Religious classes in school

I listened to a discussion amongst friends the other day about religious education in school, and that made me think of my own experiences. In our school system, Muslims would go for religious classes whilst at the same time, non-Muslims would attend classes on Moral Education.

When I was in primary school, the first three years of my life I had an ustazah (female religious teacher) who took our classes. She was neither overly strict nor was she overly lenient. Considering the fact that we're talking about kids between the ages of seven to nine, that's understandable.

By the time I hit upper primary though, a new teacher took over our classes, an ustaz (male religious teacher). I'll never forget him as he was a kind, gentle man who didn't believe in using physical punishment or even raising his voice to get the points into our head. I think practically the whole class looked up to him since we were more afraid of his gentle verbal scolding when we did something wrong then if he had raised his hand to give us a tight slap. He was the kind of person that made you feel really small and guilty if he had to chide us (always in a gentle manner). Three interesting years of religious education where I enjoyed learning more about my religion.


When I hit secondary school though, things truly changed. The first two years of my life there, classes were taken on by an ustazah who was so set in her ways that it left me very little with new religious understanding but more on depression at having to attend the compulsory classes.

I'll never forget our first class with her. She had taken a look at the register of names and then she called out the name of one Malay boy, "Jeff. Come to the front." (all this was in Malay of course, I'm translating it now to English since my command of Malay has deteriorated over the years).

Jeff went to the front of the class to stand next to her with a slightly apprehensive look.

Ustazah: "What is your father's name?"
Jeff: "Yahaya, ustazah.
Ustazah: "From now on, I shall address you as Yahaya. Jeff is not a Muslim name."

There was silence in the class at that. I didn't really think much of it then being just 13 years of age, but now that I'm much older (and I hope, far wiser) I wonder at the irony of it. Jeff is not a Muslim name? It might not be a Malay name, certainly but...

Think about other Muslims throughout the world. I met a man from China sometime back, his name was Lee Hui. He was born a Muslim, his passport states just that as his name. He was addressed by his name by other Malaysian Muslims, and I never heard any issue about his name not being a Muslim one.

Anyway you can imagine the tone of the classes for the next two years from there I'm sure.


If I thought things were difficult in the first two forms, I had a rude shock by the time I reached form 3 in school, the religious teacher changed to an ustaz who truly believed in the rod anytime over words. He truly made me think that "brimstone and fire" was the attitude that he gave out toward us. He was not shy to raise his voice at us, and at times he went out on a witch hunt against the boys to try turn up whatever wrong-doings we might have no matter if we were doing anything wrong or not.

We were also required to attend extra religious classes a couple of days a week after school. He refused to accept any excuses if we were unable to attend. It didn't matter if we had tuition, or extra curricular activities. No excuses or he would want to see our parents.

I truly felt uncomfortable with him mainly because I felt he could be a bit racist at times. As I'm the product of a mixed marriage, I wasn't viewed as "Malay" by the others but more of an outsider. And I could tell that there was no love lost between us. I was picked on quite a bit more (by him and my fellow classmates) then I was in preceding years.


This lasted only for a year though. In form 4, again another teacher change to a much younger ustaz. He was much like the gentle ustaz who thought me in primary school, soft spoken, always believed in trying to advise or guide us rather then to reprimand our mistakes. He was well liked by the class and was viewed as much as a friend as a teacher since he was only about 10 years older then we were.

Alas, this lasted only a year, for in my final year of school we reverted back to the old ustaz. Again it was a fairly difficult time for me. My only saving grace was that for some reason or other, I always scored well in Islamic studies during exams. I was usually amongst the top 5 at least. Thank heavens for that!

My feelings of the ustaz being somewhat racist came to fore that year. During the year we in the fifth form had elections for the position of head prefect. As I recall there were three candidates running. Two Malays and a Chinese. One of the Malays was there only to make up the numbers and he was definitely not considered a likely candidate by the majority of the students. The other two however were considered worthy candidates, with the Chinese leading with quite margin due to his strong attributes and personality.

During one of my religious classes, he asked us how we were going to vote for the elections. There was silence for a bit before one of the boys chimed up that they were of course going to vote for the Malay candidate. He then replied, "Good. Make sure you do. Don't vote for the Chinese guy. You are Malays and should stick to your own race." So much for racial integration these days, eh? And our politicians are wondering why there's no racial unity these days, sheesh.

I do wonder though how religious classes in school are like these days. Any improvements? Any changes? Hrmm...