KABUL

- In the last year, Afghan Khalil Jan chose to send three of his sons to the Imam Abu Hanifa School of Religious Studies in Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan.

While his two children Abdul Hafeez and Abdul Shakour are in the third grade, his eldest son Abdul Kabir is in the fourth grade.

The father works in the vegetable market in the city, and supports a family of 9.

He told Al Jazeera Net, "I can hardly provide for them, and sending children to these schools helps our families."

For Khalil Jan, and for many Afghan families in similar circumstances, religious schools are important because they provide religious education as well as food and shelter for their children.

In addition to providing housing and 3 meals a day, a number of these schools grant simple financial assistance to their students, which encourages poor families to ease the financial burden on them, while at the same time providing religious education for their children.

A student learns the Holy Quran in a religious school in the Afghan capital, Kabul (Al-Jazeera)

A significant increase

Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last August, official bodies have registered a 40% increase in religious schools.

This is after the new government announced the opening of new schools in all Afghan provinces.

According to the ministries of education and endowments in the Afghan government, about 6,000 religious schools have become officially registered throughout the country, in addition to 15,716 schools and houses for memorizing the Holy Qur’an that are not registered.

Officially registered schools receive their funding from the government budget, while unregistered schools and centers receive support and donations from private bodies or charities.

The head of the Religious Schools Department in the Afghan Ministry of Education, Abdul Razzaq Siddiq, told Al Jazeera Net, "The Islamic Emirate has decided to open a major religious school in each state, providing housing for about 500 to a thousand students, and we will open in each district from 5 to 10 schools. small according to necessity and the need of the people.


The Book, the Sunnah and the Arabic Language

Despite its wide spread, there is no unified religious education system in Afghanistan.

However, a large percentage of them teach the curriculum of the Islamic University of Dar Al Uloom "Dio-Pand" in northern India (founded in 1867).

This curriculum is based on "teaching the Qur'an and Sunnah and teaching the Arabic language", as its literature speaks.

Afghans are inspired by religious curricula from Islamic educational institutions in India and Pakistan in particular, due to their proximity to them.

Pakistani schools were an important destination for them, especially after the Soviet invasion of the country in 1989.

Students of a religious school in the Afghan capital, Kabul (Al-Jazeera)

A source of mobilization for the Taliban

Madrasas have been known for the past four decades as an essential incubator for providing new elements to Taliban fighters.

Madrasas in Pakistan and Afghanistan played an important role in mobilizing the movement's fighters against foreign forces and the former Afghan government.

Observers view the new government's (Taliban-led) interest in religious schools as a way to raise a generation close to the movement's ideology (thought) to ensure its continued rule and penetration in Afghan society.

A source in the Afghan Ministry of Education does not hide this trend to Al Jazeera Net, as he says that the strategy set by the new government for the educational sector emphasizes the transmission of its ideology to future generations.

The focus on religious education - according to the source - extends to universities as well.

The number of Islamic culture classes has been increased, even though it has been around for years.


A threat to previous governments

The previous Afghan government viewed religious schools as a threat to its rule, and the content and quality of what they teach has been the subject of much debate and criticism in the Afghan and foreign media.

Therefore, in 2006, the Afghan government resorted to developing a comprehensive plan to improve Islamic education in Afghan schools and universities, while developing religious schools so that Afghans would not go to their counterparts in Pakistan.

"We have put in place a comprehensive plan to develop religious curricula, starting with registering religious schools and allocating budgets for them, with the aim that Afghans will not go to religious schools outside the country," said Amanullah Eman, a former spokesman for the Ministry of Education.

Iman added to Al Jazeera Net, "We wanted young people to get what benefits them in their daily lives because the religious curricula are very traditional, and focus on things that the student does not benefit from, such as logic and Arabic grammar, which do not enable the student to speak Arabic as it should."

The former Afghan government supervised only 1,300 religious schools out of the 13,000 that were not under its control.

The number of religious schools registered with the Ministry of Awqaf was 5025 schools throughout Afghanistan.

And the number of those who joined it during the 9 months of Taliban rule reached 4,035.

But writer Abdul Karim Haroun says that "Afghans are questioning the Islamic Emirate's interest in opening more religious schools, despite the presence of major problems in the educational sector in general."