Quran Memorisation, Anyone?

A few days ago I found a great YouTube channel that distributes online documentary reports (it has over 3500 of them). It’s very interesting, mostly stuff from around the world, and mostly depressing as hell. I’ve only seen a few so far but two especially stuck to mind: involving Quran memorisation schools in the Sudan and Senegal.

A news scare report about terrorism will often bigotedly flash to a few seconds of madrassas while saying something about brainwashing and radicalism. The shots will almost always be of young boys buzzing like bees in their Quranic recitation, swaying back and forth and so on. Stories on Islam in the west (at least in the media I’ve seen) seem to only tell two types of narratives: Islam as radical/terroristic and Islam as a religion of peace — both of which annoy me to no end in their simplistic falseness. So it was really good to actually see two examples of Quranic schools in some detail that’s framed with these two narratives.

Memorising the Quran is hard work. There are 6236 verses to memorise and most Muslims do not speak Arabic which makes it a hard task. Schools typically take in students as young as four — and they typically graduate when they’ve memorised the Quran. The slower you are, the longer your prison term. And it is a prison term, in fact I’m not exaggerating to say that I’d prefer a prison where there was no threat of violence. The immensity of the Quran means that to even cram it into 2-3 years requires “full-time” tuition: 18-20 hour study days. Students in the Sudan are awakened at I believe two in the morning, in Senegal later.

Breaks are typically reserved for prayers or in Senegal, walking around the streets begging for food. Schools are impoverished, bursting with students at the seam. In the Sudan, students got 2 meals a day of gruel-like sorghum paste. Those who don’t want to learn are beaten or put up under a wooden implement to make them stay out in the blistering sun. Those who try to run away have their legs chained together so they can only take tiny steps. In all cases the instructors have canes and will whip boys for the smallest of infractions (in one of the videos for bothering him, or possibly for not reciting with enough fervour). Students spend all day memorising their alloted section which they have written on their boards, then recite it to the teacher, then wash out the boards. Then, in a ritual reminiscent of the Sotah, they drink the water they washed their boards in to imbibe the learning.

So basically it’s several years of imprisonment, malnutrition, repetition, beatings, more repetition (since even reading the Quran cover to cover once is very repetitive — trust me), chains, psychological terror and parroting (it’s not like anything like the meaning is taught, just the outer form). I think to call it brainwashing trivialises the utter torture that’s inflicted on these kids — and during the formative period of their lives too. Of course in the end there is some prestige for them in the community for having learned the Quran. But even that comes at a huge opportunity cost — as the Senegal video says, many of them will find it very hard to get a job since they’re not trained in anything else. Unless of course they can land a job as a Quran recitation teacher. But hey it’s a bit rude to speak of religion in epidemiological terms, right? And this is not a rare phenomenon. There are probably millions in these schools right now. This cannot be dismissed by appeasers as a “radical interpretation” of Islam — whatever you call it, it is how a sizeable majority of people seem to practice it in the Sudan and Senegal.

I’ve sometimes been asked to justify the idea that religion is harmful even in its softer variations. This is a great example, methinks, because the practice displays a fetishism for the actual words of the Quran. The mere act of reciting them is meritorious (a similar vein runs in Judaism in that you get merit for saying the Hebrew even if you don’t understand it). There are plenty of non-religious totalitarian systems out there. However, I think it is the belief in this magical property of the spoken holy word that’s making people even blinder (to how useless and harmful this is) than they might be.