The crowd remains silent. The maulana sitting on a throne-like chair placed on the stage accompanied by the local elites sitting behind him. All listening to the stories as the preacher brings new meaning and dimensions of the stories from the life of the Prophet and his men.
`Here I'm facing a problem'- says the maulana, the Arabic word for cleric. He is speaking on a microphone and that voice is spread till the end of the village through big loud speakers. He continues, "I was little bit happy that a total of amount as donations from you rose to 18 thousand taka (taka, Bangladeshi currency, 1$ = 80 taka in 2011). I was expecting if somehow some guys could come forward to donate two thousands more and we could make it a round figure of 20 thousand. Now, see what has happened, I can see three down-to-earth servants of Almighty Allah who came forward to donate one thousand each. That makes the amount 21 thousand."
The maulana waits, so does the crowd. People from around the village swarms the playground and fill it up to the brink. December fog seems to cool down everything in the vicinity. It was almost midnight. Among the listeners there are farmers as old as 80 years of age and there are adolescents and all the age groups in between. A colorful samiana cocoons the ground and the people in the winter night.
The crowd remains silent. The maulana sitting on a throne-like chair placed on the stage accompanied by the local elites sitting behind him. All listening to the stories as the preacher brings new meaning and dimensions of the stories from the life of the Prophet and his men.
To the village people the maulana is here to teach, to preach, to the madrasa administration this is the event to raise funds for the institution. He is invited here, in Brahmanbaria, an eastern district of Bangladesh from the capital Dhaka to make the mehfil a success.
As the maulana tells stories from the Prophets' life, the volunteers collect money from the donors in the crowd. In a point of time, he stops, as in a gasping pause before reaching a climax, and announces it is 21 thousand taka in total!
After a brief silence he continues, "please, let me know if we will call this a day or we should wait to let some other people to have the chance to donate some more money to can make it 30 thousand." The crowd remains silent and he continues, "Ok, let's try for 30 thousand and then we will continue the story of the battle of Ohud. It is only nine thousand taka for some rich person here and for the poor students this might be the biggest help in their holy path to be a Hafiz, a person who holds The Quran in his heart"
The same "round figure" problem keeps repeating itself when the amount approaches 30 thousand, so the next target is 40, and then 50 thousand. At the end of the mehfil the maulana announces the total amount rose. It is seven hundred and fifty thousand taka and the promise of 500 kilograms of rice after the season's harvest. The volunteers will go to donor's house to collect the promised rice.
That rice will be added to the stock of the Hefzkhana – the dormitory of a qaumi madrasa where the senior students live. Students who are memorising the Holy Quran to be Hafiz.
Not every household can donate 500 kilograms of rice though. This woman can afford 'half-a-pot' every week.
Raising funds for the madrasa is not as easy everywhere. For example, people living on the chars of big rivers are poorer than the people of mainland. Generally people living in char area are mostly the people who who always bear the risk of losing their homes and whatever earthly posessions they have to perpetual river erosion. These erosions occurs with every flood during monsoon.
So, in the same month of December where the madrasa administration is happy with the donation from the mehfil in Brahmanbaria, some 300 kilometers away on a village road Aynal Shaikh and Chand Miah walk from house to house to collect "Moosthi" or "handful of rice" as their remuneration on Saturday mornings. They are two teachers who teach at the madrasa founded by an old farmer Ansar Ali Mandal in the village of Telgachia in the district of Tangail. And yes, this is happening on the chars of Jamuna, the widest river in Bangladesh.
The founder Ansar Ali Mandal can pay 800 taka each of the teachers a month and this is all he can afford. The rest comes from the collected moosthi. "In the previous years I could just make a single round and come back with a bag full of grains", says Aynal Shaikh, "but now I cannot do that any more. I have to come back after collecting from half of the houses and then make another round." Not because the number of students have increased, and certainly not that the houses are giving more now a days, this is just the teacher grew old and he cannot carry 20 kilograms of rice. That is all he gets, 20 kilograms of rice from moosthi and 800 taka, a months salary for a madrasa teacher.
"Even an unskilled day-laborer earns more", says Ansar Ali Mandal, the founder, "but that's all I can arrange for them". The madrasa is founded on the piece of land from his family property and now he cannot arrange enough salary for the teachers and also cannot shut down the madrasa, since it's a religious duty.
In the villages of Bangladesh, most of the qaumi madrasas are facing almost similar limitations and challenges. Generally, these madrasas are founded on someone's piece of land donated for the institute and for some time, initially, they function well. But, after a few years they start to face financial shortages and related predicaments. The word Qaumi is from the Arabic word Qaum which means community or people. All the qaumi madrasas in Bangladesh are the institutes that fall outside the gamut of government funding and depend on donations from common people in the community.
Qaumi madrasas are not only deprived from government funding, they are not governed by any government body either. And there are no statistics on the total number of qaumi madrasas in the country. The number might be somewhere between 15,000 to 100,000, take or leave a few. Until few years back there was no formal examination system for these madrasa students, rather the teacher would determine the education level for the students to decide who gets the promotion to the next class. Now the scenario is changing. In these madrasas formal examination system is being introduced and sometimes they invite teachers from other madrasas as external examiners.
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On the other hand, madrasas that are run under the Alia tradition have formal certificate examinations and they operate under the Madrasah Education Board under the ministry of education.
Changes are taking place in some other areas too. Napoleon in France and Bismarck in Germany introduced the concept of Cadet Colleges. Military and Royal aristocrats would send their children or wards to those cadet colleges for education and a career in the Royal Army. Cadet colleges were established in East Pakistan with a similar vision. Now there are 12 cadet colleges in Bangladesh and they are known for their standard of education. Following the goodwill of these institutes, some kindergarten schools in Bangladesh started to introduce themselves as "Pre-Cadet Schools" giving an impression that they prepare young students for the cadet colleges.
Later in the 90's this "Cadet" concept came to madrasas and some newly founded madrasas stated taking the name is "Cadet Madrasas". No, they do not promise to prepare students for the cadet colleges, the name indicates something different.
"We want to prepare our students well, maybe not for the cadet colleges, but for their future"-says Harun-ur-Rashid Khan, the principal and chairman of Kurtubi Cadet Madrasa in the northern town of Tangail. He says, "We are focusing more on English, Mathematics, Science and on physical training within the context of Islamic education"
Founded in 1999, Kurtubi Cadet Madrasa now has 1600 students in different classes and about 150 teachers. This number is huge compared with village qaumi madrasas where there are in an average 200 to 300 students and 5 to 10 teachers.
This madrasa does not depend on donations. The cost of education is high here and therefore students from financially solvent families are common here. "If you want your son or daughter to learn good English and if you want them to be religious, this is the kind of school they need", says the principal.
Like Kurtubi Cadet Madrasah, there are other Islamic schools that are carrying out experiments in some other fields. On the southern part of the country, there is a "Model", "Science" and "Technical" madrasa. Founded by a non resident Bangladeshi living in UK, the Dawatul Iman Model, Science and Technical Madrasa vows to offer technical training within the package of Islamic education.
But, these experimental institutes are very few in number and almost all the madrasas belong to the two main traditions of Islamic education in the country- The Alia tradition and the Qaumi tradition.
In 1780 the Calcutta Alia Madrasa was founded by the British ruler in India, Warrern Hastings. After some massive changes in 1821, this madrasa introduced the formal system of examination in Islamic Education. The certifications known as Dakhil (School Final) Alim (Intermediate), Fazil (Graduation) and Kamil (Masters) were introduced. Now this structure is adopted by the government as standard of madrasa education.
On the other hand, in 1866 some clerics at the madrasa named Darul Ulum Deoband in Deoband, India proposed a new school of Islamic education. This was accepted by some other madrasas and spread Indiawide and started being called Qaumi madrasa and also as Deobandi madrasa.
Though the Qaumi and Alia are the two major traditions in madrasa education in Bangladesh, they sometimes criticize one another. The Qaumi supporters claim the Alia tradition to be the result of a conspiracy done by the British rulers of this land. To them, Alia is not a true Islamic tradition, rather it is the British approved Islamic education and therefore unacceptable.
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On the other hand, the Alia supporters claim the Qaumi madrasas are the breeding ground of the fundamentalists. This negative mindset caused a lot of trouble for a good number of religious people in 2006. That was the year when alleged Islamic fanatics bombed at 400 different places in one day, creating a nationwide panic and pandemonium that led the government to take some strict measures regarding religious fanatics.
That bombing event became the background of a feature film by a reputed film maker Tareq Masud (1956-2011). The film titled Runway tells the story of a madrasa student Ruhul. After some failed attempt to get a job, Ruhul becomes influenced by a fanatic who preaches him about jihad and Islamic revolution. But seeing the brutality of the bombing, Ruhul retreats and joins the mainstream population, who are against fanatics.
Tareq, himself being a former madrasa student felt the necessity of showing the film to rural areas of the country. He decided not to release the film in town theatres and went to different places, on his own accord, to do the shows of the movie with his laptop, projector and portable sound systems.
On such a movie show trip Tareq took me with him to Mymensing, a town 130 kilometers north of Dhaka. After a hugely successful show, on the way back to Dhaka, Tareq told me, "You see, this time we did the show in a university campus outside Dhaka. Well, this is not bad, but we need to go to places that are yet to reach. University students already have the money and access to movies. We need to make those aware about fanaticism that are still beyond our rich - both in terms of distance and in terms of financial capacity. The university students already know the theme of the movie; it's of no use trying to convert those who are already converted. We need to reach the boys like Ruhul in the movie, who are vulnerable."
I got a chance to meet Nurullah, a young boy who at the age of 12 became a Hafiz-e-Quran.
Nurullah's day starts even before dawn. The same rule applies for about 250 students at the madrasa throughout the year. He prepares himself by taking an ablution with the pond water beside madrasa and then joins Fazr salat or the Morning Prayer. After that the students take a short nap and wake up by 7 in the morning.
The breakfast is usually Muri, or biscuits. After that, the students start reading under supervision of teachers.
After a brief break at 11 in the morning, they resume their study till its time for the prayer at noon and lunch. After the prayer Nurullah goes to a village home where he has his lunch and in a food carrier brings the food to eat as dinner at night. Every single resident student of the madrasa is attached with a village family that extends the food support for the students.
After the lunch Nurullah takes a day time nap like most of the students of the dorm. Just before evening students enjoy some outdoor sports like football and cricket. Before and after the sports there are two more prayers. And finally after evening study Nurullah, with other students have their dinner and then the night prayer indicates one more day in the path of Allah is spent properly.
In Brahmanbaria, one day after the fund raising mehfil I ask Nurullah, if he had the chance to see the movie, Runway. He replies negatively- "the teacher says, television and cinema are not allowed in Islam". I, then, ask him about his future plans and desired professions. He says he wants to serve Islam. I rephrase the question and ask whether he has any specific plan for earning and living a financially solvent life. He says - "You know, there is someone up there and He takes care of everything. I do not have to worry about all these things"
Dhaka, Bangladesh | 11 January 2012
