October 7, 2022: “Pakistani Madrassas: A Real Pathway to Islamic Terrorism in the 21st Century” Steven Atwood
Background:
Madrassas are Islamic seminaries in Pakistan. There are two narratives about them: the first and most common in the “West” is that madrassas are de facto brain-washing facilities for young men to become terrorists. The other, less well-known, narrative is that these schools are equivalent to community centers, sources of additional learning, and are generally beneficial to the community. At madrassas, students of all ages have an Islamic education. They learn Arabic, to read and write, and subjects related to the Quran and its interpretation. They are popular for multiple reasons such as feeding and housing their students for free, the teacher may have a strong reputation of religious instruction, and parents want their children having such an education. The first reason has made them viable or the only resort for Pakistan’s poorest.
The first narrative has some historical roots: Generally, madrassas are Sunni and follow the Deobandi sect. This sect is particularly popular in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Madrassas exploded in popularity after President-General Zia-ul-Haq rose to power in 1977. He funded Deobandi madrassas, turning them into an integral part of the Pakistani educational system, which grew in enrollment due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the 80s, Saudi Arabia (and the United States to support the Mujahideen) also began to fund madrassas as a countermeasure to Iran’s nurturing of Pakistan’s Shia minority. During this period of massive growth and in part due to Saudi funding, prominent al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders studied in Deobandi madrassas. Here, Deobandi ideology was combined with Wahabism or Pashtun ideals, the hallmark of the Taliban. Due to the learning system of memorization and removal of individual will, fanaticism could easily take root. This was aimed at anyone the teacher labels an infidel, possibly priming students for Islamist terrorism.
Post 9/11, due to US pressure and financial aid, along with the image that madrassas were a fundamentalist institution that breed terrorists, changes were introduced in Pakistan. Then leader of Pakistan, President-General Musharraf tried to reform the madrassas, shifting them from the Islamization of Zia-ul-Haq to Modernization through the Pakistan Madrassa Education Board and the Voluntary Registration and Regulation Ordinance 2002 which proved ineffective.
Madrassas and the Pakistani Education System in the last 2 Decades
Madrassas are a regular part of daily life in Pakistan, educating students from poorer areas and families. The main schools are: Wahabi, Deobandi (15% of the population but 60% of madrassas), Barelvi (25% of madrassas but most Pakistanis follow this), Jamat-i-Islami, and Jafria-Shia. Due to the functions provided by madrassas, the economically depressed, vulnerable, and impressionable youth of Pakistan tend to attend madrassas. However, a major reason for attending are the parents who want their child to retain a religious education. The Pakistani education system has a 3-tier system: expensive private schools taught in English focused on secular subjects, generally low-quality public schools taught in Urdu/English that teaches secular subjects with Islamic influences, and madrassas at the lowest level. The ratio of madrassa attendees to private and public students is 1:38:104 respectively. This ratio has led some scholars such as William Dalrymple and Tahir Andradi to argue that indoctrination takes place in notorious centers of radicalization and that the total number of students indoctrinated by madrassas are too few to have a major impact. Sageman in 2004 found that only 18% of Islamist extremists had an Islamic primary or secondary education, meaning that most of them went to secular schools. According to Tariq, 3 madrassas are the main schools for Islamic terrorism: the Haqqani Madrassa in the Haqqani Complex, the Noori Madrassa, and the Panjpiri Madrassa.
In part, there is a strong correlation between madrassas and religiously motivated violence through studies done by Ali in 2009 and Fair in 2007. Fair, however, however argues that less than a quarter of militants ever attended madrassas in the first place. The madrassa is, according to Angeles and Aijazi, in the best case an esteemed pillar of the neighborhood (and even beyond). One, the JOAQ mosque-madrassa complex in an affluent part of Islamabad, has a prayer hall, a Darul Iftah, an ablution facility, but also shopping plazas, banks, a private hospital, and retail stores. Another madrassa in Islamabad, IIS, offers the secular national curriculum along with traditional Islamic studies. Interviewing students from both schools, a prime reason for their attendance in these madrassas was the poor education quality not just of their local madrassa(s) but of public education as well. Another was the opportunity of being enrolled in school while being in a city.
Conclusion
Madrassas, while starting out as important locations for Islamic extremism and terrorism particularly between the 70s and the 90s, are not necessarily the places that the “West” has painted them as. While officially the Pakistani education system has a 3-tier system, common knowledge ascribes that it could almost be a 2-tier system of private schools and madrassas tied with public schools based on the low-quality of the latter. It is not determined that madrassas are inherently peaceful schools of Islamic studies without any Islamist extremism. There are many madrassas that can still have students come out of it with strong conservative and hateful ideology such as antisemitism and anti-West sentiment. On the other hand, due to the wide variety of madrassas and the skill of the teachers to filter out possible would-be extremists, there are many madrassas that do not have these students. The narrative that madrassas are common dens of extremism with students ready to have jihad with the “West” does not stand up to scrutiny in the 21st century.
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