- Title: PAKISTAN: PAKISTANI MADRASSAHS
- Date: 18th July 2005
- Summary: (BN15) KARACHI (JULY 18, 2005) (REUTERS) 1. SLV EXTERIOR OF JAMIA BINORIA, A REPUTABLE SCHOOL OF ISLAMIC LEARNING 0.05 2. SLV/CU OF DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN STUDENTS/SIGN (2 SHOTS) 0.14 3. SLV/SV/MCU VARIOUS OF LOCAL AND FOREIGN STUDENTS LEARNING THE KORAN (9 SHOTS) 0.53 4. SV TWO STUDENTS TALKING 0.57 5. SLV REPORTER TALKING W
- Embargoed: 2nd August 2005 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: KARACHI, PAKISTAN
- Country: Pakistan
- Reuters ID: LVA6VCHKK1P7QR0ELXP0LGHEBKE2
- Story Text: London bombs reverberate in Pakistani Madrassahs.
Abdus Samad, a 23-year-old Briton of Bangladeshi
origin studying at the Jamia Binoria madrassah in Karachi,
one of the more reputable
schools of Islamic learning, rejects militancy completely,
saying it will only add to the problems of Muslims. But
there is plenty of alarm in the West that
Pakistan's madrassahs are churning out militants and that
some are little more than fronts for local jihadi groups.
There are thousands of madrassahs in Pakistan. They
offer board and lodging to some 1.5 million children in a
poor country where mainstream education is weak. Some
produce children able to recite the Koran by rote and
schooled in the basics. Others aim higher, teaching
students Islamic thought, logic, philosophy, Urdu, Arabic,
Persian and English, as well as mathematics, history and
geography. Appalled by the events in London on July 7,
Samad says it was hard to believe for him.
"First of all, I didn't first believe it that, you
know, it could be Muslims who can do this kind of things. I
went myself to the internet caf, and I saw
the news. I still have hard to believe that is it these
people or not who bombed it," he says. "It might be a
conspiracy or something, I don't know.
But if it is (Muslims), it is very shameful. It is very
very shameful and it is a disgrace, that you know, minority
of people, all the Muslim Ummah," he added. "And people who
do these kinds of things, they don't identify them with
traditional Islamic Libas (dress), you know, they hide
their selves," says Samad.
But asked for his views on al Qaeda and its leader
Osama bin Laden, Samad, whose father runs a curry
restaurant in England, was non-committal.
President Pervez Musharraf, whose policy of madrassah
reform had made limited headway despite millions of dollars
of U.S. aid, said on Monday some madrassahs still breed
extremism.
Madrassahs mushroomed and became recruiting grounds for
jihadis in the 1980s when the West and Saudi Arabia poured
millions of dollars into Pakistan to finance a war against
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Today, the cause is
Iraq, and Western powers are occupiers.
However, two Pakistani Americans studying at Binoria
along with dozens of other foreigners from South East Asia,
Africa, Europe and North America, expressed disgust at the
London attacks and frustration that the concept of jihad,
which can also mean non-violent
struggle, was being abused.
"How come a human has a heart to do that, killing
innocent people like that? Islam does not teach this,
killing Muslims, and ladies and men and
children, they also have a heart," Farhan Mughal, 21, a
Pakistani American student told Reuters television. "Islam
even teaches to how to respect animals, how to treat your
own animals, how to respect everything. You give your life
to just help out others. This is what Islam is. Not to take
people's life for your own benefit. So, it's very sad to
hear this happening, and specially I don't know how these
people do this."
What goes on in Pakistani madrassahs and the thinking
they inspire is of critical interest to Western security
agencies after the discovery that at least one of the
London bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, visited several in
Pakistan before the attacks. In May, a group of leading
clerics declared such
attacks within Pakistan un-Islamic, but ducked the issue of
whether they were legitimate in conflicts abroad.
Afzal Shaikh, 20, another foreign student said he had
never been taught anything to justify such acts. "I am
studying here, I have been studying here. I
haven't ever learnt anything to do something like this.
This is something really disgusting," Shaikh said.
- Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None