Extremism and education in Pakistan

Extremism in the name of Islam has greatly affected the structural stability and functionality of Pakistani society and the state in recent years. Extremism could be effectively prevented and countered through viable educational infrastructure in the country. The case of Pakistan in this context is unique. In our country, educational institutions and academia have become a key factor in extremism and terrorism. Although regarding the connection between education and extremism in Pakistan much attention has remained focused on the role of madrassas, the main issue is the failure of successive governments and regimes to provide adequate education infrastructure and curricula.

Analysis of educational institutions’ primary role of disseminating and spreading knowledge in society reveals that they have clearly lacked on this count. Due to the substandard quality of curricula, faculty plus the interference in universities and degree awarding colleges by successive governments, primarily by political regimes, the former could not play any meaningful role in educating the society and thus failed to provide it leadership. Pakistani universities did occasionally serve as rallying grounds and launching pads for liberal and leftist political movements but, by and large, they have failed to play their manifest functions.

Universities and colleges, instead of educating the society through its graduates and studying and finding solutions to social problems, have suffered deep parochial divisions. Since the creation of Pakistan, various political parties and the establishment supported groups among teachers and students have not only undercut the capacity of institutes of higher learning to play their part for which they were established, but rather politicisation of educational institutions turned them into seats of extremism.

Due to absence of strong research traditions and capacity to study contemporary issues, Pakistani universities cannot take exact cognisance of prevailing social problems, including religious extremism, exploring the issues, reaching their root causes and bringing forth the findings, suggesting solutions and enabling the decision-makers to take informed and appropriate policy actions.

Yet another problem with mainstream public educational institutions has been their incapacity to impart education literally and instead inculcating state-devised propaganda into the minds of students.

A part of Pakistani educational institutions, instead of having a moderating and democratising influence on society, themselves become hubs of religious extremism and terrorism! The large number of madrassas particularly those that cropped up under General Ziaul Haq and in the 1990s financed by Arab countries and Muslim charities have been instrumental in radicalising Pakistan.

However, the problems with madrassas are multifaceted and not just limited to militancy. The students of thousands of madrassas are imparted religious theory, largely based on selective lessons from the Islamic scripture and their de-contextualised exegesis, and are prepared to take up jobs in the religious sector. The main problem of madrassas is that their extremely narrow worldview that they cultivate among their students along with the curricula that is bereft of modern civic education interacts with the poverty of the students and cause large-scale radicalisation of society.

Importantly, well before madrassas in Pakistan became hubs of militant training and extremism, many universities and colleges had already been dens of arms, ammunition and violence, if not of militant training per se. The example of the Punjab University is a case in point where a student group, the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, associated with Jamaat-e-Islami, since long has made the institute into its virtual forte and preaching of its radical agenda. According to an American expert on Pakistan, Christine Fair, who was informed by some Pakistani official respondents, as much as 40 per cent of militant manpower actually comes from Pakistan’s public schools and higher educational institutions.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1^st, 2017.

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