Madrasas teach us moderation and balance

Islamic academies, or madrasas, have been in the news again. This time in Syria, where a suspect implicated in the Sept 2008 car bombing acknowledged having once been a madrasa student. This has cast a shadow of suspicion over the Islamic academy programmes of Damascus. But Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was a graduate of Harvard and no doubts were cast on that institution; so what then of a two-year dropout of a six-year programme?

This should really not be the case. The traditional Sacred Law academies are an important source of moderation and balance in the Muslim world. The grounded classical teaching of the academies provide an organic element to maintain the equilibrium of the whole system. It is the modernist "lay readers" not skilled in the hermeneutics of textual interpretation that take matters to their literal extremes.

Contemporary Syrian society prides itself on its stability. It is by far the safest of countries I have ever seen. There are no homeless, and poverty is buffered by countless citizen charities, inspired by a conviction of moral responsibility to one's neighbour. Sectarianism is not only not tolerated by government, it is considered bad form by citizens. The academies are apolitical. Contrary to recent news, the curricula are far from sectarian. If anything the curriculum could stand for some strengthening. The more grounded it is in classical texts, the more robust, wholesome and dynamically able it will be to provide rich new insights into the possibilities for Muslims to become partners in global society.

The classical academy, of which Damascus is one of the few remaining, provides its balancing curriculum in three ways. First, it is a holistic programme that sees the human person as not just material form but as a tripartite whole in body, mind and soul. All of these must be nurtured, disciplined and cultivated to work in balanced concert. The second part of the dynamic is the companionship of the Master. He or she is a link in an unbroken chain of scholar sages reaching back to the great teachers whose instruction allowed the rich religious diversity of Muslim Spain. It was these understandings of Islam that produced the moral imperative to absorb the Jewish refugees of the Inquisition into North Africa and Istanbul. In Damascus itself, the scholar and commander Abd al Qadir would harbour several thousand Christian families in his own home citing a mandate of Sacred Law.

The third dynamic is the implementation of the Aristotelian "golden mean" that the Jewish theologian Maimonides, influenced by Muslim Kalam, would have learnt through Averroes before mentioning it in his own writings. Temperance is the mean between two extremes. Wisdom is the mean between ignorance and cunning, courage is the mean between cowardice and recklessness, and so on. The problem of casting suspicions on the academies is that if they are stifled, it pushes the youth into the hands of one-dimensional lay readers and self-appointed muftis. It would be a shame to lose what is an essential and organic source of cultural and religious balance in the Muslim world just for the sake of political expediency. Politics is fleeting and changes its values and priorities with the winds of utility and opportunity.

"As for the froth, it evaporates into nothingness; but what benefits the people remains in the earth." (Q. 13:17) Jihad Hashim Brown is director of research at the Tabah Foundation. He delivers the Friday sermon at the Maryam bint Sultan Mosque in Abu Dhabi