The Pakistani leader’s hard-hitting crackdown on Islamic religious schools has sparked public outcry and criticism from analysts and politicians who say that not all madrassas are spreading extremism.
By Naveed Ahmad in Pakistan for ISN Security Watch (10/08/05)
Opposition politicians in Pakistan have expressed concern that the government’s harsh crackdown on Islamic religious schools (madrassas) could lead to nationwide protests and set back reform efforts that had finally begun to make some headway after four long years.
On Sunday, the government got its first taste of what critics warn could end in nationwide demonstrations when madrassa students in Peshawar protested against orders to expel all foreign students from the religious schools.
General Pervez Musharraf, the country’s president and military chief, ordered the expulsion of all foreign students as part of his crackdown on madrassas in the wake of the 7 July bombings of London’s transport system and British investigators’ claims that two of the suspected suicide bombers had attended madrassas in Pakistan - a claim that is not supported with concrete evidence.
Since then, accusations that madrassas are fostering extremism and in some cases even providing students with “terrorism” training have made the schools a target for indiscriminate Pakistani security forces.
In late July, Pakistani security forces arrested some 300 Islamic clerics and students from madrassas across the country for allegedly preaching extremism and disseminating hate material. It was the third such crackdown in as many years - and the most hard-hitting.
Musharraf set a deadline of 31 December for the religious schools to register with the Interior Ministry and to send hundreds of foreign students packing - even those holding dual citizenship in Pakistan.
Pakistani officials estimate that there are about 1,400 Muslims, mostly from Arab and African countries, but some also from Britain and the US, among an estimated one million students attending madrassas in Pakistan. Nongovernmental sources estimate that there are around 10,000 madrassas in Pakistan.
There is no lack of critics of the crackdown. Human rights groups say the government is indiscriminately attacking madrassas without investigating whether they are indeed training “terrorists” and spreading extremism, or actually providing much-needed education in the country’s remote and isolated regions. Opposition politicians say the crackdown was conducted hastily and under international pressure, pointing out that Musharraf has drawn most of his current political power from “terrorism” and “terrorists”, having enthusiastically joined the US-led “war on terror”.
Recently, Musharraf himself has admitted that the security forces might have gotten a bit out of hand in their anti-madrassa operations.
During one of their raids in mid-July, police wounded 23 female students at a Muslim school for women, prompting Musharraf to issue an order to Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao, saying: “The crackdown must be restricted to seminaries promoting militancy and religious intolerance because all seminaries are not drawn into terror activities.”
Madrassas and the anti-Soviet jihad
After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, large sums of money flowed into Pakistan to educate Afghan children growing up in refugee camps. Most of the money came from Saudi Arabia and the US.
The schools established with that money served the twin purposes of imparting religious education in accordance with the strict Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam and preparing students to fight against the Soviets.
Today, many madrassas are portrayed as frightening, dreary places, where children memorize the Muslim holy book, the Koran, by rote and the curriculum is sometimes a recipe for fanaticism. But many others provide a much-needed education and create opportunities for students in the country’s remote, isolated tribal regions.
Hafiz Moazzam Shah, 20, says his dream is to become a banker.
Hailing from an underdeveloped, remote village in Pakistan’s Northwestern Batagram district, Shah says his father gave him his only chance for a decent future by sending him to the Idara Uloom-i-Islami madrassa. There, his education is free, from books to lodging.
Shah says that coming from a village with no electricity, no hospital, and no proper roads, a chance to study at the madrassa is a Godsend.
While many madrassas offer instruction only in religion, ignoring other academic fields, the Idara Uloom-i-Islam madrassa is well-known for offering a quality education not only in Islamic subjects but also in the humanities.
Amid the atmosphere of insecurity, the Idara Uloom-i-Islami confidently continues with its work, offering its students sports and access to newspapers and even the internet.
While Shah is making a name for himself as one of the country’s top science students, his relatives back home are struggling to make ends meet in hard labor jobs.
“I have been very lucky, thanks to The Almighty,” says Shah.
In another remote town of Pind Daden Khan, in the historic Jhelum district, Maulana Anwar Qureshi runs a similar madrassa - Jamia Muhammadia Rizvia - which has become renowned for offering a quality, well-rounded education.
“We look after the children 24 hours a day and guide them in religion and contemporary subjects,” Maulana Anwar told ISN Security Watch in July.
Some 275 students are enrolled in the madrassa’s humanities and general science department, while another 75 are registered in classes focused on memorizing the Koran..
“We are one of those competing with the modern schools, but to a great extent, madrassa students across the country have been taking exams in mainstream educational institutions since the mid-1980s,” Anwar says.
The shrinking job market is one reason for the madrassas shift in academic focus from purely religious to more practical, contemporary subjects that could help their students find gainful employment, says Shah.
Knocking down the wrong doors?
American scholars Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey, writing for the New York Times, say that while today’s madrassas “may breed fundamentalists who have learned to recite the Koran in Arabic by rote, such schools do not teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist”.
For their study, Bergen and Pandey examined the educational backgrounds of 75 “terrorists” believed to have been responsible for the largest attacks against Westerners in recent history. They found that a majority of them were not educated at madrassas, but at universities, and that most of them had studied technical subjects, like engineering.
The study, titled “The Madrassa Myth”, found that in the four attacks for which the most complete information about the perpetrators’ educational levels is available - the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1998 attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US, and the 2002 Bali bombings - 53 per cent of the “terrorists” had either attended college or had received a college degree.
“The terrorists in our study thus appear, on average, to be as well educated as many Americans,” Bergen and Pandey wrote.
Moreover, the 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities. The lead 9/11 pilot, Mohamed Atta, had a degree in urban preservation from a German university, while another pilot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina, according to the study.
Pakistan’s religious politicians largely agree with the US study.
“Without thinking for a second as he heard [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair warn against Pakistani madrassas, the general [Musharraf] launched an assault, putting four years of bridge-building at stake,” Maulana Rasheed Ghazi, a respected Islamic scholar, told ISN Security Watch.
“They have picked up some extremely docile ulemas who have never said a word beyond prayers,” Ghazi said.
The religio-political leadership of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) rejects allegations that Pakistan’s madrassas have played any sort of role in terrorism.
Professor Tahir Andrabi of California’s Pomona College and co-author of a World Bank-funded study finds that madrassa attendance accounts for less than 1 per cent of school enrollment in Pakistan and that there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years. The enrollment is less than 7.5 per cent in areas close to Afghanistan.
Pakistani religious institutions are respected within the Muslim world for their standard of education, says Syed Rashid Bukhari, a researcher on madrassa reforms at the Islamabad-based Institute of Policy Studies.
He agrees with Bergen and Pandey that Pakistan’s madrassas are ill-equipped to provide “terrorism” training to their students.
“Since 9/11, every madrassa I have visited to discuss change and reform seems to [be willing to] transform while protecting their core values and specializations,” he said.
Reforming the madrassas
The government’s failure to devise a framework to manage the madrassas is largely to blame, say many critics.
Musharraf recently appointed his former intelligence chief and current education minister, Lieutenant General (retd) Ashraf Jehangir Qazi as chairman of the Madrassa Reform Board. He appointed Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq as vice-chairman of the board. But these appointments only came after months of squabbling over who would win control over the Islamic schools, from their financial matters to their educational agendas.
“The whole process will be completed in two phases,” Federal Secretary for Religious Affairs Vakil Ahmed Khan told ISN Security Watch, adding that the Interior Ministry would complete the registration of all formal and informal madrassas in the first phase and then the newly formed commission would “streamline their curriculum and look into financial matters”.
As of 2 August, some 6,148 madrassas were registered with provincial governments, but the daunting task of registering the remaining 5,073 madrassas lies ahead.
Many observers believe that the government’s proposed madrassa reforms are not necessarily the answer to the problem.
Shahid Hafeez Kardar, a former finance minister for the Punjab provincial government, says the answer to the problem lies in improving the country’s education system as a whole.
“The reforms mean little if the government schools fail to offer good and cheap education to the poor,” he told ISN Security Watch.
Experts say that millions of dollars in international aid for education reform remain unused because of the government’s inability to plan their disbursement.
But while the government seems incapable of handling the reforms, some analysts also believe that the West lacks the cultural sensitivity to step in and help.
Wali Zahid, a social scientist and former editor of The News, recalled an incident in which a Western donor fielded female teachers who were “too Western, even for ordinary folks” to teach English to ulemas in Peshawar and Multan. “If it was deliberate, it was crass,” he says, “if it was by error, it was simply naïve”.
Maulana Faiz-ur-Rahman, the principal of the Uloom-i-Islami madrassa who introduced computer science and mathematics to his students long before the 11 September 2001 attacks, says the madrassas stand to face even tougher challenges thanks to the “war on terror”. However, he says: “They want to transform, but let it be gradual and homegrown.”
“The government can only succeed if it comes with good intentions to help us and does not attempt to alter our identity or force a Western agenda on us,” says Qari Hanif Jalandhary, a madrassa spokesman.
He says the madrassas refused to accept any financial assistance from Western donors or the government “that may compromise our autonomy”.
Rashid agrees with Jalandhary that the government cannot introduce any change without first earning the confidence of the madrassas, whose tradition dates back to the birth of Islam.
Naveed Ahmad is ISN Security Watch’s senior correspondent in Pakistan. He is an investigative journalist and broadcaster whose work regularly appears in the Pakistani daily newspaper, The News, and the monthly magazine, Newsline. Mr Ahmad also hosts a 30-minute current affairs talk show, Insight, for Radio Pakistan’s News & Current Affairs Channel.
