Dr Abdullah Al Madani - Academic Lecturer and Researcher in Asian Studies:

Like in the post-September 11 days, Islamabad is once again under mounting pressure from the West, given three of the four young men involved in the July 7 London bombings are of Pakistani descent and are said to have spent time in Pakistan’s religious schools or madrassas.
After the September 11 events, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf acted quickly by distancing his country from the Taliban regime in Kabul and joining the US-led war on terror, something that has ensured his regime’s survival.
The key question now is could he successfully escape the new situation? The answer depends on the way he will deal with thousands of madrassas – once described by former US secretary of state Colin Powell as “breeding grounds for fundamentalists and terrorists.”
Stung by charges from Washington that he allows terrorism to breed under the guise of religious education, Gen. Musharraf has tried in recent years to regulate these madrassas beginning with a requirement that they report on the numbers and names of students and teachers, types of facilities, educational programmes, and financial details. Besides, he urged them to broaden their curriculum by teaching modern subjects. The move, however, has not generated the desired results. Only some 4,000 of the estimated 50,000 madrassas agreed to be regulated. The others firmly rejected the plan, dubbing it “foreign-sponsored” and describing Gen. Musharraf as a pawn in the hands of America. One of these madrassas’ leaders openly told Jessica Stern of the Harvard University that Gen. Musharraf’s reform plan was against Islam. He added that where states have taken control of madrassas, such as in Jordan and Egypt, “the engine of jihad is extinguished.”
In recent weeks, and as a result of the Pakistani connection to the London bombings, Pakistani security forces detained 600 Islamist extremists in several raids on madrassas and other centres across the country. Gen. Musharraf should be praised for this, but such an occasional action may no longer serve as assuasive. There is mounting evidence that Pakistan’s madrassas are still the major source of extremism and hate, and will continue to be so if they are left operating. Let us remember that many of those involved in terrorist acts in recent years passed through these madrassas or had links with them. In addition to the six most senior Al Qaeda leaders arrested so far and the London bombers, the list includes Richard Reid, the failed shoe-bomber, Saajid Badat, who has admitted plotting to blow up a plane bound for America in 2003, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, who killed American journalist Daniel Pearl, Osama Nazir, the bomber of a church in Islamabad in 2002, and Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Mohammed Hanif, the two bombers of a café in Tel Aviv in 2003.
One of the most dangerous madrassas is Darul Uloom Haqqania – where most of the Taliban leadership was educated. Christina Lamb of the London-based Times, who recently visited the school, said that the only posters on the walls were of kalashnikovs and bin Laden, and that the young students she spoke to were unable to do simple calculations and had never heard of dinosaurs or astronauts landing on the moon. When she asked them what they wanted to be in future, many talked of becoming jihadis and ending as martyrs so they would go to paradise.
Another equally dangerous madrassa is Khuddamddin. Its principal once proudly told a reporter that nearly 13,000 trained jihad fighters of different nationalities had passed through his school, adding that “the world has to go the way we want and all people must become Muslim.”
Gen. Musharraf, therefore, needs to do more, not for the sake of the West but for the sake of Pakistan and its youth. This must include shutting down all madrassas, enrolling their estimated 2 million students in the state-run schools, upgrading the country’s educational system, and spending more on the sector. Pakistan is currently one of only 12 nations in the world to spend less than 2 per cent of GDP on education.
Such a task, however, cannot be undertaken without solid commitments from the international community to assist the Gen. Musharraf government both politically and economically. The West, in particular, must play the major role in any such plan, simply because a massive mushrooming of the madrassas and a significant increase in their militancy was a result of the West-backed jihad war against the Soviets in the 1980s. As explained by a former Pakistani official, there were only 2,000 madrassas in Pakistan at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, all of which taught orthodox Islam but were by no means militant.
In brief, without the aforementioned plan and enough proper, free state-run schools, millions of poor Pakistani parents will have no alternative but to send their children to the madrassas, where the fiery mix of fundamentalism and intolerance is creating cannon fodder for religious wars around the world. 
Last update on: 2-8-2005