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  johnpi 8:06 am on December 31, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: bengal (2), education reform (2), madrassas (3), Muslim education (7), Pakistani madrassas (3), religious education

  West Bengal madrassas draw non-Muslim students.

  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.
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  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.

   

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  johnpi 2:15 pm on November 11, 2009 | 14 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: 'Islam under siege', education (70), Extremism (166), Muslim education (7), NWFP (10), Pakistan (568), Pakistani Taliban (126), Pashtuns (11), predator drones (11), Punjab (8), religious education, Salafis (17), salafism (24), saudi arabia (135), shia (32), shia islam (6), sufi (9), Sufis (10), sufism (24), taliban (260), Terrorism (399), US foreign policy (62), US military (60), wahhabi (7), wahhabism (14), women in Islam (22)

  Pakistani magazine article: The Saudi-isation of Pakistan.

  Soldiers, policemen, factory and hospital workers, mourners at funerals and ordinary people praying in mosques have all been reduced to globs of flesh and fragments of bones. But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation. Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition, is an act only the Americans can commit.
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  Villages have changed drastically; this transformation has been driven, in part, by Pakistani workers returning from Arab countries. Many village mosques are now giant madrassas that propagate hard-line Salafi and Deobandi beliefs through oversized loudspeakers. They are bitterly opposed to Barelvis, Shias and other sects, who they do not regard as Muslims. The Punjabis, who were far more liberal towards women than the Pukhtuns, are now beginning to take a line resembling that of the Taliban. Hanafi law has begun to prevail over tradition and civil law, as is evident from the recent decisions of the Lahore High Court.
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  Pakistan’s self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia’s system, provides an ideological foundation for violence and future jihadists. It demands that Islam be understood as a complete code of life, and creates in the mind of a school-going child a sense of siege and embattlement by stressing that Islam is under threat everywhere.

   
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  johnpi 3:17 pm on October 29, 2009 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: religious education, University of New Mexico (2)

  Muslim student complains that University of New Mexico Islam classes are Islamophobic.

  Letter to the local paper:

  As a Religious Studies major who happens to be Muslim, I recently signed up for classes related to my religion of choice: Islam. I thought that taking these classes would increase my knowledge of the religion and give me a much-needed break from the lies and propaganda that I see on the news. Man, was I wrong.

  Not only did my teachers not know about the true teachings of Islam, they acted like cheerleaders for the so-called War on Terror. I had one professor compare the Prophet Muhammad to Adolf Hitler. Then a couple of days after that, another professor told a class of scared Christians that Islam teaches terrorism. And so here I am in the middle of another semester listening to the same lies. I sometimes find myself asking, “Did my professors of Islam study the religion at the University of Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib?”

  The only knowledge about Islam that is being passed on to non-Muslim students is fear and hatred. Maybe one day common sense will prevail and UNM will hire Muslims to teach classes about Islam.

  Muhajir Salam
  UNM student