Mahadjirines

Learning Quran in Chad, eastern Sahel region.

Mahadjirines, yesterday “Allah’s migrants”, today with chains on their feet.

 

It returned to them the role to Islamise the people. Too many in a country in crisis, their future is dubious.

The word “mahadjirine” means « emigrating », from “mahadjir”, the emigrant. These emigrants left at one time Makkah for Medina in Saudi Arabia. The Mahadjirines went there to study Koran. Thus, the “mahadjir” is the student in theology and the proponent of Islam. The word has another meaning, more recent, that is the one of beggar.

The phenomenon has some years in Chad. The students of these koran schools with Sudanese and Saudi inspirations are more and more numerous. These two countries with the unbending Islam finance these madrassa. The families pay all to the more two bags of be chummy for all the year (about 60 Euros).  The chadian public school is paying. The center that I visited is known under the name of “mabourouka”. It is situated in the desert harbors, outside of the city, east of the Chad close to the border of the Darfur. The boarders are about 400.

Certain children are linked when they disobey, do not want to learn the Koran or attempt to flee. These girls and these boys may, as early as the age of six years old, keep the chains during two years. The apprenticeship of Koran, by heart, at the place then with back, is the only activity as early as 3 o’clock in the morning. Up to 10 p.m. Their goal: to become the one of the very numerous marabous of the Chad after to improve their apprenticeship in Sudan, or, absolute dream, in Saudi Arabia. Little of them arrive there. Consequence is an insertion problem in professional life to their majority, unless these children sink in the madness after an eager indoctrination. In the chadian street, enlightened opinions affirm to see in these possessed teenagers a den of candidates to the Islamic terrorism.

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