MUSLIM SCHOOLS TEACH HATE AND ABUSE CHILDREN
Hundreds of children 'abused in UK madrassas'... but only TWO have been convicted
Revelations follow undercover investigation into beatings and hate lessons at madrassas in Britain
By KATE LOVEYS
19th October 2011
Hundreds of children are being subjected to physical abuse in madrassas, an investigation claims.
At least 250,000 Muslim youngsters attend the religious instruction centres, which are not formally regulated.
And more than 400 allegations of physical abuse have been made over the past three years, with the total reaching 146 last year and 89 in 2009.
Prosecutors fear the real numbers may be higher because many parents are reluctant to make formal complaints or are pressured to withdraw them.
In a large number of cases children claim to have been hit with sticks or other implements.
At a Lancashire mosque, children as young as six were punched in the back, slapped, kicked and had their hair pulled. In Lambeth, South London, staff attacked youngsters with pencils and even a phone cable.
The stark findings coincide with a dramatic increase in the number of madrassas as a result of a growing Muslim population, which has now hit 2.5million, with half 25 or younger.
Children in madrassas spend about ten hours a week on Islamic law and learning to recite the Koran in Arabic.
Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, founder of the Muslim Institute think-tank, said large numbers of unregulated groups were opening madrassas most often in mosques but also in garages, abandoned pubs or private homes.
He said: We are basically destroying the lives of young people.
Some kind of system must be put in place to ensure that only teaching takes place there, not sexual or physical abuse.
The figures were obtained through a freedom of information request to more than 200 local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales.
Officials were asked to disclose information on allegations of physical and sexual abuse over the past three years.
They disclosed 421 allegations of physical abuse, only ten of which went to court, leading to two convictions.
The councils also disclosed 30 allegations of sexual abuse over the same period, which led to four prosecutions and one conviction.
Mohammed Hanif Khan, an imam from Stoke, was imprisoned for 16 years in March for raping a 12-year-old boy and sexually assaulting a 15-year-old.
Some local authorities told the BBC, which conducted the investigation, that community pressure had led families to withdraw complaints.
Mohammad Shahid Raza, chairman of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board, which was set up to improve standards in mosques, said he would investigate.
These figures are very, very alarming and shocking. There is no justification for such punishments within our mosque schools, he said.
Im not sure how wide this unacceptable practice is, but our responsibility is to make those who run the mosques realise we live in a civilised society and this is not acceptable at any cost.
Mr Raza said he wanted the issue dealt with through self-regulation.
Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the North West of England, said he believed the local authority figures represented a significant underestimate.
We have a duty to ensure that people feel confident about coming forward, he said.
Poor schooling slows anti-terrorism effort in Pakistan
By Griff Witte
Washington Post
Sunday, January 17, 2010
ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- With a curriculum that glorifies violence in the name of Islam and ignores basic history, science and math, Pakistan's public education system has become a major barrier to U.S. efforts to defeat extremist groups here, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.
Western officials tend to blame Islamic schools, known as madrassas, for their role as feeders to militant groups, but Pakistani education experts say the root of the problem is the public schools in a nation in which half of adults cannot sign their own name. The United States is hoping an infusion of cash -- part of a $7.5 billion civilian aid package -- will begin to change that, and in the process alter the widespread perception that Washington's only interest in Pakistan is in bolstering its military.
But according to education reform advocates here, any effort to improve the system faces the reality of intense institutional pressure to keep the schools exactly the way they are. They say that for different reasons, the most powerful forces in Pakistan, including the army, the religious establishment and the feudal landlords who dominate civilian politics, have worked against improving an education system that for decades has been in marked decline.
"If the people get education, the elite would be threatened," said Khadim Hussain, coordinator of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy and a professor at Islamabad's Bahria University. "If they make education available, the security establishment's ideology may be at risk."
That ideology, Hussain said, involves the belief that non-Muslim nations are out to destroy Pakistan and that the army is the only protection Pakistanis have from certain annihilation. Those notions are emphasized at every level in the schools, with students focused on memorizing the names of Pakistan's military heroes and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, but not learning the basics of algebra or biology, he said.
The nature of the education system is reflected in popular attitudes toward the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups that in recent months have carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Pakistan, many of them targeting civilians.
Although the groups in many cases have publicly asserted responsibility for the attacks, a large percentage of the population here refuses to believe that Muslims could be responsible for such horrific crimes, choosing to believe that India, Israel or the United States is behind the violence. When Hussain challenges graduate-level students for proof, they accuse him of being part of the plot, he said.
"Telling students they need to use evidence and logic means that you are definitely an agent of India, Israel and the CIA," he said. "They don't understand what evidence is."
The madrassas have multiplied in Pakistan as public education has deteriorated. But madrassas still educate only about 1.5 million students a year, compared with more than 20 million in public schools. If Pakistan is to improve its dismal literacy rate and provide marketable skills to more of the estimated 90 million Pakistanis under the age of 18, it will have to start in the public schools.
The United States plans to spend $200 million here this year on education, the U.S. Agency for International Development's largest education program worldwide. The money comes from the Kerry-Lugar aid bill, which was passed in late 2009 and promises Pakistan $7.5 billion in civilian assistance over the next five years.
The funds are intended to signal a substantial shift from earlier years, when U.S. assistance to Pakistan was overwhelmingly focused on helping the military, which is battling the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the nation's northwest.
U.S. officials say the money will be spent on a combination of programs, including infrastructure improvements, teacher training and updates to the curriculum. Unlike in past years, the money will not be filtered through non-governmental organizations and contractors but will be given directly to Pakistan's government, officials say.
The idea is to improve the capacity of the nation's fledgling civilian-led administration, and to promote trust between the two nations.
But there is also the risk that without adequate monitoring, much of the money will go to waste.
Pakistan's current spending on education -- less than 3 percent of its budget -- is anemic, and far lower on a relative basis than in India or even Bangladesh. Much of it never reaches students.
Pakistan's public education system includes thousands of "ghost schools," which exist on paper and receive state funding. But in reality, the schools do not function: A local landlord gets the money, and either pockets it or dispenses it to individuals who are on the books as teachers, but in fact are associates or relatives who do nothing to earn their salaries. School buildings are often used for housing farmworkers or livestock, not for education.
Those buildings that do operate lack basic facilities -- a 2006 government study found that more than half do not have electricity and 40 percent have no bathrooms. About a third of students drop out by the fifth grade. Teachers, meanwhile, earn as little as $50 a month, less in many cases than that of a domestic servant. The low pay mirrors teachers' perceived value in Pakistani society.
"The social status of teachers is low, compared with other professions," said Rehana Masrur, dean of the education department at Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad. "If someone is doing nothing and has no future, people say, 'Why doesn't he become a teacher?' "
Top government officials have little incentive to change that, experts here say. Although the vast majority of Pakistanis must choose between the public schools or madrassas for their children, Pakistan's well-to-do can send their kids to private schools, many of which are considered world-class.
Javed Ashraf Qazi, a former Pakistani education minister, said the United States has not helped by frittering away much of its assistance budget on poorly defined programs, such as conflict-resolution training, which he said leave no enduring impact. What Pakistan really needs, he said, is a network of vocational training institutes that can prepare students for the workplace.
"What would help is something that is lasting," he said. "The U.S. is spending more money, but spending it in a way that it does not leave any impact."
But Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted nuclear physicist at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University and a longtime proponent of education reform, said Pakistan needs something more fundamental.
"I don't think it's a matter of money. The more you throw at the system, the faster it leaks out," he said. "There has to be a desire to improve. The U.S. can't create that desire. When Pakistanis feel they need a different kind of education system, that's when it will improve."
Bangladesh seizes explosives from Islamic school
Mar 24, 2009
DHAKA,
March 24 (Reuters) - Bangladesh soldiers raided an Islamic religious school on
Tuesday as part of countrywide hunt for islamist militants and seized a cache of
arms and explosives stored there by suspected Islamist militants, police said.
The elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) force raided the Green Crescent Madrasa
at a village near Bhola district town, 350 km (219 miles) south of the capital
Dhaka, following an intelligence tip, a police officer told Reuters by telephone
from the scene.
"The raid is still continuing," said police inspector Mohammad Sohrab Ali. Two
suspected Islamist militants from the madrasa were detained, he added.
The government has been conducting a sweep for members of outlawed Islamist
groups, which it suspects may have been involved in the mutiny at the Dhaka
headquarters of a paramilitary unit last month.
The February 25-26 mutiny killed nearly 80 people, mostly army officers
commanding the paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) troops, and raised fears of
more violence to come.
Police last week said suspected Islamist militants had threatened the principals
of several English-language schools if they did not pay "tolls".
Officials say Islamist militants, who have killed dozens of people in Bangladesh
in bomb attacks in recent years, were trying to turn the Muslim-majority country
of 140 million people into a sharia-based Islamic state.
The radical Islamist movement has been subdued since six top commanders were
executed in 2007. But intelligence officials have said they were regrouping and
might strike again.
Police seized a huge cache of explosives, grenades and firearms after raiding
suspected militant hideouts ahead of parliamentary elections in December.
(Reporting by Nizam Ahmed; Editing by Bill Tarrant)
U.S. Islamic Schools Teaching Homegrown Hate
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
By Kenneth Adelman
NEW YORK Can it be true? That Islamic schools in the United States teach hatred towards American Christians and Jews?
The Washington Post on Monday revealed that one such school outside Washington, D.C., uses textbooks teaching 11th graders that "the Day of Judgment can't come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews."
Other accredited Islamic schools in America have world maps on classroom walls that exclude Israel. Some such schools promote class discussions that portray Usama bin Laden as "simply the victim of prejudice" against all Muslims in America.
These astonishing facts were broken by Post reporters Valerie Strauss and Emily Wax in their front-page piece, too tepidly entitled, "Where Two Worlds Collide: Muslim Schools Face Tension of Islamic, U.S. Views."
But their reporting was anything but tepid.
Americans generally assume Islamic hate teaching resided "out there" in Cairo or Riyadh. And yet it's right here in the elite Islamic Saudi Academy just outside Washington, D.C. "At stake," the two ace reporters say, "is how the next generation of Muslims coming of age in the United States will participate in the country they live in."
As with all educational institutions, the stakes are high. But the prospects here are low.
I don't know precisely what new immigrant schools taught when waves of Catholics or Jews first flocked to America. But I suspect they adopted and spread the basic American values tolerance, freedom and patriotism.
Surely not the hatred propagated in many Islamic studies classes. At the Al-Qalam All-Girls School in Springfield, Va., seventh graders learn that Usama bin Laden may be not a villain but a victim of Americans' biased views toward great Islamic leaders. Hence "some students question the government's claim that bin Laden is responsible for the terrorist attacks disputing that videotapes actually show him taking credit."
The Post reporters questioned "Fawzy, a 19-year-old who will graduate from George Mason University in 2003, [who] wonders whether the United States just needed someone to blame and picked a Muslim. 'A lot of the students can't make up their minds if [Usama] is a good guy or a bad guy,' Fawzy said. 'The thing is, we don't have any real proof either way. I think a lot of people feel this way.'"
Classrooms of the Washington Islamic Academy, which teaches kindergarten through fourth grade, feature world maps without Israel. "Upstairs in Al-Qalam girls school, the word is blackened out with marker, with 'Palestine' written in its place."
When the reporters asked about this, academy officials "defended the maps, pointing out that some of the students are refugees from Palestine and want their heritage represented."
These school officials attempt to delegitimize Israel. I would delegitimize them removing them from any role in shaping the beliefs and instilling knowledge in young Americans.
With the massive immigration of Muslims over recent decades primarily because of the wretchedness of most native Islamic states these parochial schools are increasing. Throughout America now are 200 to 600 Islamic day schools, teaching at least 30,000 full-time students and thousands more on weekends. The Washington Islamic Academy, outside the nation's capital, teaches some 1,300 kids, including children of Arabic-speaking diplomats.
It may rank among the worst of these academies, as it is funded by Saudi money. Its high school textbook, in the reporters' words, "says one sign of the Day of Judgment will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say: 'Oh Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him.'"
According to Strauss and Wax, "Several students of different ages, all of whom asked not to be identified, said that in Islamic studies, they are taught that it is better to shun and even to dislike Christians, Jews and Shiite Muslims.
"Some teachers 'focus more on hatred,' said one teenager 'They teach students that whatever is kuffar [non-Muslim], it is okay for you' to hurt or steal from that person."
What can be done about this outrage?
First, reveal it, for which Valerie Strauss and Emily Wax and the Post deserve a Pulitzer Prize. Other reporters and top media outlets should follow in their steps.
Second, stop the accreditation of these hate schools. This, too, the reporters investigated when contacting an official at an accrediting agency of the Islamic Academy. His response was typical bureaucratese: the Secondary and Middle School Commission of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools "does not delve into curriculum extensively but would be 'concerned' about such material being taught."
Well, he can stop being "concerned" and start de-accrediting the place.
Third, stop the Saudi funding. After Sept. 11, we were shocked to realize that "our friends, the Saudis" gave us Usama bin Laden, 15 of the 19 terrorists of Sept. 11 and more than 100 of the 150-plus terrorist leaders now confined in Guantanamo Bay cells. They also fund the Islamic schools spreading hate around the world towards Christians, Jews, America, freedom, and our sacred values.
Now we learn that Islamic hatred is being spread here at home, molding young American minds in what is shaping up as a real fourth column.
Kenneth Adelman is a frequent guest
A Madrassah in Bridgeview, Illinois
by Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com
June 20, 2005
Islamic schools constitute perhaps the least known area of Muslim institutional life in the United States, acting largely out of public view but with many signs suggesting their radicalization. When a reporter has the rare chance to interview faculty and students, especially with a photographer in tow, it's an important opportunity.
Marguerite Michaels of Time Magazine got "an unusual degree of access" to the inside of the Universal School in Bridgeview, Illinois, sixteen miles southwest of downtown Chicago, with 638 students in pre-K through 12th grades. She wrote up her impressions at "The Model School, Islamic Style" and Robert A. Davis took some striking pictures.
Unfortunately, Michaels proved clueless about the real nature of the Universal School. She portrays it as a moderate institution, but the information she herself provides points to its being a school imparting an extreme version of Islam.
Several examples concern sexuality:
· "Casual conversation between girls and boys is discouraged at all times," she reports. "They can't socialize," so any communication between the sexes is limited to writing.
"Older girls must wear the hijab (light blue for middle schoolers, gray or white for high schoolers) and a calf-length navy top that resembles a raincoat." The astonishing photograph of eight covered girls playing basketball brings to mind the female Islamist revolutionaries who rose against the shah of Iran in the late 1970s. Students realize how off-putting most Americans find this apparel; a freshman, Gulrana Syed, points out how "It's kind of impossible to blend in wearing a head scarf."
· When a high school senior, Ali Fadhli, tells about his "problems" dealing with America outside the school environment, he mostly means sexual temptation. This 18-year-old male will likely have difficulties adjusting to the mainstream of American life; he could end up isolated and perhaps violently rejecting the society around him.
Other attitudes concern the place of Muslims in the United States:
· Until 9/11, says Safaa Zarzour, vice chairman of the school's board and its former principal, Muslims, like other immigrants, experienced a "little discrimination." Since 9/11, however, "people don't think there is any such thing as a good Muslim." One school family actually fled the United States after 9/11 for the United Arab Emirates, saying it did not feel "welcome here as Muslims." This siege mentality furthers the Islamist agenda of grievance and demanding special privileges.
· So too does a comment of Universal's principal, Farhat Siddiqui. "We're telling our kids they're American. But the doors of opportunity have been shut since 9/11. What's the password to open them?" This is nonsense, for all evidence indicates that Muslims are flourishing socio-economically in the United States, no less after 9/11 than before it.
· The high school senior quoted above also believes that "America" sees Muslims as the "new enemy." A student named Ryan Ahmad observes that "Americans seem to have more fun. Muslims try to be American, but we don't know how. The cultures are so different." Seeing Americans and Muslims, or more accurately, non-Muslims and Muslims, as separate populations is a key component of the Islamist project.
A preoccupation with foreign policy rounds out the picture:
· "They are obsessed with foreign politics," says Steve Landek, the mayor of Bridgeview. "I come to talk to them about better sidewalks. They want to know how to run for Congress so they can change America's Israeli policy."
· Assigned in English class to write about his American Dream, a 15-year-old wrote that the territories under Israeli control should be returned to the Palestinians and "the Jews should be left to suffer."
I finished Marguerite Michaels's article doubly dismayed. First, that a veteran Time journalist cannot see an American madrassah before her very eyes, replete with the alienation, resentment, supremacism, and isolation that feed the Islamist temperament. Secondly, that this "model school" quietly and openly churns out graduates hoping they will create an Islamic States of America.
From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2696
Islamic schools under abuse scrutiny
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- The accounts are disturbing: beatings, forced sex and imprisonment with shackles and leg irons. Abuse accusations from hundreds of children sent to study at Islamic schools are prompting growing calls from parents and rights groups for a full-scale investigation.
But officials have moved slowly and cautiously in probing the charges of mistreatment in Quranic schools, or madrassas -- pointing to a paradox across much of the Muslim world. It's often easier to tackle Islamic militants than to confront the cultural taboo on publicly airing alleged sex crimes and challenging influential clerics.
Still, if Islamic institutions ever face a reckoning over sexual abuse -- such as the Roman Catholic upheavals in recent years -- it could begin in Pakistan where institutions already are under unprecedented scrutiny by anti-terrorism agents.
"We are forcing people to look this problem in the eye," said Zia Ahmed Awan, whose group Madadgaar, or Helper, compiles reports of sexual abuse of children in Pakistan. "It is not anti-Muslim. It is not anti-cleric. We are looking out for the most vulnerable in society."
Last year, a Pakistani official stunned his nation by officially disclosing more than 500 complaints of sexual assaults against young boys studying in madrassas. Children's rights advocates were elated, feeling their long-standing claims had been validated. They also hoped Pakistan's actions would open related inquiries in other Muslim nations -- similar to the domino effect through parishes after the Catholic abuse scandals broke in the 1980s.
But there's been little progress since.
There have been no significant arrests or prosecutions involving alleged sex abuse in madrassas. Also, the official who made the revelations -- Amir Liaquat Hussain, the deputy minister for religious affairs -- now refuses to discuss the issue after reported death threats and harsh criticism from Islamic leaders. He turned down repeated interview requests by The Associated Press.
Every discussion about Pakistan's madrassas leads eventually in an uncomfortable direction for authorities: the potential problems of leaning too hard on Islamic schools.
The madrassas have ties to influential religious and political groups. The core of madrassa funding is a tour of powerful networks: government aid, Saudi donations and zakat, the traditional Islamic practice of giving alms.
The schools also serve as a social safety net in a nation with a galloping birth rate and nearly one-third of the population under the poverty line -- meaning they cannot afford basic necessities.
Poor families often count on the nation's more than 10,000 madrassas to take one or more young sons to ease financial strains at home. The boys typically receive little more than Quranic studies for an education. But the big dividend for families is the housing, clothes and meals offered the boys. The schools, which have up to 1 million students, operate with almost no official oversight.
"The mullahs think they are above the law," said Asma Jehanghir, chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a nongovernment agency. "We have to break this wall of silence."
An Interior Ministry official confirmed that police are investigating some cases of alleged sex abuse by madrassa instructors. He declined to give further details or to be identified by name because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Hanif Jalandhri, the head of the Federation of Madrassas, the main overseeing agency in Pakistan, acknowledged that abuses could occur, but disagreed it is a widespread problem.
"I cannot rule out isolated incidents of sex abuse at madrassas, but I reject reports that hundreds of students are being subjected to sexual attacks at madrassas," he told AP. "It is wrong."
Pakistani rights groups are encouraging parents and children to speak out and document abuse. Dozens of allegations of abuse in madrassas are being compiled -- part of a wider campaign to draw attention to child abuse in a culture where domestic violence is common but rarely reaches the public's attention.
"The difference now is that no one can deny (abuse) is happening," said Manizeh Sano, executive director of Sahil, a group assisting child victims of sexual abuse. "The leaders of madrassas cannot turn their back on this problem anymore. That's a first step."
A madrassa teacher and two others are jailed awaiting trial in the port city of Karachi for an acid attack on a 14-year-old boy in 2002 after he allegedly refused to have sex with a cleric. The boy was blinded and badly disfigured. The suspects deny the charges.
In December, in another part of Karachi, Muhammad Askoroni's mother noticed a bite on the 10-year-old boy's neck. The child started crying and vomiting when asked what happened, said his mother, Dil Jauher. The boy's claim: a cleric at his madrassa sodomized him after evening Quran classes, according to a complaint filed with police and the rights group Madadgaar.
Jauher claims a madrassa official and village elders offered her a bribe to keep the incident quiet. "But I want justice for my son," she told AP.
There have been no arrests yet in the case.
The files of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan include the affidavit of Atif Rehman, who was 11 when he was admitted to the Lahore Children's Hospital in April 2004 with head injuries and extensive bruises. He told investigators he was routinely beaten with iron rods at a madrassa in the northern city of Faisalabad and was chained when he tried to escape.
"The boy was bleeding from the mouth and nostrils," said his father, Muhammad Aashiq, according to the commission report.
A madrassa teacher, Qari Mahboob Aalam, denied the torture allegations, but admitted "it is a practice to chain students," the report said.
The maximum penalty in Pakistan for sexually attacking a child is life imprisonment, according to Karma Cauchy, a senior Pakistani lawyer. But tribal justice and Islamic law dominate in some parts of the country and could bring calls for violent punishment.
"When you start talking about it, then you start to think that things can change," said Fazila Gulrez, spokeswoman for the Islamabad-based Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child. "That is what's happening here in Pakistan. People are starting to talk about it."
The problem goes beyond Pakistan, according to scattered references to alleged sex abuse and other rights violations in madrassas noted in recent international reports.
A 2003 survey by the Thailand-based group ECPAT -- or End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes -- raised concerns about madrassa teachers in Mauritania forcing students to beg on the streets and hand over the money.
In Bangladesh, rights groups have increased calls for madrassa investigations after a teacher was arrested in March and charged with raping girl students, who are allowed to attend the schools that in many other countries are male-only.
In the Middle East, few activists have demanded investigations into conditions in Islamic schools, but that could change as groups increasingly challenge traditional centers of influence.
"Pakistan is now a center of the showdown between modernizing Islam and forces resisting change," said Irfan Khawaja, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York who follows Islamic affairs. "The madrassa issue is part of this. It will spread around the Islamic world."
Amnesty International and the Human Rights Council of Pakistan have recounted cases in Pakistan of students shackled to prevent escape and noted growing allegations of sex abuse.
"Leaders of religious parties resent official probing into the functioning of the madrassas and threaten retaliation if they are more closely controlled," Amnesty wrote.
The London bombings in July, meanwhile, could hasten the end to the madrassas' traditions of secrecy and autonomy in Pakistan.
At least one of the attackers visited a Pakistani madrassa. Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has vowed to stamp out "extremism and militancy" in madrassas and has threatened to close schools that refuse to register with authorities by the end of the year.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.
Pakistan struggles with Islam in schools
By Paul Watson
Los Angeles Times
Lahore, Pakistan -- Each year, thousands of Pakistani children learn from history books that Jews are tightfisted moneylenders and Christians vengeful conquerors. One textbook tells children they should be willing to die as martyrs for Islam.
These aren't students being indoctrinated by extremist mullahs in madrassas, the private Islamic seminaries often blamed for stoking militancy in Pakistan. These are pupils in public schools learning from textbooks approved by the administration of President Pervez Musharraf.
Since joining the United States as an ally in its "war on terror" four years ago, Musharraf has urged Pakistanis to shun radical Islam and pursue "enlightened moderation."
Musharraf and U.S. officials say education reforms are crucial to defeating extremism in Pakistan, the only Islamic nation armed with nuclear weapons. Yet reformers who study the country's education system say public-school lessons still promote hatred against non-Muslims and urge jihad, or holy war.
"I have been arguing for the longest time that, in fact, our state system is the biggest madrassa," said Rubina Saigol, a U.S.-trained expert on education. "We keep blaming madrassas for everything and, of course, they are doing a lot of things I would disagree with.
"But the state ideologies of hate and a violent, negative nationalism are getting out there where madrassas cannot hope to reach."
The current social-studies curriculum for sixthand seventh-graders instructs textbook writers and teachers to "develop aspiration for jihad" and "develop a sense of respect for the struggle of (the) Muslim population for achieving independence."
Textbook teaches students to prepare for jihad
In North-West Frontier Province, governed by supporters of the ousted Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan, the federally approved Islamic-studies textbook for eighth grade teaches students they must be prepared "to sacrifice every precious thing, including life, for jihad."
"At present, jihad is continuing in different parts of the world," the chapter reads. "Numerous mujahedeen (holy warriors) of Islam are involved in defending their religion, and independence, and to help their oppressed brothers across the world."
The textbook for adolescent students says Muslims are allowed to "take up arms" and wage jihad in self-defense or if they are prevented from practicing their religion.
"When God's people are forced to become slaves of man-made laws, they are hindered from practicing the religion of their God," the textbook says. "When all the legal ways in this regard are closed, then power should be used to eliminate the evil.
"If Muslims are being oppressed," the book reads, "then jihad is necessary to free them from this cruel oppression."
"Jihad" can mean peaceful struggle as well as holy war. Jihad can be waged on several levels, from a peaceful, inner struggle for one's own soul to the killing of infidels.
Pakistani critics of the public school system maintain that jihad's softer sense is easily lost in lessons that emphasize the oppression of Muslims in many parts of the world and that encourage fellow Muslims to fight.
"Some people coming from the regular school system are volunteering for various kinds of jihad, which is not jihad in classical Islamic theory, but actually terrorism in the modern concept," said Husain Haqqani, a Pakistani author and professor of international relations at Boston University.
"All of that shows that somehow the schooling system has fed intolerance and bigotry."
Pakistan is an Islamic state, and 97 percent of its people are Muslims, so it's not surprising that its government promotes Islamic values in public schools.
But Pakistan's public education system goes beyond instilling pride in being Muslim and encourages bigotry that can foment violence against "the other," said Haqqani, who has written a new book on links between the military and radical Muslims.
Under Pakistan's federal government, a national curriculum department in Islamabad, the capital, sets criteria for provincial textbook boards, which commission textbooks for local public schools.
Javed Ashraf Qazi, a retired army general and former head of the military's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, was named education minister last September to revive a stalled reform effort.
Study weighs in on public-school textbooks
In a nation with one of Asia's highest illiteracy rates, Qazi said he was determined to have specialists rewrite course guidelines and textbooks, from the first grade to the college level, so that "the curriculum will be in line with that of any other advanced country."
"We don't want to condemn any religion -- which we will not," he said.
A study of the public-school curriculum and textbooks by 29 Pakistani academics in 2002 concluded that public-school "textbooks tell lies, create hatred, inculcate militancy and much more."
The study by the independent Sustainable Development Policy Institute angered religious conservatives, and even a few liberals, who saw it as an attack on the country's Islamic values, or even a plot by Western governments and rival India to subvert Pakistan.
Qazi headed the ISI from 1993 to 1995, when the intelligence agency was recruiting students from Pakistan's madrassas to join the extremist Taliban militia. Under Qazi's watch, the Taliban won its first major victory, the seizure of Kandahar, with ISI training and weapons.
His critics say that makes Qazi the wrong man to take on hard-line Islamic parties and clerics who are blocking education reforms. But the education minister insists he will fight hard to correct a curriculum he calls lopsided.
It would be easier to end extremism in Pakistan if Western governments did more to resolve conflicts that anger Muslims worldwide, such as the war in Iraq, the dispute with India over the enclave of Kashmir, or the Palestinians' struggle against Israel, he said.
After it won independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan had a secular public-school system. President Zia ul-Haq, a former military dictator, ordered Islamic education to be incorporated into the public-school curriculum in the 1980s as he consolidated power with the support of hard-line Islamic clerics.
Still grappling with 'Islamization' policy
Pakistan is still grappling with the lethal forces that Zia's "Islamization" policy unleashed.
Educationists pressing for deeper reforms say they suspect Musharraf, an army general who seized power in a 1999 coup, wants to maintain elements of Zia's strategy in order to preserve the military's dominant role in Pakistani society.
"Reforming education is not a part of Musharraf's agenda, because it will require squarely confronting the mullahs," said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor who specializes in high-energy and nuclear physics.
"Musharraf acts only upon pressure, and there must be relentless, sustained pressure from the outside world if meaningful reforms are ever to become reality," he said.
Punjab state's seventh-grade social-studies textbook, published in January, begins with a full-page message from Musharraf urging students to focus on modern disciplines such as information technology and computers.
"It is a historical fact that the Muslims ruled the world for hundreds of years," Musharraf writes. He acknowledges that in the past, Pakistan's school curriculum "was not in concert with the requirements of modern times." But he assures students that "textbooks have been developed, revised and updated accordingly."
The changes, if any, are hard to spot. Disparaging references to Christians, Jews and Hindus from previous editions are carried over to the new text.
"Before Islam, people lived in untold misery all over the world," the textbook reads. "Some Jewish tribes also lived in Arabia. They lent money to workers and peasants on high rates of interest and usurped their earnings. They held the whole society in their tight grip because of the ever increasing compound interest.
"In short, there was no sympathy for humanity," the passage continues. "People were selfish and cruel. The rich lived in luxury and nobody bothered about the needy or those in sufferings."
A section on the Crusades teaches that Europe's Christian rulers attacked Muslims in the Holy Land out of revenge even though "history has no parallel to the extremely kind treatment of the Christians by the Muslims."
"Some of the Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem fabricated many false stories of suffering," the passage continues. "If they were robbed on the way, they said it were the Muslims who robbed them."
Christians eventually realized they were inferior to Muslims, the chapter concludes.
Combined with lessons on armed jihad, such a view of history helps make young Pakistanis ripe for manipulation by Islamic militants, who have given jihad "a demonic meaning," said Saigol, the education expert.
"The word is so much more associated with violence, killing, death and blood," she said, "that I think it's difficult to reclaim it, as the modernists are trying to do, and turn it into a war against one's inner self."
By Brian Murphy
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 3, 2005
ISLAMABAD,
Pakistan -- Page after page, activists are battling to purge school textbooks of
Muslim-inspired hatred and intolerance that they fear is creating a new
generation of Islamic extremists.
They flag hard-edged Muslim views toward other faiths, such as those
describing past efforts by Hindus and Christians to "erase" Muslims. They note
sections that speak of martyrdom and the duty to battle perceived religious
enemies.
"We are fighting for the future of Islam. Children are sometimes being
force-fed a diet of hate, anger and intolerance," said Ahmad Salim, leader of a
campaign to have Pakistan's education establishment remove what activists
consider extreme language and images from the curriculum.
Mr. Salim's group, the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, issued a
report two years ago calling for broad revisions.
This month, it plans to issue an updated review of all Pakistan's textbooks
that reprimands authorities for failing to make serious changes.
It will be the latest example of widening appeals for textbook reform across
the Islamic world.
Barely a whisper just a few years ago, the demands have begun to draw
attention at the highest levels. Educators and activists argue that current
battles against Islamic extremism are superficial without deep revisions of
schoolbooks -- similar to efforts to purge Balkan lessons of ethnic slurs after
the wars of the 1990s.
In Jordan -- the target of triple suicide blasts Nov. 9 claimed by al Qaeda
-- another overhaul is expected in next year's textbooks, part of a process that
includes making clear distinctions between terrorism and what that nation sees
as legitimate struggles, such as the Palestinian uprising. Even Saudi Arabia has
started to rewrite its highly conservative lessons after worries they were
encouraging homegrown radicals.
Jihad a central concept
Much of the concern among reformers is how students learn about jihad -- a
concept that encompasses all acts on behalf of Islam. It's clear the phrases in
some textbooks pay homage -- directly or indirectly -- to violence.
"Recognize the importance of jihad in every sphere of life," say the
curriculum guidelines for Pakistan's elementary schools. Critics claim the
message is often interpreted in malignant ways, such as strong denunciations of
Pakistan's historical Hindu rivals in India or sympathy for Islamic militants in
Kashmir and elsewhere.
In the Palestinian seventh-grade Arabic language book, a 1930s protest poem
called "The Martyr" includes the lines: "And the flow of blood gladdens my soul.
... And who asks for a noble death, here it is."
The Palestinian 11th-grade "Islamic Culture" book has dozens of appeals for
Islamic solidarity to confront "enemies" such as Israel, its allies and Western
culture. "The Islamic nation needs to spread the spirit of jihad and the love of
self-sacrifice among its sons," reads one passage.
Fifth-graders read: "The martyrs kiss [the Palestinian flag] with their
blood."
Critics sound off
Nearly every section of the Palestinian textbooks touches on the intifada.
"Peace with Israel is not mentioned at all," according to a report by the Center
for Monitoring the Impact of Peace, an Israeli-American group that examines
schoolbooks throughout the Middle East.
"There is an incredible glorification of jihad (as holy war) throughout the
entire Palestinian school curriculum," said Itamar Marcus, director of
Palestinian Media Watch, a Jerusalem-based group that monitors Palestinian
broadcasts and publications.
Israeli textbooks have undergone extensive reforms in the past decade to
remove the most overt anti-Arab bias, but Arabs are still widely portrayed as
opposed to gestures for peace. Meanwhile, books used by Israel's ultra-Orthodox
Jews often give negative impressions of Arabs as shifty and violent.
In Saudi Arabia -- guardian of Islam's holiest sites -- textbooks reflect
the kingdom's two main pillars: commitment to spread Islam and to follow
Wahhabism, an austere Saudi interpretation of the faith.
Wahhabism spreads out
This puritanical brand of Islam has provided theological footing for the
faith's most extreme edges, including al Qaeda and other terrorist
organizations. Its lessons also spill far beyond Saudi borders, since the Riyadh
government funds hundreds of schools around the world.
The Saudi schoolbooks have been modified in the past two years to soften the
descriptions of non-Muslims, other cultures and different branches of Islam,
though critics say it still has a way to go.
Pressure for change came from two directions. The West, particularly the
United States, began serious demands for textbook reforms after the September
11, 2001, attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. But the overseers of
Saudi education -- heavily influenced by Wahhabi clerics and scholars -- got
serious about changes only after members of the royal family stepped in.
Saudis feel a jolt
Muslim militants, apparently inspired by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, began
attacks on Saudi soil in May 2003 and rattled the kingdom's pro-Western leaders.
In a speech last year, Mohammed al-Rasheed, the Saudi education minister, told
teachers and administrators to "stay away from extremism and fanaticism."
A recent U.S. State Department report on global religious freedom noted that
Saudi Arabia has "removed some disparaging references to other religious
traditions" from schoolbooks, but the kingdom was still listed among the most
restrictive religious settings.
The Saudi curriculum frames the world along rigid lines. Religious studies
note Islam's historical bonds with Christianity and Judaism, but declare that
only Muslims practice the true faith and "other religions destroy their
followers."
Saudi seventh-graders also read that Judaism is a "corrupted religion."
Lessons portray the Muslim world as under constant threat. In ninth-grade,
geography studies describe centuries of "malice and hatred" toward Muslims, from
the Crusades to recent conflicts in Kashmir, Chechnya and the Palestinian
intifada.
Critics unimpressed
Such phrases were taught in Saudi classes as recently as the 2003-04 school
year, according to international monitors. It's not clear whether they will be
removed in subsequent years.
"The recent changes in the Saudi textbooks do not offer any real improvement
in the level of hatred that the schoolchildren are taught," said Logan Barclift,
an analyst at the Institute for Gulf Affairs, a Washington-based group that
monitors politics and education in the Gulf. "As long as this continues, it will
be much harder for a more tolerant view of Islam to take hold in the Arab
world."
Right now, Saudi education is directed by some of the most conservative
forces in the kingdom. One petition, signed by some judges and clerics last
year, denounced the reforms as American pressure aimed at taking "the kingdom
along the path of infidels."
Jordan has conducted one of the most sweeping revisions of its schoolbooks,
which were also used by Palestinian children until the 1990s and had contained
some of the most direct praise for martyrdom on behalf of Islam.
"We want to instill in [students] positive values of accepting the 'other'
and coexisting with other societies," said Jordan's education minister, Khaled
Touqan. "It's true that in today's world, the reality may be far off."
AP writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad, Diana Elias in Kuwait City and
Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
Nineteen Muslim teachers held in restive Thai south
By Nopporn Wong-Anan
Reuters
Tuesday, March 28, 2006; 5:51 AM
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Nineteen teachers at an Islamic school founded by a top fugitive insurgent in the Thai south have been held on suspicion of involvement in two years of bloody separatist violence, officials said on Tuesday.
The arrests would fuel more resentment among ethnic Malays in the mainly Muslim region, where more than 1,100 people have been killed in the violence, Muslim leaders and lawyers said.
Security officials in Bangkok said the 19 men were arrested under a controversial emergency decree which allows detention of suspects without charge for 30 days.
The teachers at Thamma Wittaya School in the city of Yala were arrested last week after they came back from a curriculum preparatory meeting on an island off nearby Satun province, said a Bangkok-based Muslim lawyer who is working on the case.
"Police and soldiers went to search their houses and arrested them after they came back from the island," Kitcha Ali-ishoh, who also works for a Justice Ministry-appointed agency to bring peace to the south, told Reuters.
"This mass arrest as a result of their meeting, which was not a secret, will affect students when classes resume," he said.
Thai schools are on holiday until in mid-May.
At least six teachers from the school -- founded by Sapaeing Bazo, the most wanted separatist leader with 10 million baht ($257,000) on his head -- have been killed since the latest unrest began in January 2004.
Security agencies have named Sapaeing as a leader of the BRN Coordinate, one of the groups behind the violence in the region, and say he is believed to be hiding in Malaysia.
Several teachers and students at Thamma Wittaya, a school of 6,000 students which teaches both Islam and general subjects, have been arrested previously on suspicion of involvement in the two-year insurgency, police said.
Security officials told Reuters the 19 teachers were arrested because other suspects had implicated them during police interrogations and some of these teachers were educated in Muslim countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.
"They claimed to have a meeting about the school curriculum, but why did they have to have it on a remote unknown island hardly ever visited by tourists," a Satun security official said.
A leading Islamic scholar in the region said arresting people on flimsy excuses would only raise more anger in a region which has seen bouts of separatist violence since annexed by predominantly Buddhist Thailand a century ago.
"I've told senior officials so many times that if they suspect someone, they should invite them for questioning, not just detain them with no charges," Yala provincial Islamic council chief Abdullahmee Cheseh said.
The government has tried many ways to end the violence and win the hearts and minds of the 1.8 million people in the region bordering Malaysia, from brute force to bombing the region with millions of paper "peace" birds by Air Force warplanes. But the violence persists.
Saudi textbooks preach intolerance, hate
Despite post-9/11 policy change, children still taught to wage jihad
By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
Updated: 2:02 a.m. PT July 11, 2006
WASHINGTON - In the classroom and across Saudi society, Saudi officials insist their message has changed dramatically. The land that produced 15 of the 9/11 hijackers now officially preaches religious tolerance and moderation.
In numerous statements, senior Saudi officials have specifically claimed that the kingdom has cleaned up all school textbooks.
"We eliminated what might be perceived as intolerance from old textbooks that were in our system," says Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
There has been progress. However, a new study found examples of intolerance, even hate, in multiple Saudi textbooks now used in grades 1-12.
Nina Shea's group the Center for Religious Freedom examined textbooks used during the past school year, and found the following teachings, which were verified by NBC News:
· Jews and Christians are "enemies" of Muslims.
· Every religion other than Islam is "false."
· "The hour [of Judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them."
"It's taught that Christians and Jews are the enemy of the Muslim," says Shea. "And that the Muslim must wage jihad in order to spread the faith in battle against the infidel."
What's more, an eighth grade text equates Jews with "apes" and Christian infidels with "swine." A tenth grade text teaches that the life of a Muslim is worth twice that of a non-Muslim.
"This is the ideological foundation for building tomorrows' terrorists," says Shea.
And it's not just textbooks. In Canada, moderate Muslims like Tarek Fatah charge that militant literature provided by the Saudis is radicalizing some young Muslims, like the 17 men arrested there last month for planning bombings in Canada.
"I see Saudi influence," says Fatah, the communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.
Fatah says a version of the Quran sent to Canada from Saudi Arabia in his possession includes added language encouraging jihad.
"The Quran does not ask people to conduct war against non-Muslims, but that's what the Saudis are distributing," says Fatah.
In one example, the word "Jews" is added to the translation, identifying "people" who have "strayed from God's laws."
"It's totally unethical, immoral and un-Islamic to do that, to play around with the words of God," says Fatah.
Middle Eastern sources tell NBC that the Saudi government has stopped distributing the Qurans in question. As for the textbooks, Saudi officials say they can only change as much and as fast as Saudi society allows, and that they are more concerned about how reforms are perceived at home than in the United States.
The problem with schools in Muslim countries
May 21, 2006
SOROUSH SEIFI
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
My name is Soroush. I was born in Iran 21 years ago and now reside in Toronto. I lived through the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. But this article is not about me. It is about a disturbing trend in education in Muslim countries.
I hope to draw a correlation between the education system in Iran and the recruitment of angry, young and easily manipulated individuals by terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda.
The ruins of Ground Zero are proof that we no longer live in an isolated box. The problems of people on one side of the world can bring destruction to people on the other. I say this only to reiterate former secretary of state Colin Powell's statement in 2004: "To eradicate terrorism, the United States must help... alleviate conditions in the world that enable terrorists to bring in new recruits."
It seems that conditions in the Middle East are not being "alleviated," as the U.S. administration had planned. Even Republican senators disagree with U.S. President George W. Bush on the war in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs' annual surveys consistently show a lack of freedom of expression, human rights, access to resources, economic stability and technological innovation in societies where most terrorists come from.
So perhaps there are more effective ways than military force to fight terrorism. The failure of American military intervention should prompt us to look at other dimensions of the conflict.
The school system of countries like Iran, where I was educated, is a good place to start.
To be a terrorist, it is not enough to be poor and angry. Otherwise, many more terrorists would originate from places like sub-Saharan Africa, where the rates of poverty are much worse than in Saudi Arabia, the homeland of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 terrorists. Those terrorists were predominantly from middle-class families.
The more interesting issue is why these individuals were unable to think for themselves and find better ways of showing displeasure than through terrorism. My personal school experience in Iran offers a clue.
My education there was a military-like experience. The vice principal would stand in front of students lined up in formation and ask us to repeat pro-government propaganda, such as "Long Live Hezbollah" (a Middle Eastern paramilitary group with a strong presence in Iran and Lebanon). I was only 10 back then.
I remember that the teacher was similar to a God figure. We accepted his/her words without a grain of salt. Students were not encouraged to think for themselves or come up with our own solutions. On the contrary, we were spoon-fed information.
In religion and Qur'an classes (mandatory for all students), we learned the "correct" way of speaking, reading and acting. The incessant declaration of the importance of tradition helped students conform to what the authorities considered "Islamic." For example, it was blasphemous to dress in "feminine" colours, have a fancy haircut or, in general, think outside of the box. Such transgressions were often met with physical abuse.
I remember one of my close friends, Ali Esmaili, asked our Grade 5 teacher, "Miss, is it true that Ayatollah Khomeini only had an elementary school education?" The teacher immediately got up from her chair and her glare became fixed on Ali's eyes. She asked him to stand up. When he did, she hit him. After three blows, the teacher told Ali to go to the office and call his parents because he was going to be expelled from school.
Ali was not expelled in the end, but I learned never to question authority again. I can only assume that the other 41 students in that class continue to believe that very same message today: Never think for yourself.
When it came to mathematics and science, those subjects were no more than a struggle through theoretical concepts in books that we bought at the beginning of each school year. I never had to do research, look through dictionaries and encyclopedias, or go to the library to learn things on my own.
I remember that teachers constantly reviewed many of the political experiences of the nation in a certain framework. We were taught to accept some values and reject others. For one reason or another, the teachers, despite their own personal opinions, usually promoted the status quo.
In Grade 7, my teachers told me and other students to tell our parents to "vote for Nouri," the conservative opponent of the former Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami.
My experience in Canadian schools has been entirely different. I moved here in 1997 with my family and went into Grade 8 in the Toronto public school system. The teachers there taught me to understand things through various creative activities and to think for myself.
I sometimes wonder whether young Muslims who become terrorists are trapped by the limits of their education. Like me and my classmates in Iran, they don't question anything; they merely do what others tell them to do for no other reason than to simply obey orders.
To alleviate terrorism, it will be necessary to create educational systems in Muslim countries like Iran that allow the harvest of children's creative ideas. Allowing thought to grow will give these children the opportunity to imagine and be innovative as adults; they will find new ways to solve their problems. These solutions will stem from within and most likely match their culture, as well.
It is not possible to build a house without first laying the foundation. Hence, developed nations instead of military intervention have the responsibility to help lay the foundation and encourage education systems that foster creativity in Muslim nations.