Reforms fail at many madrassas

By Willis Witter
November 6, 2007

READING, WRITING AND RELIGION: Students studied the Koran and bonded with younger children recently at the Jamia Naeemia madrassa in Lahore, Pakistan, which has added math and science to the curriculum.

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First of two parts

LAHORE, Pakistan — The suicide attacks and battles between army and Islamist forces cited by President Pervez Musharraf in his weekend declaration of emergency rule seem a world away from the quiet life in the Islamic seminaries of Lahore.

Photo Gallery: Inside the Jamia Naeemia madrassa

Known as madrassas, the privately funded schools double as orphanages and free boarding schools for families too poor to feed their children, but they also have a darker side.

They teach a Taliban-style doctrine and graduate tens of thousands of young adults each year, some of whom are eagerly recruited by insurgents for military training as guerrillas and even future suicide missions, say Pakistani lawmakers, academics and analysts.

Many of these analysts bemoan the government's failure to implement the sweeping reforms of the madrassa system announced by Gen. Musharraf five years ago.

Just a tiny fraction of the madrassas — estimated by some to number nearly 30,000 — have complied with rules requiring registration with the government, an accounting of private donations and an expanded syllabus that adds traditional subjects such as math and science to core religious classes.

The Jamia Naeemia madrassa in Lahore, which was visited by The Washington Times last month when the prospect of emergency rule seemed out of the question, stands out as an exception.

"There are two kinds of madrassas, those who changed their courses after September 11, and those who did not," said Sarfraz Naeemi, the school"s headmaster.

"There"s no jihad, there"s no terrorism here," Mr. Naeemi said of the school for 1,350 boys, a white-columned three-story complex that surrounds an open courtyard of smooth paved stone.

Unlike seven years ago, its graduates earn accredited bachelor"s and master"s degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies, in contrast to many madrassas where students become well-grounded in anti-Western Taliban theology but are unable to read or write.

But even if the students at Jamia Naeemia are well-educated, one can question whether they are any less militant, anti-Western or anti-American in their outlook.

Musharraf's guidelines

Lahore, a cosmopolitan city of nearly 8 million people, teems with Western icons such as McDonald"s and Citibank. It has yet to be bloodied in the wave of suicide and terrorist attacks that followed a July raid by police commandos on a radical girls" madrassa attached to Islamabad"s Red Mosque.

Those attacks have killed an estimated 400 people; another 400 are said to have died in army battles with insurgents in Pakistan"s mountainous northwest.

Still, one can find all types of madrassas here.

Of schools that refuse to register and follow government guidelines, Mr. Naeemi said, "They were preaching jihad before September 11, and they are still preaching jihad."

Those guidelines were announced by Gen. Musharraf in a Jan. 12, 2002, speech in which he proclaimed a new "jihad against backwardness and illiteracy" — an effort that drew much praise in Pakistan and the West.

His plan required all madrassas to stop accepting money from non-Pakistani sources such as wealthy Saudis who adhere to a militant form of Islam that helped inspire and fund the Taliban in past years. It also included a requirement to add four core subjects: math, science, Pakistan studies and English.

"The children in these madrassas need to be brought into the mainstream of life," Gen. Musharraf said a month later at the White House, with President Bush at his side calling the reforms "visionary."

It was a logical step, considering that the entire Taliban leadership had been educated in Pakistani madrassas and they were largely ignorant of anything beyond the draconian Islamist doctrine that they imposed on Afghanistan.

This same doctrine provided the rationale for Afghanistan"s receiving Osama bin Laden as an honored guest and attempting to shelter the terrorist leader after the September 11 attacks.

Gen. Musharraf again pledged a crackdown on madrassas after the July 2005 suicide attacks in London"s transit system, in which 52 persons and four bombers died. One of the four bombers, a 22-year-old Briton of Pakistani descent, had studied religion at a madrassa in Pakistan.

Gen. Musharraf subsequently said he had expelled more than 1,000 foreign students and promised to refocus on the reforms that he had announced more than three years earlier.

The modern world

A steel gate and high wall separates Jamia Naeemia from the din of Lahore"s exhaust-choked streets. It boasts a library that would rival in size that in many American high schools. One difference is that the books are on glass-covered shelves, offering protection in a dusty part of the world.

A computer lab funded by the Lahore Lions Club and a local charity affiliated with the school contains dozens of desktop computers with familiar names such as Compaq and Philips.

Mr. Naeemi, whose gray beard and dark-rimmed glasses do little to mask a biting contempt for both Muslim terrorists and U.S. policy toward the Islamic world, is satisfied that his students have many options when graduating.

The bachelor"s degree awarded after eight years of study beyond what would be considered middle school in the United States gives graduates the option of becoming preachers or schoolteachers.