To some people, writing about Al-Azhar is like walking
on a rope hanging over a minefield… not because Al-Azhar is a scared entity
that should not be touched… but because those people have kins, in-laws and
family members who studied in Al-Azhar, the thing that makes one hesitate long
before picking his words.
I am one of those… as my maternal grandfather who died
in 1942, my father who died in 1988, my maternal uncles older and younger than
my father, tens of boys and girls of Al-Gammal family along with their in-laws
and kins are all pure Azhar students… most of them chose the faculty of Shari’a
or Islamic law to get his university degree as the elderly – grandfather,
father and maternal uncles – always thought that the one who did not study Usul
al-Fiqh is not a scholar.
Also, they had a deeply held belief that there are two
kinds of knowledge… a Sharif knowledge; meaning descendent from Islam and
prophet Muhammed; that is what is being taught in Al-Azhar… and only knowledge;
that is the rest of sciences taught outside Al-Azhar… in many times, I used to
find on the margins of their disjointed books, collected between two covers of natural
leather, attempts to enhance their handwritings by writing their names in Naskh
or Req’ah calligraphy scripts with a phrase reading “student of Sharif knowledge”
underneath.
With all this and despite all this and after the whole
country is fed up with terrorism, tardiness and double-standards, some have to
walk on this rope hanging over the field… minefield.
I said before that being strict in complicating Shari’a
branches of knowledge turning them into enigmas is undesirable in two aspects…
first, the student is obliged to memorize and rote-learn instead of understanding,
criticizing and innovating… second, the monopoly in some people who said about
themselves that this knowledge is theirs and those enigmas are their codes and
no one else should get close to them… and so, whether we liked it or not, a
group of clergymen or theology men came to exist like what happened in
religions prior to Islam. I have already given the example of John the
Evangelist who adopted a stricter interpretation in his narration away from the
three Evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke.
However, the most dangerous and serious thing we have –
I here apologize for using the superlative form – is double education systems
in Egypt since the beginning of the nineteenth century and the inability of the
whole state – people and authority – to unite them in one, the thing that led
to conscience and cultural duplicity and one may also say duplicity in the set
of criteria used in evaluation.
I resist a strong desire inside me to dive deep into
the old roots of this phenomenon and how we used to hear from the old people we
witnessed when we were young boys and men; our folks of peasants, craftsmen,
merchants and even some of the rich affirming that they dedicated their son to
study Sharif knowledge; meaning to study in Al-Azhar.
It is a thing that goes back in time to the ancient
Egyptians or people of the orient in general where there was a temple for each
God… and those temples used to have servants of males and sometimes females
dedicating their lives to stay there hoping they can earn the satisfaction of
the God… also hoping that the talented of them may make it to the frontline of
the theology people… thus, obtaining a distinguished social rank as the hierarchical
order allowed clergymen, military leaders and noble men to come atop of it.
And so, the clergymen monopolized – especially during deterioration
times – everything starting from absolving sins and not ending by monopolizing the
scientific issues… to the extent that some historians who worked hard to know
the reason behind the mysterious collapse of the ancient Egyptian civilization
reckoned that the monopoly of sciences and scientific applications by the
clergymen led to the ignorance of the society… and when it happened that the
clergymen decreased, the civilization collapsed and Egypt became an easy catch
for foreign invasions and occupations on the hands of Persians, Greeks and
Romans.
Back to our point; the duplicity of culture,
conscience and evaluation criteria and dominance of ignorance and tardiness, I believe
limiting the study in Al-Azhar ash-Sharif to Shari’a branches of
knowledge and resisting the attempt of Sheikh Hassan al-Attar in the nineteenth
century to renovate it was the reason lying behind the cultural, social and
economic tardiness we have today.
We shall also know that our country, which is an
agricultural one in the first place, kept using Shaduf – a long wooden
pole suspended over an upright frame at a distance of about one-fifth of its
length, with a bucket fixed at the end with the longer arm and a weight of
stone or clay fixed to the other end – in irrigation, then when the Greek came,
they used Archimedes’ screw or Tanbur and water wheels. We kept using Shaduf,
Tanbur and water wheels for a long time. We did not know about barrages,
water locks and relatively advanced irrigation systems until the time we knew civil
education and Muhammed Ali’s delegations dispatched to Europe. Moreover, we
will find resistance to study modern sciences even outside Al-Azhar, an example
of this is the story of prohibiting anatomy lessons in the school of medicine
and struggle of Imam Muhammed Abdo against those who called for prohibiting
this… such thing is a direct and quick evidence of what I want to say.
We now have two references of evaluation; one judging
with Halal and Haram and another one judging with right and wrong… we have a
reference saying that this is the best we can do and another one saying there
is something new every day… etc… to the extent that one day we found some
people standing against the tyranny of Ismail Sedqi Pasha; then-prime minister
from 1930 to 1933, while some others – that was muslim brotherhood – standing
for them shouting: “And mention in the
Book, Ishmael. Indeed, he was true to his promise, and he was a messenger and a
prophet", they used the Quranic verse in a mean and hypocrite
way to quell the demonstrations while the verse has nothing to do with this
incident.
It even happened that in some occasions people are
placed in lines according to their costumes as those wearing turbans come
first, then those wearing Tarbush, and after this come those who wear nothing
over their heads; no turban or Tarbush. Once again, it happened that the
conflict and struggle over the reference of constitution and laws heated, as we
witnessed in the past few years over whether this reference shall be Shari’a,
its aims or its principles… and how the deputy chief of the salafist Dawaa
called Yasser Burhami once kept talking about how they could snatch this
constitutional article from others after they exhausted them day and night
until they managed to get it written as they wanted.
I suggested before that we should keep specializations
in Shari’a branches of knowledge in the post-graduate studies level; meaning
master and doctorate levels… and that public education should be one for all
Egyptians; males and females; Muslim and Christian.
At this time, I believe the dilemma will be what we
should do with thousands of teachers, senior teachers, supervising ones, school
masters, managers and administrative employees working in the public Azhari
education; meaning preparatory, secondary and the rest of faculties of Al-Azhar
university… here I say we can solve this problem on transition phases by turning
those Azhari institutions into schools and re-qualifying those teachers to do their
mission.
Actually, why don’t we direct some of those masses of
people to a mission I believe lies at the heart of serving God’s religion; that
is combating illiteracy and teaching people how to read and write… as I believe
that the Muslim who cannot read is disobedient to God’s orders since the
Quranic order to “read” is not less necessary than the Quranic one to “hold
prayers”.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Almasry alyoum newspaper
on June 16, 2015.
To see the original article, go to:
#almasry_alyoum #ahmed_elgammal #al_azhar
#educational_systems_in_Egypt
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