Madrasas and universities are neither rivals nor equals
Before the emergence of the modern education system and the rise of universities, madrasas were the main centres for learning, literacy, and nurturing elites. They were where people acquired the knowledge necessary for politics, administration, and culture. Sometimes, activities resembling those of universities also took place in madrasas when individuals, after completing their religious education, would turn their focus to research, experimentation, and theory-building. Relying on their madrasa-acquired knowledge, great scholars would occasionally emerge from the margins of these religious schools.
The landscape of knowledge has been entirely transformed in the past few centuries. The education and research system developed in the West, with its empirical and practical methods, has plowed and revolutionized the field of knowledge so thoroughly — introducing effective tools and methodologies — that the traditional methods of madrasa-style learning became obsolete, much like tilling soil with oxen and wooden plows.
In some places, people still till their small plots of land with shovels, use oxen-drawn plows, and wooden tools, and feel a sense of abundance after harvesting a few sacks of wheat. But this kind of farming is no longer the standard. Those who farm using modern, university-developed methods do not see the shovel-wielding farmers as their peers or competitors.
The same is true for the relationship between madrasas and universities. In various corners of the world, people continue to teach the traditions, customs, and cultures of their ancestors — some practice lifestyles from pre-industrial eras while living just a few kilometres away from America’s advanced universities and industrial factories. In China, India, Japan, and the Middle East, religious and traditional schools still operate. In some places, they even attempt to present alternative ways of life, both social and personal.
Sometimes, like in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the madrasa-educated, born out of the vacuum and devastation caused by war and underdevelopment, rise to the forefront of politics, economics, and education. They form emirates, manipulate educational curricula, stir debates over the duties and traditions of learning, and speak of equating universities with madrasas.
Recently, Khalid Hanafi, a hardline cleric and the Taliban’s minister for the promotion of virtue, urged university-educated individuals not to look down on madrasa graduates with “contempt.” There is a truth embedded in his words. A significant portion of madrasa graduates do not enjoy respected positions in society, and they struggle greatly to find footholds in the job market, public administration, or the economy. Even when they come to power through the force of foreign money and guns, and in the wake of crises, they lack the confidence and expertise necessary to govern a village, let alone a city or country. To retain their positions, they often resort to coercion and violence.
Why madrasa graduates have ‘inferiority complexes’
University-educated and madrasa-educated individuals view each other differently. University graduates do not consider madrasa graduates as competitors. They are confident that madrasa graduates would not be able to compete with them if a level playing field existed — neither in politics and culture, nor in economics, or the marketplace. Most university graduates pay little attention to them except when madrasa graduates issue fatwas of apostasy against them or attack them with whips demanding obedience.
They see madrasa graduates as simply irrelevant. This is because madrasas produce neither discoveries, inventions, nor fresh ideas. They do not offer social or cultural movements that bring welfare or peace, especially those madrasas that reject the university method.
Yet, among madrasa circles, some have attempted to adapt to modern conditions. A few madrasas in Egypt and elsewhere have made efforts to approach university standards by gradually phasing out traditional methods. On one hand, they have revised their curriculum by adding university-level subjects; on the other, they have sought to introduce modern teaching and research methods. Upon realizing the outdatedness of their education, some successful madrasa graduates shift to universities and pursue academic study within the university system.
However, others, such as the Taliban, feel deeply inferior in the face of the university-educated. This sense of inadequacy fosters both fear and hatred toward academic institutions. On one side, they seek to capture universities and seize the benefits and tools produced through academic knowledge. On the other, they act out on their overt and hidden insecurities with destruction, violence, and misconduct toward the academic community. The Taliban’s emirate has become a showcase of this madrasa-based inferiority complex.
This inferiority originates in the madrasas themselves. Turning universities into madrasas, suppressing scholars, or even trying to force universities to respect madrasa graduates will not solve the deep-seated feelings of inadequacy among armed clerics fueled by guns, dollars, and ignorance.
The Taliban and madrasa-educated individuals will not be redeemed until they accept the university method. Converting schools and universities into madrasas will only deepen their sense of inferiority, and that inferiority will spread into the very schools and universities that have been madrasa-fied. What has made the university valuable and productive is not its buildings or its titles, the things the Taliban believe they can capture to gain legitimacy, but the non-Taliban curriculum and the non-madrasa methods it employs.
If madrasas are to become equals or competitors of universities, they must first break free from the past and engage with the realities of today and the needs of tomorrow. In other words, they must become universities. Academic communities believe that returning to the past is impossible, and that searching for a utopia in bygone eras is an expensive fantasy. That is why parroting the beliefs of the past is not encouraged in universities but is instead considered a major weakness.
The Taliban and others from madrasa backgrounds who think that the academics who look down on them are suffering from a delusion of equality and competition. Their sense of inferiority stems not from the behavior of university graduates, but from the clash between this delusion and the current realities.
Younus Negah is a researcher and writer from Afghanistan who is currently in exile in Turkey.
