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Pakistan's madrassas in perspective

President Pervez Musharraf's announcement that Pakistan's madrassas are once again under the scanner underscores the fine balance he has had to maintain since September 2001 between deflecting criticism from the West about the country's `jihad factories' and sparking a dangerous reaction from the religious Right at home. Soon after 9/11, the United States placed a list of demands before General Musharraf; one of these was the `reform' of the madrassa system of education. Washington believed these institutions imparting `Islamic education' were producing radicalised graduates ready to be hired by Al Qaeda. President Musharraf obediently decreed the registration of all madrassas in Pakistan; the introduction of a mixed curriculum to teach subjects such as modern mathematics, science, and information technology along with Islamic subjects; and an audit of madrassa accounts. However, he quickly retreated from enforcement, evidently because these `reforms' generated a tremendous backlash from the seminaries and religious political parties. After a period of negotiations with the institutions that ended in mid-2002, the Government decided to do nothing much about them. The General's most recent `reform' update includes the decision to expel about 1400 foreign students enrolled in Islamic religious schools; it followed western media reports that two (and possibly three) of the July 7 London bombers spent time in Pakistani madrassas.

The reform of the madrassa system is certainly overdue. President Musharraf's method, however, seems to be to signal or reiterate his reformist intentions every time Muslim terrorists with an alleged Pakistani link strike on western soil. This merely contradicts his own reasonable claim that not all seminaries are breeding grounds for terrorists. Focussing obsessively on madrassas is to overlook other reasons for the growth and expansion of Al Qaeda — and the deadly autonomous cells the Al Qaeda kind of world-view has spawned in far-flung parts of the world. The British Government's reluctance to accept the link between its Iraq policy and the London bombings is typical of western obscurantism that has much in common with religious fundamentalism. There is absolutely no need for official Indian policy to join in this obfuscation of the larger truth. A handful of Pakistan's seminaries are certainly associated with militant Islam — these appear more in need of a firm hand than reform. But in a social context where the state education system is dysfunctional, there is a need to identify practical alternatives to the madrassas, which offer a measure of literacy and learning, however outmoded or inadequate. If the impression about the role they play is the opposite, President Musharraf must accept some of the blame for distorting the picture in his anxiety to appease and, in a sense, pull the wool over the eyes of, his western patrons.

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