Sana Asma’s scientific contributions

Education is the only mechanism that enhances the process of social, economic, and cultural development of communities. Among all the religious communities, Muslims are in the least educated section of Indian Society. The backwardness among Muslims in comparison with non-Muslims in India have become a matter of concern at present. There are several reasons for backwardness of Muslims in India such as large family size, lack of link between madarsa education and modern education, economic poverty, negative attitude towards girl's education etc. The objective of this paper is to analyze the educational vision of Muslims in India. Education is the top most priority in Islam and hence to the Muslims. It reveals from study that Muslim community in India is the most backward in terms of education as well as socioeconomic condition. It makes clear that the vision of Muslims is not towards modern education. The present study has identified the problems of Muslim's education in India and further address the proper suggestion and measures for improvement in their vision.

A large population of Muslims in India are receiving education either from Madarsas or from Urdu-medium schools. Madarsa is an Arabic word which means an educational institution. They were never limited to provide only religious education. But this concept has been changed and Madarsas have become the centre of religious education only. Nowadays marginalized Muslim communities are increasingly demanding more quality education from their Madarsas. But most of the Madarsas in India are privately owned and Madarsa leaders may not feel a need to fulfil the community desires. Although Muslim parents are attracted to the safe environment of these schools, they are aware that a purely religious education will not help their children to earn a decent living, because of outdated traditional methods and technique of teaching and learning, with a negative outlook towards modern subjects and also due to lack of innovations, experiments and researches. The main concern of this paper is to find out the contribution of Madarsa education in the empowerment of Muslims and point out the shortcomings of Madarsa education. This paper suggests some remedial measures also to improve the quality of Madarsa education for overall development of Muslim community.