Drishtikone
Well.. it seems the Madrassas in Pakistan have some special “extra-curricular” activities going on – like suicide bombing for example. They even demo stuff with actual bombs in classes filled with kids!! And then we wonder how can someone kill people by the hundreds and not even feel any remorse!! Well, when they are brought up on such a rich educational heritage what can you possibly expect from the young men from the Islamic countries! I feel every Muslim person who believes in his/her religion should hang his/her head in shame.. when someone out there is using the tenets of the very religion to do all this. It is NOT enough to say that they are extremists. These extremists are FAR too many to just sit back and shrug their effect off!! If I pray to Ram and there is someone else who uses Ram’s name to kill people – somewhere I lose too!
One wonders exactly what sort of subjects are on the curriculum in Pakistan’s madrassas, or Islamic seminaries. News from Agence France Press via the Daily Times reports that in the divisional district of Dera Ismail Khan, in North-West Frontier Province, a man believed to be a pro-Taliban militant killed himself by accident in a religious school.
Apparently he was handling the grenade when it went off. He has been identified as Abdul Rahman. A security official said on condition of anonymity that the pin on his grenade was accidentally removed, and that two of his companions were wounded in the blast.
The incident happened in the town of Jandola, which lies next to South Waziristan district, where Pakistan Taliban have taken control, and have instituted Sharia law in the main city of Wana.
The issue of extremist Islam being taught in such madrassas has been questioned after two of the 7/7 bombers, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, were said to have attended an extremist madrassa in Pakistan before carrying out their suicide attacks in London last year. As a result, in July last year, 1,400 foreign students at madassas were asked to leave. In August, registration forms were handed to seminaries, requesting details of funding and spending.
Last August, the Daily Times noted that even standard school textbooks in state schools were advocating extremism, outside of the private madrassa system. These books describe Jews as tightfisted money-lenders, and Christians are vengeful conquerors. One standard school textbook even states that children should be willing to die as martyrs for Islam.
As we reported last September, the private madrassas have become havens for sexual and physical abuse of students. Some madrassas regularly keep their students tied up in chains. Chaining of children in madrassas also happens in India.
There are at least 20,000 madrassas in Pakistan, and at the end of last year, madrassas were given a deadline of December 31 to register and submit financial audits and performance records. The idea was then abandoned. 12,000 madrassas had not signed their registrations.
A similar move to register madrassas and have them disclose their accounts was urged by Musharraf in Spring, 2002, but this too appears to have been ignored. Most of the leadership of Afghanistan’s Taliban were educated in Pakistani Deobandi madrassas, such as the Haqqania in North-West Frontier Province, where Mullah Omar was trained.
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