Simply because I don't remember the darul uloom in it's history being guarded by men with machine guns.However,I knew which madressa it was from your description of the hiding you got at Fijr.lol.I won't say the Moulana's name but he was mostly probably the moulana who loves his paan.lol. bro,i am sorry for you as to how the experience affected you and you were very young to be exposed to that environment.What you should understand is that aalims job that he keeps for himself is to wake up the madressa for fijr.the guys that make it through love him despite the hiding they get at his hands.You should understand bro,that that madressah was like a rehab.all the delinquants of society are sent there to get 'fixed up'.drug addicts,rebellous children,violent children,children from broken homes e.t.c.Thus you had students who came there who could not care less and took pride and competed with one another at being rebellious.Also,corporal punishment was not illegal at that time.This created an environment where the students were hell-bent on being rebellous while ustadhs were hell-bent on 'fixing them up' .thus that type of environment was created-this is the type of environment and ustadhs(including that particular ustadh)that produced the likes of Ml'Sulaiman Mulla,Ml.Sulaiman Kindi,Ml.Sulaimn Jada,Qari Saleem Seedat e.t.c.and some of the best huffaz.However,since corporal punishment has been outlawed,that problem has been eradicated.Also,the state of the rooms were not good due to the huge financial demands. the situation is much better and there is a whole new dormitary section.During those years youngsters were fascinated with jinns and stuff. I suggest you return to South Africa and maybe start off where everything went wrong. I am not justifying the hiding you got.I'm just contextualising it for you. Besides the other darul ulooms like azadville and isipingo did not have a policy of hitting. As to your questions regarding the beliefs e.t.c. I will try to provide links.However,if you use the search function of this site you will find plenty answers. was salam