Universities of Terrorism

Faisal Usman
UET, Lahore

Pak­istan’s lit­er­a­cy rate is offi­cial­ly 57% which is still one of the low­est in the world while the out of school pop­u­la­tion in Pak­istan amounts to the sec­ond largest. The state has mis­er­ably failed in its con­sti­tu­tion­al duty to pro­vide free and qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion to all chil­dren aged 5–16. The sit­u­a­tion is fur­ther aggra­vat­ed by the fact that a large num­ber of peo­ple mon­e­tar­i­ly can­not afford to send chil­dren to schools. Almost one fourth of coun­try’s pop­u­la­tion is liv­ing below the pover­ty line and is forced to strive hard in order to earn enough to scrape by. In these con­di­tions quite often a child going to school is a poten­tial loss of an earn­ing hand for a large impov­er­ished fam­i­ly. A good edu­ca­tion seems like a lux­u­ry which not every­one can afford.

Among such unfor­tu­nate fam­i­lies, many chil­dren are either sent to jobs as under­age work­ers or sent to madras­sas where the par­ents are free from hav­ing to feed them. In addi­tion to this, an added incen­tive is per­ceived in ded­i­cat­ing one or more chil­dren to study­ing and serv­ing Islam in madras­sas. The reli­gious fac­tor plays a key role in decid­ing for chil­dren’s enroll­ment in the madras­sas. Evi­dence also indi­cates that house­holds diver­si­fy by send­ing one child to school and anoth­er to a madras­sa. Madras­sas orig­i­nat­ed as trust insti­tu­tions with the pur­pose of train­ing reli­gious func­tionar­ies, Islam­ic schol­ars and impart­ing free Quran­ic teach­ings to poor chil­dren while pro­vid­ing social ser­vices such as free food, cloth­ing and board­ing to their stu­dents. These fac­tors increase madras­sas’ appeal in areas where edu­ca­tion­al alter­na­tives are lack­ing or expen­sive. A report by Social Pol­i­cy and Devel­op­ment Cen­ter (SPDC) revealed that only 6% of madras­sa stu­dents cite reli­gious rea­sons for attend­ing madras­sas, while 89% cit­ed eco­nom­ic rea­sons.
Madras­sas are found across the breadth of this coun­try. While their exact num­bers remain con­test­ed, accord­ing to con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates there are approx­i­mate­ly 20,000 madras­sas in Pak­istan (USCIRF 2011). At the time of inde­pen­dence, there were 137 madras­sas in Pak­istan with their num­ber increas­ing each year. How­ev­er the largest increase in their num­ber was wit­nessed in Gen­er­al Zia’s era dur­ing which they flour­ished owing to state’s patron­age and spon­sor­ship. Zia’s edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy of 1979 envis­aged 5,000 mosque schools and estab­lished a Nation­al Com­mit­tee for ‘Deeni Madaris’ to trans­form madras­sas “into an inte­gral part of our edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem”. The madras­sas struck gold at the time of Aghan jihad when ISI fun­neled bil­lions of Sau­di and US dol­lars into the madras­sas and madras­sas became the breed­ing ground of jihadis. The madras­sas grew into much more than reli­gious school where not only mil­i­tary train­ing was impart­ed but the stu­dents were also invig­o­rat­ed through fiery speech­es by the teach­ers to pre­pare them for jihad. Accord­ing to one esti­mate, Sau­di Ara­bia report­ed­ly spent more than one bil­lion dol­lars per year to fund madras­sas respon­si­ble for recruit­ing, mobi­liz­ing pub­lic opin­ion, train­ing jihadis and sup­port­ing oth­er vehi­cles of reli­gious mil­i­tan­cy in Pak­istan. The stu­dents of madras­sas, par­tic­u­lar­ly those sit­u­at­ed along the bor­der with Afghanistan also grew with an influx of recruits from Cen­tral Asia, North Africa, Bur­ma, Bangladesh, Chech­nya and Afghan refugees. Zia allowed for­eign madras­sa stu­dents free entry and move­ment with­in the coun­try, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly encour­ag­ing them to join the Jihad in Afghanistan.
The state has no con­trol over or involve­ment in madras­sa cur­ricu­lum. Although ‘Dars-e-Niza­mi’ is the semi-offi­cial syl­labus of most of the madras­sas, each madras­sa has its own cur­ricu­lum accord­ing to its par­tic­u­lar sec­tar­i­an inter­pre­ta­tion of Islam. The cur­ricu­lum con­tains hate con­tent which glo­ri­fies vio­lence and por­trays vio­lent Jihad as the true des­tiny through which the dream of glob­al Islam would be real­ized. As a result of unlim­it­ed fund­ing and no account­abil­i­ty, the madras­sas have evolved from reli­gious schools to sanc­tu­ar­ies and meet­ing places for ter­ror­ists and mil­i­tants preach­ing ter­ror­ism. The madras­sas are con­stant­ly spew­ing out young peo­ple with an archa­ic and exclu­sive mind­set trained on sec­tar­i­an con­tent, intend­ing to enforce the socio-eco­nom­ic sys­tem of 1400 years ago while exhibit­ing extreme intol­er­ance and big­otry for oth­er sects and reli­gious minori­ties. While the major­i­ty of madras­sas do not impart mil­i­tary train­ing or such edu­ca­tion, at least 10–15% of madras­sas are affil­i­at­ed with vio­lent extrem­ist groups. These madras­sas teach a brand of vio­lent polit­i­cal jihad, extol sui­cide bomb­ing and impart hate and sadism in the stu­dents.

There have been con­clu­sive links between these madras­sas and ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. Lashkar-e-Tai­ba (LeT), Sipah-e-Saha­ba Pak­istan (SSP) and its lat­er off­shoot, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LJ) grew out of such jiha­di madras­sas and estab­lished their head­quar­ters in Pun­jab. Both the SSP and the LJ have been respon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing recruits, finances and weapons to the Tehrik-e-Tal­iban Pak­istan (TTP) con­tribut­ing to and assist­ing in its rise while also serv­ing as al-Qaeda’s prin­ci­pal allies in the region. The coun­try­wide net­work of mosques and madras­sas remains major cen­ter of jiha­di recruit­ment to date, pro­vid­ing recruits for inter­nal sec­tar­i­an con­flicts, the region­al jihad in Afghanistan, against India, and the glob­al jihad against the West.
The jiha­di hydra mon­ster which is spread­ing extrem­ism, vio­lence and big­otry can be con­trolled by reg­u­lat­ing its breed­ing grounds. These extrem­ist groups cre­ate indi­vid­u­als who do not respect oth­er’s basic human rights, instead extol an ide­ol­o­gy accord­ing to which any­one not sub­mis­sive enough will have to be oblit­er­at­ed. All the unreg­is­tered madras­sas should be erad­i­cat­ed and those reg­is­tered should teach only the state approved cur­ricu­lum with prop­er­ly trained teach­ers select­ed by the state. Gen. Mushar­raf tried to intro­duce an ele­ment of nom­i­nal con­trol as an over­ture to Amer­i­can pres­sure which by and large failed. The admis­sion of for­eign stu­dents should be espe­cial­ly reg­u­lat­ed and secu­ri­ty cam­eras be installed in order to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion espe­cial­ly in the trib­al areas. As long as these sem­i­nar­ies con­tin­ue breed­ing new trainees, the prob­lem of ter­ror­ism can­not be effec­tive­ly solved.
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Sources: ICG Asia Report 2009, SPDC.