Afghanistan's deputy minister of religious
affairs, said the fledgling madrassa reform project is unlikely to
have a major impact until it reaches beyond the provincial capitals
and begins to have an impact on the hundreds of smaller religious
schools that dot the rural landscape.
"The level of illiteracy in many rural areas of Afghanistan means the
population is blind. And the level of education for the rural mullahs
is such that even they don't know how to explain true Islam," said
Murad.
"The result is that we have the blind teaching the blind. Yet, at the
same time, we have a population where a significant number of poor
families prefer their children receive a religious education.
"So that is the scale of what we are up against, and the answer lies
in not only a better quality curriculum, but more importantly, better
quality instructors.
"Frankly, it is going to take years. We need to proceed very
carefully, because the rural communities are nothing if not
traditional and traditional communities resist change." |
