Author: ANI
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: December 1, 2004
URL: http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEH20041130113230&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=-100&ISLAMABAD:~After~spewing~venom~on~the~Americans~and~the~infidels~for~their~so-called~attacks~on~Islam,~jihadis~in~Pakistan~are~now~imparting~
After spewing venom on the Americans
and the infidels for their so-called attacks on Islam, jihadis in Pakistan
are now imparting "violent lessons" aimed at targeting Hindus.
The Daily Times quoted a report
in the Chicago Tribune as saying that not only were the madrassas functioning
in a clandestine manner as "secretive" religious schools and espousing
jihad or holy war but, was also imparting "violent lessons" targeting Hindus.
The report further states that these
schools which were under the control of politically powerful clerics and
advocating conservative Islam coupled with religious intolerance, were
glorifying Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and
the Taliban's efforts to establish a puritan Islamic state based on the
Sharia in Afghanistan.
The aspect of jihad has so much
permeated into Pakistani civil society that even public schools in Pakistan
are imparting lessons in jihad. Several schools have distributed curriculum
instructing teachers or educators to teach that not only is the Kashmir
dispute legitimate, even fighting India is a religious duty.
Even students themselves are so
taken in by this rhetoric that some have even decided taking up jihad as
a professional career.
In public schools in Karachi, children
as young as 5th graders still learn about the "glories of jihad and martyrdom
in textbooks the government approves." One 9th-grade student even dreamed
of going to fight in a jihad upon growing up provided he got his mother's
blessings.
Educational experts opine that the
appointment of a former leader of the country's intelligence, the Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI) as Pakistan's new head of the Education Ministry
has rather than anything else, only compounded the problem.
They further added that even when
the government removed some jihadi language from textbooks and issued new
textbooks, the truth was, that to placate the clerics, the government this
time round, at least in one textbook devoted an entire chapter to jihad,
which "read like a lesson on jihad from the literature of banned militant
groups."
"If you look at Pakistan's educational
system, it encourages you to fight in jihad. It glorifies the military.
It imbibes the student with the philosophy of martyrdom and jihad. The
new head of the Education Ministry is a former leader of the Inter-Services
Intelligence, the feared intelligence agency in Pakistan that maintains
strong ties to militant clerics.
He has no experience in education,"
the paper quoted Dr A H Nayyar, an educational expert as saying.
