What is Madrassa?

Monday, July 15, 2019

What is Madrassa?

Madrassa- additionally spelled madrassah or madrasah—is Arabic for "school." The word is normally utilized all through the Arab and Islamic world to allude to wherever of learning in a similar sense that, in the United States, "school" alludes to a grade school, secondary school or college. It very well may be a common, professional, religious or specialized school. By and large, nonetheless, madrassas offer religious-put together guidance centering with respect to the Quran and Islamic writings at both the essential and optional levels.

The negative implication of "madrassa" as it's come to be comprehended in the English-talking world—as alluding to a spot where fundamentalist, Islamic guidance is joined with against Western occupations, or in the extraordinary, as a spot where fear mongers are framed ideologically—is for the most part an American and British vanity. It is generally, yet not by any means, mistaken.

These centuries-old Islamic religious institutions came into closer focus after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011, when experts suspected that madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan teaching Islamic extremism were tied to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, fomenting anti-Americanism and fostering hatred toward the West in general.

The Rise of Religious Schools

One of the first madrassas—the Nizamiyah—was set up in Baghdad in the eleventh century A.D. It offered free lodging, education, and food.
Unquestionably, there has been a rise in the number of religious schools in the Islamic world, and particularly of schools dominated by the more fundamentalist Deobandi, Wahhabi and Salafi strains of Islam.

What is Madrassa?

Pakistan detailed that somewhere in the range of 1947 and 2001, the quantity of religiously based madrassas expanded from 245 to 6,870. The schools are often funded by Saudi Arabia or other private Muslim donors through a system known as zakat, which is one of the five pillars of the Islamic faith and requires part of one's income to be given to charity. Some madrassas have produced militants, especially in Pakistan, where the government in the 1980s actively supported the formation of Islamic militias to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Madrassas concentrated on religious philosophy as managed by the Koran until the 20th century, along with mathematics, logic, and literature. Overwhelmingly, however, madrassas are apolitical and, due to their low costs, provide instruction and boarding to the poorer segments of society—segments generally neglected by the state. While most of madrassas are for young men, a bunch is devoted to the instruction of young ladies.