Radicalisation: Tashfeen Malik attended madrassa in Multan

Her husband was apparently ‘obsessed’ with Israel, agreed with Da’ish chief.

MULTAN: The woman who had shot dead 14 people in California last week along with her husband, had attended one of Pakistan's most high-profile and right-wing religious seminaries for women, the madrassa confirmed to AFP Monday.

Tashfeen Malik, 29, had enrolled at the multi-national Al-Huda Institute in Multan in 2013, which targets middle-class women seeking to come closer to Islam. The madrassah also has offices in the US, the UAE, India and the UK, said Imran Amir, an administration official at the seminary.

As investigators in the US continue to probe the path that led to Tashfeen’s and her husband’s possible radicalisation, her attendance offers fresh insight.

Amir adds that during the brief time Tashfeen was enrolled at the school, she took classes on translating the Quran.

"But she did not complete her course and was here only for a short time," he added.

A teacher who only chose to identify herself as Muqadas, described Tashfeen as a “good girl”.

As investigators probe Tashfeen’s possible role in radicalising her husband, 28-year-old Syed Rizwan Farook, his father hinted that she may not have had to try very hard.

"He [Rizwan] said he agreed with (IS chief Abu Bakr) al-Baghdadi's ideas for creating the Islamic State, and he was obsessed by Israel," La Stampa quoted Rizwan’s father, also named Syed Farook, as saying.

"I always used to say to him, be calm, patience, in two years' time Israel will no longer exist," he said, in remarks reported in Italian.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 8^th, 2015.