The unequivocal denunciation of faith-proclaimed terrorism in all its manifestations by the Deoband (Uttar Pradesh)-based Darul Uloom — India’s largest Islamic seminary — and its call to save Islam from its lunatic fringe which has brought it grave global disrepute, has come not a day too soon. Addressing a convention comprising thousands of clerics and students from across the country in Delhi on May 31, Habib-ur-Rehman, rector of the 150-year-old Darul-Uloom Deoband, which offers its 3,500 students study programmes in Islamic law and jurisprudence, declared: “The religion of Islam has come to wipe out all kinds of terrorism and to spread the message of global peace…” Six days earlier, a self-styled Islamic terrorist group — Indian Mujahideen — claimed responsibility for bomb blasts in Jaipur which indiscriminately killed 65 citizens (including three Muslims) and injured 200 people.
Following the failure of the country’s Muslim intelligentsia and middle class to squarely condemn faith-based guerilla outfits (repeatedly prescribed on this page), this forthright denunciation of Islamic terrorist groups who are giving Islam a bad name while playing into the hands of Hindu militant organisations, is particularly timely and welcome.
Now the lead given by the community’s ecclesiastic leadership needs to be followed up by Muslim academics and middle class to introduce secular learning within the curriculums of India’s 30,000 madarsa schools and institutions of religious education. The overwhelming majority of students enrolled in these institutions have little or no exposure to modern knowledge and English communication skills, which theologists with their narrow perspectives are unlikely to fulfill. Subjects such as economics, history, geography, mathematics, political science, computer science etc — the staples of contemporary school education — are alien to them. Against this backdrop, a recent proposal of the Central government to set up a Central Madarsa Board (akin to CBSE), which will inject contemporary learning into madarsa education needs to be strongly endorsed by the Muslim intelligentsia.
It’s patently obvious that the failure of the Muslim clergy to sufficiently stress the importance of modern, secular education has alienated the minority community’s youth from the mainstream, thus making them soft targets for fundamentalist and terrorist groups. Such a contrast to the enlightened ecclesiastical leadership provided by the Aga Khan to the (Muslim) Ismailia community, which is thoroughly modern and secular in outlook and completely untainted by terrorism. It is from such groups/sects within the Muslim community that the Deoband clerics — who have taken the wise and welcome step of denouncing radical violence and terrorism — need to look for inspiration.
The clerics of Deoband, the Muslim clergy and intelligentsia in general need to accept and assert the liberal, humanist and sui generis traditions of subcontinental Islam. This is the prerequisite for transforming the country’s young Muslim population into respected, contributing citizens of a just and stable society.