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The poison in the books we teach
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Bringing the madrasa into the mainstream would in some measure mean bringing the regular curriculum into the seminary. Is this curriculum any different from the twisted view of life taught to the boys who are then fed into jihad? There is some research that says that jihad in Pakistan was numerically fed from the mainstream educational institutions far more than from the seminaries

President Pervez Musharraf, in his ‘breakfast meeting’ with foreign intellectuals on ARY channel on 1 March 2004, defended his government’s go-slow policy on the taming of the madrasas in Pakistan, saying Pakistan didn’t have the money to do it. The world thinks that unless the religious seminary in Pakistan is purged of its dangerous jihadi ideology Pakistan’s role in the campaign against terrorism would not be complete. The United States and the European Union are both focusing on the madrasa reform in Pakistan and will probably put more pressure on President Musharraf for it in the coming days.

Mainstream no different from madrasa: But Pakistan’s allies in the war against terrorism have not focused on what Pakistan does in its regular mainstream schools. Bringing the madrasa into the mainstream would in some measure mean bringing the regular curriculum into the seminary. Is this curriculum any different from the twisted view of life taught to the boys who are then fed into jihad? There is some research that says that jihad in Pakistan was numerically fed from the mainstream educational institutions far more than from the seminaries. If seminary teaches jihad, should one presume that the normal school doesn’t?

Islamabad’s Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) has examined the mechanism of school textbook-writing in Pakistan and presented its findings in 2003 in the hope that the government would look into some of the shocking revelations in them and take remedial measures. Not much reaction has come from the government to the report titled The Subtle Subversion: the State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan.

Before General Zia’s Islamisation, textbooks were not based on Muslim majoritarianism. They were sensitive to the fact that Pakistan was a multi-religious state and that non-Muslims were full citizens under the Constitution. Islamisation ended all that and the textbooks began a new nation-building process that excluded the non-Muslim. The philosophy of education followed was summed up in one Curriculum Wing directive given in 1995 in respect of class five: ‘In the teaching material no concept of separation between the worldly and the religious be given; rather all the material be presented from the Islamic point of view’. The general directive for textbooks implies that Pakistan is for the Muslims alone; that Islamiyat is to be forcibly taught to all students, whatever their faith, including compulsory reading of the Quran; that ideology of Pakistan is to be internalised as faith, and hate be created against the Hindus of India; and students be urged to take the path of jihad and shahadat.

The crudeness of the message: Has the liberal world view of General Musharraf made any difference? Not really. A 2002 directive from the Curriculum Wing named National Early Childhood Education lists the objectives as follows: to nurture in children a sense of Islamic identity and pride in being a Pakistani and regard Pakistan as an Islamic country and acquire deep love for it. Throughout no thought is given to the possibility that a child in the school could be non-Muslim and might therefore feel that he is not a Pakistani simply because the textbook equates Pakistani with Muslim. Although Islamiyat is not compulsory for non-Muslims pupils, the fact that there are 25 percent extra marks for any non-Muslim studying it is a strong proselytising incentive. The injection of religion in such subjects as Urdu, social studies/Pakistan Studies and English was added later, removing all subtlety and persuasion from indoctrination. While the crudeness of the message failed to transform children into good Muslims, the hate content in the textbooks rendered them bad human beings. A good Muslim was no longer necessarily a good human being. The 2002 directive ironically gave the following message: ‘To make the Quranic principles an integral part of curricula
to train the future generation of Pakistan as true practising Muslims who would be able to usher in the 21st century and the next millennium with courage, wisdom and tolerance’.

Closing of the Pakistani mind: The 2002 directive for Pakistan Studies goes on to define the following learning objectives: ‘Develop understanding of Hindu-Muslim differences and need for Pakistan (Class 4); Hindu-Muslim differences in culture, India’s evil designs against Pakistan; identify the events in relation to Hindu-Muslim differences’. How did the textbooks respond to these directions? The SDPI report tells us that in the class 5 textbook prepared by Punjab there is a sentence that says ‘Hindu has always been an enemy of Islam’; a class 4 textbook said ‘The religion of the Hindus did not teach them good things, Hindus did not respect women’; a class 6 textbook said ‘the Hindus lived in small and dark houses. Child marriage was common in those days. Women were assigned a low position in society, in case a man died his wife was burnt alive with him, the killing of shudras was not punished, but the killing of a brahmin was severely punished, caste system made people’s lives miserable’. The ‘hate material’ goes on: ‘Hindus thought that there was no country other than India nor any other people other than Indians, nor did anyone possess any knowledge’; [a cooked-up story titled The Enemy Pilot] stated that ‘he had only been taught to have no pity on Muslims, to always bother the neighbouring Muslims, to weaken them to the extent that they forget about freedom, and that it is better to finish off the enemy. He remembered that the Hindus tried to please the goddess Kali by slaughtering people of other religions, they regarded everybody else as untouchables. He knew that his country India had attacked Pakistan in the dead of the night to bleed Pakistani Muslims and to dominate the entire Subcontinent’ (Class Six, Punjab). ‘The Hindus who had always been opportunists cooperated with the British’ (Class Six Punjab).

Hate presaging war: The most notorious social studies textbook that the Curriculum Wing was able to coax Punjab into producing was An Introduction to Pakistan Studies by M. Ikram Rabbani & Monawar Ali Syed (1995). It was noticed by scholars abroad for the crudeness of its hate formulations. One sentence that the SDPI report quotes from it goes like this: ‘The Hindus always desired to crush the Muslims as a nation. Several attempts were made by the Hindus to erase the Muslim culture and civilisation. Hindi-Urdu controversy, Shuddhi and Sanghatan movements are the most glaring examples of the ignoble Hindu mentality’. A gem that would make anyone outside the Curriculum Wing laugh says: ‘While the Muslims provided all types of help to those wishing to leave Pakistan, the people of India committed cruelties against the Muslim refugees. They would attack the buses, trucks and trains carrying the Muslim refugees and they murdered and looted’.

If President Pervez Musharraf were to read the textbooks on which the federal education ministry continues to pride itself he would simply give up his campaign against extremism in Pakistan. The brainwash in favour of jihad and shahadat is so consistent and widespread in the various disciplines targeted for indoctrination by the Curricular Wing that for many years to come Pakistan would be endangered by its own youth. The textbooks that the country’s four provinces would have next year will certainly contain the hate content we have reviewed only skimpily above. Perhaps he can’t do anything to completely surgically remove hatred from our textbooks, but he surely can remove the crudity of the message. We can still hate the Hindu but we can do it subtly. Maybe then our youth will not slaughter the Hindus and rape their women as ruthlessly if there is another war and we, instead of losing, start winning. Since there is no prospect of a war with India our youth can vent their hatred on their own country, especially on people who seek to normalise relations with India.
Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-03-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=28550