Les madrasas chiites afghanes à l’aune iranienne : anthropologie d’une dépendance religieuse

As a social institution, the madras must be analyzed in terms of their relationship to social, econmomic and political change and to the public educational system whose bureaucratic organization they have copied. In the case of Afghanistan they cannot be disassociated from the war and its consequences, such as emigration and the reconstitution of ethno-religious affiliations. Financed and run by the diaspora, they enable the Shiite minority, notably Hazara, to reestablish itself in the central State and to provide a counterweight to the Pachtoune domination. They also contribute to the education of girls and children from disfavored social classes. The dependeance of Shiite education in Afghanistan on the Iranian clergy has organizational, theological, financial and symbolique benefits. But it is accompanied by a reinvention of, and separation from, the Iranian model which should, in the minds of the religous authorities, lead to a national schism in Afghanistan of which Kaboul hopes to be the spiritual capital. The asymetric Irano-Afghan interaction illustrates the relevance of the notion of « religous dependence ».