Burma Muslims Push for Education Reforms

CAIRO – Suffering from an "outdated" education system, Burma Muslims have been urging quick reformations at Islamic schools, calling for necessary procedures to ensure the protection of vulnerable Muslim students.

"We need dialogue, we need discussions," U Myo Win, who founded Smile Education and Development Foundation in 1999, told The Myanmar Times on Monday, February 24.

"These schools are not really teaching civic education, civic consciousness, geography, history.

"How can [students] lead without knowing history, geography and the basic concepts of politics?" added Win who argues that current system does not teach students to think "critically".

Though launched decades ago, Muslim education in Burma has been a target for criticism from Muslim community leaders as failing to satisfy students' needs.

With the first Islamic school opening its doors to students in 1958, Islamic education witnesses limited improvements, depending on both madrassahs and maktabs.

Unlike madrassahs, the maktabs are evening schools that offer Islamic education to Muslim students who attend secular government schools during the morning.

Lacking proper regulations, the Islamic education facilities have usually come under criticism from Muslim community leaders.

"The entire syllabus should be revised," said Al-Haj U Aye Lwin, the chief convener of Myanmar's Islamic Centre.

Along with poor syllabus, Lwin asserted urgent need for qualified teachers to teach Arabic and the holy Qur'an.

"Arabic is not properly taught," Al-Haj U Aye Lwin said.

"They need to teach Arabic as a language with full proficiency skills: reading, writing, listening, spoken. Only then will they [students] be able to grasp the true meaning of what the Quran's message is, what the sayings of the Holy Prophet are."

Burma's Muslims -- largely of Indian, Chinese and Bangladeshi descent -- account for an estimated four percent of the roughly 60 million population.

Muslims entered Burma en masse for the first time as indentured laborers from the Indian subcontinent during British colonial rule, which ended in 1948.

But despite their long history, they have never fully been integrated into the country.

No Security

Along with the outdated Islamic education curriculum, vulnerable Muslim students expressed fear over failing vulnerable to Buddhist threats in the restive country.

"We feel afraid," said Ko Aung Kyaw Oo, 22, who studies in Mawlamyine township, where the stickers of the ultra-nationalist, pro-Buddhist "969" movement are regularly and prominently displayed.

"We are worried what will happen when we are in school.

"I want to study religious education in peace and safety."

Over the past months, Muslim students have been easy target for communal violence.

Last March, angry Buddhist mobs have stormed a madrasa in Meiktila, killing scores of Muslim students and teachers.

"Hate campaigns are still going on," said Al-Haj U Aye Lwin.

With the absence of laws that regulate the Islamic education, Burma Islamic schools have been abused by the authorities.

"There seems to be no clear-cut rules and regulations for what a madrasa can do or cannot do in Myanmar," said Mohammed Mohiyuddin Mohammed Sulaiman, the author of Disorder and Decline in Myanmar in 2008.

"All rules and laws change from time to time."

The most recent hate campaign against Islamic schools in Burma occurred after rumors were circulated that the Islamic school in Thaketa township's Manpya quarter was being replaced by a mosque.

In the wake of declaring the restoration plans, Buddhist mobs attacked the school in February 2013, looting its the buildings and forcing it to close its doors.

Denying accusations, the chief convener of Myanmar's Islamic Centre said that renovation work included digging on a small pool outside to offer students a place for 'ablution'.

School managers hope that it will re-open this month to serve hundreds of Muslim students who escaped last year's violence.

Sentiments against Muslims in Burma have been high last year's attacks that forced thousands of Muslims to flee their homes in western Burma.

Many of the incidents have featured widespread retaliatory violence against Muslim communities in response to accusations of seemingly isolated criminal acts.

Source: http://www.news.myanmaronlinecentre.com/2014/02/25/burma-muslims-push-for-education-reforms/