Author: Muzamil Jaleel
Publication: Indian Express
Date: Aril 12, 2001.
Srinagar, April 11: THE three-day
international Deobandi meet which ended near Peshawar in Pakistan today
may not have had any participants from here but its echoes are being heard
loud and clear in about 60 madrassas across the Valley.
Here the Deoband school of thought
is the driving force, the same force that feeds the Taliban in Afghanistan
and jehadi groups in Pakistan, including the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
And although Deobandis here deny
that these religious schools are potential jehad factories-they insist
that students in the Valley are taught not to take to the gun-they admit
that much of what is taught here overlaps with the hardline philosophy
of the Taliban.
They believe that ''the freedom
of women, which allows them to work in every field of life with men is
the main reason for social degradation''. That the safe place for women
is in pardah (veil) and inside the four walls of the house. Television
is the ''spark of hell'' responsible for moral degradation and watching
it is un-Islamic and sinful. So is music, which they consider evil.
However, Deobandi scholars here
insist that they are imparting education, no more and no less. Interestingly,
the man who heads the 143-year-old Darul Uloom Deoband (Deoband University)
is a Kashmiri, Alama Anzar Shah Kashmiri, who is also president of all
Deobandi madrassas. Though the first such madrassa, the Darul-Uloom Dandipora,
came up in Kashmir in the early '70s, the past decade-coinciding with militancy-has
seen a mushrooming of these religious schools. Most of them are in the
frontier Kupwara district, the ancestral home of Alama Anzar Shah Kashmiri.
These madrassas may be as orthodox
as the ones that nurture the Taliban but they don't focus on jehad. ''We
believe that to change a society, you need to reform individuals. When
individuals get ready, results come automatically,'' says Moulana Ahmad
Syed Shah Qasimi, who heads the Darul-Uloom Qasimia in Srinagar which has
200 in-house students. ''We are not against jehad. No Muslim can be against
jehad. But our aim is to reform the moral degradation in Muslims through
religious education.'' He says that despite the network of madrassas, a
lot needs to be done. ''Eighty percent of our teachers still come from
outside the state. Only 5% of our Imams are qualified.''Another top Deobandi
scholar is Moulana Rehamatullah Qasimi who heads the largest Darul-Uloom
in the Valley, Darulaloom Raheemia of Bandipore, which has around 500 students.
Qasimi claims the aim is to ''impart education'' and sees no link with
this and militancy.
So why are the Taliban different
despite being Deobandis? ''Whatever the
Taliban do in Afghanistan is not
the product of the environment of madrassas the exhibition of Afghan tradition,''
says Alama Anzar Shah Kashmiri. ''Our madrassas neither produce terrorists
nor the education they impart can be a cause for strife.''
He said that the temperament and
traditions of Kashmiris can never lure to violence but adds in the same
breath: ''The communal elements in the Army and other security forces are
humiliating Kashmiris rather than trying to win them over. This hurts.''
Will these madrassas finally turn into jehad factories? ''Let someone do
research. In the past decade, nobody can name a single militant who has
been a product of any Deobandi madrassa in Kashmir or anywhere in India,''
says Kashmiri.
The madrassa system is a 12-year
course with subjects ranging from how to study and recite the Quran to
Islamic literature, grammar, logic, jurisprudence and philosophy.
