An Indian court has banned Islamic madrassas

An Indian court has ordered a ban on Islamic madrassas in the country’s most populous state, while directing hundreds of thousands of students to attend traditional schools.

This court order is a move that will further alienate Muslims ahead of the national elections.

The Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh on Friday struck down the 2004 Madrasas Act in the state. The court said that the law related to Islamic religious schools violates constitutional secularism.

Justices Subhash Vidyarthi and Vivek Chaudhary said the state government will ensure that children between the ages of six and 14 are admitted to regularly recognized institutions.

Religious madrassas have been a part of Muslim-populated Indian states for decades and focus on Islamic methods of education while other schools in India provide traditional education.

Iftikhar Ahmed Javed, head of Madrasa Education Board in the state, said that this initiative will affect 2.7 lakh students and about 10,000 teachers of 25,000 madrasas.

He said that although the court has not given any time to implement its order, madrasas are unlikely to be closed immediately.

A fifth of the 24 crore population of Uttar Pradesh, a state in the northeastern part of India, is Muslim.

Rakesh Tripathi, spokesman for the Uttar Pradesh branch of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said he was not against madrassas and was concerned about the education of Muslim students.

He said: ‘We are not against any seminary but we are against discrimination. We are against illegal funding and the government will decide on further action after looking at the court order.’

According to new data from a US-based research group, India saw an average of two incidents of hate speech against Muslims every day in 2023.

According to a report published this week by the Washington, DC-based research group India Hate Lab (IHL), most of these incidents took place in states where the right-wing Hindu nationalist party BJP is the government of

Incidents of hate speech peaked from August to November last year. It was a time when campaigning and voting in four important state elections was underway.

General elections are going to be held in India from next month, in which Modi is making a unique attempt to come to power for the third time.

However, Muslim and human rights organizations in the country have accused some members of the BJP and its affiliates of promoting anti-Islamic hate speech and vandalizing Muslim properties.