The new age aalim

In his spacious office on the top floor of the old Haj House, where pilgrims once waited for their ships to Mecca, Burhanuddin Qasmi chews vigorously on his paan and expands on the market for aalims (scholars). “It’s a simple matter of supply and demand,” he explains patiently. “Our clients, the Muslim community, demand religious leaders to guide their prayers, fulfil their rituals and so on. This being an era of specialisation,” he says, ducking momentarily behind his desk to let flow the paan juice, “instead of burdening these aalims (scholars) with irrelevant subjects, the solution is to give them the key skills they need to overcome their weaknesses.”

Students at the Markaz ul Maarif, where Qasmi is director, acquire just these skills—English language, public speaking and even a smattering of media studies-over its two year programme. Open to madarsa graduates from across the country, the course admits only twenty students each year through a competitive exam. “They are the brightest from their circle” says Qasmi, “and have a real hunger for knowledge.” The Markaz’s course is part of a wider attempt by Muslims organisations to bridge the gap between madarsa education and modern knowledge. Says Mufti Abdul Ahad, of the Khair-e-Ummat Trust, which runs a computer literacy class in its office near Bhendi Bazaar, “It is not just about setting up a few machines inside madarsas. Our attempt is to enable Islamic scholars to participate in wider debates and to broaden their horizons.”

Students at the Markaz follow a gruelling schedule that begins at 5.30 am with pre-dawn prayers, and ends at 11.30 pm with conversation class, with breaks in between for prayers and meals. “It has to be tough,” says Qasmi, “because we start from the alphabet and take them up to Shakespeare.”

Outside his office, in the long hall with its cool stone floor, students pore over English newspapers from which the “indecent” supplements have been removed. Leaning over the stands, they read aloud and occasionally look up words in their bulky English-Urdu dictionaries. Post-graduate fellows at the centre tap away at computers, working on their papers about Islamic investments and the modern economy. Colourful wall magazines line the corridors, with handwritten articles on Valentine’s Day and the Sachar Committee as well as English phrases –“My heart broke with grief” --with their Urdu translations. The handwriting on the charts gets neater with each issue.

“We try to make lessons more interesting through these devices,” says Mohd Khalili Qasmi, one of the teachers at the seminary. In his mid-twenties, he is not much older than his students and addresses them with the respect due to their rank as Islamic scholars. Classes are held in the smaller ante rooms, furnished with whiteboards and rows of desks and chairs. Khalili teaches from a primary school textbook, but often breaks off to throw questions at the class, walking amongst them, drawing them out. There isn’t a single clean shaved face in the room, but the solemnity of the beards is belied by frequent outbursts of laughter and snappy exchanges.

“People think we are very conservative and don’t want to be close to us,” says Muneer Khan, a Kerala native, “so we are learning English to reach out to them and clear their misconceptions of Islam.” Adds his classmate, Parvez Wasi from Bihar, “Even the Prophet advised his helpers to learn other languages so they wouldn’t have to depend on translators.”

“A Muslim scholar needs to know more about modern developments,” argues Mohd Shahnawaz, whose father heads a madarsa in his native Bengal, “because Islam is a holistic way of life. Unlike other religions, we cannot restrict ourselves just to scriptures or spiritual matters.” Classes break off at the sound of the azaan from the small, marble tiled old mosque in the building’s courtyard, four floors down. Coming back up for lunch, the boys take the broad wooden stairs two at a time.

“Moving to Mumbai was like coming to another world,” says Ali Amir, “even the women here are always in a hurry.” A skilled poet and satirist, his writing now tends to dwell upon the sights of the city. He recites his latest, a dig at the Shetty-Gere controversy. “We encourage our students to follow the news carefully, especially the way Muslims are reported,” says Khalili. Headlines are discussed at morning assembly, right after Quranic recitations. In Qasmi’s office is a file that carefully preserves articles and letters by students published in various Urdu and English journals. Nearly all the students have a radio in their rooms, but television is not allowed, except for prime time news bulletins.

“Our task is to help them grow in confidence,” says Qasmi. “They are skilled in their own spheres but fall behind in dealing with outsiders. We try to groom them into leaders in front of the world.” For this, they organise regular “personality building events” like debates, poetry recitations and drama competitions. To this last session, they invited Gujarati theatre personalities as judges. “They couldn’t believe that these were madarsa boys,” he smiles.

 “Our methods may seem unorthodox” says Qasmi, “but madarsas have to innovate to keep their relevance.” Largely, he feels, they are open to such creative tweaking. “Even the Darul Uloom in Deoband now has a computer department,” he points out.
 
However, he admits that there is a limit to how far a madarsa can let the outside world in. “We cannot replicate the same interaction with different communities you would get in a non-religious school,” he says, “but that is inevitable in every kind of specialised training. You wouldn’t expect that from a Sanskrit gurukul so why from us?” Also, there are certain ways in which his students would rather not “fit in” with current norms, he adds. “They cannot do this modern thing of seeing something bad and moving on, saying ‘let it be’. We are taught to condemn or stop evil wherever we see it.” Echoes Khalili, “Every day in the newspapers, you read these letters asking for advice. They will say—‘I had sex with my boyfriend, what should I do?’ And the reply will never be, ‘you have done a sin’, but simply, ‘next time, use a condom’. This, we just cannot understand.”