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Traditional Qurʾanic Education in a Southern Moroccan Village

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Jarmo Houtsonen
Jarmo Houtsonen
Affiliation:
Junior Research Fellow with the Department of Sociology, University of Joensuu, P.O. Box 111, SF-80101, Joensuu, Finland.
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Extract

Although the Western model of education has spread worldwide, traditional Islamic education continues to have a strong influence in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. This article seeks to determine the reason it remains such a vital part of village life in the commune of Bounaamane, located in Morocco's southern Souss valley. Why do so many children attend Qurʾanic schools, even though modern education is available? Because standard sociological methodologies, with their surveys and statistical analyses, were not viable in this social and cultural setting, I approached the problem by using ethnographic and case-study methods. I will first present an overview of traditional Qurʾanic education and then try to explain the low-enrollment rates in modern schools and the relative popularity of traditional Qurʿanic ones in terms of economic factors and culture. We can better understand the continuity of traditional Islamic education if we see it as being closely bound to the popular understanding of Islam. In this respect, the most important elements are the role of the Qurʾanic teacher in the community and the discipline and punishment involved in the course of Qurʾanic training that socialize children into the accepted Islamic code of conduct.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , August 1994 , pp. 489 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank the Finnish International Development Agency, the University of Joensuu, all the members of the Bounaamane Project, M'hammed Sabour, Dale F. Eickelman, Roy Goldblatt, and four anonymous IJMES reviewers.

1 Boli, J., Ramirez, F., and Meyer, J. M., “Explaining the Origins and Expansion of Mass Education,” Comparative Education Review 29, 2 (1985): 145–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 This article is based on my master's thesis, “Islamic Education: Qurʾanic Schooling, Its Discipline and Cognitive Style in a Southern Moroccan Village” (University of Joensuu, Finland, Faculty of Social Sciences, 1991)Google Scholar. The study was a part of the University of Joensuu's Environment and Village Project in Bounaamane that was financed by the Finnish International Development Agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Minor Field Studies Program. Information was gathered in fieldwork undertaken between 17 10 and 15 12 1990Google Scholar. The methods used were observation and interviews of key informants.

3 Compare with Eickelman, Dale F., “The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and Its Social Reproduction,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20, 4 (1978): 485–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Knowledge and Power in Morocco, The Education of a Twentieth-Century Notable (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 166–67Google Scholar; see also idem, Moroccany Islam. Tradition and Change in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 10–13Google Scholar.

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8 Office of Preschool Affairs at the Delegation of the Ministry of Education in Tiznit.

9 Annuaire statistique du Maroc 1992, 12Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 261, 265.

11 Zouggari, Ahmed, “Strategic des agriculteurs en matière d'éducation,” Groupe pluridisciplinaire d'élude sur les Jbala, Colloque de Chaouen (26–28 11 1988), 7–12Google Scholar.

12 Cf. Wagner, Daniel and Lotfi, Abdelhamid, “Traditional Islamic Education in Morocco: Sociohistorical and Psychological Perspectives,” Comparative Education Review 24, 2 (1980): 240–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Massialas, Byron G., “Morocco,” in World Education Encyclopedia, ed. Kurien, G. T. (New York: Facts on File Publication, 1988), 2:876Google Scholar.

13 According to the diverse information I received from the delegation of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Tiznit, the number of these schools is between 60 and 70, and the number of students ranged, according to various sources, from 1,074 to 1,316 in 1989Google Scholar.

14 Pollak, Susan, “Traditional Islamic Education” (Unpublished paper from the Project on Human Potential, Harvard University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1982), 17Google Scholar.

15 See also Bray, Mark, Clarke, Peter B., and Stephens, Davis, Education and Society in Africa (London: Edward Arnold, 1986), 86Google Scholar.

16 Cf. Wagner, and Lotfi, , “Traditional Islamic Education in Morocco,” 246–47Google Scholar.

17 See also Rosander, Eva Evers, “Women in a Borderland: Managing Muslim Identity Where Morocco Meets Spain,” Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology 26 (Ph.D. diss., Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, 1991), 71Google Scholar.

18 Cf. Foster, Philip, “Regional Disparities in Education: Some Critical Observations,” in Regional Disparities in Educational Development: A Controversial Issue, ed. Carron, Gabriel and Châu, Ta Ngoc (Paris: Unesco, International Institute of Educational Planning, 1980), 27–28Google Scholar.

19 See Psacharopoulos, G. and Woodhall, M., Education for Development: An Analysis of Investment Choices (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 117–18Google Scholar; Bowman, Jean M., “An Integrated Framework for Analysis of the Spread of Schooling in Less Developed Countries,” Comparative Education Review 28, 4 (1984): 563–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Takala, Tuomas, Kehitysmaiden koulutusongelmia (Problems of Education in Developing Countries) (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 1989), 36–37Google Scholar.

20 See Massialas, , “Morocco,” 875, 879, 884, 887Google Scholar.

21 Zouggari, , “Strategic des agriculteurs en matière d'éducation,” 15–24Google Scholar.

22 See Bowman, J. M. and Anderson, C. A., “The Participation of Women in Education in the Third World,” Comparative Education Review 24, 2 (1980), 13–32CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Bray, Mark, Universal Primary Education in Nigeria: A Study of Kano State (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 42Google Scholar. See also Rosander, Evers, “Women in a Borderland,” 70–74Google Scholar.

23 See also Psacharopoulos, and Woodhall, , Education for Development, 119Google Scholar.

24 See Eickelman, , “Art of Memory,” 491Google Scholar.

25 In Morocco respect for knowledge that is fixed and enduring pervades not only religious knowledge (ʿilm) but secular subjects and skills (maʿrifa). See Eickelman, Dale F., The Middle East: An Anthropological Approach (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1981), 234–36Google Scholar.

26 See Eickelman, , “Art of Memory,” 491–92Google Scholar; idem, Knowledge and Power in Morocco, 166–67Google Scholar.

27 On instrumental, expressive, and normative goals, see, for example, Bray, , Clarke, , and Stephens, , Education and Society in Africa, 87, 103Google Scholar.

28 Cf. Eickelman, , “Art of Memory,” 493–94Google Scholar; idem, Knowledge and Power in Morocco, 62–63Google Scholar; Rosen, Lawrence, Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 32Google Scholar.

29 See Eickelman, , Middle East, 181Google Scholar.

30 “There are some people who just study one or two years [in a madrasa ʿatīqd] and then become a ṭālib. The student who has spent more than ten years in a madrasa ʿatīqa, he can become a fqīh. There is a ṭālib and there is a fqīh. The ṭālib is the man who is teaching in the Qurʾanic school” (middle-aged male informant).

31 Spratt, Jennifer E. and Wagner, Daniel A., “The Making of a Modern Fqih: The Transformation of Traditional Islamic Teachers in Modern Times” (Unpublished paper from the Project on Human Potential, Harvard University, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1984)Google Scholar.

32 Cf. Rosander, Evers, “Women in a Borderland,” 228–54Google Scholar.

33 Eickelman, , Knowledge and Power in Morocco, 64–66Google Scholar.

34 Cf. ibid., 66–67.

35 Cf. ibid., 66.

36 See also Bray, , Universal Primary Education in Nigeria, 149Google Scholar.

37 See Eickelman, , Knowledge and Power in Morocco, 168Google Scholar; see also idem, “National Identity and Religious Discourse in Contemporary Oman,” International Journal of Islamic and Arabic Studies 6 (1989): 1–28Google Scholar.