THE Jam-iyyah Enwaanul Islam bil Filibbin that stands at the heart of Marawi City’s infamous Ground Zero is trying its hand at online teaching, the first by any Arabic-language madrasah, or school, in the country, as it also tries to make sense of the massive displacement four years ago of its former students in Arabic language.
At a dilapidated residential building near Ground Zero, Ustadz Zobair Gutoc Nanagun, 47, struggled with his old mobile phone and aging laptop to set up the online class with 35 students who were able to establish contact with their former teacher when the madrasah was still standing inside Ground Zero.
The online class was started only in the middle of April after Nanagun and his family was able to settle snugly at an abandoned building inside a fenced 300-square-meter lot in Marawi City.
For Nanagun, teaching his students must resume immediately because learning the ways of peace and Islam is non-negotiable, immediate and in continuum.
Core of faith
THE name of the madrasah that Nanagun established in 1985 in downtown Marawi literally means society of advocates of Islam, and Nanagun wanted precisely to revive the education of Muslim youths in the finer points of the language.
For Muslims, the core of their faith hinges largely on the holy book, Qur’an, the essence of which is best understood and extracted from Arabic from which it was written.
Nanagun’s extensive experience in handling and managing the madrasah has made him one of the few renowned madrasah teachers in Marawi City and Lanao del Sur. He has logged 35 years of teaching the Arabic language and grammar, a must for every Muslim who has reached high school.
The madrasah curriculum approximates the number of school years in the regular Department of Education curriculum.
Nanagun finished only high school in the regular Philippine educational curriculum, but his Islamic education brought him to the premier Islamic University in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
As in regular education, schooling in the madrasah (plural: madaris) was supposed to be required, but in the case of Marawi City and many parts of Lanao del Sur, this was interrupted when the Maute Group, a local affiliate of the Middle East-based Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or Isis, attempted to control Marawi City in May 2017.
The displacement was widespread, affecting all the lakeside towns of Lanao del Sur, populated mainly by the Maranao tribe. To this day, Ground Zero remains off-limits to its inhabitants due to what the military has warned is the presence of still unexploded ordnances during the May to October war in 2017.
Ground Zero incidentally was also the most densely populated in the city, and many of its inhabitants were scattered, as a result of the siege, across different evacuation camps and families in Lanao del Sur. Nanagun evacuated to a town farther away from Marawi City.
A number of them, unfortunately, became casualties of the war. That included Nanagun’s students, and his madrasah.
Inspiration
THE group chat established by former and current students of Nanagun now has members from other asatidz (plural of ustadz) who are keenly observing how Nanagun would carry on online teaching.
“They are engaging in lively interaction with students and Nanagun, sharing what must be done, what should have been done,” said Amer Hassan Salacop Sanggacala, a former student of Nanagun when the madrasah was still untouched by the 2017 war.
He said Nanagun has a student assistant who would bring the mobile phone camera to focus on the blackboard as Nanagun wrote on the nuances of Arabic grammar.
What Nanagun has initiated has provided the inspiration for all asatidz, and all Filipino Muslim communities, Sanggacala said. “It’s his advocacy and mission.”
Sanggacala has started a solicitation campaign to support the online class, and detailed in his social media account and in the private online chat group what the Jam-iyyah Enwaanul Islam bil Filibbin needed.
“[If hindi kaya ng oras mo to go physically to a madrasah, na zadqa ka ko madrasah ka gyoto e kinisompat ka ko balas iyan]. I just learned from a friend that our madrasah in Marawi is now adopting the online class scheme [because of health and safety protocols]. I also learned that they’re only using pocket WiFi to get their class[es] going. Ultimately, this will not suffice their khamsata Ayyām [5 days] & yawmayn [weekends] classes. So I thought why not palagyan ng Wi-Fi ang madrasah so connectivity won’t be a problem [sa marami pa nilang kailangang problemahin]. Kung gusto niyo pong tumulong, below are the GCash/bank account deets. Inn shaa Allah na misosompat kano ko langon o balas ko omani morit a di ron di makatontot sa ilmo,” he said in a mix of Maranao and Filipino.
During the interview with the BusinessMirror on Wednesday, Sanggacala said he was already receiving financial donations from various places in Mindanao.
Struggle
HOWEVER, Nanagun told the BusinessMirror that he was still struggling with the technology, both with his mobile phone and the online class.
“I am adjusting to the technology,” he said, pointing out to the regular haplessness among Filipinos when Internet connection gets lost or is kept hanging, slowing down or stopping further communication.
“When it hangs, it also drains fast our load,” he added.
“If only they were supported, at least financially, we could reach out to more students to our online class, maybe double what we have now when we could accommodate only 35 students,” he said.
Sanggacala said the struggles of the nascent online class in the madrasah in Marawi City is an initiative that the whole world would be watching. And, he looks forward to that day that as they make headway with more help, their experience would provide people with hope in these dark times of pandemic, when rebuilding from war becomes even more challenging.
Image courtesy of Amer Sanggacala
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