Inside a madrassa in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan

Описание: (30 Sep 2021) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4346384

In Kabul, Afghan children are memorizing the Quran under the watchful eyes of their religious instructor.
Their tutelage takes place in a madrassa on the outskirts of the city where hundreds of children are housed and taught.
Madrassas are Islamic religious schools for elementary instruction and higher learning.
They educate children in the basic tenets of their religion, train the lower-level clergy, but also qualify religious scholars and legal experts.
The Taliban movement - 'Taliban' literally means 'students' - emerged from a network of Pakistani and Afghan madrassas in the 1990s.
This has contributed to the schools being portrayed as institutions that teach extremist ideas, and certainly the rural background of the Taliban movement has encouraged consistently conservative interpretations of the faith.
The institutions are often criticized for promoting rote-learning over critical thinking and secular skills, and for not preparing students for the requirements of modern life and the job market.  
In the Indian subcontinent many of them follow the Deobandi school of Islam, a conservative strain of the religion.
Many of the Taliban that took over Afghanistan last month were educated in madrassas in Pakistan.
Students wake up at 4:30 in the morning to pray and start their studies. They memorize the Quran and learn disciplines like basic math. They pray five times a day.  
Most students are poor. Their parents often send them to these institutions because they can't afford to feed and clothe them.  
These madrassas provide them with housing and food as well as instruction. The students live at the madrassa.
Facing dire economic conditions, madrassas hope for support from the new Taliban government, but whether they will get it is unclear.

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