Religious Schools In Pakistan Fill Void ( Dinosaurs do exist..the US infidels and the Israeli's created them to devour Muslims)
By Peter Fritsch
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
AKORA KHATTAK, Pakistan -- At the Jamia Abu Huraira School of Islamic
Studies for Boys near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, supreme imam
Maulana Abdul Qayyum says over tea that his pupils are ready for a jihad
against the U.S. Two of his acolytes, Taliban members in their 30s, look on
with icy resolve.
Jamia Abu Huraira is one of thousands of mosque-based madrasahs, or
religious schools, in Pakistan where young male students, or taliban, from
this country and Afghanistan spend years memorizing the Koran in Arabic, a
tongue foreign to their native Urdu or Pashto. That's not all they learn:
Students such as Qasin Nodhi are also trained in weapons and judo. "For the
self defense of Islam," says the reed-thin 18-year-old.
The near collapse of public education in Pakistan and Afghanistan -- and the
corresponding rise in influence of the madrasahs -- are critical legacies of
more than two decades of Cold War proxy battles and subsequent armed strife
in this region. In the 1980s, the U.S. supported the mujahedeen resistance
to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan by pumping billions of dollars into
that country through Pakistan's intelligence service.
But when the Soviets retreated in 1989, the U.S. and other Western
governments invested relatively little in promoting civil institutions such
as education. Militant Muslims eagerly stepped into the vacuum, and their
madrasahs educated many of the taliban who went on to form the movement of
that name which now rules Afghanistan.
At least one education program the U.S. did sponsor probably did little to
break the culture of violence that envelops children here from an early age.
The Agency for International Development paid the University of Nebraska $50
million over eight years, from 1986 to 1994, to produce educational
materials for Afghan primary- and secondary-school students. But texts on a
range of subjects were highly politicized and often had a militaristic
overtone, Tom Gouttierre, director of the university's Center for Afghan
Studies in Omaha, now concedes. Some questions prodded students to tackle
basic math by counting dead Russians and Kalashnikov rifles.
Private aid groups have tried other approaches on a smaller scale and shown
some success. The U.S. branch of Save the Children took over primary
education from the Pakistani government in the camps for Afghan refugees in
the southern Baluchistan province in 1995. Then, only 6,000 children were
enrolled. On a standardized test administered when the program began, only
one of the 647 girls passed. With a meager $1 million annual budget, part of
which is funded by the U.S. State Department, the program now educates more
than 16,000 Afghan refugees with new texts developed in Germany.
If expanded, such efforts could, over the long run, have a more devastating
effect on the Taliban and other militant Muslims than smart bombs, educators
and aid officials argue
The battle for Arshad's heart and mind may be over, however...
The
11-year-old, who doesn't offer his last name, rises each morning at 4 to
pray and recite the Koran at the Central Martyrs madrasah in the Pakistani
capital, Islamabad. In his village near Peshawar, there is no public school.
His parents paid the equivalent of $2 a month, a large sum in Pakistan, to
put his older brother through a private high school, but he has yet to find
work years after graduation, Arshad says.
"The madrasah is free" -- and includes room and board -- "so why waste money
in such a way?" he asks. Following typical madrasah rules, the boy hasn't
seen his parents in nine months and probably won't have any contact with
them for at least another few years.
Arshad has learned little about the modern world. A visitor asks him whether
a man has ever walked on the moon. "This isn't possible," the boy answers.
What is two times two? Silence. Eager to impress, though, he announces that
dinosaurs exist: "The Jewish and American infidels have created these beasts
to devour Muslims."
With Afghanistan largely in ruins, and the Taliban having specifically
decimated the country's schools, many Afghan refugee children join Pakistani
youngsters seeking education in Pakistan. But Pakistan, the world's sixth
most-populous nation, with 150 million people, will spend only about 2% of
its gross national output on public education this year, one of the lowest
rates in the world, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization. Pakistan, as a matter of law, promises children a
free education, but in many places, public schools starved for resources
barely function.
The nation's hermetic madrasahs fill most of this enormous gap. They are not
only a potential source of future jihad warriors, but also a bulwark against
the evolution of secular institutions in business, government and other
areas.
"Education has been ignored for so long in this region, and the current
crisis is part of the price," says Andrew Wilder, Save the Children's
director for Pakistan and Afghanistan. "Ironically, relatively uneducated
hard-line groups recognized much better than the West did the desirability
of co-opting education for its ends."
Pakistan's military dictator and president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said in
an interview with CNN that was broadcast over the weekend that his country's
"7,000 or 8,000" madrasahs comprise "the biggest welfare organization
anywhere in the world," providing free education and living arrangements for
up to 700,000 mostly poor children. But asked about the role many of the
schools play as a breeding ground of anti-American fanaticism, he added,
"Any madrasah which is preaching terrorism or militancy . . . we would like
to move against it."
The madrasahs' funding and organizational structure are murky. Intelligence
and education officials in Pakistan say madrasahs receive much of their
money from hard-line Islamic groups and charities in such Muslim countries
as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. Some of these officials say some schools
receive funds from alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. The U.S.
has targeted charities linked to radical Muslim groups in the first salvo of
its reponse to the Sept. 11 suicide-hijacking attacks.
Mr. Qayyum, head of the Jamia Abu Huraira School, says Muslim charities he
won't specify have allowed his madrasah to erect 1,000 tents for Afghan
refugees in the arid terrain near Peshawar and provide a medical dispensary
equipped with an X-ray machine. He tools around the Akora Khattak region in
a late-model van accessorized to look like an ambulance, passing street-side
gun bazaars and freshly painted signs recruiting Muslim warriors for an
unspecified holy war.
The Institute of Islamic Studies, a large madrasah in the Pakistani village
of Barakahu, 10 miles outside Islamabad, thrives on the "charity of Muslim
brothers blessed by Allah," says its imam, S.M. Saeed, from his
air-conditioned office. The institute illustrates the recent development of
better-equipped madrasahs whose curricula sometimes go beyond the Koran. The
school's hundreds of students enjoy new, clean facilities -- and computers
used in class. Tuition, room and board are all free.
(END) DOW JONES NEWS 10-01-01
11:00 PM
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