Jihad Inc.

A recent survey puts the number of madrassas in Pakistan at over 28,000 – almost 10 times the number in 1988. Their students are by and large indoctrinated and a mindset is created which is intolerant, fearful of outside influences and increasingly militant.

The madrassas are particularly attractive for those who are from poorer families, in large part because they provide housing and lodging to their children once admitted. This, to many poor Pakistanis, seems like a worthy alternative to sending their children to the local government school. Of course this whole system is funded by donations and because of state patronage, which started during General Zia’s time. The donations come mostly from Saudi benefactors, and others in other Middle Eastern countries. During Zia’s time, madrassah graduates who had otherwise no formal education were allowed to compete for government jobs. And it was during this time that the patronage extended to madrassas was extended by the establishment to then use their students as proxies in Kashmir and Afghanistan.

Now, especially after 9/11, the focus on the madrassas has become all the more sharper. This has to obviously do with their role in promoting jihad worldwide and this has consequently led to a lot of pressure on the Pakistani state to monitor and regulate the functioning of these institutions. Somewhat reluctantly, the Musharraf regime agreed to modernise the curriculum of the madrassas and to require that they be registered – just like government schools and colleges. Large sums of foreign aid were received for these aims but the sorry fact is that not much was done. Of course, there was a lot of hype but it all turned out to be the typical bluff and bluster.

The regime wanted the madrassas to register with the government and to submit their accounts to scrutiny but the mullahs running them simply took to the streets and in turn used their students to put pressure on the government. When the policy of using a stick failed, the Musharraf regime then tried to use a carrot – in the form of aid to all those madrassas which would agree to register. America played a role in this, funding a plan worth millions of dollars.

The Musharraf government is now history and so is the plan, it seems, to reform the madrassas. The reforms process initiated by that government was essentially on paper, and this current government has not done anything on this front either. The seminaries continue to ‘teach’ hatred and intolerance and their ‘graduates’ are recruited by the Taliban and al Qaeda without any checks or monitoring. Clearly, the government needs to wake up and do something about this – or are we going to keep burying our heads in the sand and ignore this at our own peril?

Published in The Express Tribune, July 2^nd, 2010.