Bangladesh's madrassas enrol girls (second largest school system in the world)

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/20091017828296410.html


Bangladesh claims to possess the second largest religious school system in the world.

Al Jazeera's Nicolas Haque reports from Dhaka, the capital, where over the past few years the government has been implementing a series of reforms to include more secular subjects in the curriculum and increase the numbers of female students.

The authorities have been offering incentives - providing cash to cover 80 per cent of scholastic costs - to see their reforms through.

This is proving to be hugely successful, bringing most madrassas under state supervision; religious schools that are largely funded by the government now follow both the state and religious curricula.

Zainul Abedine, the headmaster of the country's largest Islamic school, says: "In order to access government funds, many madrassas have opened their syllabus to other subjects like teaching languages such as English or Bengali. The number of madrassas have multiplied and so have the students".

With more then six million students currently enrolled, the madrassa system in Bangladesh is the second-largest in the world and is likely to get even larger as religious institutions open their doors to female students for the first time.

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"Girls are thriving – they tend to perform better than male students," he said.

:)

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According to UN figures, some 48 per cent of the population is illiterate, and this - rather than militancy - is the main challenge that the country faces.

For the time being, the country's 20,000 madrassas appear to be the best equipped to fight this battle.

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smart move by Bangladesh

Islam isn't evil in and of itself, it's the Wahabbist reading of it combined with all the horrible tribal traditions Mohammad tried to stamp out that are evil. It was an astonishingly progressive religion for women at that time, allowing women to keep their own property and become educated. Their dress was only to be modest and there was nothing at all about covering their heads, let alone wearing a full body shroud in anticipation of death.

No country can succeed if it counts half its population as natural slaves, to be worked and bred but never educated.

What prompted this probably isn't a change of heart on the behalf of religious leaders. It's probably the success so many women there have experienced with minimal loans from the Grameen Bank. The government just finally realized what an untapped resource they had.