|
Pakistan's
vow to rein in schools goes unfulfilled
PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- A few months after the
Sept. 11 attacks, President Pervez Musharraf announced he would overhaul
the Islamic religious schools that function as incubators for religious
fanatics.
"The day of reckoning has come," he said.
But more than two years later, the religious seminaries known as
madrassas continue to operate with little oversight, many still preaching
hatred of the West. Critics say the slow reform is a prime example of
Pakistan's halfhearted effort to eradicate extremism.
"Madrassa reform means nothing," said I.A. Rehman,
director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. "That is the
greatest proof of the government's lack of sincerity: You arrest 20
terrorists and train 2,000 more."
Government officials say the reform aroused strong opposition the
instant Musharraf announced it, many perceiving it as an imposition by the
U.S. government. Then, after the president visited some schools, he was
convinced that only a handful were a problem and that the crisis was
overblown, said Ijazul Haq, the minister of religious affairs.
"The original announcement was done in haste," Haq said.
"They went to the madrassas, to the mosques, to put pressure on them.
They thought they were under pressure from the U.S. or somebody, that they
wanted to just shove it up our throat, and that's why nobody wanted to
swallow it."
Madrassa operators in Peshawar say they are pleased the government
appears to have backed off. They insist that most don't promote terrorism
- though their interpretation of terrorismand who is responsible for it
does not necessarily agree with commonly held beliefs in the West.
"All of us are against terrorism because Islam doesn't allow
terrorism," said Maulana Hassan Jan, who operates Jamia Imdadul Uloon
Al Islamia, a large madrassa housed in a marble-columned former Masonic
temple, a vestige of colonial rule. "So why are people involved in
terrorism? Because they are oppressed by the United States and the
brutalities it is committing in Afghanistan and Iraq. When someone here
loses a child or a wife, you can understand how they might feel."
Madrassas have been a part of Islamic education for centuries, but
their importance grew in the 1980s, when Afghan refugees flooded into
Pakistan after the Soviet invasion and public schools were unable to
accommodate them.
So Arab countries - chiefly Saudi Arabia - funded hundreds more
madrassas, whose students included most of the Taliban leaders who would
come to power in Afghanistan in the 1990s. Many offer primarily religious
teachings, viewed through the prism of the strict fundamentalist Wahhabi
sect.
The government said it had taken steps to regulate the schools.
About 5,000 of an estimated 8,000 now are registered with the government,
and the education ministry has created three prototype schools to serve as
models.
Critics are unimpressed. "The models don't mean anything
unless they're replicated," said Samina Ahmed of the International
Crisis Group, which has studied Pakistan's education system.
"Madrassas should be a key part of antiterrorism policy, but
nothing is done," she said. "There's no monitoring of funds, no
changes to the curriculum, which is antidemocratic. So the madrassas are
allowed to produce a new generation of students who are
anti-Western."
The United States has pledged $100 million to help Pakistan
improve its public schools, also criticized by religious minorities for
their heavy overlay of Islamic theology.
In March, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told a skeptical
congressional subcommittee that Musharraf was "working hard to put in
place programs to start to shift the focus of these madrassas to providing
an education that's useful."
Pakistan faces enormous educational challenges, madrassas aside.
Only 44 percent of girls are enrolled at the primary level, and 57 percent
of boys, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development. The
dropout rate during the first five years is 70 percent. About half of all
adults are illiterate.
Those who do learn to read no longer receive a broad view of the
world that takes in other cultures and religions, according to a study by
the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, a think tank in Islamabad.
"Instead, children are now taught that the history of
Pakistan starts from the day the first Muslim set foot in India," the
report said.
With such an impoverished school system, the government is not
eager to absorb the cost of paying for students in madrassas, as some
reformers have proposed. Most madrassas, now funded entirely from private
sources, provide free room, board and clothing.
"The government is not prepared to take up another million
students and to provide them with clothing, food and teachers," even
to end extremist foreign influence on the madrassas, said Haq, the
religious-affairs minister.
In Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier province that
contains the tribal areas where religious schools are the chief medium of
education, madrassa operators insist they are are not creating jihadists.
"Extremism was a circumstance associated with the invasion of
Afghanistan," said Pir Muhammad Noorul-Haq Qadri, who operates nine
madrassas around Peshawar. "I believe this trend is on the
decline."
In North West Frontier, Islamic political parties won provincial
elections two years ago, and sentiment strongly favors the government's
keeping its nose out.
"I'm against the government interfering in the affairs of the
madrassas," said Maulana Jan, who heads an Islamic political party in
addition to operating Jamia Imdadul Uloom Al Islamia. "These
religious institutions operate on their own basis. Only the religious
leaders decide what we shall teach."
Jan said his school was teaching English, math and science long
before Musharraf urged madrassas to broaden their curriculum beyond
Islamic studies. But religion still dominates. On a recent day, 300
students sat in a circle around Jan as he lectured on the Koran.
A beefy man with a long, untrimmed beard, Jan said his school
registered with the government, but only to trademark its name, not to
submit to control. The school houses 1,150 students, all male and about a
third from Afghanistan.
Jan said he had never met Osama bin Laden, though he has spoken
with Mullah Mohammed Omar, head of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.
Musharraf appointed Jan to visit Omar in Kabul, to urge him to surrender
bin Laden before the U.S. bombing began in 2001.
"The Taliban were not terrorists," he said. "There
was no justification for the American aggression against them. The United
States needs to change its policy. America talks about love, peace and
justice. When they start living that way, then I think there won't be any
terrorism."
Jan assigned teacher Mohammed Rahim to guide a visitor around the
school. Rahim clearly had something on his mind as he walked along,
growing increasingly agitated.
Finally, he demanded to know what America had against bin Laden.
"There was never anything proven against Osama bin Laden," he
said. "Why do you kill thousands of people just to get one man?"
He said most Pakistanis believed that Americans stage-managed 9/11
to justify an attack on Islam.
Back in his office, Jan said there was little the government could
do to control what was taught at madrassas.
"We are Muslims," he said. "We need to have
madrassas. It's part of our culture. Islamic education has been going on
for the last 1,400 years and it will continue until the last day we are on
Earth."
|