West Bengal madrassas draw non-Muslim students

KOLKATA, India | After Sept. 11, 2001, many outside the Muslim world have identified South Asias Islamic madrassas as breeding grounds for aspiring terrorists.

But in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, many government-sponsored madrassas have become so successful that they attract large numbers of non-Muslim students. In some institutions, non-Muslims outnumber Muslims.

The Brookings Doha Center, located in Qatar and sponsored by the Brookings Institution of Washington, cites West Bengal madrassas as models for modern education and has suggested that Pakistan emulate them.

“Madrassas have a noble history of use in furthering the cause of science and learning in medieval Islam, but that tradition has been largely forgotten in Pakistan because of a relatively uneducated theological establishment taking over the administration of most madrassas,” said a recent Brookings study, “Pakistan’s Madrassas: The Need for Internal Reform and the Role of International Assistance.”

The report notes that in West Bengal, “a survey of Islamic schools in January 2009 found that because of the higher quality of education at madrassas, even non-Muslims were actively enrolling in them.”

The study says non-Muslims, including Hindus, Christians and animist tribals, send their children to Bengali madrassas in the same way that some Pakistani Muslim families send their children to Christian schools “because of the high quality of teaching and discipline” there.

Seventeen percent of the pupils studying in madrassas across West Bengal are non-Muslims, according to Abdus Sattar, West Bengal’s minority development and madrassa education minister.

Unlike traditional madrassas, Bengal’s state-run versions follow a mainstream school curriculum. Their students are being groomed to become engineers, doctors, scientists and other modern professionals.

West Bengal state’s ruling Communist Party government is happy to receive accolades from abroad, which it says it merits because it has ensured quality and progressiveness in madrassa syllabuses.

“Our good work in Bengal’s madrassas is being recognized today. It’s heartening to note that the study advises Pakistan to emulate the Bengal model,” Mr. Sattar said.

“Arabic and other Islamic studies form only a small part of the curriculum in our madrassas,” he said. “We are teaching our students all other general subjects that their counterparts are studying in regular schools. Competing on a par with them, our students too are joining the stream of today’s successful professionals.

“Non-Muslims who are aware of our modernized infrastructure find no difference between regular schools and our madrassas, which could be the key reason behind the presence of so many non-Muslim pupils,” he said.

Mr. Sattar added that the government-sponsored madrassas in Bengal were still undergoing further modernization and that the number of their non-Muslim pupils is increasing.

There are 576 government-sponsored madrassas in the state, including 474 “high madrassas” that have modern school syllabuses and 102 “senior madrassas” that focus on Islamic theology.

Sohrab Hossain, president of the West Bengal Board of Madrassa Education, which controls the schools, said they should not be considered minority institutions anymore.

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