Struggles Over Schooling

The debate surrounding the new method is not easy to chronicle. Unlike the copious critique of the maktab produced by the Jadids, critics of the new method did not appear in print very often, and we are left to glean the nature of those criticisms from the Jadids' criticism of their critics in newspaper debates. Opponents of the new method also appear, in heavily caricatured form, in Jadid literature and drama.

The fundamental criticism of the new method was that it contravened customary practices surrounding the transmission of knowledge. If the possession of those practices made one a member of the Muslim community, then their contravention was construed by many as an act of secession from that community. As Fitrat's mudarris put it simply, "These schools turn our children into infidels [kafir ]."^[64] Nor was this merely a literary topos: in December 1913, the imam at the Ulugh Bek mosque in Samarqand declared in a Friday sermon that the new method of education and learning Russian were against the shariat and that those who sent their children to a new-method school were infidels.^[65] In 1914, a new-method school in the Maddahi quarter of Samarqand was prevented from opening by residents who would not allow a "Russian school" in their midst,^[66] while in late 1916, posters bearing a similar condemnation appeared in Bukhara.^[67] These schools also did away with the texts traditionally used in the maktab, which popular opinion held to have been established as part of the canon by Imam Abu Hanifa (the founder of the Hanafi school of fiqh) himself.^[68] New-method schools were considered unacceptable also because they used a simplified alphabet and because children sat on benches, "like Russians."^[69] The new body language inculcated in new-method schools provoked, not surprisingly, a great deal of debate and hostility toward the Jadids. The Jadids' denigration of the standard texts of the maktab as nonsense and sophistry, and their re-

[64] Fitrat, Munazara , 37.

[65] Mahmud Khoja [Behbudi], "Bizm hallar wa ishlar," Ayina , 18 January 1914, 200-202.

[66] Ayina , 14 January 1915, 154-155.

[67] Abdurrauf Fitrat, "Jahilana taassubgha misal," Shura , 15 January 1917, 34.

[68] Munawwar Qari, "Bizni jahalat."

[69] Haji Mum, Eski maktab , 42.

placement of these texts by primers and textbooks, also provoked suspicion. In the tradition of the maktab, the written word possessed a sacred aura; the use of lighthearted stories about animals and of songs in the new-method curriculum offended many sensibilities.^[70] Customary practices had been valorized into immutable tradition partly as a result of the Russian conquest and now served as markers of the local Muslim community and of the status of elites within it. The maintenance of such markers was especially important to the notables created by Russian rule itself if they were to act as intermediaries between two distinct communities. Jadid reform, and most specifically the new-method school, threatened to undermine the status quo.

The Jadids argued for the legitimacy, and indeed the superiority, of their method through recourse to the nation, Islam, and science. Fitrat's response to the charge that new-method schools turn children into infidels was to claim that, on the contrary, these make children "perfect Muslims and well-trained patriots [mu'addib watanparwaran ]."^[71] At the same time, the Jadids argued that it was the maktab that failed to transmit "proper" Islamic knowledge to children. Fitrat was more caustic in 1917 in his response to the anonymous posters in Bukhara; pointing to the poor grammar and spelling of the posters' text, he wrote: "Even if the backwardness of Bukharans in commerce, morals, science, and industry ... is not obvious to the writers of the posters, it is obvious to others.... Even when we see the scientific wonders of the world, such as the telephone, the telegraph, or the railway, we do not have anybody who can learn their secrets. We do not even have people who, having graduated from a madrasa, could write posters ... correctly.^[72] Munawwar Qari argued that it was simple ignorance (jahl ) to think that the canon used in the maktab had been created by Abu Hanifa because poets like Fuzuli, Sufi Allah Yar, and Bedil had not been born in Abu Hanifa's time.^[73] The Jadids also pointed to the example of other Muslim countries where the phonetic method had long been in use.^[74] As for sitting on benches, Haji Muin invoked the authority of modern science to

[70] This is scarcely peculiar to Turkestan or to Muslim society. Ben Eklof (Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy, 1861-1914 [Berkeley, 1986], ch. 9) has described very similar reactions to new schools among Russian peasants, who had only disdain for primers that made children read such lighthearted stuff, but nothing useful or "beneficial."

[71] Fitrat, Munazara , 23.

[72] Fitrat, "Jahilana taassubgha misal," 34.

[73] Munawwar Qari, "Bizni jahalat."

[74] Fitrat, Munazara , 23; Munawwar Qari, "Bizm jahalat."

argue that it was far more sanitary and hygienic than sitting on the ground because children were thus protected from the harmful moisture of the ground.^[75]

In the end, though, the best argument for the new method was its efficacy in imparting functional literacy, which had increasingly become more valued. Consequently, the Jadids borrowed from Russo-native schools the custom of making the annual examinations a public occasion to which local notables were invited to see for themselves the achievements of the new system. Visitors could ask children questions, and the children recited prayers and read from the Qur'an to impress skeptics. Such occasions, complete with printed invitations and elaborate notices in the press (including the TWG ), became important public events in the consolidation of Jadidism as a social phenomenon.