A boy, his death and not looking away
“It said they would often volunteer to be beaten first, so they could try to sleep before waking for prayers at three in the morning.”
- BBC News
Our condolence to the parents of Mohamad Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi means nothing. We are all not the boy’s parents even for a day because their world is not our world and this boy’s death brings this message home starkly.
Dr Azly Rahman, someone whose words every Malaysian should read, wrote, “This nation must go on a long soul-searching trip for the future of our children, especially when it comes to education and religious extremism there is no point taking pride in becoming the toothpick cyber capital of the forest-city world when our schools are turning into concentration camps for religious instruction?”
I believe that Malaysians regardless of race or religion empathise with the parents of this boy but the hard, uncomfortable truth is that personal responsibility, theirs and ours, means we have to take a hard look at where it went all wrong and not simply blame the system or believe it is god's will.
This is not the time for a moment of outrage until the next time something like this happens. This is the time to acknowledge that some schools are in reality “concentration camps for religious instructions” and that these schools are putting Malaysian children at physical and spiritual risk.
While urban middle-class Muslims send their children to religious schools with a holistic Islamic syllabus which includes "secular" subjects like maths and science, the average Muslim, less educated, more religious and wishing to instil Islamic values in their children, have to make do with schools that enjoy the largesse of the state but obviously not the supervision of the state.
Klang MP Charles Santiago said, "We simply cannot afford to stand by as mute spectators any more", but I think we have not been standing by as mute spectators but rather we have been active participants in defining anything to do with Islam as the sole province of the Malay community.
Furthermore, actively funding “Malay” institutions to demonstrate that we are not anti-Malay or anti-Islam and to pander to the Malay vote perpetuates the system that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is detrimental to any form of social and political cohesiveness.
Add this to the reality that non-Malays/Muslims are warned not to interfere with anything to do with “Islam” and you have a society which is divisive, apathetic and constantly on the lookout for grievances, imagined or real.
What does it say when the state religious department concludes that "tahfiz school did not commit any offence" but to set "new guidelines for these schools to hire staff, especially those in charge of students' welfare".
What kind of investigation did the state religious department carry out? What kind of obligations does the state religious department have in supervising the school and the welfare of the students? In my opinion, it should be the religious state department which is investigated and whether there has been a dereliction of duty when it comes to the children in that particular school.
When we talk about religion, children and violence, most people will not think of it in terms of how Dr Farah Nini Dusuki (whose work I have followed because I am interested in perspectives which are in conflict with my own) presented it in a paper – ‘Role of Religious Leaders in Protecting Children from Violence: With Emphasis on Islam’ - at the Violence Against Children forum organised by Unicef.
From the abstract, “To help identify approaches and mechanisms that religious leaders could use to confront and prevent violence against children, this paper seeks to address three strategic questions: first, what strengths do religious communities have in protecting children from violence and how they may have failed to prevent it; secondly, what concrete mechanisms/approaches can religious communities undertake to improve knowledge, attitudes and skills towards prevention; and thirdly, what actions can be recommended for religious communities and for the government to implement these approaches.”
What normally comes to mind especially in religious education is the narrative of religious piety that some in one community thinks it has over everyone else. Indoctrination supplants education and “knowledge” is confined to propaganda.
While someone like Dr Farah explores Islam, children and violence through a lens of empathy, religious obligation and contemporary values, the reality is that the education in these types of religious establishment is confined to what some religious people in this country consider all that is necessary for their faith - obedience and supplication...
“It said they would often volunteer to be beaten first, so they could try to sleep before waking for prayers at three in the morning.”
- BBC News
Our condolence to the parents of Mohamad Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi means nothing. We are all not the boy’s parents even for a day because their world is not our world and this boy’s death brings this message home starkly.
Dr Azly Rahman, someone whose words every Malaysian should read, wrote, “This nation must go on a long soul-searching trip for the future of our children, especially when it comes to education and religious extremism there is no point taking pride in becoming the toothpick cyber capital of the forest-city world when our schools are turning into concentration camps for religious instruction?”
I believe that Malaysians regardless of race or religion empathise with the parents of this boy but the hard, uncomfortable truth is that personal responsibility, theirs and ours, means we have to take a hard look at where it went all wrong and not simply blame the system or believe it is god's will.
This is not the time for a moment of outrage until the next time something like this happens. This is the time to acknowledge that some schools are in reality “concentration camps for religious instructions” and that these schools are putting Malaysian children at physical and spiritual risk.
While urban middle-class Muslims send their children to religious schools with a holistic Islamic syllabus which includes "secular" subjects like maths and science, the average Muslim, less educated, more religious and wishing to instil Islamic values in their children, have to make do with schools that enjoy the largesse of the state but obviously not the supervision of the state.
Klang MP Charles Santiago said, "We simply cannot afford to stand by as mute spectators any more", but I think we have not been standing by as mute spectators but rather we have been active participants in defining anything to do with Islam as the sole province of the Malay community.
Furthermore, actively funding “Malay” institutions to demonstrate that we are not anti-Malay or anti-Islam and to pander to the Malay vote perpetuates the system that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is detrimental to any form of social and political cohesiveness.
Add this to the reality that non-Malays/Muslims are warned not to interfere with anything to do with “Islam” and you have a society which is divisive, apathetic and constantly on the lookout for grievances, imagined or real.
What does it say when the state religious department concludes that "tahfiz school did not commit any offence" but to set "new guidelines for these schools to hire staff, especially those in charge of students' welfare".
What kind of investigation did the state religious department carry out? What kind of obligations does the state religious department have in supervising the school and the welfare of the students? In my opinion, it should be the religious state department which is investigated and whether there has been a dereliction of duty when it comes to the children in that particular school.
When we talk about religion, children and violence, most people will not think of it in terms of how Dr Farah Nini Dusuki (whose work I have followed because I am interested in perspectives which are in conflict with my own) presented it in a paper – ‘Role of Religious Leaders in Protecting Children from Violence: With Emphasis on Islam’ - at the Violence Against Children forum organised by Unicef.
From the abstract, “To help identify approaches and mechanisms that religious leaders could use to confront and prevent violence against children, this paper seeks to address three strategic questions: first, what strengths do religious communities have in protecting children from violence and how they may have failed to prevent it; secondly, what concrete mechanisms/approaches can religious communities undertake to improve knowledge, attitudes and skills towards prevention; and thirdly, what actions can be recommended for religious communities and for the government to implement these approaches.”
What normally comes to mind especially in religious education is the narrative of religious piety that some in one community thinks it has over everyone else. Indoctrination supplants education and “knowledge” is confined to propaganda.
While someone like Dr Farah explores Islam, children and violence through a lens of empathy, religious obligation and contemporary values, the reality is that the education in these types of religious establishment is confined to what some religious people in this country consider all that is necessary for their faith - obedience and supplication.
Help from whom?
While some may point to the fact that the abuser had a criminal record, I know many activists in “teaching” positions who have criminal records and use their experience spent in incarceration as the means to transmit values, both religious and secular, to at-risk youth and young people. Having a criminal record does not necessarily make someone abusive.
Having said that, if you were to read about the so-called “jurulatih” in prisons whom former Hindraf leader P Uthayakumar talks about, we could perhaps understand how these things happen when people who have prison records and with abusive tendencies are put in positions of power.
Again, this is pure speculation on my part but I do think that this points to how some people view their role of educator and the power that comes with it, especially in the case of marginalised communities that believe that religious education is more important, or told is more important, than a secular one.
Azmil Tayeb in an article in the New Mandala (a few years back) – ‘The ups and downs of Islamic education in Malaysia’ - wrote, “Efforts to quell ‘anti-establishment’ tendencies among some of the SAR (Sekolah Agama Rakyat) prove to be a tricky proposition as the government has to walk the tight rope between repelling challenges to its hegemonic rule posed by the Islamists and at the same time not coming off as ‘anti-Islam’.
“In the context of a heavily Islamised Malay society to be branded as such would be a death knell to its legitimacy (at least this was true until a few years ago as Islamic discourse in Malaysia has presently started to become slightly more diversified). Religion, in this particular context Islamic education, is still a useful political tool ready to be instrumentalised if needs arise.”
As I have discussed in many articles (and Azmil does too in this 2012 article), the idea of using Islam as a hegemonic tool may started with the rise of young politicians like Anwar Ibrahim who were co-opted by the establishment in the form of former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad but has become the currency in which political parties here in Malaysia attempt to buy the Malay vote.
What we do know is that besides certain private religious institutions which cater to the urban and well-off members of the Malay polity, the rest of these types of religious schools are provincial, myopic and extreme and engage in various activities that ultimately bring no benefit to greater Malaysian polity.
Mohamad Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi was tortured in his religious school. His diary (as reported in the press) is evidence that he begged for help. What does it say when a child begs for help from his parents in a school devoted to teaching the child about god and religion? Help from whom? God? His parents?
Reacting to threat posed by these religious establishments, Mahathir said, “Of course [we will interfere] if they deviate from the real purpose of education, when they use the premises to inculcate our young with their ideologies and aims [sic] to topple the government.”
I say that these types of schools pose a threat to young children which ultimately is a greater threat than what they pose to the government. The fact that these types of "education" continue to get funding is all the evidence anyone needs to make the claim that Malaysians would rather look away than to actually demand that our elected representatives do something.
S THAYAPARAN is Commander (Rtd) of the Royal Malaysian Navy.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
