| January 2009 - Politics |
| January 2009 |
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Religious Schools Under Review Words Obaida Hamad
The Syrian government is comprehensively overhauling its regulation of Islamic schools. The shake-up comes after one of the militants accused of involvement in last September’s deadly terrorist attack in Damascus was found to have studied at a local religious institute. A wide-reaching review of the country’s 32 private religious schools will result in a more hands-on approach that will allow the government to exercise greater control over what is being taught, who is teaching it, and from where these institutes are sourcing their funding. Almost six weeks after a suicide bomber triggered a 200kg car bomb on the Damascus airport road, killing 17 and wounding 14, Syrian state television aired recorded confessions by some of the militants allegedly behind the attack. One of the men, Abdul Baqi Hussein, said he was the security leader of Fatah al-Islam, the extremist group which fought a drawn-out battle with the Lebanese army in Tripoli in the summer of 2007. He also said he had spent time in Iraq fighting against the American occupation. Perhaps most alarming for ordinary Syrians, however, were Hussein’s claims that he spent three years studying at Al-Fateh al-Islamiy Institute, a private religious school located near Bab Sharqi in Damascus. He described it as a place that “attracts many Arab and foreign students” who share a “hard-line” interpretation of Islam. Meshael Shammas, a prominent human rights lawyer and a member of Syria’s minority Christian community, has been highly critical of the country’s Islamic schools and associated charities in the wake of the attack. He is now urging the government to shut them down. “Many of the terrorist group members said in their television confessions that they were going to an Islamic institute and got money from Islamic charity societies,” Shammas wrote in an article on the all4syria.com news website on November 8. “Who is monitoring these schools’ financial sources, books and curricula? And does Syria really need all these religious schools?”
Such discussion has provoked a sharp response from the country’s Islamic educators. Hussam ad-Din Farfour, vice-president of Al-Fateh al-Islamiy Institute, dismisses allegations that his school and others like it foster Islamic extremism and said it would be wrong to shut them down. “This is intellectual terrorism,” Farfour said. “I invite whoever wants to close these schools and Islamic centres to come and visit and see how we teach civilisational dialogue and languages and open our hearts. If we close these schools, where will young Muslims go? They will go to unknown places, in the dark, to get poisonous ideas that will hurt the country and national unity. Institutions such as Al-Fateh institute should be judged by their faculty members, activities, curricula and the standards of their graduates.” Slipping through the system Presently, 20 privately administered Sunni institutes and 12 Shiite schools, known as Hawzahs, operate in Syria. On top of this, Syria’s educational system also includes state-run Islamic schools.
The governance of religious educational institutions was fragmented before September’s attack, with various ministries involved in their administration. Previously, all Islamic schools were required to obtain a licence from the Ministry of Islamic Trusts and were free to solicit funding from charity societies and organisations licenced by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. The Ministry of Education was responsible for approving textbooks for primary and secondary school classes and the Ministry of Higher Education did the same for post-secondary school level students, outlining the general curriculum. Private Islamic schools were, however, free to fill in the content of their religious classes individually. Particularly troubling is evidence that some Islamic schools have been spreading sectarian prejudices among their student body. According to Bukheet, the review found that a number of institutions were teaching from books critical of other faiths. Sunni institutes were, in some cases, using texts that criticised Shia religious practices and a number of Hawzahs were found to be using books that condemned Sunni religious thought. The funding of such schools and other Islamic institutes is also being investigated by authorities. The budgets of many private Islamic schools are significant. The Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro (Abu Nour) Institute, the largest Islamic school in Syria with 6,000 students, has an annual budget of SYP 220m (USD 4.8m). It is sponsored by a registered charity called Al-Anssar, which boasts an annual budget of SYP 120m (USD 2.6m). The remaining 50 percent of its funding comes from private donations. The Al-Fateh Institute has an annual budget of SYP 155m (USD 3.3m). Other troubling matters raised in the government’s review include the make-up and qualifications of teaching staff at private Islamic schools. There are about 1,000 private teachers working at Islamic schools and little is known about their teaching methods or ideologies, officials told Syria Today. Similarly, little is known about the foreign students at these schools. Of the 10,000 private Islamic school students in Syria, about 500 are foreigners, including Africans, Europeans and Asians. The review showed few details were known about the backgrounds of these students. New controls While the government has not closed any religious school or institute, far-reaching steps to bring them under greater scrutiny are being unfurled. A new financial committee has been set up to monitor funding sources, with all institutes obliged to submit comprehensive accounts for inspection. Ambiguous ties between charitable trusts and educational institutions have also been broken. As of late 2008, all donations to religious schools must first be submitted to committees headed by governmental observers who review the donation and issue a receipt before forwarding the money on to the school. Anyone working in a clerical role, such as imams or prayer leaders at mosques and teachers at religious institutions, has also been compelled to step down from any official post they might hold in a charitable institution. “Each school will get its donations and money through a committee headed by an employee who works for the ministry,” Bukheet said. “We [the government] want to know where all monies are coming from and where and when they are being spent.” He added he had not been happy with the situation in the past, which allowed for a merging of charitable societies and teaching institutions. A second committee, made up of key religious figures including Syria’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badruddin Hassoun and school directors, has been set up to draft a uniform religious curriculum and list of approved texts which must be used by all Islamic schools. The Minister of Islamic Trusts will head the group and it will choose a general teaching plan for both Sunni and Shiite schools. A member of the review committee said “corrections” had already been made to remove references criticising those who visit shrines and tombs – a veiled reference to Shiite practices considered wrong by some Sunnis – and to withdraw texts that were disrespectful of the four caliphs who came after the Prophet Muhammad, a common Shia criticism of the Sunni faith. The government is also moving to effectively nationalise all religious school staff. Under the plan, set to be announced in a forthcoming presidential decree, all teaching staff working at private Islamic schools will be made employees of the Ministry of Islamic Trusts. “We will be the decision makers. We can now hire and fire any teacher and we will pay their salaries,” Bukheet, who will be in day-to-day charge of overseeing religious schools, said. The final major change concerns the supervision of foreign students. Rather than being able to register and study at any institute, all foreigners now have to attend a single centre affiliated with the Ministry of Islamic Trusts in the Badruddin al-Hassani school located in the Old City. The ministry will also be directly responsible for controlling visas in order to make monitoring foreign students, and possible Islamic extremists, easier. Salah ad-Din Kuftaro, director of the Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro Islamic Institute, has publicly welcomed the new controls. “We are not angry about having to teach a unified curriculum because it is based on Islamic heritage books,” Kuftaro said. “We are happy with the new measures. We work in a transparent way so we are not angry.” The new steps have also been endorsed by Farfour, whos said graduates from his school serve the cause of peace. |
1 February 2012
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Shammas’ public comments echo those being made privately by secularists and religious moderates who fear these schools are fuelling a more conservative interpretation of Islam within mainstream Syrian society.
Mohammad Bukheet, director of the Religious Education Department at the Ministry of Islamic Trusts (Religious Affairs), said the number of Islamic teaching institutes has more than quadrupled in the past three years. In 2005 there were 30 state-run religious schools in Syria. By 2007 the number had grown to 87 and by the end of last year the country housed 127 state-run religious schools. While state-run Islamic schools are not affected by the new measures – their curriculum is set and monitored by the state – their rise in number points to a growing religious feeling within mainstream Syrian society.
