Throw a glance at the educational institutions, usually in
Muslim populated neighbourhoods, and one is sure to find schools with claims of
offering "world class" education or an "education with a
difference." And while every other school makes such claims across the
city, there is another form of education based on "values" which many
schools have begun to offer alongside regular school curriculum, one that is
being offered on popular demand for a host of reasons: deeniyaat.
Deeniyaat in these schools includes basic religious
instruction such as nazira, or, recitation of the Quran and tajweed, or proper pronunciation
and an adherence to the rules of recitation, and values. The other points of
focus are committing to memory duas, meaning invocations, such as those uttered
before and after consuming daily meals, and certain verses of the Quran with
their translation. The idea, according to various managing bodies of schools,
is to imbibe in the student the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, apart from what
the regular school curriculum has to offer, which helps in making a better
citizen of the country.
The setting up of these schools came about a decade ago, but
the actual mushrooming of such institutions in the city is more recent. And
their number is steadily growing. But what is it that brought about this trend?
There are at least three factors. One is the gradual disappearance of the
morning madrassa where parents send their children for basic religious
instruction. Almost every Muslim populated neighbourhood had once such
temporary madrassa in a mosque. While they still do exist in small numbers, the
number of students from the middle class attending them is very low. The second
is the fact that many Muslim households used to engage a maulvi to teach their
children recitation of the Quran. The maulvi sahab, or its condensed version
"molisaab" in Hyderabad, was either the imam of the neighbourhood
masjid or a hafiz, one who has memorised the Quran in its entirety .This trend
of learning from the local cleric too is on the decline.
The third reason, and the most significant, is the fact that
many parents either do not have the time on account of their jobs or are not
equipped with adequate knowledge so as to impart religious instructions at
home. It is perhaps this factor which gave rise to such schools. Those who have
very closely seen the joint family setup say that there was at least one person
in the house with a reasonably good understanding of the scriptures. But with
families breaking away from the traditional setup, parents found themselves
dealing with a lack of knowledge. Thus creating a vacuum. Enter the school
offering deeniyaat as a component of education. These schools came about as a
result of valid concern of many Muslim parents who wanted a one stop shop for
all educational needs. Institutions such as MESCO came about and others
followed suit. After all, it made perfect sense to have a modern education with
religious instruction all under one roof. Apart from locals, such schools are
popular with several non-resident Indian parents, especially those living in
West Asian countries.
The trend has become such proportions that deeniyaat is one
of the factors which parents key in while choosing schools and for schools to
woo parents, a two way traffic.
But observers say that what schools are yet to do is to
bring about a standardisation of deeniyaat curriculum. This, they argue, will
improve the quality of religious instruction. It will also keep a check on
commercialisation of religious instruction.
Courtesy: Times of India
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