Madrasa to mainstream: A Muzaffarnagar school’s bridge for Hafiz students

In the sugarcane plains of Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, a small boarding school is attempting to bridge two worlds. The Vision International Academy (VIA) in Phulat village takes students who have memorised the Quran — known as Huffaz — and teaches them modern science, mathematics, English and social studies alongside their spiritual education. The aim, say its founders, is to help these young minds channel their exceptional memory into careers they could not previously imagine.

Fourteen-year-old Hafiz Abdus Samad, from Mewat in Haryana, is one of them. He says he wants to join the Indian Foreign Service and serve in the United Arab Emirates. “I want to tell the world that in India, one can follow his or her religion without discrimination,” he said, speaking softly in the school’s courtyard.

The school, founded by Kerala-born philanthropist Ameer Ahamed in 2017, currently has around 200 students, all of whom are Huffaz. A postgraduate in management from Aligarh Muslim University, Ahamed spent decades in the Gulf re-engineering sick industrial units before returning to India to focus on social work. The idea for VIA came after he observed that many madrasa graduates, despite strong memorisation skills, ended up doing menial jobs.

“I noticed these young Huffaz have something in them which the community has not explored,” Ahamed said. “Psychometric tests revealed their IQ level is no different from the best students of their age, and their memorising capacity is exceptional. However, they often remain confined to madrasas and end up doing menial jobs.”

With the help of senior professors from Aligarh Muslim University, Ahamed designed a bridge course that integrates the madrasa curriculum with subjects like physics, mathematics, English and computer basics. Students still wear kurta-pyjamas and skull caps, but they also sit in laboratories, read Premchand stories, and follow cricket. Many speak broken English but are eager to learn.

The school is located in Phulat, a village historically associated with Islamic scholarship. It is also where Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui, a preacher convicted in 2024 by a National Investigation Agency court for forcibly converting people to Islam, once offered land for the school. Ahamed said Siddiqui extended help when other madrasas in the region refused to support the project.

Student voices at VIA reflect a range of perspectives. While some defended the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan or spoke in favour of patriarchy, others hold more progressive aspirations. Mustafa, a sugarcane farmer’s son from nearby Jaula, wants to become a chartered accountant. Md Qasib and Shees Tyagi, two other students, are concerned about unemployment and lack of infrastructure, but want to change their surroundings by becoming doctors and engineers. “We respect the diversity in culture and climate of our country. No other country has it, and it needs to be preserved,” Qasib said.

Appa, a senior teacher and a PhD from Jamia Millia University, believes the students’ strong memory skills can be channeled into clearing board examinations. “My goal is to use their strong memory to clear board exams by inculcating curiosity and inquisitiveness,” he said.

Ahamed acknowledges that changing mindsets takes time. “Perceptions are changing. Moral education is an important part of the curriculum. We realised a young Huffaz doesn’t necessarily know the spirit of the Holy Quran. Islam is not about a beard and pyjama. Here, they learn about the country, the Constitution, and the basics of comparative religion to build understanding and respect for other faiths,” he said. As part of this effort, students are asked to dress in a shirt and trousers one day a week.

For now, the school remains a small experiment in a region where communal and economic tensions often intersect. But for students like Samad, it is a starting point. “The outside world can be discriminatory,” he said. “But I believe education will change that.”