| No scope for complacence, yet A World Bank study on Quomi madrassahs 'reveals' that these institutions, running primarily on private donations, are doing 'a good job' within their specific educational context, as reported in New Age on Saturday. It also claims that that these madrassahs, unlike the more traditional ones in Pakistan, have undergone structural changes even without state intervention and are increasingly becoming feminised enrolling more female students. The study also finds that the number of students enrolled in these madrassahs is less then two per cent of all students enrolled in institutions across the country.
This study, being one of the few, if any at all, on Quomi madrassahs, carried out as part of the WB's comprehensive effort to examine the quality of secondary education in Bangladesh, brings to light several other matters that had recently become reasons for genuine concern. The study dispels the growing apprehension, at least for the time being, that the madrassah base of students had reached alarmingly high proportions. It also rejects another 'finding' that raised much alarm claiming that Bangladesh military recruitment of personnel with madrassah background had gone up from only five per cent from before the 2001 general elections to almost 35 per cent by 2006 during the tenure of BNP-Jamaat government.
This was publicly stated twice — once in a study by Wazed and Ciovacco (2008), published in the Harvard International Review, and then by former ambassador Waliur Rahman at a workshop of the Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs on April 16, 2009. On both instances the claims were by and large discredited because of the individuals' proximity to the Awami League and their obvious interest in discrediting the main opposition, but even more so because neither claim was backed by authentic documentation or suggestion of comprehensive studies to substantiate them.
However, the cause of alarm could not be dismissed, especially from among the more conscious sections of the citizenry, since they are well aware of certain international forces bent on furthering their propaganda of proliferation of the Islamist terrorism and eagerly waiting for an excuse to initiate another front in the 'war on terror' without any respect for the national sovereignty of the countries where such trends are allegedly gaining ground. The WB's report in this regard should act as a deterrent as it rejects those claims.
Still, Bangladesh does not have any reason to sit back with any sense of complacence, as the trend of growing extremism is very much there. Bangladeshi Islamist extremism is primarily a political reaction to the official West's negative attitude towards 'Muslim countries' on the one hand and the failures of the ruling elites to address pervasive poverty of the millions on the other. As long as these phenomena exist, the ground will remain fertile for extremism, Islamist or otherwise, while the undemocratic forces using Islam for partisan gains would continue capture the hearts of thousands in their call for setting up of a theocratic state.
If genuinely committed to democracy, the government therefore will have to actively fight the spread of this brand of religious extremism on several fronts — social, political, economic and cultural. For starters, the government would have to appear not another one of the West's cronies. The citizens will have to be made more aware, through active campaigns, about the adverse effect of, say, Talibanisation. On top of that all, the government has to implement truly egalitarian economic policies to ensure inclusive development of the people in general, instead of exclusive development of the rich minority that perpetuates crude disparity among different sections of the society, causing frustration among the poor about the existing political order. While democratisation of society and state, inclusive economic growth and distancing from the crudely anti-Muslim western states remain key to deter the further rise of Islamist militancy, mainstreaming madrassah education, Quomi or otherwise, remains one of the most important jobs for any democratically oriented government willing to stand in the way of the Islamist political forces finding easy recruits for their parochial partisan purposes. http://www.newagebd.com/2009/may/10/edit.html |
