Source: The Economist
Mbar lifts up his trousers and points at the marks where the chains wore his skin away. He was 11 when his father sent him from his village to a religious school on the outskirts of Senegal’s holy city of Touba. His teacher made him recite passages from the Koran in the morning. Then Mbar (not his real name) was sent out to the streets to beg for money for his master until night fell. If he misbehaved, he was beaten or starved.
After two years Mbar ran home. But his father sent him to another school. This time he was not made to beg. Instead, he was chained to a wall. “I couldn’t move. They used to bring me a bucket to pee in,” says Mbar, in a cracked voice.
Categories: Africa, Education, Religion, The Muslim Times
During a short trip to Dakar, Senegal, during 2003 (or 4) I also noticed that children from religious schools were out begging in the roads, of course they would have had to deliver all ‘earnings’ to their ‘Master’. Ah, how important the Ahmadiyya Jama’at’s schools are all over Africa! No such thing there.