Author: Ben Barber
Publication: The World and I Online
Date: December 2001
URL: http://www.worldandi.com/public/2001/december/jihad.html
Afghanistan's Taliban studied in
the madrasahs-the Islamist religious schools-of Pakistan, where some 1.75
million students are currently preparing to fight for Islam around the
world.
It was hard to imagine that the
smiling children playing a quick game of cricket on a rooftop courtyard
in the heart of Pakistan's ancient cultural capital of Lahore were learning
to be killers.
The head of their madrasah (religious
school), a portly man with a white turban and white Pakistani clothing,
had invited me to see for myself how his students were treated and what
they had learned. So I'd climbed some steps in the Khuddamuddin madrasah,
one of perhaps 7,000 such religious schools in Pakistan, and found the
boys at play, taking a break from classes.
In a few moments chatting with them,
I quickly learned that their major topic of study was jihad, or holy war.
The nearly 2,000 students expect to fight infidels in Chechnya, Afghanistan,
Palestine, or Indian Kashmir once they complete their studies at the madrasah,
located inside the walls of the old city of Lahore.
This school and others like it have
prospered in recent years, in part because of the failure of the state-run
educational system. In Pakistan, the illiteracy rate among adults is estimated
at 70 percent.
About 1.75 million students are
enrolled in the schools, though it is not clear how many of the academies
are devoted to preparing their students for jihad. Some may focus only
on religious studies. It is certain, however, that each time the repressive
Islamic Taliban regime in Afghanistan needs to mount a spring offensive
against its rebel opponents, tens of thousands of students from Pakistani
madrasahs pour over the border in trucks to join the jihad, according to
reports in the Jane's defense publications. Thus, the system of madrasahs
has become a hatchery for tens of thousands of Islamic militants who have
spread conflict around the world. Incidents in the Philippines, Indonesia,
Russia, Central Asia, and at New York's World Trade Center have all been
linked to graduates of the madrasahs. Indeed, Pakistan is terrorism's fertile
garden.
Khuddamuddin is run by Mohammed
Ajmal Qadri, leader of one of the three branches of the fundamentalist
Jamiat Ulema Islam party, who told me that nearly 13,000 trained jihad
fighters have passed through his school. At least 2,000 of them were in
or on their way to Indian-held Kashmir.
Converting the World to Islam
Qadri, polite and well spoken in
the British-accented English of South Asia, offered an American guest tea
and then calmly disclosed that the modern concepts of tolerance and cultural
understanding have not made inroads into his thinking.
"Eventually, all people must become
Muslim, including the Christians and Jews of the United States," he said
in an interview. "The world has to go the way we want. It's our divine
right to lead humanity." He apologized for a lack of time to spend with
a visitor, saying he was preparing for yet another of his frequent visits
to the United States. There, he preaches in the hundreds of new mosques
built in the last decade by Muslim immigrants and raises money for his
school--where he teaches his children to kill those who stand in the path
of Islamic dominance in the world.
Up on the stone rooftop courtyard
of his 110-year-old school, the students were taking advantage of a free
period to hit a cricket ball, run, and wrestle like children anywhere in
the world. But one slightly built boy explained how he and his classmates
were being directed toward a life of violent struggle.
"Most kids here go for jihad, and
I will too, God willing," said 14-year-old Obeidulla Anwer, speaking in
Urdu through a translator. "Jihad is to fight for Islam and the pride of
Islam."
Like most of his classmates, he
will leave the school at about age 18 and go to a military training camp
in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, Afghanistan, or some other secret location.
After that training, he said, "We go to fight in Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine,
Afghanistan."
Asked whether he was prepared to
hurt or kill, the delicate, dark boy said: "I will hurt those who are enemies
of Islam. And I know that I could be hurt or killed."
The chances that Obeidulla will
die violently are high. A 23-year-old fighter with another Islamic militant
group, Hizbul Mujahideen, said that five of the eight young men in his
squad had died during his 18 months of fighting against Indian troops in
Kashmir, where an estimated 30,000 people have died in civil strife since
1989.
Obeidulla was asked how he would
recognize the enemies of Islam. "If I greet them with 'Salam Aleikum' and
they won't say it back," he answered.
The boy was asked: "Since most Americans
do not know Arabic and cannot know how to respond to the traditional Muslim
greeting, are they enemies of Islam?" The boy looked confused. "I don't
know," he said, looking expectantly at his hovering teachers, who also
appeared confused by the question. Asked directly whether all non-Muslims
were anti-Muslim, he did not need to check with his teachers. "No," he
said firmly.
The school is preparing Obeidulla
and his classmates for the hard life of soldiers with an experience that
provides little comfort or privacy. The children all sleep on the floor
of the school's mosque in sleeping bags, which they roll up each morning.
They rise at 3:00 a.m. for study and prayers with a break for play around
4:30 a.m. At 7:30, they have breakfast and then study until 11:00, when
they sleep for two hours. They pray, study, have lunch, pray, study, and
pray again until dinner at 9:30 p.m., after which they go to the mosque
to sleep. They have no room or even a bed of their own.
Why the Madrasahs Thrive
Parents choose this hard life for
their children for a variety of reasons, with religious conviction and
the poverty of village life both playing major roles.
Religion dominates life in Pakistan,
where the national airline begins its flights with a reading from the Qur'an
or a prayer. Politicians, even those educated in London or Boston and living
apparently Westernized lives, vie in calling for stricter Islamic laws.
Poverty is the other goad. A half-hour
drive from Lahore and just a stone's throw from the Indian border crossing
at Wagha, farmer Mohammed Shaffi explained why his 13-year-old son attends
the local madrasah and not a public school. In the madrasah--many are funded
by donations from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations or groups in wealthy
countries--he memorizes the Qur'an in Arabic, which he cannot understand.
But he is not being taught to read and write the national language, Urdu.
"How can a poor man educate his
son?" asked Shaffi, leaning for a moment over the mud wall he was building
around his tiny rice paddy in the village of Dayal, about 30 miles southeast
of Lahore. "Even if the school is free, the books are not. And the paper."
Shaffi, whose younger son was playing
nearby stark naked, did not even mention the cost of school clothes. As
he spoke, a herd of cows ambled by his naked child, who scratched at the
muddy earth with a sharp stick. Another son, 13-year-old Maratab Ali Shaffi,
wore a filthy, torn pair of shorts as he helped his mother and father pack
mud upon a brick wall to increase its height.
The farmer said it was too early
to make a decision about letting the boy go and join a jihad. But with
the drumbeat of resurgent Islam in the air and hopes of a good job slim
for an illiterate youth from the countryside, jihad is not an unlikely
choice.
The family has two acres of land,
on which six-inch-tall rice plants waved above the flooded paddies. They
have electricity but can afford only two lightbulbs. They have no radio
or television. No one in the family can read or write. The local madrasah,
by contrast, will provide Maratab a free daily meal and sometimes a free
shirt.
In Lahore, Qadri said he is proud
that his school is able to direct youths like Maratab into holy war in
places like Chechnya and Kashmir. But it is America that seems to be his
ultimate target, one he hopes to defeat through converting its people to
Islam.
"There are now over 3,000 mosques
and madrasahs in America, and they are a divine gift for Americans. American
civilization is a Monica Lewinsky civilization," he said with a hearty
laugh. "It is empty and hollow from inside. Islam is the only cultural
system that could bear the load of life for the times to come."
He was similarly dismissive of Hinduism,
the religion of about 900 million people in neighboring India, describing
it as nothing more than a system "of fashions and traditions."
Roots of Anti-U.S. Feeling
Qadri said he would defy attempts
by Pakistan's military government to regulate the madrasahs, beginning
with a requirement that they report on the numbers and names of students
and teachers, types of facilities, educational programs, and financial
details.
The government, stung by charges
from U.S. officials that it allows Islamic terrorism to breed under the
guise of religious education, has also called for the schools to begin
offering practical subjects such as math and science as well as memorization
of the Qur'an. In addition, the government is asking the schools to report
to local police the names of any foreign students and to list any religious
rulings (fatwas) they issue.
"We believe our rules are perfect,
and we will not allow any ruler, military, or so-called elected representatives
to change them," Qadri said. The News, an English-language national newspaper,
quoted several madrasah heads claiming the data were being collected on
the instructions of anti-Islamic Western forces, particularly the United
States and Israel. While such claims seem far-fetched to better-educated
Pakistanis, they are widely believed by others. Many Pakistanis already
feel abandoned by the West since U.S.-backed rebels expelled the Soviet
forces from Afghanistan in 1989, leaving their country to cope with a huge
refugee problem.
Pakistanis also feel it is unfair
to blame them for supporting terrorism when veterans of the conflict in
Afghanistan turn to jihad in Kashmir or Chechnya.
Americans are particularly angry
with Pakistan for helping the Taliban gain power in Afghanistan in 1995.
Islamabad's military helped organize a guerrilla force from the Islamic
students in Pakistani madrasahs. They were at first well received in Afghanistan,
because they offered hope of ending the five years of bloody warlordism
that had followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1990. But once the Taliban secured
control over 90 percent of Afghanistan, it imposed draconian Islamic rule--preventing
women from working, ordering all men to wear beards and turbans, banning
music and television, and imposing harsh punishments such as amputation
and stoning for theft or adultery.
The Taliban also allowed accused
Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden to remain in Afghanistan despite a U.S.
and UN demand for him to stand trial on charges of bombing two U.S. embassies
in East Africa in 1998, as well as other anti-American attacks.
Pakistani diplomats say they cannot
control the Taliban even if Pakistan is the only country that recognizes
the Kabul regime. The United States keeps asking Pakistan to pressure the
Afghans to hand over bin Laden, and the Pakistanis say they are unable
to do so.
As Pakistan, once a staunch U.S.
Cold War ally against the Soviet Union, slides into Islamist extremism,
continued military control, and economic chaos, its rival to the east,
India, has become America's good friend. India's half-century of democracy
has long been admired in America and, since 1990, it has abandoned its
socialist central planning and anti-Western rhetoric. India's software
boom, along with the $60 billion a year earned by Indian Americans in California's
Silicon Valley, has pushed Washington closer to New Delhi--further angering
and isolating Pakistan.
A group of Pakistani journalists
recently asked some American journalists why their country gets such bad
press in the United States. But when queried about Pakistan's Islamic revival,
tolerance of extremism, lack of schools for the poor, military control,
and other problems, the Pakistani journalists ruefully agreed it was all
true.
The root of everything, say several
analysts, is that the well-educated leaders of the country have failed
to create a system of adequate public education for Pakistan's 140 million
people. Without that, parents increasingly turn to the madrasahs, where
the fiery mix of fundamentalism and intolerance is creating cannon fodder
for future religious wars around the world.
(Ben Barber is State Department
correspondent for the Washington Times.)
