A Muslim Friend
I have a good friend who is a Muslim. I personally will have no truck with religious dogma of any kind, but this friend is a truly good man whom I trust without reserve. Though devout, he does not appear to espouse any particularly rabid ideas. Often when I visit his house he will excuse himself for 10 minutes or so to go and pray in another room. My view of all this is that this is his culture and no matter how strange it may seem to me, it is really none of my business to pass comment or try to convince him of the irrationality of his ways.
The last time we met, though, we had a conversation which made me wonder whether my live-and-let-live relativism is really the right choice. My friend has a young son, now just over 1 year old and while we were all playing together, he explained to me that he wants to send his son to a Madrassa to be educated. I did my best to hide my surprise but his remark gave me cause for concern.
For those not familiar with Islamic cultures, a Madrassa is an Islamic educational institute which accepts children from around 10 years old. The education consists of nothing more than simply memorizing the Koran. The entire Koran that is. No doubt there are many different kinds of Madrassa, but some have a reputation for being breeding grounds of fundamentalism. The concern I felt on hearing my friend’s intention was that his son would receive a narrow and intellectually-undernourishing education which would prepare him poorly for life in the modern world.
I kept my concerns to myself and just made the comment that in the Madrassa his son would be able to master Arabic and that would be a useful skill. My friend is a moderate Muslim, but the events in the Middle East over the last few years have turned him against the ‘modern world’ that I refer to above. He wants his son to be brought up as a defender of Islam, a defender of a culture under attack, both literally and metaphorically.
I suppose everyone imposes something on their children - a certain world-view or morality - and this is just another example. The thing is, this is just the tip of an iceberg - clearly, a new generation of children in the Middle East are being brought up in the middle of a war which is likely to push them further into fundamentalist religion.
I have hope, though. Just as my friend is an open-minded and humane person, so I believe his son will be. I just hope that his fine personality will survive the bizaare rigours of the Madrassa.
bamboo4 wrote:
When I was a kid, I was totally indoctrinated in the Japanese militarism rampant at the time as Japanese military was eminently victorious in the Chino-Japanese war, during which Japan plunged into the Pacific War against the Allies.
Thus, in my childhood, there was not an inkling of doubt in my mind in the direction into which Japan was going and on the militaristic way of thinking.
After the Paficic War ended in Japan’s defeat, I came into contact with the occupying US military through such turns of events which is not relevant here, and I was exposed for the first time to a way of thinking that was completely foreign to the life I had led until then. However, as a young mind is supple and adaptable, I did not have much resistance to speak of in assimilating myself to the new set of environhments and in evaluating what I knew against what I was learning.
In the same vein, I am sure that this child of your friend would surely find his own set of philosophies even after his exposure to the Islamic education, should his mind be flexible enough to absorbe and deal with the conflicting parallelism. I certainly hope so for the benefit of this child.
Posted on 07-Jun-07 at 12:50 am | Permalink
ben wrote:
Fascinating. Thank you bamboo4. Interesting that you draw the parallel (from your own experience) between Islamic fundamentalism now and Japanese Militarism when you were a child.
Posted on 08-Jun-07 at 7:47 am | Permalink