Building bridges between Islam and the West

Three people were seriously injured on Monday, July 18, after a 17-year-old Afghan refugee - possibly a Pakistani - went on a stabbing rampage with a knife and an axe near the southern German city of Würzburg. The widely condemned attack has once again put a spotlight on radical Islamic ideology and its influence on young Muslims.

The terror attacks in France, Belgium and now Germany have baffled the citizens of these European countries, who are trying to understand the motive behind the violence. While the distance between the West and Islam appears to be growing and the stereotypes dominate the European political discourse, several attempts are being made to build bridges between the two seemingly conflicting ideologies.

Recently, Germany's Erfurt University invited a group of Pakistani madrassa students to a workshop, aiming to debunk "myths" about Islam. Twelve participants from four prominent Pakistani mardrassas took part in the conference entitled "Religious Pluralism and Religious Plurality: Towards an ethics of peace."

The conference organizers believe a greater exposure for these Islamic pupils to the Western culture would help them understand and appreciate secular and democratic values.

"While preparing for the workshop, we were aware of the sensitive nature of the topic. But it was refreshing to see that we were actually dealing with normal people," Patrizia John, an Erfurt University student meeting the madrassa students for the first time in her life, told DW.

Understanding each other

It was also the first-ever trip to Europe for Umna Fatima, a female madrassa student from Lahore.

"Before coming here I feared the Germans would dislike me because I wear a head scarf, but I haven't experienced any such thing since my arrival," Fatima told DW. "I particularly found the German women very friendly and cooperative. They always have a smile on their face when they greet us," Fatima added.

Pakistan's Islamic seminaries are often portrayed in the Western media as breeding centers for religious extremism. It is estimated that currently more than 20,000 registered madrassas are functional in the South Asian country - the number of unregulated seminaries could be much higher. Most of these religious schools belong to the Deobandi sect of Islam, which according to some experts promote intolerance and extremism.

Former Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf attempted to reform the madrassas during his tenure from 1999 to 2008. His initiatives were severely resisted by the country's Islamic parties and Muslim clerics. A number of national and international rights groups also initiated several projects to bring the Islamic seminaries into the mainstream, but most of them failed to achieve their targets due to a lack of government support and resistance from the madrassas' administrators.

A difficult task

Against this background, the task to organize an event where the madrassa pupils would engage in a healthy dialogue with the German students and European Islamic scholars was definitely not easy.

"We have been working on this project for the past two years," Professor Jamal Malik, the project head at the University of Erfurt, told DW. "Inviting the madrassa students to Germany was full of hurdles. We faced many problems, not only in obtaining the German visa for the students, but also to convince the parents of female madrassa pupils to allow them to participate in our workshop," Malik added.

Initially, the workshop organizers only wanted to bring the students from five major Muslim sects to Germany and provide them with a platform to interact with each other, thus reducing sectarian tensions and promoting religious tolerance within Islam.

However, Malik said, the Erfurt University's German students were eager to join the program and increase their understanding of Islam by interacting with the Pakistani students.

"Religious pluralism is an interesting topic, especially in Germany's current political discourse. It's important to learn more about different religions and exchange ideas with people from different backgrounds," Jascha Rittmann, a student of International Relations at the University of Erfurt, told DW.

Critical thinking and reforms

The organizers of the week-long conference, which kicked off on July 16, believe the madrassa students can benefit from the German pupils' inquisitiveness and critical thinking.

"In our schools, we are only taught to memorize things without understanding them, but here in Germany, the students are encouraged to ask questions," underlined Fatima.

Arsalan Zafar, a teacher at the Jamia Salafia seminary in Pakistan, was impressed with the interactive methods used during the workshop. He told DW he would apply these techniques during his lectures in Pakistan.

He acknowledges that one of the major problems in Pakistan's madrassa education lies in its curriculum. "We only teach Islamic subjects. This needs to be reformed and more subjects and disciplines should be added to our curriculum," Zafar said.

He added that only a small number of madrassas is against reforms. "Another problem is that the seminaries who want to introduce new ideas lack finances to undertake them."

The organizers of the conference believe the reforms can't be imposed from the outside; they must come from within the madrassas. And the best way, they say, is giving the seminary students a greater exposure to different cultures and modern education.