SOCIETY
Back to their roots
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Alarmed by the blunting of their identity in mainstream schools, the newer "Islamic-English" schools now aim to produce a radically different generation of Muslims: English-speaking, academically on a par with the best, and thoroughly Islamic in conduct and appearance. JYOTI PUNWANI examines this trend.
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REUTERS
THEY sing "A for Allah, B for Bismillah"; run around their classrooms properly covered from head to toe, know Arabic almost as well as they do English, don't watch TV but are familiar with the most advanced general knowledge books and CDs.
Say "Salaam Aleikum!" to the first batch of toddlers to enrol in Mumbai's four "Islamic" English schools started over the last two years. Combining the study of Islam with a regular academic curriculum, these schools aim to produce a radically different generation of Muslims: English-speaking, academically on par with the best, and thoroughly Islamic in conduct and appearance.
Housed on one or sometimes two floors of old buildings in the city's Muslim quarter, they have yet to acquire a fully qualified staff, run only till Std. II or III, haven't yet got official recognition, but are already turning away applicants.
Their USP is their irresistible combination of religious and secular education. Most Muslim children start learning the Quran by age seven, and almost all of them end up resenting this additional burden, which cuts into their limited play/rest time, and makes little sense to them. In these new schools, Arabic is taught from nursery, to enable children to understand the Quran instead of merely learning it by rote and then "putting it away on a shelf, forgotten," as Dr. Shehnaz Shaikh puts it. But it wasn't just this belated homecoming that prompted her to risk starting the Al Mu'minah Girls High School, where her younger daughter joins 124 others in singing "Be careful little eyes what you see, as Allah is watching you". The frequent taunts faced by her elder daughter in one of Mumbai's best-known English schools, brought back bitter memories. "Why don't you go to Pakistan?" was just one of the many jibes Dr. Shaikh grew up with in prestigious Delhi and Lucknow convents.
Gulf-returned and unemployed Mehmood, had a "burning desire" to see his youngest daughter as a student of the neighbourhood convent. Despite the principal's insulting "Why do you keep coming here? Go to your Muslim schools!" he paid Rs. 5000 to an "agent" for admission. But when his three-year-old had to stand out in the sun as punishment for coming to school with mehndi on her hands after Eid, Mehmood decided it was time to try out the new Islamic school mentioned by the local Imam in his Friday sermon, even if it meant losing a year.
Today, he looks on thrilled as his little "Dadimaa" (grandmother) reproves him for indulging in the haraam activity of watching TV ("I've explained to her it's only the news"), and puts on her scarf at the sound of the azaan. Businessman Altaf bhai got rid of his TV years ago, but feels helpless about his convent-going teenaged daughter's easy familiarity with her male classmates. He tried for a reputed girls' convent, but his appearance — cap, beard and pyjama-kurta — and that of his burqah-clad wife, were enough to reject his application. So when fellow businessman Suhail Shaikh started the first Islamic English school in Mumbai, the Al-Jamia-Tul-Fikriya Islamic School, on one floor of a semi-constructed building, Altaf bhai's extended family enrolled all their six infants. The school has since moved to a better location, but classes are only till Std. III and cost Rs. 2,000 a month.
However, the joy of being corrected by his five-year-old whenever he deliberately falters over his bedtime prayers is compensation enough for Altaf bhai. The "Islamic" meals provided by the school: boiled eggs, milk, fruit and biscuits, eaten seated on the floor in "Islamic" style; the burqah-clad teachers (including non-Muslims) and the advanced science and geography textbooks brought out by the school, are a bonus.
A convent product himself, Shaikh neither wanted his son to recite the Christian prayer nor bow before the idol of Saraswati every morning. So he began his own school in his office with his son as his first student, and his Christian secretary the first teacher. Today, the parents of his 200 students willingly comply with his only condition: getting rid of their TV sets.
It's obvious that the existing English schools have failed to meet the complex needs of today's Muslims. Those tolerant enough to admit first generation learners, or children of "typical Muslims", are either too Westernised, strengthening, rather than countering, the worst effects of mass media on impressionable minds, or are too Hinduised. Rues Shahabuddin Shaikh, founder-principal of Safa English School (a/c classrooms, no songs), "Our kids in UP know more about the Ramayan than about the Quran."
Either way, they blunt the Muslim identity, more under siege after Gujarat than ever before. Many Muslims today want a school where their children can be themselves, as can Hindu/Christian children, where "students are free to express Islamic attitudes and behaviour, proudly and openly". This promise made by the Islamic International School, comes at Rs. 48,000-plus a year and is not available to parents who don't wear the hijaab or pray five times, who refuse to learn English or cut off their cable connection.
But while existing English schools can be faulted for making the country's largest minority feel excluded (most celebrate Diwali and Christmas but not Eid), the new schools run the risk of ghettoising Muslim children. So caught up are they in moulding their clay into "true Muslims" for whom education has been ordained as a religious duty, so keen to produce a generation who, while looking unashamedly like "typical Muslims", will destroy the stereotype of the "typical Muslim", that these schools seem to have forgotten their very raison d' etre: the vast, many-hued world that exists outside their classrooms.
Singing "Be careful little eyes" at the Al Mu'minah School, Mumbai.
Only Bangalore's Oasis International School, the first such school in India, started in 1997, has this world firmly in mind. "A community's survival and acceptance in a pluralistic society, depends not only on its ability to preserve its identity, but also to a large extent on its capacity to contribute to society," says founder Ayesha Masood. Though catering mainly to Muslims, who are taught Arabic and the Quran, Oasis does not call itself an Islamic school, and has separate value education classes for its non-Muslim children, based on their own scriptures. Of all these schools, Oasis is the only one that has the national anthem sung during the weekly assembly.
Most of the Mumbai schools don't give more than a day off for Diwali or Christmas, if that, preferring to give their students time off during Ramzan and Eid.
One college lecturer withdrew her child for that reason alone, since their holidays didn't coincide, and they could not visit grandparents together. Another lawyer-doctor couple withdrew their daughter after three months, not wanting to deprive her of the "National Geographic" channel, and worried that she wouldn't be able to interact with non-Muslims once she reached college.
A Muslim teacher at one of these schools prefers to send her own children to a regular school, because she doesn't have the time to supplement the learning they would receive in the Islamic school. "I would have to take them to bookshops for the normal children's books, and teach them the normal nursery rhymes, so that they don't stand out among their friends."
But the schools remain unfazed by such reactions. They believe most of the problems of Indian Muslims arise from not following Islam correctly, and they would be happy if all faiths, including Hindus, ran similar schools for their own children. Intermingling can take place through joint inter-school programmes, they say, and there's a whole lifetime for kids to meet others. "Mingling with others, we forgot our own ways," laughs Shahabuddin Shaikh.
"We mingled with the mainstream and what did we get?" asks Dr. Shehnaz Shaikh. "Humiliation and rejection. Let these children grow to be proud and confident Muslims first. Only then will they be able to integrate well. Islam teaches us to be tolerant towards other faiths. I guarantee our students will never be instigated to violence by politicians."
"Islam says we are all part of one human family, children of one father and mother. This is what we teach our students," points out Suhail Shaikh. "Our aim is not to build a good Muslim student alone, but a good Indian student."
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