Author: PTI
Publication: The Hindustan
Times
Date: August 11, 2000
About 1.75 million Pakistani
boys are being trained in nearly 7,000 madrassas (regligious schools) across
Pakistan to be sent to Kashmir and various other parts of the world to
fight 'jehad' (holy war) against "infidels", a US media report said today.
Over 2,000 such "students"
of one particular madrassa are on their way to Kashmir, The Washington
Times said in a front-page report. The report, Mohammed Ajmal Qadri,
leader of one of the fundamentalist Jamiat Ulema Islam party, who runs
one such school (Khuddamuddin madrassa), said around 13,000 boys have passed
out of his school after being trained as fighters of 'jehad', about 1.75
million students are enrolled in these madrassas in Pakistan.
"There are about 7,000
religious schools, which have prospered in part because of the failure
of the state-run educational system in a country (Pakistan) where illiteracy
rate among adults is as high as 70 per cent," the report said.
Qadri told the paper
that though the thrust of the training was to send the students to Kashmir
and Chechnya, the US was the ultimate target. Qadri added that he
would defy attempts by the military regime to regulate the madrassas, saying,
"We believe our rules are perfect, and we will not allow any ruler, military
or so-called elected representatives, to change them."
