Las madrasas no son todas iguales, explica Vali Nasr en Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World
Though a great deal of attention was directed after 9/11 to the problem of extremism being taught in madrasahs (religious schools or seminaries), the truth of the trends in education is once again more complicated than that post-9/11 narrative suggested. The brand of education that is on the rise in the Islamic world is not the extremism taught at some - and only some - madrasahs, but rather a religiously tinged style of education akin to that taught in Catholic schools in the United States. The greatest and fastest growing demand is for high-quality education that will teach children the skills they will need to become successful in the global economy - mathematics, reasoning ability, knowledge of science, and familiarity with the newest trends in technology - but with a strong dose of religious training.
The typical old-school madrasah, with a curriculum heavy on Koranic recitation and rote learning, is simply not well suited to serving the demand of Islam's rising middle class, which is intent on its children being successful in the world of increasing globalization. But quite understandably, many parents feel more confident about their children stepping out in that competitive globalized world if there is reassurance that ties to tradition will be retained. The new modern and Islamic style of education serves both of these deeply felt needs. (...)
Madrasah is a catchall term. A madrasah can mean something as simple as a Koranic academy where young children learn a few religious basics and practice reciting from Islam's holy book. Or it can mean a primary or secondary school meant to compete with national education; or a seminary established to train proper clerics in classical Islamic religious knowledge. Madrasahs, in other words, vary widely in what they teach, how they teach it, and what view of Islam and its place in the world they impart on their students.
Madrasahs are generally conservative and some are troublingly fanatical - some do indeed harbor and train jihadis and terrorists. These are a minority, however, and the problem is less extensive than usually thought. To being with, there are not as many madrasahs as common wisdom holds, and they train relatively few students. A Harvard University and World Bank study of Islamic education in Pakistan found that in 2002, fewer than 1 percent of all students in Pakistan were attending madrasahs. That number has risen but only to 1.9 percent in 2008. The report also found that over the decade leading up to 9/11, madrasah enrollment had risen by 16 percent, which was slower than the increase in overall school enrollment. Madrasahs were not gaining, but instead were losing part of an already small market share. Even in Indonesia, where Islamic education is on the rise, only 13 percent of the country's 44 million students attend some form of Islamic education. The poor do flock to madrasashs, but more so in rural areas than in cities, and studies of students' economic backgrounds reveal too much diversity to see Islamic education as the domain of the poor.
Terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey argue that the link between madrasahs and terrorism is weak. The anthropologist Robert Hefner estimates that of some 46.000 peasantrans (as madrasahs are called in Indonesia), no more than forty or so qualify as extremist. Perhaps a larger problem is that in many countries, to so-called secular schools teach a great deal of religion, often interpreted in illiberal ways, and sometimes push hair-raising intolerance. State textbooks in Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia all stand as cases in point. In Algeria, the battle against Islamic extremism now centers on changing school curricula that have long been under the control of conservative religious leaders. Sometimes, as in Jordan, the problem is that state authorities have tossed fundamentalists the education ministry as a sop. Better to give them that than have them clamoring for the foreign-affairs or finance portfolios, the thinking seems to have run. It is a worrisome reminder of the lack of seriousness with which these governments consider education.
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