[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
The Madrassa Menace
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Please help make the Manifesto better, or accept it, and propagate it!
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Extremists attract students
by Arslan Malik
Washington Times 01/5/2001
Located in the northwestern Pakistani town of Akora Khattak is an
Islamic seminary which boasts among its alumni virtually the entire
leadership of the Taliban, the oppressive Islamist group that controls
most
of neighboring Afghanistan. The seminary, run by former Pakistani
Senator
Sami-ul-Haq, currently has about 3,000 young male students from Pakistan
and
elsewhere who are being indoctrinated with a militant version of
extremist
Islam that incites them to take up jihad, Islamic holy war against
non-Muslims.
Although it stands apart for its notable alumni, the seminary at
Akora
Khattak is just one example of the thousands of seminaries, referred to
as
madrassas, that have burgeoned all over Pakistan in the last few
decades.
Many of these madrassas, in preparation for jihad, are either arming the
students themselves or graduating them to militarized training camps.
More
disturbingly, a symbiosis has developed between these seminaries and
Pakistan's rulers which is a threat to regional as well as international
security. Since radical Islam is of vital concern to the U.S. national
interest, American policy-makers should focus their efforts on
containing
these madrassas.
Until the 1970s, there were less than 1,000 madrassas in Pakistan
and
they were dedicated primarily to the formal instruction of Islamic
theology.
The decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan starting in 1979
changed
this as U.S. policy-makers and their Pakistani allies, convinced that a
religious opposition would be well-suited to fight the "godless
communists,"
set out to use the seminaries as prep schools for anti-Soviet
insurgents.
With arms from the United States, support from the Inter-Services
Intelligence(ISI), the Pakistani intelligence agency, and funding from
Islamist sources abroad, the madrassas evolved into indoctrination and
guerrilla training camps. In no time, they sprang up throughout the
country.
By 1988 there were 2,891 madrassas in Pakistan.
Despite the Soviet pullout a year later and the end of U.S.
involvement, the madrassas have continued to expand over the last
decade.
According to a recent issue of the Pakistani newspaper Ausaf, over 6,000
madrassas exist in Pakistan today, each producing hundreds of
battle-ready
alumni yearly. The primary reason that madrassas have continued to grow
is
their support by successive Pakistani governments, including the present
one
under General Pervaiz Musharraf. Although a few government officials are
sympathetic towards the madrassas because of their religious views, many
see
them more practically as rendering the country a host of services.
Indeed, the madrassas do the government a favor by functioning as
social welfare institutions that house and feed many of the restless
youths
that would otherwise not be provided for in the poverty-stricken
country.
This is a surefire way of creating a cadre of people loyal to the
madrassas,
intent on bringing Islamist rule, like that in Afghanistan, to Pakistan
a
dangerous prospect for the world's latest nuclear power.
The government also supports the madrassas because they help it
fight
archenemy India. Seminarians, in many cases, form the bulk of extremist
religious organizations, such as the Lashkar-e-Tayebba, that alongside
separatists are combating Indian forces in Kashmir. This further
provokes
India and keeps the two regional nuclear powers precariously close to
the
specter of war.
The seminarians also aid Pakistan in retaining leverage over
Afghanistan by constantly filling Taliban ranks ó and thus in turn
bolstering the repressive regime. For instance, 200 seminarians joined
the
Taliban just last year.
During his trip to South Asia in March, President Clinton, in
alluding
to Islamic extremists, urged Pakistan "to intensify its efforts to
defeat
those who inflict terror." In recent months the government there has
made
apparent strides towards clamping down on madrassas by ordering their
registration and calling for a standardized curriculum free of jihad
indoctrination. However, given the government's vested interest, any
such
efforts are unlikely to be serious.
Containing the madrassas is left to U.S. policy-makers who remain
concerned with both security in South Asia as well as the Taliban
menace.
Because an armed or political confrontation with the seminaries is
certain
to incite a militant backlash, the ideal way to handle them would be to
deprive them of their funding which primarily comes from abroad. For
instance, it is widely known that various interests within Saudi Arabia
are
filling the coffers of these madrassas with the goal of influencing them
with their rigid brand of Islam, referred to as Wahabbism. In this case,
the
United States should try to work with its Saudi allies in reining in all
such backers.
This would be a significant step in curbing the problem of Islamic
extremism, especially given the fact that in recent years hundreds of
students have been coming to these madrassas from as far away as
Chechnya
and the Philippines with the promise of fomenting trouble outside South
Asia
as well.
The rising threat of these Pakistani seminaries is in part due to
myopic U.S. policy-makers who helped militarize them in the Cold War's
last
chapter. It is now up to the successors of those policy-makers to
restrain
these seminaries. Otherwise, these madrassas are certain to forge a vast
and
cohesive network of extremists trained to wreak terror internationally
that
is unparalleled ó a grim prospect for the free world. Arslan Malik is a
writer, living in New York.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is the National Debate on System Reform. debate@indiapolicy.org
Rules, Procedures, Archives: ../debate/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------