Learning from Pakistan's
madrassas By Kaushik
Kapisthalam
In October 2003, a memo from the
office of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld intended
for his top military and civilian subordinates was
leaked, perhaps deliberately, to US media. In the memo,
Rumsfeld wondered: is the US capturing, killing or
deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than
the madrassas and the radical clerics are
recruiting, training and deploying against America? As
things stand today, nowhere is that aspect of the "war
on terror" more crucial than in Pakistan.
The
history Islamic rule was introduced to the Indian
sub-continent in the early 8th century when Arab warrior
Muhammad bin Qasim conquered Sindh, in what is
southeastern Pakistan today. But the earliest known
madrassas (Seminaries) in north India were not
recorded until the 13th century under the Turks. By the
14th century, Delhi alone had a thousand
madrassas . In the 18th century, a curriculum
known as the Dars-i-Nizamia, devised by Mullah
Nizamuddin, became the standard syllabus. The curriculum
was based on the Koran, memorizing it by rote, which was
considered the highest scholastic achievement. However,
this curriculum did not focus on violent jihad. In fact,
the whole purpose of the Dars-i-Nizamia was to combine
Islamic teachings with rational sciences to train the
madrassa pupils to become lawyers, judges and
administrators.
After the end of British rule
and the partition of India in 1947, the madrassas
in India and the newly created Islamic Republic of
Pakistan took different courses. The Indian seminaries
stayed true to their original mission of places of
Islamic scholarship, while the Pakistani ones became
progressively more intolerant and aggressive in the
competition to exclusively define Pakistan's "Islamic"
nature. There are currently five broad types of
madrassas in Pakistan, with four of them
belonging to the majority Sunni sect and one belonging
to the Shi'ite minority. Among the Sunnis, there are the
majority Barelvis, who are a moderate group who seek to
be inclusive of local rituals and customs. Then there
are seminaries run by the Jamaat-e-Islami, which is
non-sectarian but tends to be very politically active.
In the context of extremism, the remaining two
streams of madrassas are considered most
important. The first one is the Deobandi school of
thought, originating in the Indian town of Deoband, near
New Delhi. The Deobandi movement has long sought to
purify Islam by rejecting "un-Islamic" accretions to the
faith and returning to the models established in the
Koran. Then there are the Ahle-Hadith (followers of the
way of the Prophet) who have a similar emphasis on
"purifying" the faith as the Deobandis, but follow the
Salafi religious jurisprudence (fiqh) as opposed
to the Hanafi fiqh used by the Deobandis.
Madrassas and jihad Until the
1970s, Pakistani madrassas largely followed the
Dars-i-Nizamia curriculum and its variants established
in the 1700s in India. Even the Deobandi alteration of
this curriculum focused on purification of faith for the
purposes of knowledge, rather than militancy and jihad.
All this changed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
General Zia ul-Haq, who took power after a military coup
in 1977, was an ardent Islamist. He started off with
some ill-fated attempts at rushing through "Islamic law"
within Pakistan. Zia's existing plans to turn Pakistan
into an "Islamic" state gained urgency and a more
fundamentalist tone after two major events - the Iranian
revolution in 1979 and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan 10 years later.
The twin shocks also
encouraged a new movement within the Deobandi
madrassas , which sought to change the way Islam
was taught to students. While it is true that many
madrassas dropped secular subjects like
mathematics and sciences in part or whole, what was more
significant than the narrowing of the syllabus was the
change in focus and interpretation in the teaching of
the Koran and the Hadith (sayings of the Prophet
Mohammed), drawing on the incendiary combination of
Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi thinking developed under
Saudi funding from places like the Islamic University of
Medina, and propagated by other Saudi-controlled
foundations, such as the World Muslim League.
The emphasis in madrassa curriculum was
shifted almost entirely from the standard pillars of
faith such as prayer, charity and pilgrimage to the
obligation and rewards of violent jihad. The
madrassas taught the young students that the
world was divided into believers and unbelievers in a
black and white setting. Jews, Hindus and Christians
were portrayed as evil usurpers. The curriculum started
emphasizing the need for Islamic warriors or jihadis to
"liberate" regions dominated by unbelievers as well as
"purify" Islamic nations in order to establish a single
Islamic caliphate where pure Islam would be followed.
The students were taught that the only means to
achieving this Utopian state was by waging a
near-perpetual war, pursued by any and all means against
unbelievers as well as "impure" sects within Muslims.
The era of the jihadi madrassas was born.
Jihad as a policy tool During the
1980s, radical Pakistani madrassas pumped out
thousands of Afghan foot soldiers for the US and
Saudi-funded jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
They also helped bind the independent-minded Pashtun
tribesmen closely to the Pakistani government for the
first time in its history; easing the acute insecurity
Pakistan had felt towards Afghanistan and the disputed
border.
Gulf petrodollars funded a sustained
spurt in Deobandi madrassas not only in the
Pashtun areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border, but
also in the port city of Karachi as well as rural
Punjab. The Saudi and Gulf-Arab money also encouraged a
Wahhabi jihad-centered curriculum. Prominent
madrassas included the Darul Uloom Haqqania at
Akora Khattak in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP)
and the Binori madrassa in Karachi. The Haqqania
boasts almost the entire Taliban leadership among its
graduates, including Mullah Omar, the leader of the
Taliban, while the Binori madrassa, whose leader
Mufti Shamzai was recently assassinated, was once talked
about as a possible hiding place of Osama bin Laden, and
is also reportedly the place where bin Laden met Mullah
Omar to form the al-Qaeda-Taliban partnership.
After the Soviets were ousted from Afghanistan
in 1989, instead of a slow-down, the rapid spread of
jihadi madrassas in Pakistan continued unabated.
The reasons for this are manifold. The first and most
important reason is that Saudi money continued to flow
to the madrassa system. The prestige and
influence of the big madrassas encouraged wealthy
Pakistanis to contribute more than ever before,
sometimes as an expression of conviction, and sometimes
as a means of ingratiating themselves with what had
become major power players.
Pakistani
governments had grown comfortable spending massive
amounts of money on defense and almost nothing on
education during the days of Afghan jihad when US and
Saudi aid flowed freely. In the 1990s, after US-imposed
sanctions due to Pakistan's nuclear program, the economy
almost collapsed and the education infrastructure
deteriorated rapidly.
For the poor, the
madrassas offered a place where their children
could get free boarding, food and education, and it
turned out to be an irresistible option when compared to
crumbling or non-existent government-funded secular
schools. Pakistani governments also encouraged this to
avoid spending much on education. The sheer magnitude of
this increase can be fathomed by this simple statistic:
according to former Pakistani diplomat Hussain Haqqani,
only 7,000 Pakistani children attended madrassas
as early as 20 years ago. That number has grown today to
closer to 2 million, by conservative estimates.
The Pakistani army on its part saw the large
number of madrassa-trained jihadis as an asset
for its covert support of the Taliban in Afghanistan, as
well as its proxy war with India in Kashmir. While the
NWFP madrassas supplied both Afghan refugees and
Pakistanis as cannon fodder for the Taliban, the Binori
madrassa and associated ones formed the base for
Deobandi groups like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and
Jaish-e-Mohammed, which sought to do the Pakistan army's
bidding in Kashmir. The many Ahle-Hadith seminaries
supplied Salafi groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Arab
sheikhs funded madrassas in the Rahimyar Khan
area of rural Punjab, which formed the backbone of
hardcore anti-Shi'ite jihadi groups like the
Sipah-e-Sahaba, and its even more militant offshoot the
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. All these groups shared training
camps and other facilities under the aegis of Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI).
The Pakistani
government has also counted on a mutually friendly
relationship with the madrassas to suppress the
kind of ethnic nationalism that had led to the emergence
of Bangladesh in 1971. However critical leading
fundamentalists may be of government policy or the
political and military leadership, they have all thrown
their weight against Pashtun, Balochi, Sindhi and other
separatism without necessarily demanding an end to the
ethnic chauvinism that determines the allocation of
resources in Pakistan.
Reforming or
proliferating? Pakistan is a country in turmoil
today. The port city and commercial hub of Karachi is
bearing the brunt of attacks by mysterious groups
allegedly linked to al-Qaeda and even elements within
the Pakistani military. After a spate of attacks on
minority Shi'ites, the head of the Binori
madrassa Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai was recently
assassinated, setting off another round of violence
against Shi'ites, foreigners and even the Karachi corps
commander - the region's top military man. These events
have clearly underlined the centrality of the Binori
madrassa and its Deobandi affiliates in what
prominent Pakistani journalist Khaled Ahmed calls the
"Deobandi underworld" of Pakistan.
The
'al-Qaeda' madrassa The Binori
madrassa has 12 other branches within Karachi
itself and many affiliated ones all over Pakistan. Apart
from allegedly facilitating the Taliban-al-Qaeda link,
the Binori seminary under Mufti Shamzai was the
fountainhead of such terrorist groups as
Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed and
Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami, which has close ties with the
Pakistani army. Between them, these groups account for
most of the al-Qaeda-linked violence in Pakistan today.
Some reports also indicate that bin Laden might have
received medical treatment inside the Binori compound
after he escaped US bombing in the Tora Bora complex in
Afghanistan in late 2001. Time magazine correspondent
Tim McGirk, in a September 2003 report, noted that
behind some superficial changes, the curriculum at the
Binori madrassa remains largely unchanged.
In September 2003, Pakistani authorities acting
on tip-off arrested Gun Gun Rusman Gunawan, who is the
brother of Hambali, key leader in the Indonesian
al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiah (JI). Hambali is now
under US custody in connection with the bomb attack in
Bali on October 12, 2002, which killed nearly 200
people. Gunawan was "studying" at the Abu Bakar
University in Karachi, which is a madrassa
affiliated with the Pakistani Ahle-Hadith movement and
the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Interestingly, Gunawan was on a scholarship provided by
the Pakistani government under a fake name, "Abdul
Hadi". Half of the 25-year-old Abu Bakar
madrassa's 500 students are from overseas, mainly
from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
Gunawan's
arrest led to the apprehension of another five
Indonesian and 13 Malaysian students from Abu Bakar and
neighboring Darasatul Islamiah madrassa, which is
fully owned and operated by the LeT. In fact, as the
Pakistani authorities were arresting the terror suspects
from Darasatul Islamiah, LeT's chief or emir, Hafiz
Mohammed Saeed, was giving one of his venomous speeches
to the madrassa students in the same compound.
Yet the Pakistani authorities did not arrest Saeed, nor
did they shut down the Abu Bakar and Darasatul Islamiah
madrassas. The LeT madrassas provide JI's
fighters the place to learn Arabic (which is compulsory)
and interact with key Arab al-Qaeda figures, who are
known to be in Karachi, the principal gateway to and
from the Pakistan-Afghanistan theater for foreign
jihadis over the past two plus decades.
The
Taliban factories While the al-Qaeda-linked
madrassas fan the flames of violence all over
Pakistan, jihadi seminaries in the two border provinces
- Balochistan and NWFP, are supplying fresh recruits for
a resurgent Taliban militia across the border in
Afghanistan. While Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf has cleverly portrayed the activities in the
lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan as the focus
of his "war on terror", American soldiers know that the
real epicenter of Taliban resurgence is further south,
adjacent to Pakistani cities like Quetta.
In an
interview with American radio station KQED, Sarah
Chayes, a former reporter for National Public Radio and
currently a social worker based in Kandahar,
Afghanistan, recounts her conversations with frustrated
US soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Chayes pointed out
that the US soldiers saw an endless stream of fresh
Taliban recruits pour into Afghanistan from Pakistan,
most straight out of the dozens of border area
madrassas. Pakistani stringer for the Christian
Science Monitor, Owais Tohid, has filed multiple reports
quoting senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan who claim
to be able to pick up scores of madrassa
graduates eager to attain shadadat or martyrdom
while inflicting blows on the infidels (American
troops).
Empty promises According to a
seminal report on Pakistan's failed promises to reduce
extremism by the International Crisis Group, in 2002
Musharraf's government made key pledges regarding
madrassa reforms. They were: a) The government
would register all madrassas so that it had a
clear idea of which groups were running which schools;
b) The government would regulate the curriculum so that
all madrassas would adopt a government curriculum
by the end of 2002; c) The government would adopt
measures to stop the use of madrassas and mosques
as centers for the spread of politically and religious
inflammatory statements and publications; and d) The
government would establish model madrassas that
would provide modern, useful education and not promote
extremism.
Of these promises, none has even come
close to reality. The only one where the Pakistani
government even made an effort was with the
establishment of "model" madrassas. But reports
indicate that so far just three model madrassas
have been set up, with 300 students in total. This pales
in comparison to the estimated 1.6 million students in
the 25,000 official madrassas in Pakistan.
What makes it worse is that a further 25,000 to
40,000 "unofficial" madrassas cater to an equal
number of Pakistani youth. Many of these unofficial
seminaries are small one-shack establishments catering
to small villages in remote areas. There has been no
movement towards a uniform curriculum and no effort to
curtail jihadi publications.
Sending dollars
to the wrong places The Western reaction to the
madrassa problem in Pakistan, led by America, has
unfortunately been typical. First there was a total
denial of the seriousness of the issue. Now it has been
reduced to blindly throwing money at the issue, hoping
that the Pakistanis will fix the problem themselves.
Recently, the US committed to a five-year, $3 billion
assistance package to Pakistan, over and above other aid
and loan deferments. Of this money, 50% is slated for
non-military "development" purposes, with clear emphasis
on building a secular education infrastructure. But the
follow-up to ensure that the aid money goes where it is
supposed to has been absent.
For instance,
Pakistan recently announced its budget for the current
fiscal year 2004-05. The US$15.5 billion budget has $5.3
billion allocated for defense and a total of $200
million for education - primary, secondary and higher
education combined. The defense budget, at a time of
peace talks with rival India, increased by over 20%,
while the education allocation had a minimal increase in
the background of Pakistan's grandiose promises of
massive education sector reform. As a comparison, it is
worth noting that US expert Alex Alexiev of the Center
for Security Policy stated in his testimony to the US
Senate last year that foreign funding (mainly Saudi) of
Pakistan's madrassas is "estimated at no less
than $350 million per year".
A ticking
bomb Madrassas lie at the heart of the
jihadi complex in Pakistan. The heads of the leading
madrassas (the Deobandi Binori and Akora Khattak
seminaries and the Ahle-Hadith one at Muridke) also run
the jihadi organizations and political parties and the
powerful charities and trusts. The madrassas and
associated charities are the tools by which jihadi
thinking is transmitted to the broader Pakistani society
at all levels. If one looks at the allocation of
project-oriented post-September 11 aid from the US and
Western nations to Pakistan, the majority of it goes to
creating capabilities in the Pakistani armed forces to
tackle al-Qaeda elements involved in terrorism and
guerilla warfare. On the other hand, the amount offered
to back educational reform is very poor indeed.
The Rumsfeld memo shows that clearly at an
intellectual level the US understands that a change must
be brought about in the madrassa arena and there
is no doubt that Musharraf has faced pressure from the
highest levels of the American government on this
regard. However, unless America puts its money where its
mouth is, any behind the scenes pressure will be
deflected over time because of any number of short-term
crises that distract from longer-term problems.
While the US may feel that it has achieved a big
success in convincing Musharraf to make a u-turn on the
Taliban, stopping the inexorable tide of hate-filled
messages put out by Deobandi and Ahle-Hadith seminaries,
the ultimate test will be the Pakistani government's
will to change its long term direction away from
supporting jihad. The Pakistani defense for slow
progress is that madrassa reform is difficult and
dangerous, so it may take a while. The problem with that
is that the longer the madrassas operate as they
do, the fewer people there will be in Pakistan who would
support such change.
The way
forward Making a difference in a task such as
reforming the madrassas is a long-term project,
but that does not mean that the US can afford to go slow
or small. For a start, the US could change the ratio of
defense to development aid in the current monies granted
to Pakistan. Strong US pressure also needs to be applied
to Pakistani military to curtail its runaway spending. A
country like Pakistan, with rampant poverty, cannot
afford to spend more than 30% of its budget on military
spending, no matter what its grandiloquent ambitions may
be.
Musharraf needs to appoint a reform-minded
person to oversee his government's actions in the
madrassa reform field. The current religious
affairs minister, Ijaz-ul-Haq, in May spoke at the
launching ceremony of a book by a pro-Taliban cleric
titled Christian Terrorism and the Muslim World
where he thundered that given the atrocities perpetrated
on Muslims today, he was prepared to act as a suicide
bomber himself.
Claude Salhani, international
editor for United Press International, recently quoted
Marc Sageman, a US Central Intelligence Agency case
officer and author of Understanding Terror
Networks as saying that in the war against al-Qaeda,
"military options have run out" and that the US needs
"idea-based solutions". Unless the US seriously
confronts the madrassa explosion in Pakistan,
even "idea-based solutions" will run out of time.
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance
journalist based in the United States.
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