They have been called "universities of jihad," and they're going to stay that way. But note that they are not teaching terrorism -- they no doubt do not believe that what the jihadists do constitutes terrorism. "Clerics adamant against 'interference' in madrassas," from the Pakistan Daily Times, with thanks to Nicolei.
ISLAMABAD: Leaders of madrassas (Islamic seminaries) said on Sunday that they would not allow the government or anyone else to interfere in madrassa matters such as their syllabi and examination system.In a communiqué issued after the Deeni Madaris Convention arranged by the Wafaqul Madaris Al Arabia, madrassa leaders said seminaries would continue working towards making Pakistan an Islamic and democratic state and would stay united and would not allow anyone interfere in madrassa matters. It also said they would not accept the imposition of embargos to fulfil the agenda of the West. "Religious schools weren't involved in any kind of politics or terrorism and they don't want to fight the government, but they want it to accept their demands through dialogue because religious schools will not accept any imported philosophy in the name of so-called enlightened moderation," the declaration added.
Syllabi reforms in madrassas would continue because they (madrassa leaders) believed that teachers in religious schools had the capability to teach conventional education, it said, adding that madrassas would also not accept the government's financial assistance at any stage...
Pakistan Muslim League President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain told participants that madrassas were not preaching terrorism. "As a former interior minister, I conducted an inquiry to examine whether seminaries were involved in terrorism and found that not a single one was involved in such activities," he said...
...adding that madrassas would also not accept the government's financial assistance at any stage.
...and why should they, when "our good friends" the Saudis are pouring in millions of dollars? They are feeling especially beneficial these days, what with their only serious threat (Saddam)) gone and a record-high gouge on for oil. Remember when WE sent hundreds of millions of dollars out for tsunami aid and the Saudi gov't sent nothing? Now you know why. They don't send money for such secular unholinesses like WATER, FOOD, BLANKETS. No; they only send money for extremist mosques, militias, missionaries, and madrassas.
The money from the west goes into physical nourishment, while the middle eastern money goes into mental/emotional nourishment.
The west is building the body of robothug, while the middle east is in charge of its programming.
The idea that universities are places of "enlightement" in which "religious fundamentalism" cannot gain a foothold needs to be re-examined.
According to the Paki head school guy (name forgotten) there were 2500 sexual abuse complaints leveled against Paki madrassas in 03/04...according to him, only 200 were investigated and no charges of any kind were filed. Probably part of the mental abuse necessary to demoralize children, so they can grow up terrorists. If I were looking for someone to tell me the truth, I would not ask a Paki...
"Not a single one was involved... [in teaching terrorism]".
Amazing!
And I'll bet no nuclear scientists in Pakistan were ever involved with illegally spreading nuke secrets and enabling technology to other nations.
To paraphrase an old poem:
Terrorism doth never prosper,
Here's the prism:
For if it doth prosper,
None dare call it 'terrorism'.
Let them stunt the minds of their children and kill one another over fine points of Koranic silliness.
And let us keep them out of the civilized world.
FLUSH A KORAN TODAY FOR FREEDOM!
http://www.wackyzoo.com/0381.jpg
A madrassa is an Islamic religious school. Many of the Taliban were educated in Saudi-financed madrassas in Pakistan that teach Wahhabism, a particularly austere and rigid form of Islam which is rooted in Saudi Arabia. Around the world, Saudi wealth and charities contributed to an explosive growth of madrassas during the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. During that war (1979-1989), a new kind of madrassa emerged in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region -- not so much concerned about scholarship as making war on infidels. The enemy then was the Soviet Union, today it's America. Here are analyses of the madrassas from interviews with Vali Nasr, an authority on Islamic fundamentalism, and Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
All of these groups are rooted in a network of seminaries, or as the term is called in the local vernacular, "madrassa." My argument was that the main source of funding for these groups is Saudi Arabia. In fact, this whole phenomenon that we are confronting, which Al Qaeda is a part of, is very closely associated with Saudi Arabia's financial and religious projects for the Muslim world as a whole. ...
You said that the main source of funding for these Islamic extremists--
Or at least the institutions that train them.
-- is whom?
It's Saudi Arabia and its network of charities and the like. The argument I make is that there is an undercurrent of terror and fanaticism that go hand in hand in the Afghanistan-Pakistan arc, and extend all the way to Uzbekistan. And you can see reflections of it in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Indonesia, in the Philippines.
For instance, in one madrassa in Pakistan, I interviewed 70 Malaysian and Thai students who are being educated side by side with students who went on to the Afghan war and the like. These people return to their countries, and then we see the results in a short while. ... At best, they become hot-headed preachers in mosques that encourage fighting Christians in Nigeria or in Indonesia. And in a worst case, they actually recruit or participate in terror acts.
What you're saying is that, if we wanted to look for the causes of what's happened -- Al Qaeda and the movement worldwide -- we would have to look to the schools, to the educational system which Saudi Arabia has fostered in the Islamic world?
... In order to have terrorists, in order to have supporters for terrorists, in order to have people who are willing to interpret religion in violent ways, in order to have people who are willing to legitimate crashing yourself into a building and killing 5,000 innocent people, you need particular interpretations of Islam.
Those interpretations of Islam are being propagated out of schools that receive organizational and financial funding from Saudi Arabia. In fact, I would push it further: that these schools would not have existed without Saudi funding. They would not have proliferated across Pakistan and India and Afghanistan without Saudi funding. They would not have had the kind of prowess that they have without Saudi funding, and they would not have trained as many people without Saudi funding.
....
What is a madrassa?
It's a seminary. It's where students of different ages, as young as nine or ten, go to learn religious education and to be schooled first of all in reading and then in religious studies. In the old times, it substituted for regular elementary education and higher education, and ultimately produces quote, unquote, clerics. In other words, scholars, preachers, you know, religious community leaders who conduct the religious affairs of a community.
But you're saying the influence of the Saudis in these schools has been to create a certain kind of Islam, not your mainstream Islam?
Well, first of all, because of the Afghan war, we have a new kind of madrassa emerging in Pakistan-Afghanistan area.
And throughout Central Asia, right?
They've been spreading throughout Central Asia, but there have been Central Asian students, Filipino students, Indonesian students, Nigerian students, Arab students, thanks to scholarship funding provided from Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, that have been going to these schools.
And I'm also told in Kurdistan and all kinds of places.
All kinds of places. Now these Afghan madrassas, how they differ from the traditional madrassas is that they were not really so much concerned about scholarship. They were more concerned about training religious fighters who would go into the Afghan field and fight. I mean, the phenomenon of Taliban, meaning religious seminary students--
That's what the word means.
The word means. Who are they? Are they budding preachers? Are they scholars? How much scholarship do they have? Are they better trained in throwing grenades than interpreting religious law? These are all open questions.
So you have the whole rise of, if you would, Islamic West Points, or Islamic military camps, Islamic guerilla camps along the border, which mix a dosage of Islam with a lot of military training. Then they also train a new generation of mosque leaders and clerics who go open their own madrassas or go populate mosques from Jakarta to Rabat.
But I thought that in the 1980s, when the Saudis started to really spend a lot of money on this, that they were doing this in a sense with our approval to help isolate Iran and the rise of fundamentalist Shi'ism?
Yes. Well, the first generation of madrassas, [from] which many of these Northern Alliance people also came, were organized to fight the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. This was obviously the cause.
So they were basically recruiting schools?
They were recruiting, organizing schools which also use Islamic ideology as a way of creating a very efficient guerilla army with a very clear anti-communist ideology.
So what's wrong with that?
Nothing. We're dealing with the sort of unintended consequences of that, and particularly because the United States didn't really properly clean up after it left Afghanistan.
.....
Who goes to these madrassas?
They are recruited from among the lower classes and lower-middle classes. In the Afghan-Pakistan arena, there are members of Pashtun tribes who enroll in these madrassas. There are peasant children from the peasant backgrounds. And occasionally there are also lower middle-class children they are very able to recruit among people in Pakistan particularly who don't have any access to any other kind of schooling. ...
That's why the ideology that's propagated by these schools is so significant in shaping minds in the Muslim world. So if regular schooling is not schooling people, and schools that propagate fanaticism are schooling people, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what would be the impact on society.
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the Clinton administration
I think that one of the tragedies of this story is that the Saudi Arabians exported their problem by financing the schools, the madrassas, all through the Islamic world. I saw this in Uzbekistan a few years after Uzbekistan got out of the Soviet Union, became an independent state in cities like Tashkent and Samarkand, where the Saudis were funding these schools teaching Koranic studies and creating a class of people for whom education was simply the Holy Book, the Koran.
... What happened here was that the Saudi Arabian government had two wings. The mainland Saudi leadership went into financial issues, defense issues, and they controlled the elite establishment in order to purchase support. From the more fundamentalist religious groups, they gave certain other ministries, the religious ministries, education ministries, to more fundamentalist Islam leaders. And that's how the split occurred.
So the Saudi government was, to a certain extent, pursuing internally inconsistent policies throughout this period -- reaching out to the West with sophisticated, well educated, internationally minded leaders like its foreign minister, like its ambassador in Washington and others. At the same time, it was funding with this vast oil revenue a different set of efforts: education, which was narrowly based in the Koran. ...
It could be a village anywhere in Central Java. Two small girls in colourful dresses play noisily on a verandah. A mother nurses her child. Scrawny chickens scratch the bare earth. Then a woman clad from head to toe in black wanders by wearing gloves. A group of young boys, all wearing white robes and caps, appears at a street corner on the way back from prayers.
Nestled in the bosom of this bucolic Javanese community, the Ihya Us Sunnah Islamic boarding school could easily be overlooked by a casual passer-by. Yet this is no ordinary school. It was founded in 1994 by Ja'far Umar Thalib, the leader of Laskar Jihad, a militant Muslim group that sent hundreds of young men to battle Christians in far-flung Maluku.
If this is the heart of Islamic darkness in Indonesia, it is hard to fathom. Ihya Us Sunnah doesn't look like a Muslim fundamentalist stronghold. It's a humble set of buildings, populated by a handful of young boys, with no walls separating it from the nearby village. Given its openness, its proximity to the city of Jogjakarta 13 kilometres away and the easy coexistence with secular village life, it hardly seems to be one of those corners of Indonesia some United States officials believe international terrorists may be considering using as a base.
In reality, traditions of tolerance still prevail in most Muslim communities of Southeast Asia. But in places like Ihya Us Sunnah, there's also a vulnerability. The hard scrabble for resources and a lack of integration with secular society can leave Islamic schools and their students open to manipulation. If it has sufficient funding, and leadership that stresses integration, the Islamic education system will likely uphold moderate traditions. Without those factors, there's a danger it can become a fertile ground for militancy.
Teguh, a mild-mannered third-year information-technology student at the nearby Islamic University, helps run the Ihya Us Sunnah school. He gestures towards the mosque, where Koranic verse wafts out of open windows. "The mosque belongs to the village," he says in a quiet voice. "We rent some land. The lease is up in two years." Teguh isn't concerned about his more secular neighbours. At the time of this unannounced visit no security was evident. Indeed, Ja'far himself was arrested in May, leaving his three wives and numerous children in a gaily painted house at the back of the school.
But two years ago, Teguh spent a year in strife-torn Ambon with the Laskar Jihad. As he casually puts it, he "went to war." He doesn't say much about his experience except that he saw Muslim villages attacked by Christians and was in dangerous situations. He denies carrying arms and is oddly offhand about it all. "I went because I was on holiday between school and university," he says. "I won't go back until I've finished my studies."
If it's hard to determine what motivated Teguh to join the Laskar Jihad, it's easy to see how difficult it would be to dissuade him. The school is dependent on Ja'far for patronage and funding. There is no secular balance to the conservative Salafi Islamic dogma taught at the school.
At Ihya Us Sunnah boarding school, a young generation of Muslim boys badly needs a better-funded and broader education so they won't be brainwashed into believing that Muslims need defending in Ambon.
The State Department has already agreed to build several madrassas with US money. They also agreed to build several new mosques in the middle east.
Someone needs to track the State Departments money almost as evenly as the "oil for food" kick backs.
The US taxpayers would love to know where the State Departmens money goes.
I attended a madrassa. Probably, according to this article, I'm an anti-American terrorist...hmmm...NOT. Critiquing and criticing the imperialistic and tyranny supporting policy of the US is not anti-Americanism. In fact, it is particularly patriotic since only someone who cares about a nation would wish to change policies of that nation that are self-destructive and self-damaging.
Pakistan will never reform Madarssas or it's education. There is a simple explanation for this. Madrassas are the key behind Pakistani national identity and survival of Pakistan as a united nation. After partition Pakistan faced a severe identity crises. Surely the didn't want to be seen as descendents of Hindus who converted or were coverted (forcibly ofcourse). After 1947 Paki govt has started a project to cut its umbical chord which joins it to India. Many Pakistanis have been led to believe that they are descendents of Persians and Arabs. They even go as far as to suggest that Sanskrit is derived from (B)Ar(b)a(b/r)ic language. Whitout creation of a national identity,national culture and unique fictious past, Pakistanis will always be overshadowed by Indian culture. There are more ppl who speak Urdu as first language in India than Pakistan. Madrassas are the key to mass indoctrination of young generation of Pakistan becoz without the drive for intense hatred of India, Pakistan as a nation cannot survive. Balochistan and NWFP are essentially Afghan areas while Sindh,Punjab and Kashmir are originally Indian areas whose culture,language and history is indistinguishable from India.
Here's a lil unrelated fact: Jinnah's daughter Dina Jinnah Wadia(a Parsi) and his grandson are Indian citizens. Jinnah was a Muslim but his wife was a Parsi. His son-in-law was Catholic. While he had no qualms about marrying a non-muslim woman while he furiously objects to his daughter marrying a non-muslim.
I attended a madrassa. Probably, according to this article, I'm an anti-American terrorist...hmmm...NOT. Critiquing and criticing the imperialistic and tyranny supporting policy of the US is not anti-Americanism. In fact, it is particularly patriotic since only someone who cares about a nation would wish to change policies of that nation that are self-destructive and self-damaging.
Posted by: Shukri at May 17, 2005 01:04 PM
ROTFL!!! ROTFL!!! ROTFL!!!
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE TO STAY THE COURSE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM OPEN THE WORLDS EYES TO THEIR THREAT GIVE THE WORLD COURAGE TO STAND UP AND FIGHT THIS EVIL LET NOT THE WORLD BE DECEIVED BY THEM AMEN
PS
May 17, 2005
http://www.beecy.net/frank/
AGAIN NEWS WEEK LIED AND GOOD MEN DIED!!!
NOW THE MSM BLAMES BUSH NOW DON’T THAT JUST BEAT ALL?? THE IRAQI PEOPLE WERE MORE WORRIED ABOUT THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST CUTTING OFF THEIR HEADS, THEN THE GOING AND HAVING PANTIES PUT ON THEIR HEADS THE MSM JUST DOESN’T GETT IT?? OR MAYBE THEY DO AND ARE WITH THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST??
NO WONDER THE IRAQI PEOPLE AFTER A ISLAMIC TERRORIST BLOWS UP THEIR FRIENDS THROWS ROCKS AT THE MSM!!!!
REMEMBER THE MSM IS NOW ON THE SIDE OF THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST!!
NEWSWEEK LIED AND GOOD PEOPLE DIED!!!
REMEMBER ISACOFF IS A DEMOCRAT WHO SAYS THEY ARE NOT DANGOURS???
Illegals working with milk cows infect 18 cows with TB cows had to be put down in Kansas who says Illegals are not Dangerous??
Islamic Terrorist who killed children in Russia trial starts today??
More Islamic Terrorist Dead today thanks to the USA and the Iraqi Army!!!
Brit who got money from saddam[FOUND IN A HOLE DON’T SHOOT I’M A YELLOW COWARD] who now has a summer home in Portugal is in the USA to defend why he had taken the money from saddam[FOUND IN A HOLE DON’T SHOOT I’M A YELLOW COWARD] for that SUMMERHOME??
President Bush yesterday to promote Bio Diessal so we can grow our own fule for our Trucks!!! NO FOOD FOR YOU!! Yes President wants America to be FREE from sorces of forigen energy!!!
Wonder if the Arabs can eat black oil???
Sec. Rice went to Iraq who said she aint got any Balls!!! MSM said she had wore a vest?? NOT!! Well she looked Great loved the suit and the Cream color looked so good on her!! Well when the Pictures came out the MSM changed their story said she had a helment and vest while in a helo?? WELL DUH EVEN REPORTERS WHO LEAVE THEIR HOTELS WEAR THAT STUFF IN A HELO RIDE SO DO THE CONGRESSMEN AND WOMEN WHO GO OVER??
AGAIN THE NEWS WEEK LIED AND PEOPLE DIED !!! WHAT IS THE MSM ADGENDA ???
China is trying to Black Mail the Pope??
Another plane deverts cause a islamic terrorist on board??
AGAIN NEWSWEEK LIED AND GOOD PEOPLE DIED SHAME! SHAME!
WHO WAS THEIR SORCE THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST?? WHO WANTS TO DAMAGE THE USA BESIDES LIBERALS WHO BLAME EVERYTHING ON THE GOOD PEOPLE OF THE USA??
AFTER ALL WE DO HAVE SOME BAD PEOPLE LIKE EVERY WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE THEY THE MARJORTY HELL NO!! JUST LIKE THE DEMOCRATS ARE NOT THE MAJORTIY THEY ARE THE MINARTIY!! YES THEY LOST BECAUSE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE LOVE THEIR FREEDM AND WANTED PRESIDENT TO LEAD THIS NATION TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND THOSE WHO SUPPORT THEM!!!!
Faranc mans shute does not open and he dies??
Mexican Fox says he regrets his comments about Black Americans being Lazy?? Fox words do mean things!!!
News week lied and good people died!!! Shame! SHAME! SHAME! Why would newsweek do this if not to hurt the USA???
Islamic Terrorist murder clerics in Iraq now why would sader[]YELLOW FAT BOY] have his people do this ? he is in with the iran terrorist?? Could it be so he can take over just like he murdered 200 people in the mosque in Najif? Why is this FAT BOY still alive come on Iraqi People do not let this MONSTER take you down the path of destruction????
TX man comes to the aid of men beating a woman and was killed by the monsters gang were they illegal or a mulsum gang?? Remember the Islamic terrorist hand book?? WELL it is getting close to the time when all Americans will have to wear a Gun again??
BIO DESISSAL!!! YES OUR FARMERS GROW OUR FULE CAN THE ARABS EAT OIL??? NO FOOD FOR YOU!!
I AM BEGINNING TO THINK THE IRAQIS MADE A POOR CHOICE IN THEIR ELELCTION SEAMS THEY ARE NOT STOPPING THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND TODAY HAVE JUST MADE IT EASIER FOR THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST YES THEY ARE SELLING THE IRAQI PEOPLE OUT TO IRAN YES THE NEW IRAQI LEADER IS A PUPET OF IRAN?? WELL THEY CAN CHANGE HIM IN THE UP COMING ELECTION HOPE THEY DO!!
AGAN newsweek lies and good people died!!! What is the adgenda of this rag?? To HURT AMERICA AND HER PEOPLE???
Shukri...
I am not here to attack you, but only to ask a question and get a honest answer. It is always interesting to get a different perception.
You say you attended madrassas, and you are not a terrorist.
When will you be a terrorist? (what will push you over the brink to join your brothers)
and if you say "never" but you agree with fighting against occupation, then define your answer....don't hide behind "word play".
and if you are not willing to perform jihad, do you understand that you have muslim brothers that would say you are a terrible muslim and should die. If your muslim brothers came after you, who would you run to for help? and why?
What would you say to your brothers that would be against you for not being a good muslim?
I attended a madrassa. By Shukri,
What is the name of this madrassa and where is it located?
"In Pakistan, when you say 'we need to change the system' everyone says “yes”. The Majority agrees that capitalism is bad. "But when you ask 'so what should we replace capitalism with?' - the answer of most people will be 'Islamic revolution'." Most Muslims support the general ideal of an Islamic revolution. These ideas & ties are strengthened in the Madrasses.
In Pakistan there are 16,000 Madrasses. Here is how they are these funded:
1) Saudi money.
2) Every Eid (the Islamic festival that marks the end of Ramadan) the fundamentalist parties will collect the skin of a goat or a cow. Each skin will fetch about 400-500 rupees (about £5 or £6). In total jamait-e-Islam will collect millions and make upto 10 million rupees."
3) America poured $40 billion into the coffers of the jihad groups in Pakistan during the 1980s. Much of that money was used to set up madrassas in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan. Many of these were run by Pakistan's right wing religious parties and became, in effect, religious and political training grounds for the mujahideen.
It was from some of these religious schools in Pakistan that the Taliban emerged.
In Pakistan, the strength of Islam is indisputable. This is not just a state with an overwhelmingly Muslim majority; this is a virtually a theocratic state, founded on Islamic principles. Anyone who speaks out against the prophet Mohammed is liable to the death penalty in Pakistan, under the blasphemy laws.
This was not the case in the 1970s or even the 1980s but it is the case now."
Until the 1990s the Islamic parties never achieved more than two per cent of the vote. Soon it will be over 20 per cent.
So why is Islam emerging as such a powerful political force? It is partly a product of 13 years of government by the two main big business parties, the Peoples' Party and the Muslim League. They were seen as corrupt and incapable of standing up to the West leaving a lovely niche for the MMA.
In Pakistan, there is no compulsory education. There are state schools which provide primary education for a nominal fee. Poor families cannot afford this so the Islamic groups provide an “education” for children from poor families."
Most children only attend school for five years in total. "Working class families will either send their children out to work or to the 'madrasses' - the religious schools.
The madrasses provide not just “education” but free board and lodgings. These institutions began to flourish as 'schools for Jihad' in the 1980s during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Now mst people think 'Jihad' means 'holy war'. But it has wider meaning really. It means 'holy cause' though it can be for used for war also. It is an interchangeable term and this can cause misunderstanding.
Here are the bottom lines:
1) Pakistan is a breeding ground of international terrorism.
2) The West must recognise the fact that unless the terrorist sanctuaries within Pakistan are permanently closed, it can never win the international war against terrorism.
3) The World has yet to realize that they are now embroiled in a decades long war with vicious Islamofascists who hail from dozens of countries and nationalities, one of the strongest being Pakistan.
And the objective ….Islam ruling over the world…..”can’t happen”….don’t you believe it, they have made considerable in-roads in Pakistan….it is just a matter of time for the brand to become global.
Pakistan must suffer to get better…..the US needs to know how every dollar of its money is spent in Pakistan.