The Growth of Islamic Learning in Northern Ghana and its Interaction with Western Secular of Education
A paper to be presented at the 10th Codesria General Assembly Meeting, at the Nile International Conference Centre, Kampala, Uganda
8th -12th December, 2002
Abdulai Iddrisu
DSPHS, FIDS, UNIVERSITY FOR DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
P.O. BOX 1350, TAMALE, GHANA.
Email: abdulaii@hotmail.com
Tel: 233-71-25558(residence)Cell phone: 233-20-8171523Abstract
The research focuses on an areas which has received very little attention in an era of decentralization and increased demand for new competence at local levels; the determination on a meaningful and sustainable interaction between Islamic and western secular education in Ghana. The study will critique the various attempts at fostering this sort of interaction and the impact these have had on access to formal education in the Muslim dominated areas in Ghana. In addition it will document the extent of participation of the Ulama and the communities in identifying and adopting a more acceptable model (interaction) of education.
Data collection is being carried out in Northern Ghana, where Islam has had much following, which helped shape British Colonial policy towards Islamic education and northern Ghana. The impact of Colonial Policies on Muslim education is still rife here and has contributed greatly to affect attitudes to secular education and development.
Two basic issues arise. First is the conservative approach of fostering interaction between Islamic and western secular education in Ghana. This does not go any farther than restating the fears emanating from British Colonial Policies towards Muslim education in Ghana. Secondly, there is the Modernizing attempt, resulting in the creation of what became known as the “Islamic Schools”, which essentially relegates Islamic subjects to a mere collection on the School time-table. Finally, a much more sustainable interaction, which I refer to as the Progressive, seeks to take into account the long history of responses of Islamic education to Challenges since the colonial era. The essential of this is to make education accessible to the Muslim communities without necessarily sacrificing the Islamic tradition of learning.
Three types of data are being used in investigating the topic. 1) Archival search in the National Capital, Accra and in Tamale. 2) Published and unpublished literature review. 3) Brief field studies and interviews in northern Ghana. This basically is new information with regards to the situation in Ghana and therefore a contribution to an understanding and the search for a sustainable interaction between Islamic and western secular education.
Introduction
This paper is intended to examine the growth of Islamic learning in northern Ghana and its interaction with Western Secular education. It is argued that colonial policies and practice had far reaching implications on Islamic learning and no doubt stifled any attempt at growth. Thus the contemporary situation about Islamic learning in Ghana can not be understood fully without an appreciation of the historical forces that have helped fashioned this system of learning into its present form.
It is interesting to note that Islam and the cultures that come with it were often denied even in the most authoritative works on culture contact in Ghana. Ward’s A History of Ghana has no single statement on Islam or its modes of education. During the Colonial period a work published by A.W. Cardinal, In Asante and Beyond could not see any progress ever made by Islam, for Cardinal had asserted that the cluster of Dagomba speaking people had posited a strong bulwark against the influence of Islam. In the 1960s Trimingham was to consider the Guinea States, constituting present day northern Ghana as having had no contact whatsoever with the Sudan States and thus were uninfluenced by Islam. Recent authors whose work concern specifically education in Ghana like R.B. Bening, MacWilliam and Kwamena-Poh
and B.G. Der have found nothing of interest in Islamic education to write about. Despite this utter neglect some European travellers and Anthropologists scouting the then Neutral Zone often made references in their reports on the state of Islam and Islamic education in the Gold Coast. Dupuis, writing about Salaga and Asante in the 1820s fondly referred to the Neutral Zone as a Mohammedan power and describes Salaga as "…the chief city of these districts … and the population, of whom nearly one-sixth part are Moslems, to be about four hundred thousand souls…" David Asante, an early African clergyman of the Basil Mission was also to report in 1877 of the existence of many private and public schools, where children numbering between 15 and 20 recite Arabic and learn to read and write and pay school fees . Theophilus Opoku on his preaching journey also saw private schools "…where only a few children are entrusted to the care of a teacher. (And) Several Arabic prayers and the Mohammedan creed are chiefly taught". So that Islam, which penetrated the Volta Basin through migration and trade as early as the last decades of the fourteenth century but significantly after the nineteenth century came with the insistence on a literary tradition that was to be found not only useful in first the communities but also in the chiefdoms in both present-day southern and northern Ghana.
Historical Background
Ivor Wilks has identified a Wangara substratum and a Hausa overlay as the two basic sources of Islamic learning in Ghana. While the Wangara, a Muslim merchant group from Mali migrated significantly after the fifteenth century and built a network of trade that included Begho, on the fringes of the Akan forest, was occasioned by their desire to participate effectively in the exploitation of the gold resources in the Volta Basin, the Hausa was closely associated with the Kola trade from the North East. From the sixteenth century onwards these traders spread into other centres and animist communities then later into the chiefly houses spreading Islam and its modes of education along the road. Following the collapse of Mali the Wangara moved into the Savannah hinterland, along the trade routes where they helped in the founding of states like Yagbum and Nasa in Gonja and Wa respectively. Within these states they constituted a merchant class and small scholarly elite.
The demands and organisation of the trade between the people of the Middle Volta and the Hausa and Wangara brought with them, the Madugu, the emergence of the Maigida, the Muslim traders as well as the various literate assistants who performed various tasks at the established trade centres and trade settlements. These were also closely followed by the Holy men and other itinerant mallams. It was within these scattered trade settlements that the very seeds of Islamic education were sown, with the establishment of Qur’an schools to train the young and to direct the religious lives of the faithful to prevent a situation of relapsing into "mixing" especially after the nineteenth century Jihad movements.
Translations of letters of some powerful Madugu like Madugu Issa Na Garahu who lived in Kano and became famous in the last decades of the nineteenth century for his successful expeditions from Kano to the Middle Volta are still extant. His correspondence is among the few known documents of the trade. This is not to suggest that all Madugu could write, or were literate, but most of them could write. So that even newcomers into any caravan group usually called an asali could learn a lot within one month of the basic instruction in the tenets of the Islamic faith from these literate members of the caravan. These together with the Maigida were to constitute the first teachers or Mallams of the settler communities in the Middle Volta. Salaga for instance emerged as a very important centre of learning, where several short pieces in khabar form of writing progressed into what John Hunwick refers to as the Gonja tradition of historical writing. Mahmud Ibn Abdullah’s Qissat Salaga Tar’ikh Ghunja is an example of this. These writers no doubt were familiar with the Timbuktu Chronicles and used them as models. From the 1890s people like Mallam Al-Hassan, from Bornu and later of Salaga translated the Qissat Salaga Tar’ikh Ghunja into Hausa and also did Historical compilations of the Mossi, Dagomba, Mamprusi and the Grunshie people. In the Yendi area there was Yaqub Ibn Khalid recorded parts of the Dagomba drum histories in Arabic as Tar’ikh Dagbanbawi. There was also the illustrious al-Haj Umar of Salaga who later moved to Kete Krachi after the 1894 Salaga civil war. He is probably the best read among his contemporaries.
This tradition of learning was firmly rooted by the mid eighteenth century. The widespread nature of this form of learning is evidenced by the fact that after the 1774/45 Asante invasion of Dagomba many plundered Arabic books were taken to Accra. These were also in the line of the Gonja Khabar tradition of short stories and historical in nature like that of Tar’ikh al –Shaykh Sulayman. Ivor Wilks has ably collected and donated some of the copious writings of this period to the Mervyn Herskovits Africana section of Northwestern University Library. This collection is waiting to be accessed and analysed. John Hunwick’s writings on the Sudanic Region are one attempt at documenting this sort of work. The Arabic Collection of K.O Odoom and J.J Holden also contain a check list of the Arabic Literature of this region. David Owusu-Ansah has also analysed an aspect of these writing, relating to the Talismatic tradition within the colonial period. There is also The Yendi Project, which was undertaken in the 1960s by the Institute of Africa Studies of the University of Ghana in collaboration with Northwestern University. However much work still awaits the scholars in this regards.
This tradition of learning survived till date and every child in the Muslim community is required to attend the ZongKarim or other forms of Islamic learning institutions like the Qur’anic School or Makaranta. A child, usually between the ages of four and six started school under a Mallam in what was usually the Zong and progressed through the elementary stage to the Ilm and then the most talented to the advanced levels, where the study of the Islamic sciences is taught. These students upon completing their studies embarked upon Master seeking, travelling to study under learned Mallams in particular aspects of the Islamic Sciences, while others returned to their localities to found new Qur’an Schools or ZongKarima. Most of these new Mallams named their Schools after their Alma Mata. This explains the preponderance of such names as Anbariyya, Nurriya and Nah’da or Nurul-Islam Arabic Schools in the Region. The description of Salaga in the last decades of the eighteenth century therefore, as a town where every one could read and write in Arabic is an epitome of the state of learning that the British Colonisers came to meet in what later became the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast.
The Colonial Encounter
This state of Islamic learning was to be altered greatly based upon the aspirations and desires of the colonisers and this no doubt helped to render Islamic learning a weak partner in the later attempt at integration. There was a conscious effort by the colonial administration at restricting Christian Missionary effort in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, beginning first with the Catholic White fathers and later the Wesleyans and these were the precursors in the establishment of Western secular education in much of British controlled territories. The reasons often given are fascinating. While some argue that it was to prevent a clash between the two religions, others hold the view that it was an attempt to hold back the clock of progress and thus fashion the people up to serve the designs of the colonizers. What is clear is that the exclusion was not used to further the development of Islamic or Muslim education as it was done elsewhere in Nigeria, where the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) were allowed into some Muslim areas, which led to the establishment of what became the mallamai schools.
Instead the formation of Boys’ brigade was encouraged and ironically the first of such was started by a Muslim, Amadu Samba, with the intention of drafting the most intelligent into the first primary school. But this first semblance of secular education did not hold anything of special appeal to Muslims and the intention of transforming the Boys Brigade into schools fizzled out because no provision was made for teachers. The boys did an hour’s drill and an hour’s lesson but spent the greater part of the day idling or doing odd jobs for the Limam. So that some parents refused their children to return to school upon the Christmas vacation of 1914 with the argument that secular education rendered the children lazy and reasoned that it were better to have them help in keeping horses and on the farm. They were thus disbanded for their unpopularity with especially the Muslim settlements of Bawku and Gambaga. This discouraged the people the more from accepting secular education and the very foundation of Muslims resistance to secular education in Ghana was established.
What came close to official policy was the determination to allow the Muslims to find out by comparison of the two systems of education, Islamic and western secular, which had the most advantage. The suggestion was that the Muslims as being from a more advanced civilization should all the more realise the benefit that arise from secular education. This was effectively translated into three basic challenges for Islamic learning and Muslim education in Ghana. First the effective exclusion of Christian Mission effort in the north, an area with the most Muslim population was to constitute the very first challenge. The mission effort was bound to challenge Islamic learning to reform to meet colonial standards of producing people to function in that setting. The second was the half-hearted introduction of secular education with the expressed instruction to progress only to standard three, educating only sons of Chiefs in the direct line of inheritance to allow for the effective running of the Indirect Rule system. The fact of the majority of Muslims being the ordinary people in society stands to reason that access to such education was out of their reach. The most important challenge colonial rule presented Islamic education was the attempt to maintain the status-quo in the Muslim dominated area, in order to create the enabling environment for effective exploitation. The fruitlessness of any prospect of finding exploitable minerals and the later dashed hopes of mechanised farming as well as the collapse of the caravan trade, rendered the North an area where the resources of the south was not to be used to develop. The only hope now lay in turning the area into a provider of cheap labour for the plantations and Mines in the south. There was the overriding need therefore to prevent the real acquisition of new ideas as Islam and its modes of education was no doubt "…eminently suited to the native" as this rendered the people much more easy to deal with than their compatriots at the Coast.
The stage was then set for the recruitment of labour from the Muslim dominated areas to the south to work on plantations and later these were taken to War in 1914. Starting from 1907 a labour camp was set in Tamale for the recruitment of the young energetic and intelligent who also formed the cream of the ZongKarim and the Qur’anic Schools. As a result of this sort of recruiting the Salaga area for instance was said to be devoid of skilled and healthy men. Such a situation did not encourage Islamic learning, which was based upon continuous learning. This also prevented the boys from progressing to advanced studies. Again since it was these graduates who went out to found new schools, such an attempt was also dashed. Muslim education and Islamic learning therefore could not make any appreciable progress in the face of these challenges. What it did actually was to sharpen the suspicions of Muslims and thus rendered Islamic education a weak side in any future attempt at integration.
Integration; Islamic and Western Secular education
Muslims continued to practice their tradition of education without any help from the colonial administration. At best Guggisberg declared his distaste for the spread of Islam and indicated in 1925 the desire of the Colonial administration to help the Christian Missions against the advance of Islam. The provision of secular education was held back for almost three decades. So that when the Ahmadiyya Mission first appeared on the scene in 1928 with the intension of arousing "…more interest in government schools on the part of the Muslims…" for as they asserted that many Muslims believed going to school is to become a Christian their application to start a school went through frustrating times until in 1932 when they were allowed to start one, but the school was closed down immediately because of financial constraints. Their real success was in the establishment in 1940 of the Ahmadiyya Primary School at Zogbeli in Tamale. Later the school shed its religious character, adopted a secular curriculum and the basic attraction became not the religious subjects but the religious scheme under which the school operated. The Ahmadiyya initiative was rather conservative, for there was still the fear of instituting a radical change in the type of traditional Islamic education as known by the people; western secular education was still considered a preserve of the infidel Christian and the Ahmadiyya attempt was further weakened based on doctrinal differences.
Any further attempt at integration had to wait till the 1960s when some opinion leader mallams were employed to instruct Muslim students for about thirty minutes at the mainstream secular schools. Issues of faith and how to recite a selected number of Surahs from the Qur’an needed in the daily prayer activity were taught but the lack of authority of these mallams over the pupils and the inability of some of the Mallams to communicate in Arabic, using the requisite pedagogical approaches led to the failure of this attempt to generate the needed interest in secular schools.
A more modern attempt at integration was adopted in 1974 with the establishment of what became known as the Islamic Schools. These were Makaranta that had been persuaded to accept secular subjects and secular teachers into their schools. The first four that accepted this programme were Anbariyya Islamic Institute, Nurul Islam Islamic School, Nah’da Islamic School and Nurriya Islamic Institute. In order to convince the Mallams that Islamic education was not going to be pushed to the background and that the Government had no intension of taking over their schools the Ministry of education vested ownership of these schools in the Proprietors and started the practice of paying the Arabic/Islamic instructors the equivalent of a Pupil Teacher’s Salary, after they had gone through an exam and certificates issued. By the end of 1976 many Makaranta had agreed to join the Islamic Schools system. The first group of secular teachers were basically untrained. An educational Unit was also established in 1980 and properly constituted in 1986 with the National Headquarters in Tamale.
Table 1, Number of Islamic Schools and Enrolment Figures for Northern Region, 2001-2002
Number of Schools
Boys
Girls
Trained Teachers
Untrained Teachers
KG/Nursery
159
10,249
8,070
128
268
Primary
265
28,694
5,861
1,507
324
Junior Secondary School
42
4,712
2,231
246
87
Total
465
43655
16162
1881
679
Source: Islamic Education Unit, Tamale.
Despite this modern attempt the Islamic School system is still beset with problems that render the interaction impracticable. There is no single Senior Islamic Secondary school to absorb students from the Forty Two (42) Junior Islamic Secondary schools with an enrolment figure of 6,943 in the Northern Region. Further more only 15.8% space is available at the Islamic Junior Secondary schools to accommodate all primary school leavers in the region. The expansion needed is 85% increase in available space to take care of all pupils from the Islamic Primary schools in the Region. The students are therefore made to compete, rather unfavourably with their colleagues from the mainstream primary schools, who have had more instructional time, more trained teachers and less intervening activity in their studies for admission.
This no doubt leads to wastage in the system and this could be seen again from the table above. From the figures collated only 20% of pupils from the Primary School can be admitted into the Islamic Junior Secondary schools. The 80% go as waste, for most of them end their studies form there and this means not only secular but also Islamic learning as well. Parents find it difficult to understand why their Wards at the Islamic Schools can not compete favourably with their counterparts at the mainstream Schools and this has led some to withdraw their wards, either to send them to the secular schools directly or to help them on their farms or in doing other jobs for them.
The Islamic Schools throughout the Nation are allowed only two Arabic/Islamic Instructors between them, with the exception of the Islamic Schools in the Tamale Municipality who have about five Arabic Instructors. The figures in Table 1 illustrate clearly the number of secular teachers allowed at the Islamic Schools. Each school has six teachers and a Head teacher. But then there is a perpetual fear since 1990 of Government attempts at reducing even the small number of Arabic Instructors allowed at the Islamic Schools from Government payroll. There are a few Islamic Instructors in the system who still have the Arabic Instructors certificate but can not get employment at the only place where their Certificates are recognised, the Islamic Schools. So that any other Mallam who comes around to teach will have to be sustained by the small contributions of those who receive Salary. Those without salary therefore choose to come to school at their leisure and therefore are not frequent at school. The comparison aptly justifies the fears of the Mallams of a possible Government attempt at dispossessing them of their schools, schools they claim their fathers have run since time and handed down to them.
Table 2, Number of Islamic Schools and Enrolment Figures for Tamale Municipal, 2001-2002
No. of Schools
Boys
Girls
Total Boys & Girls
Trained Teachers
Untrained Teachers
KG/Nursery
76
5832
5681
11513
61
134
Primary
86
9188
7142
16330
489
78
JSS
12
1003
432
1435
64
19
Total:
174
Source: Islamic Education Unit, Tamale.
None of the Islamic Schools has a syllabus to guide its teaching and learning activity and no particular text book is in use. Only personally owned books from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Iran and Nigeria exist. From Table 2, there are twelve Islamic Junior secondary schools that are supposed to be fed by 162 Islamic schools with a total population of 27,843 pupils in the Tamale Municipal area, the capital of the northern Region and with a high percentage of Muslims. Therefore only 13% of space is available to accommodate all pupils from the Islamic Primary schools and only 8.7% of students from the primary school can be admitted into the Islamic Junior Secondary schools. There is no doubt that most of the students would not find placement at the mainstream Junior Secondary School and since the schools do not have enough vacancy for their own students, those from Islamic definitely will have to forget it.
The schools are also still looked upon as the property of the Proprietor and the problem as to who really is in Charge, the Proprietor or the Secular Head teacher, is still an everyday confusion; in the area of admission into the Islamic Schools, and the class into which the pupil be placed, Proprietors also check secular teachers and report directly to the Islamic Unit teachers they feel they can no longer work with and expect such teachers to be released. This is a serious delimiting effect on the performance of secular teachers in some Islamic Schools. These have tended to kill the communal spirit that used to characterise the earlier centres of Islamic learning. As a result interest in Islamic learning is beginning to wane and Islamic learning is progressively been turned into a weaker partner in the integration. As a result those who attend these Islamic Schools are finding difficulty in competing favourable with their counterparts in the mainstream schools.
There is also the problem of the relegation of Islamic subjects to a mere collection on the time table. Students start school at 8:00 am and begin secular subjects until late in the afternoon, 1:00 pm when they enter for Islamic instruction. Some Islamic Schools are known to be teaching as much as thirteen subjects at their schools. These subjects are taught in the afternoon at the close of school when certainly both students and Instructors are very tired and can no longer settle down to any effective teaching and learning activity. Efficiency of the Arabic instructors is actually compromised greatly, for staying at School from early in the morning only to start work late in the afternoon will certainly affect the performance of any serious Instructor. Some parents, not aware of these problems get worried that their wards at the Islamic Schools are not able to read even at Primary six while their counterparts in the mainstream schools, Catholic Education Unit and Local Authority Schools are able to do so. This situation has gone a long way in contributing to wastage in the system, with students dropping out quite early at school and those who are compelled to stay and complete not able to progress into either the Senior Secondary schools or other Vocational Institutions.
Conclusion
There is the overriding need for a meaningful and sustainable interaction between Islamic and Western Secular education, especially in this era of decentralisation and increased demand for new competence at local levels; the demand for local businesses, communities, associations and individuals to assume new responsibilities for which their Qur’anic education has not equipped them. Western secular education has no doubt become the defacto medium of commerce and of business. Yet the numerous Makaranta is still having a stronger urge over western education in respect of enrolment in some communities while the Islamic Schools are also not well disposed in such a way as to compete favourably with the mainstream Secular schools. In fact for beneficiaries of Qur’anic education and the recently established Islamic Schools to stand up to these new responsibilities it is imperative that the Islamic tradition of education and Muslim education generally be reformed meaningfully and made much more sustainable.
The very first issue should be the training of Arabic/ Islamic Instructors up to a standard that would make them capable of teaching both Secular and Islamic Subjects. Those who already have had some Makaranta and Secular education could be constituted as this new crop of teachers. This could be done with the establishment of a training college with such a mandate. The Rashidiya Islamic University College, located in Tamale was established to fill this vacuum but unfortunately without support from the Government and the community within which the school is established, Rashidiya is bound to face problems as they are already witnessing. The school has no approved site of its own; it is funded from voluntary contributions of the faithful but for how long will such contributions continue to flow and for how long will the Lecturers continue to sacrifice? The Islamic Republic of Iran has also established the Islamic University College of Ghana which according to the Registrar has a "…Strong academic and spiritual background", beginning with two courses; Business Administration and Religious Studies but admission is opened to all irrespective of religion because the question as to how many qualified Muslim applicants are applying does exist. But a much more greater need now is to be able to train a crop of teachers capable of transforming the numerous Islamic Schools in the country into institutions capable of contributing students not only to the traditional Universities in Ghana but also feeding the Islamic University Colleges. This is the surest way to putting Islamic education and the education of the Muslim on a better footing in any attempt at fostering a meaningful integration.
There could be a start with the introduction of Arabic/Islamic Studies department in one or two of the already existing Teacher training Schools in Ghana. These could be developed into the proposed Islamic Training School. Here refresher courses or workshops could be organised to help upgrade or sharpen the skills of selected Proprietors and the Arabic Instructors already in the system. Then teachers solicited from the Islamic or Arab countries to help in turning the Islamic School system into an equal partner in the ceaseless search for a meaningful interaction.
This Islamic training school or the Arabic/Islamic Studies departments will be the appropriate places to help develop or redesign the curriculum of the Islamic Schools to include the teaching of science and mathematics and Geography so as to eliminate duplication. The teachable subjects such as Ha-t, writing and Sira, history could also be encouraged and taught here. Other subjects like Arabic grammar could start from the lower primary but graded in such a way as to take into consideration the pedagogical needs of the students while the more complicated ones like Tajweed (Phonetics) reserved for those interested in them in the higher classes. Nigeria was aided in floating a similar idea during the colonial era and the Muslim education systems of the Sudan and that of the then Gold Coast were studied and teachers brought in from the latter and these helped greatly in reforming and standardizing the Muslim education system in Northern Nigeria. With such a redefinition therefore the integration in Ghana could be made more meaningful.
In the light of the colonial encounter it is pertinent to observe that the stagnating character of Islamic and Muslim education in Ghana is largely a reflection of the policies and practices initiated by the colonial administration, which resulted in stifling any significant growth and left Islamic education an underdog in the later integration with western secular education. An integration therefore that seeks to take into account this long standing delimiting effect like the one suggested in this paper is imperative to any meaningful but sustainable interaction between Islamic and Western Secular education in Ghana.