The Assam government has shut down around 700 madrassas in the past few years, which has led to a massive uproar in the secular (that is, Islamist) coterie. But the state’s Chief Minister is anything but apologetic about having closed these madrassas. While many claim that this is an attack on the country’s secular fabric, the justification on why a secular government must fund religious studies of a particular faith system remains obscure.
There are myriad incidents that demonstrate that madrasas often propagate the jihad ideology; their indoctrinated pupils frequently graduate to become recruits of various jihadi outfits. Despite abundant evidence of jihad preaching and recruitment within the four walls of numerous madrasas, India for a considerable period treated them as if they were harmless educational units. While all madrasas are not jihad recruitment entities, most of these institutions have the potential of becoming jihad recruitment centers at any time.
In India, the most “literate” state of Kerala has sent the maximum number of recruits to the Islamic State, and it is not unjustified to link these numbers to the madrassas active in the state. A 2018 India Today probe found that “several madrasas in Kerala are teaching the theo-Fascist variety of Islam” and Wahhabism. Funded by hawala money from Gulf countries, these seminaries have been indoctrinating impressionable minds to establish a worldwide caliphate through a global jihad.
The following year, NDTV published a detailed report on the jihad recruitment going on in West Bengal madrassas, highlighting how Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh used some madrassas in the Burdwan and Murshidabad districts for recruitment of young men to jihad terror activities; the Union Home Ministry also acknowledged this as a fact. In 2020, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) revealed that an Al-Qaeda cadre had planned to run a jihad training camp under the façade of operating a madrassa in West Bengal, and had already raised funds for the purpose.
But even before this revelation, an extensive Firstpost piece brought to the fore the fact that although Indian madrasas have not been as involved in jihad terrorism as their counterparts in the neighboring Islamic nations, their jihad recruitment was indeed very real. By teaching that women are inferior beings and non-Muslims are “kafirs,” they initiate their students into fanatical thinking.
A friend of mine who lives in Meerut decided to send her ten-year-old son to a madrassa during summer vacation to learn the Quran and “something about Islam” told me she was shocked when after a few weeks the child started asking “strange questions” like why she didn’t wear burqa; and was it “haram” to watch movies and have photographs in the house? When she asked him who had told him these things, he said his “maulvi saheb” at the madrassa had. “But I was really upset when one day he asked if our Hindu maid was a ‘kafir.’ I told him to stop talking such nonsense and decided that he was not going back to the madrassa,” my friend told me…
The hatred for non-Muslims that is propagated in such establishments is apparent.
While Saudi money is being used to prop up Wahhabism, other rich Arab countries are shelling out millions of dollars to promote conservative Islam in the guise of preserving Islamic culture and keeping children from mingling with children from other communities.
In a 2017 article, Indiafacts quoted retired IPS officer Ram Ohri: “According to a conservative estimate during the last two decades Saudi Arabia alone has rolled out nearly 90 billion dollars for the propagation of Wahhabi Islam through the establishment of thousands of mosques and madrasas. On a rough count, more than 25 per cent of the 90 billion petro-dollars are believed to have been pumped into India, Nepal and Bangladesh for establishing more madrasas. Additionally, huge sums were transferred from other Muslim nations, including Pakistan, to establish lakhs of madrasas in India and other countries of South Asia to step up the campaign of global jihad.”
Back in 2020, the Jammu and Kashmir authorities booked three teachers of a Siraj-ul-Uloom at Jammu and Kashmir’s Shopian district; according to police sources, 13 students of the madrassa had joined various terror outfits, and one of its alumni, Sajad Bhat, turned out to be the jihad suicide bomber who carried out the 2019 Pulwama attack, killing 40 India CRPF personnel.
After a high-intensity explosion took down an entire building of a madrassa in Banka, Bihar last year, Hari Bhushan Thakur, a local politician, stated, “Madrasas are meant to provide the education of terrorism in Bihar. Hence, we have demanded a ban on such institutions in Bihar.” While Thakur received a major backlash for his statement, one is left wondering how this mass of explosives made its way into an educational institution.
Despite the evident history of jihad recruitment in various madrassas, the enormous concessions made by preceding Indian governments towards these Islamic schools are astounding.
The government has been spending exclusively on the Muslim community through the funds allocated to Minority Affairs Ministry. These government funds were also supporting madrassas that were potential jihad recruitment units, and that promoted anti-Hindu sentiments.
Recently, the Uttar Pradesh Minister of State, Raghuraj Singh, called the madrassas “hideouts of terrorists, where they are trained,” and claimed that if given a chance, he would shut down all the madrasas in the country. Of course, he angered the secularists by his statement, but one can’t deny the need to mainstream education and eliminate the ghettoization of a community through religion-based schools promoting religious fanaticism. After all what business do institutions touting the jihad ideology have in secular countries — whether they be India or any democracy in the West?
PRCS says
Teaching Islam = teaching jihad.
mortimer says
PRCS is correct: The PRACTICE of jihad is a CANONICAL REQUIREMENT for every Muslim. Those who do not practice or at least DESIRE to practice jihad will go to Islamic hell.
“Whoever dies without having fought or having resolved to fight has died following one of the branches of hypocrisy.” (Reported in Sahih Muslim).
(Zad al-Ma`ad, 3/9-11)
gravenimage says
Yes–this is what Islam teaches.
Buraq says
Islam puts the ‘mad’ in madrassa!
Jim says
The jihadis have the tactic of pretending they believe in religious freedom and free speech, but they actually want to appropriate these values for themselves and take them away from everyone else. Jamie Glazov says it is the tactic of the psychopath. They pretend to be just like other people, but they aim to cheat and hurt other people. And even when they claim to uphold their values, they are undermining them. The Indians are doing the right thing. We should start fighting the jihadis that way too. Such as not letting them use foreign financing for huge mosques and cultural centers, not letting them infiltrate text books and curricula in public schools. There are all sorts of things that can stop the advancement of jihad. Not allowing them to build minarets or dominate skylines. Not letting them force their costumes on women or their food on school cafeterias. These are all parts of the Jihadi march through the institutions.
gravenimage says
Spot on.
Walter Sieruk says
That’s a good idea. Maybe Western governments should do the same.
Infidel says
Himanta Biswa Sarma – Assam’s Chief Minister – is one of the few people who can save India in the long term. During the elections in that state early this year, before he became CM, he publicly stated, ‘I do not want the muslim vote’ in a state where muslims are 35% of the population. Despite that, he won a thumping victory, and after the election, he shut down his party’s ‘Minority Cell’ which did outreach to muslims. He then announced that the state government would no longer fund madrassas, and converted them into normal schools for everyone
Another thing he did was boldly crack down on Bangladeshi muslim squatters in an area that belonged to a 5000 year old Shiva temple, and get them evicted. He announced that if they were valid Indian citizens, they’d be rehabilitated elsewhere, but if they were Bangladeshi muslim squatters, they were SOL. He’s also accused his opponents of trying to alter his state’s demography and wipe out its culture, and has been pushing for the National Registry of Citizenship, which would eliminate all foreigners from voting rights
I do hope that either he or Yogi Adityanath become India’s next prime minister, hopefully in two years rather than seven
gravenimage says
Thanks for that background, Infidel.
gravenimage says
India: Assam government shuts down hundreds of madrassas, jihad recruitment taking place in many of them
…………..
Good for Assam!
Derek says
Any state that has a policy that patronizes, allows, funds or tolerates, any religion or cult, that preaches undermining of human rights defined in the UN charter, of any person or group of persons not belonging to that cult, is to be sanctioned.
Why should any state be allowed to give out my money that I pay as tax, or other revenue collected by the state, to fund any institution that preacher that I, a non-believer, my property and my family, are forfeit.
Not only state funding, even allowing such institutions to function by use of public infrastructure should not be permitted