"Moosa and the Madrassas"

“Moosa and the Madrassas”

Ebrahim Moosa

In “Moosa and the Madrassas,” published yesterday at American Thinker, journalist Stephen Schwartz reports on a recent address at UC-Berkeley by Duke University professor of Islamic studies Ebrahim Moosa: As Schwartz details, the aim of Moosa’s talk was to whitewash the role of madrassas in spreading radical Islam:

In his “keynote lecture,” Moosa reveled in a defense of Deobandism and its main madrassa, Dar Ul-Uloom Deoband, located in India. The title of his presentation was innocuous: “Norms in the Madrassa-Sphere: Between Tradition, Scripture, and the Public Good.” Nevertheless, after an introduction by GTU Islamic Studies director and assistant professor Munir Jiwa, Moosa made clear early in his presentation that his aim was to cleanse the “narrative” on madrassas, in which, he claimed, madrassas have been “treated in [the] media with dread as a threat to Western security.”

Moosa gave no ground to those who would argue that many madrassas, especially in South Asia, are centers for radical Islamist indoctrination. He dismissed in a passing reference reports that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban chief for whose capture the U.S. government has offered a $10-million reward as an accomplice of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, was a student at Dar Ul-Uloom Deoband. According to Moosa, Mullah Omar’s involvement with the madrassa “caused Deoband to be identified with the Taliban,” as if the association was trivial or manufactured by media. In reality, the murderous extremists in Afghanistan were inspired by Deobandism, and Mullah Omar was not the sole alumnus of its madrassa system among their ranks.

To read the rest of this essay, please click here.

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University of California, Berkeley Duke University

Winfield Myers

Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.