The Darul Uloom, an Islamic madrassa or seminary, located at Deoband, a town in Uttar Pradesh, India is self-described as a cornerstone of "Islamic sciences." It was founded in 1866. It teaches an Islamist version of the religion. Its students have gone on to found many other maddrassas across modern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and farther afield. As its official website proclaims, 'the whole of Asia is redolent with the aroma of this prophetic garden.' Its only rival in influence has been the Jam'a-e Azhar , Cairo. The school of the Islamic religion promulgated here is often described as Deobandi, and has had great influence on the Taliban of Afghanistan. Deobandi thought has much in common with the Wahhabi movement that originated in Saudi Arabia.

Founded at a time when the handful of Islamic Madaris in India were dormant, the school awakened political consciousness. Many of the school's Ulema had taken active roles in the "Indian Mutiny" or "War of Independence of 1857". The founder, Hazrat Nanautavi, turned lack of official support into a virtue, establishing the principle that the religious schools be run with public contributions from "the poor masses alone."

A center of both the Shariah and the semi-secret Tariqa from the very day of its inception, Darul Uloom has been a force explicitly counter to rationalism and secularism, which are associated with Western culture. The syllabus set at the outset "has been in force generally for more or less a century in all the Arabic schools in the country" according to the official website. The current syllabus consists of four stages, three that take eight years to complete, and Mastery Post-graduate stage, in Tafsir, Islamic theology, Fiqh or Islamic law, and literature.

External link

• Official Website