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Fake Degrees for the Big Boys in Pakistan
Schooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/chitribts/20041128/ts_chicagotrib/schooledinjihad
Posted by
mumbaikar
Nov 29, 2004 06:11 am
Chicago Tribune Schooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/chitribts/20041128/ts_chicagotrib/schooledinjihad
Fake Degrees for the Big Boys in Pakistan
Schooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
Wearing a dark jacket instead of his army uniform, he denounced religious extremism and vowed to fix the Islamic schools in his back yard accused of fomenting hatred, the ones that crank out militants the way Harvard churns out MBAs.
But almost three years later, Pakistan remains a country where promises come easier than progress. Indeed, travels through the dense cities and dusty provinces of this Muslim nation that relies heavily on U.S. aid show just how little has been done to reform education--both in the Islamic madrassas and the failed public schools.
In the struggle for the soul of Islam, few things are as important as education reform. Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools were described as ``incubators for violent extremism`` by the Sept. 11 commission.
Little has changed inside the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, where Maulana Samiul Haq still preaches the same anti-American rhetoric and praises Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
``He is a brave and courageous man,`` says Samiul, the madrassa leader who scoffs at the idea of government reform at the school. ``We will remain here no matter what.``
At public schools in Karachi, children as young as 5th graders still learn about the glories of jihad and martyrdom in textbooks the government approves. One 9th-grade student told a Tribune reporter that he dreamed of going to fight in a jihad when he grows up, if he could get his mother`s blessing.
Pakistani leaders, under enormous American pressure, have not sat idly. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has arrested more than 600 suspected Al Qaeda members and flushed out terrorists and their local allies from cities and tribal areas. Earlier this year, Musharraf called on Muslims around the world to replace extremism with an ideology of ``enlightened moderation.``
Musharraf appointed Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq, a longtime politician and son of a legendary Pakistani president, to head the Religious Affairs Ministry, one of the key agencies responsible for reforming madrassas. Ijaz brings considerable political skills and credibility to the reform effort, particularly among the powerful clerics skeptical of the government`s objectives.
But Ijaz has seemed reluctant to push hard for change. The lesson so far in Pakistan: While making arrests is important in the war on terror, adopting education reforms to combat the extremist teachings that foster violence is far more difficult, like asking ward bosses in Chicago to voluntarily relinquish power.
The International Crisis Group, a non-profit specializing in conflict resolution, blames the Musharraf government for not confronting the religious lobby. Critics say Musharraf has failed to tackle extremism in public schools and has not lived up to his promises to revamp madrassas.
``None of it has come true, nothing,`` says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
Carved from India in 1947, Pakistan is an Islamic nation of 159million people with a volatile ethnic mix, a history of tribal conflict and a three-tiered education system that serves the rich but not the poor.
Elite private schools, a legacy of British colonial rule, remain a haven for the children of wealth and privilege. Graduates are destined for influential jobs in the government and military.
The state-run school system forms the second tier, which critics say has long been plagued by neglect, corruption, incompetence, a bloated state payroll and financial problems. Pakistan, which has a constitutional mandate to provide education until age 16, now is one of only 12 countries that spend less than 2 percent of national economic output on education, not even half the amount earmarked for the military.
Madrassas, the final and some believe most troublesome tier, are secretive religious schools controlled by politically powerful clerics who advocate conservative Islam coupled with religious intolerance. They prosper on the financial donations of wealthy Muslims around the world.
Madrassas are thriving, partly because they offer free room and board and partly because parents are frustrated by the public schools` problems. In 1971, Pakistan had about 900 madrassas. Today, an estimated 20,000 madrassas educate as many as 1.5 million students a year.
One of the few things public schools and madrassas have in common is the teaching of jihad, an Islamic concept that has two meanings -- one a personal struggle against temptation and another a war of Muslims against aggressors. In Pakistan, particularly in the madrassas, jihad has essentially come to mean war.
A rare glimpse inside a madrassa
Almost 3,000 boys and young men attend Darul Uloom Haqqania, perhaps Pakistan`s best-known madrassa, often referred to in media reports as the University of Jihad. Its most famous student was Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed cleric who led the Taliban, the puritanical regime that once ruled neighboring Afghanistan.
On a rare visit inside Haqqania, boys can be seen locked in a courtyard for most of the day, rocking back and forth, memorizing the Koran and staring at a white wall. They are not allowed to talk to or look at each other. They do not understand the Arabic language they memorize, the teachers say.
Centuries-old textbooks are still in use, and the school`s leader, Samiul Haq, speaks with pride of Mullah Omar and his followers.
``I was pleased they became the rulers of Afghanistan,`` Samiul says. ``They restored law and order there. They respected human rights. They respected women`s rights. They completely eliminated heroin and drug use.``
Sprawled over 7 acres next to Samiul`s home northwest of Islamabad, Haqqania features vast dormitories with arches, administration buildings, even a graveyard. For a limited tour, school officials asked two women reporters to wear black robes and veils that covered everything but their eyes.
Samiul denies that Haqqania and other madrassas have been a source of jihad and militancy, but ample evidence suggests otherwise.
Only months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a conference at Samiul`s madrassa brought some of Pakistan`s most notorious militants to the pulpit. In the courtyard, masked men in camouflage marched and carried Kalashnikovs, as seen in a documentary called ``Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow.``
When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, Samiul and fellow clerics raised money to help the Taliban. One madrassa nestled in a working-class neighborhood gave almost $2,500 in donations--no small sacrifice for poor Pakistanis--to the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, receipts show.
Students at many madrassas have told reporters they went to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops. Samiul denies that any students left Haqqania, but Shah Abdul Aziz Mujahid, a friend and former student of Samiul`s, says about 1,000 Haqqania students took off for Afghanistan.
``They announced in the mosque, the Americans had come to Afghanistan,`` says Zaharullah, 22, who uses only one name. He lives near Samiul`s village but is not a madrassa student. ``All the religious scholars, including Samiul Haq, said, `Go. There is a jihad.```
Sitting in his study, Samiul, 62, toys with his glasses in his lap. He pulls his graying beard into a point and occasionally adjusts his gray-and-white turban.
``We are not against reforms,`` he says. ``We are trying our best to reform ourselves.``
He says he has added a computer room and English classes to his school. He dismisses government officials who advocate madrassa reform as stooges of the U.S. Madrassas will change on their own terms, he says, not those imposed by the government.
Many madrassa leaders agree, arguing they have already incorporated other subjects into their curricula. Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, the secretary general of a group representing about 8,000 madrassas, says his coalition developed a syllabus and published its own textbooks in math, English and Pakistan studies 15 years ago.
But buried in these books are matter-of-fact references to fighting and war. On page 65 of the English book, the focus switches from geography to Islam. Stories feature violent lessons against idol worship--a pointed reference against Hindus in neighboring India. In grammar lessons, the book includes these examples: ``You had been participating in Jihad`` and ``Go and fight the enemy.``
In science classes at a girls` madrassa in Islamabad, students learn that the sun was made by God. They study English translations of the Koran. A math lesson includes a formula that says God made the world in seven days. ``God created everything,`` says Shameem Akhtar, vice principal of the madrassa. ``So every subject relates to God.``
In contrast, just outside Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Sciences could be a model for the kind of madrassa reform the government envisions. It teaches English and math. Students from the madrassa performed better than most students from public schools in federal board tests for 10th graders. Seven students from this Islamic school scored among the top 10 in the nation.
President Faiz-ur-Rahman Usmani says jihad is just one of 70 subjects being taught at his school. He hauls out two dog-eared volumes of the 18th Century Islamic text that forms the basis of education in most Pakistani madrassas--out of 1,100 pages, only 15 deal with jihad.
But jihad is a captivating subject. Some of Usmani`s top students resent the government`s attempts to change their syllabus. It must include jihad, they argue, so they can learn the circumstances that lead to holy war. Teachers tell them it`s justified against an aggressive country. Right now, the young men say, jihad is justified both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Abdul Basit, 23, who just graduated, says he will go to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight America if ordered by a religious leader. ``Every religious man would go to defend our brothers,`` Basit says. ``I would like to go there.``
``Why not? I am ready for it,`` adds Azam Khan Tanoli, 23. ``Whenever our leaders say.``
At other madrassas, the sentiment is also hostile to the West. Many students do not believe that bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. They routinely attend protests against U.S. aggression. They talk of superpower ruthlessness, preferring to see the world through the prism taught inside madrassas: Muslims against the West.
The students firmly believe that America is out to destroy Islam, to crush any Muslim nation. For every argument, they cite some French book or an American newspaper article they once heard about, even if they never saw it.
They claim to know for a fact that thousands of Jews stayed home from jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. They believe Musharraf to be a lackey of America. They show a lack of tolerance for any other religion.
``Islam comes in the world to dominate the world,`` says Syed Ali Mohiuddin, 20, who graduated from a madrassa in Rawalpindi.
In the madrassas that allow visitors, younger children can be seen memorizing the Koran, each one starting at a different place, each one talking over the next, a mumble of broken Arabic that echoes in other classrooms. The young students sit on the floor in dark rooms occasionally lit by bare fluorescent light bulbs. There is no air conditioning, often no fans, and children are sometimes drenched in sweat.
The West believes madrassa students would be better off in a public school. But a message extolling conflict and extremism is easy to find there too.
Public schools in disarray
In a nation where the line between church and state often is blurred, students at public schools face some of the same problems as those at madrassas. Jihad is on everyone`s mind.
The public education system is a mess. State-funded schools are undercut by corruption and politics. Some schools are shams, existing only on paper but still eating into the limited education budget, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group. As a result, students have suffered. The literacy rate for adults is 41.5 percent.
The state maintains iron-fisted control over every aspect of the public school system from curricula to key jobs. Critics say the lessons promote the goals of a government highly influenced by the military: Recent public school curricula instructed educators to teach that fighting India is a religious duty and that the Kashmir (news - web sites) dispute is legitimate. India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmiri territory since 1947.
As early as 5th grade, public school students learn about jihad and martyrdom. A recent 5th-grade Urdu textbook devoted a chapter to Pakistani soldiers killed by the Indian army. The chapter quoted religious texts emphasizing that a Muslim has no faith if he does not wish for martyrdom, and that martyrs earn a special place in heaven.
One high school principal in Karachi turned Independence Day celebrations two years ago into an assembly encouraging students to fight jihad--if the opportunity arose.
``If you look at Pakistan`s educational system, it encourages you to fight in jihad. It glorifies the military,`` says A.H. Nayyar, who has studied the country`s schools. ``It imbibes the student with the philosophy of martyrdom and jihad.``
Like madrassa students, those who choose a public education often graduate ill-equipped for the modern job market, end up marginalized and can become easy recruits for militant groups. Messages promoting jihad or anti-Western views simply reinforce what they learned back in school.
Reform of the public school sector doesn`t seem likely. The new head of the Education Ministry is a former leader of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the feared intelligence agency in Pakistan that maintains strong ties to militant clerics. He has no experience in education.
Nayyar, who helped write a recent study on public schools for a Pakistani non-profit, found that the state-issued textbooks also promote prejudice and discrimination against religious minorities and women. Islamic studies permeate nearly every subject, from social studies to language. Clerics questioned his study, and Nayyar received death threats.
Critics say the government has failed to change public school textbooks because of fierce opposition from clerics. Nayyar says that earlier this year, the government removed some jihadi language from textbooks. But the clerics objected, and the government issued new textbooks, he says. This time, an entire chapter in at least one textbook was devoted to jihad. Nayyar says the chapter read like a lesson on jihad from the literature of banned militant groups.
Changes face stiff resistance
Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq strolls confidently into the conference room of a Peshawar hotel. He is impeccably dressed in Pakistani attire--a starched tunic-length shirt, baggy pants and dark vest.
As minister of religious affairs, he is one of the key people the president has tapped for madrassa reform.
Ijaz, 52, is a religious man who nonetheless smokes, which is frowned upon in conservative Islamic circles. He says he first turned down the job when Musharraf offered it last winter, fearing he would be caught between the government and the clerics.
``If officials wanted me to do something controversial or implement something the people didn`t want, it would be very embarrassing for me,`` Ijaz says.
But eventually he relented.
As the son of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the former president who set Pakistan on its path to Islamic fundamentalism, Ijaz can attempt to span the political divide between the government and the madrassas.
Everywhere he goes, he hears the name of his father, who took power in a 1977 coup and ruled until he died in a 1988 plane crash, the longest reign of any Pakistani head of state.
Under Zia`s rule, madrassas sprang up across the country. Madrassa leaders to this day remain grateful to Zia for his political and financial support. Muslims from around the world began using Pakistan as a base and a training ground for holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia supported the Afghan jihad and indirectly strengthened the madrassas. The two countries infused some $3.5 billion into Zia`s Pakistan, according to Milton Bearden, CIA (news - web sites) station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989. Bearden says most of that money went into buying weapons, but Saudi Arabia and other gulf states independently gave additional money to madrassas. Saudi officials acknowledge building schools during the war but say their involvement ended there.
``Zia didn`t directly give us money,`` recalls Maulana Muhammad Hasan Jan, who runs a madrassa in Peshawar. ``But in his time, the world gave us lots of money.``
Ijaz portrays himself as a realist schooled in the world of Pakistani politics and aware of the political booby trap that madrassa reform poses for Musharraf, already the target of failed assassination attempts.
Musharraf called for madrassa reform as part of a broad anti-terrorist program designed to appease the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the U.S. has provided additional aid and pledged $3 billion over five years.
The Pakistani president also began pushing legislative and constitutional measures that would solidify the military`s control of the government and extend Musharraf`s term until 2007. Musharraf succeeded largely because of support from the religious political parties, a bloc of which was newly elected into the Pakistani parliament.
This alliance now poses a problem: To satisfy his American patrons, Musharraf must crack down on madrassas. But if he succeeds, he will anger the clerics, the people he needs in order to stay in power.
In Musharraf`s January 2002 speech, he said all madrassas must register in two months and adopt a government curriculum by the end of the year. He vowed to close any madrassas that promote extremism or keep weapons.
Today, most madrassas remain unregistered, and no national syllabus has been imposed. Pakistan claims it shut down some madrassas, although no official could identify which ones. The government has opened three model schools with about 300 students each.
But some madrassas linked to banned militant groups still have been allowed to operate.
At a school raided in August after leaders were accused of Al Qaeda links, female students with sticks attacked police, said Faisal Saleh Hayat, the interior minister at the time. A Kalashnikov was found in the madrassa. The school remained open.
Most government officials, including Ijaz, now say that no extremism or violence is being taught in any madrassa in Pakistan. They refuse to publicly say anything negative about madrassas. They also admit they have no idea how many madrassas exist or where they are.
Ijaz`s goal is to get the clerics to accept a plan far more modest than Musharraf`s original proposals--a new curriculum that includes some secular subjects. It may not be the kind of reform the Americans want, but that`s about all Pakistan can accomplish in the current political climate.
``Everyone`s resisting,`` Ijaz says. ``Nobody`s on board yet.``
Critics: Reform talk is lip service
When Ijaz talks to clerics, he does not seem like a man bent on changing anything. He seems like a man who wants to be liked.
At this year`s ceremony to mark the death of his father, more than 1,000 people crowd into a hotel basement filled with posters of Zia. ``Man of the truth, man of the believers!`` they shout. ``Zia ul-Haq! Zia ul-Haq!`` Along with Ijaz, clerics get seats of honor onstage and in the front rows.
Every speech contains the language of Islamic struggle. The country`s information minister tells the crowd that jihad is part of Islam. Ijaz offers a message of support to oppressed Kashmiris, Afghans and Palestinians.
``For the preservation of Islam and the ideology of Pakistan, we will sacrifice even our last droplet of blood,`` Ijaz booms over the microphone.
The previous week, at the hotel in Peshawar, Ijaz is more direct to some 30 clerics, all wearing peaked hats, white caps or the signature turbans of the Pashtuns, who hail from one of the most conservative parts of Pakistan.
``It is widely believed that the government has a nefarious agenda against madrassas,`` Ijaz says. ``It is sheer misunderstanding. I have met with the president and told him that I had an age-old relationship with madrassas. I never noticed any sort of terrorism.``
Many critics believe that such scenes represent the true face of the Pakistani government--officials who pay lip service to education reform and to the Americans while currying favor with the clerics.
After a long day of reassuring clerics in Peshawar, Ijaz starts driving home to Islamabad in a Land Cruiser. Just before 10p.m., he grabs his mobile phone. ``Are you awake?`` Ijaz asks. ``I`m coming over just for five minutes. . . . Put on a good turban.``
The government minister pulls up in front of Haqqania, the madrassa run by Samiul Haq. Near a photo of Samiul holding the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, the two men hug.
Ijaz walks into Samiul`s office, leans back on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table and asks if he can light a cigarette. Samiul nods and grabs Ijaz`s arm.
Samiul says the religious affairs minister needs to teach people in other countries that Islam is a religion of peace.
``It`s up to him now, to get rid of the misunderstanding about Islam in the West,`` Samiul says. ``That`s his No. 1 job.``
Posted by
mumbaikar
Nov 29, 2004 06:11 am
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/chitribts/20041128/ts_chicagotrib/schooledinjihadSchooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
Wearing a dark jacket instead of his army uniform, he denounced religious extremism and vowed to fix the Islamic schools in his back yard accused of fomenting hatred, the ones that crank out militants the way Harvard churns out MBAs.
But almost three years later, Pakistan remains a country where promises come easier than progress. Indeed, travels through the dense cities and dusty provinces of this Muslim nation that relies heavily on U.S. aid show just how little has been done to reform education--both in the Islamic madrassas and the failed public schools.
In the struggle for the soul of Islam, few things are as important as education reform. Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools were described as ``incubators for violent extremism`` by the Sept. 11 commission.
Little has changed inside the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, where Maulana Samiul Haq still preaches the same anti-American rhetoric and praises Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
``He is a brave and courageous man,`` says Samiul, the madrassa leader who scoffs at the idea of government reform at the school. ``We will remain here no matter what.``
At public schools in Karachi, children as young as 5th graders still learn about the glories of jihad and martyrdom in textbooks the government approves. One 9th-grade student told a Tribune reporter that he dreamed of going to fight in a jihad when he grows up, if he could get his mother`s blessing.
Pakistani leaders, under enormous American pressure, have not sat idly. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has arrested more than 600 suspected Al Qaeda members and flushed out terrorists and their local allies from cities and tribal areas. Earlier this year, Musharraf called on Muslims around the world to replace extremism with an ideology of ``enlightened moderation.``
Musharraf appointed Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq, a longtime politician and son of a legendary Pakistani president, to head the Religious Affairs Ministry, one of the key agencies responsible for reforming madrassas. Ijaz brings considerable political skills and credibility to the reform effort, particularly among the powerful clerics skeptical of the government`s objectives.
But Ijaz has seemed reluctant to push hard for change. The lesson so far in Pakistan: While making arrests is important in the war on terror, adopting education reforms to combat the extremist teachings that foster violence is far more difficult, like asking ward bosses in Chicago to voluntarily relinquish power.
The International Crisis Group, a non-profit specializing in conflict resolution, blames the Musharraf government for not confronting the religious lobby. Critics say Musharraf has failed to tackle extremism in public schools and has not lived up to his promises to revamp madrassas.
``None of it has come true, nothing,`` says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
Carved from India in 1947, Pakistan is an Islamic nation of 159million people with a volatile ethnic mix, a history of tribal conflict and a three-tiered education system that serves the rich but not the poor.
Elite private schools, a legacy of British colonial rule, remain a haven for the children of wealth and privilege. Graduates are destined for influential jobs in the government and military.
The state-run school system forms the second tier, which critics say has long been plagued by neglect, corruption, incompetence, a bloated state payroll and financial problems. Pakistan, which has a constitutional mandate to provide education until age 16, now is one of only 12 countries that spend less than 2 percent of national economic output on education, not even half the amount earmarked for the military.
Madrassas, the final and some believe most troublesome tier, are secretive religious schools controlled by politically powerful clerics who advocate conservative Islam coupled with religious intolerance. They prosper on the financial donations of wealthy Muslims around the world.
Madrassas are thriving, partly because they offer free room and board and partly because parents are frustrated by the public schools` problems. In 1971, Pakistan had about 900 madrassas. Today, an estimated 20,000 madrassas educate as many as 1.5 million students a year.
One of the few things public schools and madrassas have in common is the teaching of jihad, an Islamic concept that has two meanings -- one a personal struggle against temptation and another a war of Muslims against aggressors. In Pakistan, particularly in the madrassas, jihad has essentially come to mean war.
A rare glimpse inside a madrassa
Almost 3,000 boys and young men attend Darul Uloom Haqqania, perhaps Pakistan`s best-known madrassa, often referred to in media reports as the University of Jihad. Its most famous student was Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed cleric who led the Taliban, the puritanical regime that once ruled neighboring Afghanistan.
On a rare visit inside Haqqania, boys can be seen locked in a courtyard for most of the day, rocking back and forth, memorizing the Koran and staring at a white wall. They are not allowed to talk to or look at each other. They do not understand the Arabic language they memorize, the teachers say.
Centuries-old textbooks are still in use, and the school`s leader, Samiul Haq, speaks with pride of Mullah Omar and his followers.
``I was pleased they became the rulers of Afghanistan,`` Samiul says. ``They restored law and order there. They respected human rights. They respected women`s rights. They completely eliminated heroin and drug use.``
Sprawled over 7 acres next to Samiul`s home northwest of Islamabad, Haqqania features vast dormitories with arches, administration buildings, even a graveyard. For a limited tour, school officials asked two women reporters to wear black robes and veils that covered everything but their eyes.
Samiul denies that Haqqania and other madrassas have been a source of jihad and militancy, but ample evidence suggests otherwise.
Only months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a conference at Samiul`s madrassa brought some of Pakistan`s most notorious militants to the pulpit. In the courtyard, masked men in camouflage marched and carried Kalashnikovs, as seen in a documentary called ``Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow.``
When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, Samiul and fellow clerics raised money to help the Taliban. One madrassa nestled in a working-class neighborhood gave almost $2,500 in donations--no small sacrifice for poor Pakistanis--to the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, receipts show.
Students at many madrassas have told reporters they went to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops. Samiul denies that any students left Haqqania, but Shah Abdul Aziz Mujahid, a friend and former student of Samiul`s, says about 1,000 Haqqania students took off for Afghanistan.
``They announced in the mosque, the Americans had come to Afghanistan,`` says Zaharullah, 22, who uses only one name. He lives near Samiul`s village but is not a madrassa student. ``All the religious scholars, including Samiul Haq, said, `Go. There is a jihad.```
Sitting in his study, Samiul, 62, toys with his glasses in his lap. He pulls his graying beard into a point and occasionally adjusts his gray-and-white turban.
``We are not against reforms,`` he says. ``We are trying our best to reform ourselves.``
He says he has added a computer room and English classes to his school. He dismisses government officials who advocate madrassa reform as stooges of the U.S. Madrassas will change on their own terms, he says, not those imposed by the government.
Many madrassa leaders agree, arguing they have already incorporated other subjects into their curricula. Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, the secretary general of a group representing about 8,000 madrassas, says his coalition developed a syllabus and published its own textbooks in math, English and Pakistan studies 15 years ago.
But buried in these books are matter-of-fact references to fighting and war. On page 65 of the English book, the focus switches from geography to Islam. Stories feature violent lessons against idol worship--a pointed reference against Hindus in neighboring India. In grammar lessons, the book includes these examples: ``You had been participating in Jihad`` and ``Go and fight the enemy.``
In science classes at a girls` madrassa in Islamabad, students learn that the sun was made by God. They study English translations of the Koran. A math lesson includes a formula that says God made the world in seven days. ``God created everything,`` says Shameem Akhtar, vice principal of the madrassa. ``So every subject relates to God.``
In contrast, just outside Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Sciences could be a model for the kind of madrassa reform the government envisions. It teaches English and math. Students from the madrassa performed better than most students from public schools in federal board tests for 10th graders. Seven students from this Islamic school scored among the top 10 in the nation.
President Faiz-ur-Rahman Usmani says jihad is just one of 70 subjects being taught at his school. He hauls out two dog-eared volumes of the 18th Century Islamic text that forms the basis of education in most Pakistani madrassas--out of 1,100 pages, only 15 deal with jihad.
But jihad is a captivating subject. Some of Usmani`s top students resent the government`s attempts to change their syllabus. It must include jihad, they argue, so they can learn the circumstances that lead to holy war. Teachers tell them it`s justified against an aggressive country. Right now, the young men say, jihad is justified both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Abdul Basit, 23, who just graduated, says he will go to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight America if ordered by a religious leader. ``Every religious man would go to defend our brothers,`` Basit says. ``I would like to go there.``
``Why not? I am ready for it,`` adds Azam Khan Tanoli, 23. ``Whenever our leaders say.``
At other madrassas, the sentiment is also hostile to the West. Many students do not believe that bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. They routinely attend protests against U.S. aggression. They talk of superpower ruthlessness, preferring to see the world through the prism taught inside madrassas: Muslims against the West.
The students firmly believe that America is out to destroy Islam, to crush any Muslim nation. For every argument, they cite some French book or an American newspaper article they once heard about, even if they never saw it.
They claim to know for a fact that thousands of Jews stayed home from jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. They believe Musharraf to be a lackey of America. They show a lack of tolerance for any other religion.
``Islam comes in the world to dominate the world,`` says Syed Ali Mohiuddin, 20, who graduated from a madrassa in Rawalpindi.
In the madrassas that allow visitors, younger children can be seen memorizing the Koran, each one starting at a different place, each one talking over the next, a mumble of broken Arabic that echoes in other classrooms. The young students sit on the floor in dark rooms occasionally lit by bare fluorescent light bulbs. There is no air conditioning, often no fans, and children are sometimes drenched in sweat.
The West believes madrassa students would be better off in a public school. But a message extolling conflict and extremism is easy to find there too.
Public schools in disarray
In a nation where the line between church and state often is blurred, students at public schools face some of the same problems as those at madrassas. Jihad is on everyone`s mind.
The public education system is a mess. State-funded schools are undercut by corruption and politics. Some schools are shams, existing only on paper but still eating into the limited education budget, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group. As a result, students have suffered. The literacy rate for adults is 41.5 percent.
The state maintains iron-fisted control over every aspect of the public school system from curricula to key jobs. Critics say the lessons promote the goals of a government highly influenced by the military: Recent public school curricula instructed educators to teach that fighting India is a religious duty and that the Kashmir (news - web sites) dispute is legitimate. India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmiri territory since 1947.
As early as 5th grade, public school students learn about jihad and martyrdom. A recent 5th-grade Urdu textbook devoted a chapter to Pakistani soldiers killed by the Indian army. The chapter quoted religious texts emphasizing that a Muslim has no faith if he does not wish for martyrdom, and that martyrs earn a special place in heaven.
One high school principal in Karachi turned Independence Day celebrations two years ago into an assembly encouraging students to fight jihad--if the opportunity arose.
``If you look at Pakistan`s educational system, it encourages you to fight in jihad. It glorifies the military,`` says A.H. Nayyar, who has studied the country`s schools. ``It imbibes the student with the philosophy of martyrdom and jihad.``
Like madrassa students, those who choose a public education often graduate ill-equipped for the modern job market, end up marginalized and can become easy recruits for militant groups. Messages promoting jihad or anti-Western views simply reinforce what they learned back in school.
Reform of the public school sector doesn`t seem likely. The new head of the Education Ministry is a former leader of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the feared intelligence agency in Pakistan that maintains strong ties to militant clerics. He has no experience in education.
Nayyar, who helped write a recent study on public schools for a Pakistani non-profit, found that the state-issued textbooks also promote prejudice and discrimination against religious minorities and women. Islamic studies permeate nearly every subject, from social studies to language. Clerics questioned his study, and Nayyar received death threats.
Critics say the government has failed to change public school textbooks because of fierce opposition from clerics. Nayyar says that earlier this year, the government removed some jihadi language from textbooks. But the clerics objected, and the government issued new textbooks, he says. This time, an entire chapter in at least one textbook was devoted to jihad. Nayyar says the chapter read like a lesson on jihad from the literature of banned militant groups.
Changes face stiff resistance
Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq strolls confidently into the conference room of a Peshawar hotel. He is impeccably dressed in Pakistani attire--a starched tunic-length shirt, baggy pants and dark vest.
As minister of religious affairs, he is one of the key people the president has tapped for madrassa reform.
Ijaz, 52, is a religious man who nonetheless smokes, which is frowned upon in conservative Islamic circles. He says he first turned down the job when Musharraf offered it last winter, fearing he would be caught between the government and the clerics.
``If officials wanted me to do something controversial or implement something the people didn`t want, it would be very embarrassing for me,`` Ijaz says.
But eventually he relented.
As the son of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the former president who set Pakistan on its path to Islamic fundamentalism, Ijaz can attempt to span the political divide between the government and the madrassas.
Everywhere he goes, he hears the name of his father, who took power in a 1977 coup and ruled until he died in a 1988 plane crash, the longest reign of any Pakistani head of state.
Under Zia`s rule, madrassas sprang up across the country. Madrassa leaders to this day remain grateful to Zia for his political and financial support. Muslims from around the world began using Pakistan as a base and a training ground for holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia supported the Afghan jihad and indirectly strengthened the madrassas. The two countries infused some $3.5 billion into Zia`s Pakistan, according to Milton Bearden, CIA (news - web sites) station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989. Bearden says most of that money went into buying weapons, but Saudi Arabia and other gulf states independently gave additional money to madrassas. Saudi officials acknowledge building schools during the war but say their involvement ended there.
``Zia didn`t directly give us money,`` recalls Maulana Muhammad Hasan Jan, who runs a madrassa in Peshawar. ``But in his time, the world gave us lots of money.``
Ijaz portrays himself as a realist schooled in the world of Pakistani politics and aware of the political booby trap that madrassa reform poses for Musharraf, already the target of failed assassination attempts.
Musharraf called for madrassa reform as part of a broad anti-terrorist program designed to appease the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the U.S. has provided additional aid and pledged $3 billion over five years.
The Pakistani president also began pushing legislative and constitutional measures that would solidify the military`s control of the government and extend Musharraf`s term until 2007. Musharraf succeeded largely because of support from the religious political parties, a bloc of which was newly elected into the Pakistani parliament.
This alliance now poses a problem: To satisfy his American patrons, Musharraf must crack down on madrassas. But if he succeeds, he will anger the clerics, the people he needs in order to stay in power.
In Musharraf`s January 2002 speech, he said all madrassas must register in two months and adopt a government curriculum by the end of the year. He vowed to close any madrassas that promote extremism or keep weapons.
Today, most madrassas remain unregistered, and no national syllabus has been imposed. Pakistan claims it shut down some madrassas, although no official could identify which ones. The government has opened three model schools with about 300 students each.
But some madrassas linked to banned militant groups still have been allowed to operate.
At a school raided in August after leaders were accused of Al Qaeda links, female students with sticks attacked police, said Faisal Saleh Hayat, the interior minister at the time. A Kalashnikov was found in the madrassa. The school remained open.
Most government officials, including Ijaz, now say that no extremism or violence is being taught in any madrassa in Pakistan. They refuse to publicly say anything negative about madrassas. They also admit they have no idea how many madrassas exist or where they are.
Ijaz`s goal is to get the clerics to accept a plan far more modest than Musharraf`s original proposals--a new curriculum that includes some secular subjects. It may not be the kind of reform the Americans want, but that`s about all Pakistan can accomplish in the current political climate.
``Everyone`s resisting,`` Ijaz says. ``Nobody`s on board yet.``
Critics: Reform talk is lip service
When Ijaz talks to clerics, he does not seem like a man bent on changing anything. He seems like a man who wants to be liked.
At this year`s ceremony to mark the death of his father, more than 1,000 people crowd into a hotel basement filled with posters of Zia. ``Man of the truth, man of the believers!`` they shout. ``Zia ul-Haq! Zia ul-Haq!`` Along with Ijaz, clerics get seats of honor onstage and in the front rows.
Every speech contains the language of Islamic struggle. The country`s information minister tells the crowd that jihad is part of Islam. Ijaz offers a message of support to oppressed Kashmiris, Afghans and Palestinians.
``For the preservation of Islam and the ideology of Pakistan, we will sacrifice even our last droplet of blood,`` Ijaz booms over the microphone.
The previous week, at the hotel in Peshawar, Ijaz is more direct to some 30 clerics, all wearing peaked hats, white caps or the signature turbans of the Pashtuns, who hail from one of the most conservative parts of Pakistan.
``It is widely believed that the government has a nefarious agenda against madrassas,`` Ijaz says. ``It is sheer misunderstanding. I have met with the president and told him that I had an age-old relationship with madrassas. I never noticed any sort of terrorism.``
Many critics believe that such scenes represent the true face of the Pakistani government--officials who pay lip service to education reform and to the Americans while currying favor with the clerics.
After a long day of reassuring clerics in Peshawar, Ijaz starts driving home to Islamabad in a Land Cruiser. Just before 10p.m., he grabs his mobile phone. ``Are you awake?`` Ijaz asks. ``I`m coming over just for five minutes. . . . Put on a good turban.``
The government minister pulls up in front of Haqqania, the madrassa run by Samiul Haq. Near a photo of Samiul holding the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, the two men hug.
Ijaz walks into Samiul`s office, leans back on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table and asks if he can light a cigarette. Samiul nods and grabs Ijaz`s arm.
Samiul says the religious affairs minister needs to teach people in other countries that Islam is a religion of peace.
``It`s up to him now, to get rid of the misunderstanding about Islam in the West,`` Samiul says. ``That`s his No. 1 job.``
Mainstream Textbooks and What They Teach
Chicago Tribune
Schooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
Wearing a dark jacket instead of his army uniform, he denounced religious extremism and vowed to fix the Islamic schools in his back yard accused of fomenting hatred, the ones that crank out militants the way Harvard churns out MBAs.
But almost three years later, Pakistan remains a country where promises come easier than progress. Indeed, travels through the dense cities and dusty provinces of this Muslim nation that relies heavily on U.S. aid show just how little has been done to reform education--both in the Islamic madrassas and the failed public schools.
In the struggle for the soul of Islam, few things are as important as education reform. Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools were described as ``incubators for violent extremism`` by the Sept. 11 commission.
Little has changed inside the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, where Maulana Samiul Haq still preaches the same anti-American rhetoric and praises Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
``He is a brave and courageous man,`` says Samiul, the madrassa leader who scoffs at the idea of government reform at the school. ``We will remain here no matter what.``
At public schools in Karachi, children as young as 5th graders still learn about the glories of jihad and martyrdom in textbooks the government approves. One 9th-grade student told a Tribune reporter that he dreamed of going to fight in a jihad when he grows up, if he could get his mother`s blessing.
Pakistani leaders, under enormous American pressure, have not sat idly. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has arrested more than 600 suspected Al Qaeda members and flushed out terrorists and their local allies from cities and tribal areas. Earlier this year, Musharraf called on Muslims around the world to replace extremism with an ideology of ``enlightened moderation.``
Musharraf appointed Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq, a longtime politician and son of a legendary Pakistani president, to head the Religious Affairs Ministry, one of the key agencies responsible for reforming madrassas. Ijaz brings considerable political skills and credibility to the reform effort, particularly among the powerful clerics skeptical of the government`s objectives.
But Ijaz has seemed reluctant to push hard for change. The lesson so far in Pakistan: While making arrests is important in the war on terror, adopting education reforms to combat the extremist teachings that foster violence is far more difficult, like asking ward bosses in Chicago to voluntarily relinquish power.
The International Crisis Group, a non-profit specializing in conflict resolution, blames the Musharraf government for not confronting the religious lobby. Critics say Musharraf has failed to tackle extremism in public schools and has not lived up to his promises to revamp madrassas.
``None of it has come true, nothing,`` says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
Carved from India in 1947, Pakistan is an Islamic nation of 159million people with a volatile ethnic mix, a history of tribal conflict and a three-tiered education system that serves the rich but not the poor.
Elite private schools, a legacy of British colonial rule, remain a haven for the children of wealth and privilege. Graduates are destined for influential jobs in the government and military.
The state-run school system forms the second tier, which critics say has long been plagued by neglect, corruption, incompetence, a bloated state payroll and financial problems. Pakistan, which has a constitutional mandate to provide education until age 16, now is one of only 12 countries that spend less than 2 percent of national economic output on education, not even half the amount earmarked for the military.
Madrassas, the final and some believe most troublesome tier, are secretive religious schools controlled by politically powerful clerics who advocate conservative Islam coupled with religious intolerance. They prosper on the financial donations of wealthy Muslims around the world.
Madrassas are thriving, partly because they offer free room and board and partly because parents are frustrated by the public schools` problems. In 1971, Pakistan had about 900 madrassas. Today, an estimated 20,000 madrassas educate as many as 1.5 million students a year.
One of the few things public schools and madrassas have in common is the teaching of jihad, an Islamic concept that has two meanings -- one a personal struggle against temptation and another a war of Muslims against aggressors. In Pakistan, particularly in the madrassas, jihad has essentially come to mean war.
A rare glimpse inside a madrassa
Almost 3,000 boys and young men attend Darul Uloom Haqqania, perhaps Pakistan`s best-known madrassa, often referred to in media reports as the University of Jihad. Its most famous student was Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed cleric who led the Taliban, the puritanical regime that once ruled neighboring Afghanistan.
On a rare visit inside Haqqania, boys can be seen locked in a courtyard for most of the day, rocking back and forth, memorizing the Koran and staring at a white wall. They are not allowed to talk to or look at each other. They do not understand the Arabic language they memorize, the teachers say.
Centuries-old textbooks are still in use, and the school`s leader, Samiul Haq, speaks with pride of Mullah Omar and his followers.
``I was pleased they became the rulers of Afghanistan,`` Samiul says. ``They restored law and order there. They respected human rights. They respected women`s rights. They completely eliminated heroin and drug use.``
Sprawled over 7 acres next to Samiul`s home northwest of Islamabad, Haqqania features vast dormitories with arches, administration buildings, even a graveyard. For a limited tour, school officials asked two women reporters to wear black robes and veils that covered everything but their eyes.
Samiul denies that Haqqania and other madrassas have been a source of jihad and militancy, but ample evidence suggests otherwise.
Only months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a conference at Samiul`s madrassa brought some of Pakistan`s most notorious militants to the pulpit. In the courtyard, masked men in camouflage marched and carried Kalashnikovs, as seen in a documentary called ``Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow.``
When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, Samiul and fellow clerics raised money to help the Taliban. One madrassa nestled in a working-class neighborhood gave almost $2,500 in donations--no small sacrifice for poor Pakistanis--to the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, receipts show.
Students at many madrassas have told reporters they went to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops. Samiul denies that any students left Haqqania, but Shah Abdul Aziz Mujahid, a friend and former student of Samiul`s, says about 1,000 Haqqania students took off for Afghanistan.
``They announced in the mosque, the Americans had come to Afghanistan,`` says Zaharullah, 22, who uses only one name. He lives near Samiul`s village but is not a madrassa student. ``All the religious scholars, including Samiul Haq, said, `Go. There is a jihad.```
Sitting in his study, Samiul, 62, toys with his glasses in his lap. He pulls his graying beard into a point and occasionally adjusts his gray-and-white turban.
``We are not against reforms,`` he says. ``We are trying our best to reform ourselves.``
He says he has added a computer room and English classes to his school. He dismisses government officials who advocate madrassa reform as stooges of the U.S. Madrassas will change on their own terms, he says, not those imposed by the government.
Many madrassa leaders agree, arguing they have already incorporated other subjects into their curricula. Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, the secretary general of a group representing about 8,000 madrassas, says his coalition developed a syllabus and published its own textbooks in math, English and Pakistan studies 15 years ago.
But buried in these books are matter-of-fact references to fighting and war. On page 65 of the English book, the focus switches from geography to Islam. Stories feature violent lessons against idol worship--a pointed reference against Hindus in neighboring India. In grammar lessons, the book includes these examples: ``You had been participating in Jihad`` and ``Go and fight the enemy.``
In science classes at a girls` madrassa in Islamabad, students learn that the sun was made by God. They study English translations of the Koran. A math lesson includes a formula that says God made the world in seven days. ``God created everything,`` says Shameem Akhtar, vice principal of the madrassa. ``So every subject relates to God.``
In contrast, just outside Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Sciences could be a model for the kind of madrassa reform the government envisions. It teaches English and math. Students from the madrassa performed better than most students from public schools in federal board tests for 10th graders. Seven students from this Islamic school scored among the top 10 in the nation.
President Faiz-ur-Rahman Usmani says jihad is just one of 70 subjects being taught at his school. He hauls out two dog-eared volumes of the 18th Century Islamic text that forms the basis of education in most Pakistani madrassas--out of 1,100 pages, only 15 deal with jihad.
But jihad is a captivating subject. Some of Usmani`s top students resent the government`s attempts to change their syllabus. It must include jihad, they argue, so they can learn the circumstances that lead to holy war. Teachers tell them it`s justified against an aggressive country. Right now, the young men say, jihad is justified both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Abdul Basit, 23, who just graduated, says he will go to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight America if ordered by a religious leader. ``Every religious man would go to defend our brothers,`` Basit says. ``I would like to go there.``
``Why not? I am ready for it,`` adds Azam Khan Tanoli, 23. ``Whenever our leaders say.``
At other madrassas, the sentiment is also hostile to the West. Many students do not believe that bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. They routinely attend protests against U.S. aggression. They talk of superpower ruthlessness, preferring to see the world through the prism taught inside madrassas: Muslims against the West.
The students firmly believe that America is out to destroy Islam, to crush any Muslim nation. For every argument, they cite some French book or an American newspaper article they once heard about, even if they never saw it.
They claim to know for a fact that thousands of Jews stayed home from jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. They believe Musharraf to be a lackey of America. They show a lack of tolerance for any other religion.
``Islam comes in the world to dominate the world,`` says Syed Ali Mohiuddin, 20, who graduated from a madrassa in Rawalpindi.
In the madrassas that allow visitors, younger children can be seen memorizing the Koran, each one starting at a different place, each one talking over the next, a mumble of broken Arabic that echoes in other classrooms. The young students sit on the floor in dark rooms occasionally lit by bare fluorescent light bulbs. There is no air conditioning, often no fans, and children are sometimes drenched in sweat.
The West believes madrassa students would be better off in a public school. But a message extolling conflict and extremism is easy to find there too.
Public schools in disarray
In a nation where the line between church and state often is blurred, students at public schools face some of the same problems as those at madrassas. Jihad is on everyone`s mind.
The public education system is a mess. State-funded schools are undercut by corruption and politics. Some schools are shams, existing only on paper but still eating into the limited education budget, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group. As a result, students have suffered. The literacy rate for adults is 41.5 percent.
The state maintains iron-fisted control over every aspect of the public school system from curricula to key jobs. Critics say the lessons promote the goals of a government highly influenced by the military: Recent public school curricula instructed educators to teach that fighting India is a religious duty and that the Kashmir (news - web sites) dispute is legitimate. India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmiri territory since 1947.
As early as 5th grade, public school students learn about jihad and martyrdom. A recent 5th-grade Urdu textbook devoted a chapter to Pakistani soldiers killed by the Indian army. The chapter quoted religious texts emphasizing that a Muslim has no faith if he does not wish for martyrdom, and that martyrs earn a special place in heaven.
One high school principal in Karachi turned Independence Day celebrations two years ago into an assembly encouraging students to fight jihad--if the opportunity arose.
``If you look at Pakistan`s educational system, it encourages you to fight in jihad. It glorifies the military,`` says A.H. Nayyar, who has studied the country`s schools. ``It imbibes the student with the philosophy of martyrdom and jihad.``
Like madrassa students, those who choose a public education often graduate ill-equipped for the modern job market, end up marginalized and can become easy recruits for militant groups. Messages promoting jihad or anti-Western views simply reinforce what they learned back in school.
Reform of the public school sector doesn`t seem likely. The new head of the Education Ministry is a former leader of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the feared intelligence agency in Pakistan that maintains strong ties to militant clerics. He has no experience in education.
Nayyar, who helped write a recent study on public schools for a Pakistani non-profit, found that the state-issued textbooks also promote prejudice and discrimination against religious minorities and women. Islamic studies permeate nearly every subject, from social studies to language. Clerics questioned his study, and Nayyar received death threats.
Critics say the government has failed to change public school textbooks because of fierce opposition from clerics. Nayyar says that earlier this year, the government removed some jihadi language from textbooks. But the clerics objected, and the government issued new textbooks, he says. This time, an entire chapter in at least one textbook was devoted to jihad. Nayyar says the chapter read like a lesson on jihad from the literature of banned militant groups.
Changes face stiff resistance
Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq strolls confidently into the conference room of a Peshawar hotel. He is impeccably dressed in Pakistani attire--a starched tunic-length shirt, baggy pants and dark vest.
As minister of religious affairs, he is one of the key people the president has tapped for madrassa reform.
Ijaz, 52, is a religious man who nonetheless smokes, which is frowned upon in conservative Islamic circles. He says he first turned down the job when Musharraf offered it last winter, fearing he would be caught between the government and the clerics.
``If officials wanted me to do something controversial or implement something the people didn`t want, it would be very embarrassing for me,`` Ijaz says.
But eventually he relented.
As the son of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the former president who set Pakistan on its path to Islamic fundamentalism, Ijaz can attempt to span the political divide between the government and the madrassas.
Everywhere he goes, he hears the name of his father, who took power in a 1977 coup and ruled until he died in a 1988 plane crash, the longest reign of any Pakistani head of state.
Under Zia`s rule, madrassas sprang up across the country. Madrassa leaders to this day remain grateful to Zia for his political and financial support. Muslims from around the world began using Pakistan as a base and a training ground for holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia supported the Afghan jihad and indirectly strengthened the madrassas. The two countries infused some $3.5 billion into Zia`s Pakistan, according to Milton Bearden, CIA (news - web sites) station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989. Bearden says most of that money went into buying weapons, but Saudi Arabia and other gulf states independently gave additional money to madrassas. Saudi officials acknowledge building schools during the war but say their involvement ended there.
``Zia didn`t directly give us money,`` recalls Maulana Muhammad Hasan Jan, who runs a madrassa in Peshawar. ``But in his time, the world gave us lots of money.``
Ijaz portrays himself as a realist schooled in the world of Pakistani politics and aware of the political booby trap that madrassa reform poses for Musharraf, already the target of failed assassination attempts.
Musharraf called for madrassa reform as part of a broad anti-terrorist program designed to appease the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the U.S. has provided additional aid and pledged $3 billion over five years.
The Pakistani president also began pushing legislative and constitutional measures that would solidify the military`s control of the government and extend Musharraf`s term until 2007. Musharraf succeeded largely because of support from the religious political parties, a bloc of which was newly elected into the Pakistani parliament.
This alliance now poses a problem: To satisfy his American patrons, Musharraf must crack down on madrassas. But if he succeeds, he will anger the clerics, the people he needs in order to stay in power.
In Musharraf`s January 2002 speech, he said all madrassas must register in two months and adopt a government curriculum by the end of the year. He vowed to close any madrassas that promote extremism or keep weapons.
Today, most madrassas remain unregistered, and no national syllabus has been imposed. Pakistan claims it shut down some madrassas, although no official could identify which ones. The government has opened three model schools with about 300 students each.
But some madrassas linked to banned militant groups still have been allowed to operate.
At a school raided in August after leaders were accused of Al Qaeda links, female students with sticks attacked police, said Faisal Saleh Hayat, the interior minister at the time. A Kalashnikov was found in the madrassa. The school remained open.
Most government officials, including Ijaz, now say that no extremism or violence is being taught in any madrassa in Pakistan. They refuse to publicly say anything negative about madrassas. They also admit they have no idea how many madrassas exist or where they are.
Ijaz`s goal is to get the clerics to accept a plan far more modest than Musharraf`s original proposals--a new curriculum that includes some secular subjects. It may not be the kind of reform the Americans want, but that`s about all Pakistan can accomplish in the current political climate.
``Everyone`s resisting,`` Ijaz says. ``Nobody`s on board yet.``
Critics: Reform talk is lip service
When Ijaz talks to clerics, he does not seem like a man bent on changing anything. He seems like a man who wants to be liked.
At this year`s ceremony to mark the death of his father, more than 1,000 people crowd into a hotel basement filled with posters of Zia. ``Man of the truth, man of the believers!`` they shout. ``Zia ul-Haq! Zia ul-Haq!`` Along with Ijaz, clerics get seats of honor onstage and in the front rows.
Every speech contains the language of Islamic struggle. The country`s information minister tells the crowd that jihad is part of Islam. Ijaz offers a message of support to oppressed Kashmiris, Afghans and Palestinians.
``For the preservation of Islam and the ideology of Pakistan, we will sacrifice even our last droplet of blood,`` Ijaz booms over the microphone.
The previous week, at the hotel in Peshawar, Ijaz is more direct to some 30 clerics, all wearing peaked hats, white caps or the signature turbans of the Pashtuns, who hail from one of the most conservative parts of Pakistan.
``It is widely believed that the government has a nefarious agenda against madrassas,`` Ijaz says. ``It is sheer misunderstanding. I have met with the president and told him that I had an age-old relationship with madrassas. I never noticed any sort of terrorism.``
Many critics believe that such scenes represent the true face of the Pakistani government--officials who pay lip service to education reform and to the Americans while currying favor with the clerics.
After a long day of reassuring clerics in Peshawar, Ijaz starts driving home to Islamabad in a Land Cruiser. Just before 10p.m., he grabs his mobile phone. ``Are you awake?`` Ijaz asks. ``I`m coming over just for five minutes. . . . Put on a good turban.``
The government minister pulls up in front of Haqqania, the madrassa run by Samiul Haq. Near a photo of Samiul holding the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, the two men hug.
Ijaz walks into Samiul`s office, leans back on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table and asks if he can light a cigarette. Samiul nods and grabs Ijaz`s arm.
Samiul says the religious affairs minister needs to teach people in other countries that Islam is a religion of peace.
``It`s up to him now, to get rid of the misunderstanding about Islam in the West,`` Samiul says. ``That`s his No. 1 job.``
- - -
PAKISTAN (map)
Population: 159 million
Percent Muslim: 97 (77% Sunni, 20% Shiite)
Government type: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: 1947, from Britain
Literacy rate: 41.5%
Legal system: Based on English common law but with provisions recognizing it as a Muslim nation
Poverty rate: 35% (2001 est.)
Industries: textiles, clothing, food processing, construction
materials
Agriculture: cotton, wheat, rice, sugar cane, fruits, milk, beef Sources: CIA World Factbook, U.S. State Dept., UN Development Report, ESRI
- - -
Islam at the center of Pakistan`s history
INDEPENDENCE AND CONFLICT
Aug. 14, 1947 Pakistan, a mostly Muslim area that had long been part of British controlled India, becomes an independent state. West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) lie on either side of newly independent India and are separated by more than 1,000 miles.
1947-49 Pakistan and India fight a war over Kashmir after the northern region`s Hindu maharaja opts to join India despite the fact that much of Kashmir`s population is Muslim. Both sides eventually retreat behind a mutually agreed cease-fire line.
1956 Pakistan becomes a republic, and a constitution is approved.
1958 Martial law is declared, and Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan eventually assumes the presidency.
1965 Pakistan and India again clash over Kashmir.
1969 Khan resigns amid widespread social unrest. The country is placed under martial law, and Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan becomes president.
CIVIL WAR AND ISLAMIZATION
1971 Cultural and political differences lead to civil war in Pakistan, with East Pakistan declaring independence and renaming itself Bangladesh. India backs Bangladesh in the conflict, and war breaks out between India and Pakistan. More than 1 million people are killed.
1973 Pakistan adopts a new constitution, with a president, prime minister and two-chamber legislature.
1977 Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq overthrows Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and declares martial law. He later introduces Islamization policies, including legal punishments based on the Koran.
1979 After being convicted of ordering a political opponent`s murder, Bhutto is executed. Also, Pakistan begins supporting Muslim rebels against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
NEW LEADERS AND A NEW WEAPON
1988 Zia dies in a plane crash. For the next 11 years, Pakistan is led alternately by the Pakistan People`s Party, led by Benazir Bhutto, the former leader`s daughter, and the Pakistan Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif.
1989 After the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan, Pakistan continues to support Islamic extremists in the country, including the Taliban, many of whom attended Pakistani madrassas. The Taliban regime later takes over Afghanistan.
1998 Responding to Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan conducts tests of its own, confirming that it has nuclear weapons.
1999 Gen. Pervez Musharraf leads a coup that overthrows the Sharif government.
2001 Musharraf declares himself president and dissolves parliament. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., he allows American forces to use Pakistani military bases and airspace to help overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Zia ul-Haq Benazir Bhutto Sharif
Sources: World Book, Encyclopedia Britannica; AP and Reuters photos
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&ncid=2027&e=1&u=/chitribts/20041128/ts_chicagotrib/schooledinjihadChicago Tribune
Schooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
Wearing a dark jacket instead of his army uniform, he denounced religious extremism and vowed to fix the Islamic schools in his back yard accused of fomenting hatred, the ones that crank out militants the way Harvard churns out MBAs.
But almost three years later, Pakistan remains a country where promises come easier than progress. Indeed, travels through the dense cities and dusty provinces of this Muslim nation that relies heavily on U.S. aid show just how little has been done to reform education--both in the Islamic madrassas and the failed public schools.
In the struggle for the soul of Islam, few things are as important as education reform. Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools were described as ``incubators for violent extremism`` by the Sept. 11 commission.
Little has changed inside the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, where Maulana Samiul Haq still preaches the same anti-American rhetoric and praises Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
``He is a brave and courageous man,`` says Samiul, the madrassa leader who scoffs at the idea of government reform at the school. ``We will remain here no matter what.``
At public schools in Karachi, children as young as 5th graders still learn about the glories of jihad and martyrdom in textbooks the government approves. One 9th-grade student told a Tribune reporter that he dreamed of going to fight in a jihad when he grows up, if he could get his mother`s blessing.
Pakistani leaders, under enormous American pressure, have not sat idly. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has arrested more than 600 suspected Al Qaeda members and flushed out terrorists and their local allies from cities and tribal areas. Earlier this year, Musharraf called on Muslims around the world to replace extremism with an ideology of ``enlightened moderation.``
Musharraf appointed Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq, a longtime politician and son of a legendary Pakistani president, to head the Religious Affairs Ministry, one of the key agencies responsible for reforming madrassas. Ijaz brings considerable political skills and credibility to the reform effort, particularly among the powerful clerics skeptical of the government`s objectives.
But Ijaz has seemed reluctant to push hard for change. The lesson so far in Pakistan: While making arrests is important in the war on terror, adopting education reforms to combat the extremist teachings that foster violence is far more difficult, like asking ward bosses in Chicago to voluntarily relinquish power.
The International Crisis Group, a non-profit specializing in conflict resolution, blames the Musharraf government for not confronting the religious lobby. Critics say Musharraf has failed to tackle extremism in public schools and has not lived up to his promises to revamp madrassas.
``None of it has come true, nothing,`` says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
Carved from India in 1947, Pakistan is an Islamic nation of 159million people with a volatile ethnic mix, a history of tribal conflict and a three-tiered education system that serves the rich but not the poor.
Elite private schools, a legacy of British colonial rule, remain a haven for the children of wealth and privilege. Graduates are destined for influential jobs in the government and military.
The state-run school system forms the second tier, which critics say has long been plagued by neglect, corruption, incompetence, a bloated state payroll and financial problems. Pakistan, which has a constitutional mandate to provide education until age 16, now is one of only 12 countries that spend less than 2 percent of national economic output on education, not even half the amount earmarked for the military.
Madrassas, the final and some believe most troublesome tier, are secretive religious schools controlled by politically powerful clerics who advocate conservative Islam coupled with religious intolerance. They prosper on the financial donations of wealthy Muslims around the world.
Madrassas are thriving, partly because they offer free room and board and partly because parents are frustrated by the public schools` problems. In 1971, Pakistan had about 900 madrassas. Today, an estimated 20,000 madrassas educate as many as 1.5 million students a year.
One of the few things public schools and madrassas have in common is the teaching of jihad, an Islamic concept that has two meanings -- one a personal struggle against temptation and another a war of Muslims against aggressors. In Pakistan, particularly in the madrassas, jihad has essentially come to mean war.
A rare glimpse inside a madrassa
Almost 3,000 boys and young men attend Darul Uloom Haqqania, perhaps Pakistan`s best-known madrassa, often referred to in media reports as the University of Jihad. Its most famous student was Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed cleric who led the Taliban, the puritanical regime that once ruled neighboring Afghanistan.
On a rare visit inside Haqqania, boys can be seen locked in a courtyard for most of the day, rocking back and forth, memorizing the Koran and staring at a white wall. They are not allowed to talk to or look at each other. They do not understand the Arabic language they memorize, the teachers say.
Centuries-old textbooks are still in use, and the school`s leader, Samiul Haq, speaks with pride of Mullah Omar and his followers.
``I was pleased they became the rulers of Afghanistan,`` Samiul says. ``They restored law and order there. They respected human rights. They respected women`s rights. They completely eliminated heroin and drug use.``
Sprawled over 7 acres next to Samiul`s home northwest of Islamabad, Haqqania features vast dormitories with arches, administration buildings, even a graveyard. For a limited tour, school officials asked two women reporters to wear black robes and veils that covered everything but their eyes.
Samiul denies that Haqqania and other madrassas have been a source of jihad and militancy, but ample evidence suggests otherwise.
Only months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a conference at Samiul`s madrassa brought some of Pakistan`s most notorious militants to the pulpit. In the courtyard, masked men in camouflage marched and carried Kalashnikovs, as seen in a documentary called ``Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow.``
When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, Samiul and fellow clerics raised money to help the Taliban. One madrassa nestled in a working-class neighborhood gave almost $2,500 in donations--no small sacrifice for poor Pakistanis--to the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, receipts show.
Students at many madrassas have told reporters they went to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops. Samiul denies that any students left Haqqania, but Shah Abdul Aziz Mujahid, a friend and former student of Samiul`s, says about 1,000 Haqqania students took off for Afghanistan.
``They announced in the mosque, the Americans had come to Afghanistan,`` says Zaharullah, 22, who uses only one name. He lives near Samiul`s village but is not a madrassa student. ``All the religious scholars, including Samiul Haq, said, `Go. There is a jihad.```
Sitting in his study, Samiul, 62, toys with his glasses in his lap. He pulls his graying beard into a point and occasionally adjusts his gray-and-white turban.
``We are not against reforms,`` he says. ``We are trying our best to reform ourselves.``
He says he has added a computer room and English classes to his school. He dismisses government officials who advocate madrassa reform as stooges of the U.S. Madrassas will change on their own terms, he says, not those imposed by the government.
Many madrassa leaders agree, arguing they have already incorporated other subjects into their curricula. Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, the secretary general of a group representing about 8,000 madrassas, says his coalition developed a syllabus and published its own textbooks in math, English and Pakistan studies 15 years ago.
But buried in these books are matter-of-fact references to fighting and war. On page 65 of the English book, the focus switches from geography to Islam. Stories feature violent lessons against idol worship--a pointed reference against Hindus in neighboring India. In grammar lessons, the book includes these examples: ``You had been participating in Jihad`` and ``Go and fight the enemy.``
In science classes at a girls` madrassa in Islamabad, students learn that the sun was made by God. They study English translations of the Koran. A math lesson includes a formula that says God made the world in seven days. ``God created everything,`` says Shameem Akhtar, vice principal of the madrassa. ``So every subject relates to God.``
In contrast, just outside Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Sciences could be a model for the kind of madrassa reform the government envisions. It teaches English and math. Students from the madrassa performed better than most students from public schools in federal board tests for 10th graders. Seven students from this Islamic school scored among the top 10 in the nation.
President Faiz-ur-Rahman Usmani says jihad is just one of 70 subjects being taught at his school. He hauls out two dog-eared volumes of the 18th Century Islamic text that forms the basis of education in most Pakistani madrassas--out of 1,100 pages, only 15 deal with jihad.
But jihad is a captivating subject. Some of Usmani`s top students resent the government`s attempts to change their syllabus. It must include jihad, they argue, so they can learn the circumstances that lead to holy war. Teachers tell them it`s justified against an aggressive country. Right now, the young men say, jihad is justified both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Abdul Basit, 23, who just graduated, says he will go to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight America if ordered by a religious leader. ``Every religious man would go to defend our brothers,`` Basit says. ``I would like to go there.``
``Why not? I am ready for it,`` adds Azam Khan Tanoli, 23. ``Whenever our leaders say.``
At other madrassas, the sentiment is also hostile to the West. Many students do not believe that bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. They routinely attend protests against U.S. aggression. They talk of superpower ruthlessness, preferring to see the world through the prism taught inside madrassas: Muslims against the West.
The students firmly believe that America is out to destroy Islam, to crush any Muslim nation. For every argument, they cite some French book or an American newspaper article they once heard about, even if they never saw it.
They claim to know for a fact that thousands of Jews stayed home from jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. They believe Musharraf to be a lackey of America. They show a lack of tolerance for any other religion.
``Islam comes in the world to dominate the world,`` says Syed Ali Mohiuddin, 20, who graduated from a madrassa in Rawalpindi.
In the madrassas that allow visitors, younger children can be seen memorizing the Koran, each one starting at a different place, each one talking over the next, a mumble of broken Arabic that echoes in other classrooms. The young students sit on the floor in dark rooms occasionally lit by bare fluorescent light bulbs. There is no air conditioning, often no fans, and children are sometimes drenched in sweat.
The West believes madrassa students would be better off in a public school. But a message extolling conflict and extremism is easy to find there too.
Public schools in disarray
In a nation where the line between church and state often is blurred, students at public schools face some of the same problems as those at madrassas. Jihad is on everyone`s mind.
The public education system is a mess. State-funded schools are undercut by corruption and politics. Some schools are shams, existing only on paper but still eating into the limited education budget, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group. As a result, students have suffered. The literacy rate for adults is 41.5 percent.
The state maintains iron-fisted control over every aspect of the public school system from curricula to key jobs. Critics say the lessons promote the goals of a government highly influenced by the military: Recent public school curricula instructed educators to teach that fighting India is a religious duty and that the Kashmir (news - web sites) dispute is legitimate. India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmiri territory since 1947.
As early as 5th grade, public school students learn about jihad and martyrdom. A recent 5th-grade Urdu textbook devoted a chapter to Pakistani soldiers killed by the Indian army. The chapter quoted religious texts emphasizing that a Muslim has no faith if he does not wish for martyrdom, and that martyrs earn a special place in heaven.
One high school principal in Karachi turned Independence Day celebrations two years ago into an assembly encouraging students to fight jihad--if the opportunity arose.
``If you look at Pakistan`s educational system, it encourages you to fight in jihad. It glorifies the military,`` says A.H. Nayyar, who has studied the country`s schools. ``It imbibes the student with the philosophy of martyrdom and jihad.``
Like madrassa students, those who choose a public education often graduate ill-equipped for the modern job market, end up marginalized and can become easy recruits for militant groups. Messages promoting jihad or anti-Western views simply reinforce what they learned back in school.
Reform of the public school sector doesn`t seem likely. The new head of the Education Ministry is a former leader of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the feared intelligence agency in Pakistan that maintains strong ties to militant clerics. He has no experience in education.
Nayyar, who helped write a recent study on public schools for a Pakistani non-profit, found that the state-issued textbooks also promote prejudice and discrimination against religious minorities and women. Islamic studies permeate nearly every subject, from social studies to language. Clerics questioned his study, and Nayyar received death threats.
Critics say the government has failed to change public school textbooks because of fierce opposition from clerics. Nayyar says that earlier this year, the government removed some jihadi language from textbooks. But the clerics objected, and the government issued new textbooks, he says. This time, an entire chapter in at least one textbook was devoted to jihad. Nayyar says the chapter read like a lesson on jihad from the literature of banned militant groups.
Changes face stiff resistance
Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq strolls confidently into the conference room of a Peshawar hotel. He is impeccably dressed in Pakistani attire--a starched tunic-length shirt, baggy pants and dark vest.
As minister of religious affairs, he is one of the key people the president has tapped for madrassa reform.
Ijaz, 52, is a religious man who nonetheless smokes, which is frowned upon in conservative Islamic circles. He says he first turned down the job when Musharraf offered it last winter, fearing he would be caught between the government and the clerics.
``If officials wanted me to do something controversial or implement something the people didn`t want, it would be very embarrassing for me,`` Ijaz says.
But eventually he relented.
As the son of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the former president who set Pakistan on its path to Islamic fundamentalism, Ijaz can attempt to span the political divide between the government and the madrassas.
Everywhere he goes, he hears the name of his father, who took power in a 1977 coup and ruled until he died in a 1988 plane crash, the longest reign of any Pakistani head of state.
Under Zia`s rule, madrassas sprang up across the country. Madrassa leaders to this day remain grateful to Zia for his political and financial support. Muslims from around the world began using Pakistan as a base and a training ground for holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia supported the Afghan jihad and indirectly strengthened the madrassas. The two countries infused some $3.5 billion into Zia`s Pakistan, according to Milton Bearden, CIA (news - web sites) station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989. Bearden says most of that money went into buying weapons, but Saudi Arabia and other gulf states independently gave additional money to madrassas. Saudi officials acknowledge building schools during the war but say their involvement ended there.
``Zia didn`t directly give us money,`` recalls Maulana Muhammad Hasan Jan, who runs a madrassa in Peshawar. ``But in his time, the world gave us lots of money.``
Ijaz portrays himself as a realist schooled in the world of Pakistani politics and aware of the political booby trap that madrassa reform poses for Musharraf, already the target of failed assassination attempts.
Musharraf called for madrassa reform as part of a broad anti-terrorist program designed to appease the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the U.S. has provided additional aid and pledged $3 billion over five years.
The Pakistani president also began pushing legislative and constitutional measures that would solidify the military`s control of the government and extend Musharraf`s term until 2007. Musharraf succeeded largely because of support from the religious political parties, a bloc of which was newly elected into the Pakistani parliament.
This alliance now poses a problem: To satisfy his American patrons, Musharraf must crack down on madrassas. But if he succeeds, he will anger the clerics, the people he needs in order to stay in power.
In Musharraf`s January 2002 speech, he said all madrassas must register in two months and adopt a government curriculum by the end of the year. He vowed to close any madrassas that promote extremism or keep weapons.
Today, most madrassas remain unregistered, and no national syllabus has been imposed. Pakistan claims it shut down some madrassas, although no official could identify which ones. The government has opened three model schools with about 300 students each.
But some madrassas linked to banned militant groups still have been allowed to operate.
At a school raided in August after leaders were accused of Al Qaeda links, female students with sticks attacked police, said Faisal Saleh Hayat, the interior minister at the time. A Kalashnikov was found in the madrassa. The school remained open.
Most government officials, including Ijaz, now say that no extremism or violence is being taught in any madrassa in Pakistan. They refuse to publicly say anything negative about madrassas. They also admit they have no idea how many madrassas exist or where they are.
Ijaz`s goal is to get the clerics to accept a plan far more modest than Musharraf`s original proposals--a new curriculum that includes some secular subjects. It may not be the kind of reform the Americans want, but that`s about all Pakistan can accomplish in the current political climate.
``Everyone`s resisting,`` Ijaz says. ``Nobody`s on board yet.``
Critics: Reform talk is lip service
When Ijaz talks to clerics, he does not seem like a man bent on changing anything. He seems like a man who wants to be liked.
At this year`s ceremony to mark the death of his father, more than 1,000 people crowd into a hotel basement filled with posters of Zia. ``Man of the truth, man of the believers!`` they shout. ``Zia ul-Haq! Zia ul-Haq!`` Along with Ijaz, clerics get seats of honor onstage and in the front rows.
Every speech contains the language of Islamic struggle. The country`s information minister tells the crowd that jihad is part of Islam. Ijaz offers a message of support to oppressed Kashmiris, Afghans and Palestinians.
``For the preservation of Islam and the ideology of Pakistan, we will sacrifice even our last droplet of blood,`` Ijaz booms over the microphone.
The previous week, at the hotel in Peshawar, Ijaz is more direct to some 30 clerics, all wearing peaked hats, white caps or the signature turbans of the Pashtuns, who hail from one of the most conservative parts of Pakistan.
``It is widely believed that the government has a nefarious agenda against madrassas,`` Ijaz says. ``It is sheer misunderstanding. I have met with the president and told him that I had an age-old relationship with madrassas. I never noticed any sort of terrorism.``
Many critics believe that such scenes represent the true face of the Pakistani government--officials who pay lip service to education reform and to the Americans while currying favor with the clerics.
After a long day of reassuring clerics in Peshawar, Ijaz starts driving home to Islamabad in a Land Cruiser. Just before 10p.m., he grabs his mobile phone. ``Are you awake?`` Ijaz asks. ``I`m coming over just for five minutes. . . . Put on a good turban.``
The government minister pulls up in front of Haqqania, the madrassa run by Samiul Haq. Near a photo of Samiul holding the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, the two men hug.
Ijaz walks into Samiul`s office, leans back on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table and asks if he can light a cigarette. Samiul nods and grabs Ijaz`s arm.
Samiul says the religious affairs minister needs to teach people in other countries that Islam is a religion of peace.
``It`s up to him now, to get rid of the misunderstanding about Islam in the West,`` Samiul says. ``That`s his No. 1 job.``
- - -
PAKISTAN (map)
Population: 159 million
Percent Muslim: 97 (77% Sunni, 20% Shiite)
Government type: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: 1947, from Britain
Literacy rate: 41.5%
Legal system: Based on English common law but with provisions recognizing it as a Muslim nation
Poverty rate: 35% (2001 est.)
Industries: textiles, clothing, food processing, construction
materials
Agriculture: cotton, wheat, rice, sugar cane, fruits, milk, beef Sources: CIA World Factbook, U.S. State Dept., UN Development Report, ESRI
- - -
Islam at the center of Pakistan`s history
INDEPENDENCE AND CONFLICT
Aug. 14, 1947 Pakistan, a mostly Muslim area that had long been part of British controlled India, becomes an independent state. West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) lie on either side of newly independent India and are separated by more than 1,000 miles.
1947-49 Pakistan and India fight a war over Kashmir after the northern region`s Hindu maharaja opts to join India despite the fact that much of Kashmir`s population is Muslim. Both sides eventually retreat behind a mutually agreed cease-fire line.
1956 Pakistan becomes a republic, and a constitution is approved.
1958 Martial law is declared, and Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan eventually assumes the presidency.
1965 Pakistan and India again clash over Kashmir.
1969 Khan resigns amid widespread social unrest. The country is placed under martial law, and Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan becomes president.
CIVIL WAR AND ISLAMIZATION
1971 Cultural and political differences lead to civil war in Pakistan, with East Pakistan declaring independence and renaming itself Bangladesh. India backs Bangladesh in the conflict, and war breaks out between India and Pakistan. More than 1 million people are killed.
1973 Pakistan adopts a new constitution, with a president, prime minister and two-chamber legislature.
1977 Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq overthrows Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and declares martial law. He later introduces Islamization policies, including legal punishments based on the Koran.
1979 After being convicted of ordering a political opponent`s murder, Bhutto is executed. Also, Pakistan begins supporting Muslim rebels against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
NEW LEADERS AND A NEW WEAPON
1988 Zia dies in a plane crash. For the next 11 years, Pakistan is led alternately by the Pakistan People`s Party, led by Benazir Bhutto, the former leader`s daughter, and the Pakistan Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif.
1989 After the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan, Pakistan continues to support Islamic extremists in the country, including the Taliban, many of whom attended Pakistani madrassas. The Taliban regime later takes over Afghanistan.
1998 Responding to Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan conducts tests of its own, confirming that it has nuclear weapons.
1999 Gen. Pervez Musharraf leads a coup that overthrows the Sharif government.
2001 Musharraf declares himself president and dissolves parliament. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., he allows American forces to use Pakistani military bases and airspace to help overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Zia ul-Haq Benazir Bhutto Sharif
Sources: World Book, Encyclopedia Britannica; AP and Reuters photos
Chicago Tribune
ON THE INTERNET
- For more stories and photos in the series ``Struggle for the
soul of Islam,`` go to chicagotribune.com/news/specials.
Madrassahs and Schools
Chicago Tribune
Schooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
Wearing a dark jacket instead of his army uniform, he denounced religious extremism and vowed to fix the Islamic schools in his back yard accused of fomenting hatred, the ones that crank out militants the way Harvard churns out MBAs.
But almost three years later, Pakistan remains a country where promises come easier than progress. Indeed, travels through the dense cities and dusty provinces of this Muslim nation that relies heavily on U.S. aid show just how little has been done to reform education--both in the Islamic madrassas and the failed public schools.
In the struggle for the soul of Islam, few things are as important as education reform. Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools were described as ``incubators for violent extremism`` by the Sept. 11 commission.
Little has changed inside the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, where Maulana Samiul Haq still preaches the same anti-American rhetoric and praises Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
``He is a brave and courageous man,`` says Samiul, the madrassa leader who scoffs at the idea of government reform at the school. ``We will remain here no matter what.``
At public schools in Karachi, children as young as 5th graders still learn about the glories of jihad and martyrdom in textbooks the government approves. One 9th-grade student told a Tribune reporter that he dreamed of going to fight in a jihad when he grows up, if he could get his mother`s blessing.
Pakistani leaders, under enormous American pressure, have not sat idly. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has arrested more than 600 suspected Al Qaeda members and flushed out terrorists and their local allies from cities and tribal areas. Earlier this year, Musharraf called on Muslims around the world to replace extremism with an ideology of ``enlightened moderation.``
Musharraf appointed Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq, a longtime politician and son of a legendary Pakistani president, to head the Religious Affairs Ministry, one of the key agencies responsible for reforming madrassas. Ijaz brings considerable political skills and credibility to the reform effort, particularly among the powerful clerics skeptical of the government`s objectives.
But Ijaz has seemed reluctant to push hard for change. The lesson so far in Pakistan: While making arrests is important in the war on terror, adopting education reforms to combat the extremist teachings that foster violence is far more difficult, like asking ward bosses in Chicago to voluntarily relinquish power.
The International Crisis Group, a non-profit specializing in conflict resolution, blames the Musharraf government for not confronting the religious lobby. Critics say Musharraf has failed to tackle extremism in public schools and has not lived up to his promises to revamp madrassas.
``None of it has come true, nothing,`` says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
Carved from India in 1947, Pakistan is an Islamic nation of 159million people with a volatile ethnic mix, a history of tribal conflict and a three-tiered education system that serves the rich but not the poor.
Elite private schools, a legacy of British colonial rule, remain a haven for the children of wealth and privilege. Graduates are destined for influential jobs in the government and military.
The state-run school system forms the second tier, which critics say has long been plagued by neglect, corruption, incompetence, a bloated state payroll and financial problems. Pakistan, which has a constitutional mandate to provide education until age 16, now is one of only 12 countries that spend less than 2 percent of national economic output on education, not even half the amount earmarked for the military.
Madrassas, the final and some believe most troublesome tier, are secretive religious schools controlled by politically powerful clerics who advocate conservative Islam coupled with religious intolerance. They prosper on the financial donations of wealthy Muslims around the world.
Madrassas are thriving, partly because they offer free room and board and partly because parents are frustrated by the public schools` problems. In 1971, Pakistan had about 900 madrassas. Today, an estimated 20,000 madrassas educate as many as 1.5 million students a year.
One of the few things public schools and madrassas have in common is the teaching of jihad, an Islamic concept that has two meanings -- one a personal struggle against temptation and another a war of Muslims against aggressors. In Pakistan, particularly in the madrassas, jihad has essentially come to mean war.
A rare glimpse inside a madrassa
Almost 3,000 boys and young men attend Darul Uloom Haqqania, perhaps Pakistan`s best-known madrassa, often referred to in media reports as the University of Jihad. Its most famous student was Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed cleric who led the Taliban, the puritanical regime that once ruled neighboring Afghanistan.
On a rare visit inside Haqqania, boys can be seen locked in a courtyard for most of the day, rocking back and forth, memorizing the Koran and staring at a white wall. They are not allowed to talk to or look at each other. They do not understand the Arabic language they memorize, the teachers say.
Centuries-old textbooks are still in use, and the school`s leader, Samiul Haq, speaks with pride of Mullah Omar and his followers.
``I was pleased they became the rulers of Afghanistan,`` Samiul says. ``They restored law and order there. They respected human rights. They respected women`s rights. They completely eliminated heroin and drug use.``
Sprawled over 7 acres next to Samiul`s home northwest of Islamabad, Haqqania features vast dormitories with arches, administration buildings, even a graveyard. For a limited tour, school officials asked two women reporters to wear black robes and veils that covered everything but their eyes.
Samiul denies that Haqqania and other madrassas have been a source of jihad and militancy, but ample evidence suggests otherwise.
Only months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a conference at Samiul`s madrassa brought some of Pakistan`s most notorious militants to the pulpit. In the courtyard, masked men in camouflage marched and carried Kalashnikovs, as seen in a documentary called ``Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow.``
When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, Samiul and fellow clerics raised money to help the Taliban. One madrassa nestled in a working-class neighborhood gave almost $2,500 in donations--no small sacrifice for poor Pakistanis--to the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, receipts show.
Students at many madrassas have told reporters they went to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops. Samiul denies that any students left Haqqania, but Shah Abdul Aziz Mujahid, a friend and former student of Samiul`s, says about 1,000 Haqqania students took off for Afghanistan.
``They announced in the mosque, the Americans had come to Afghanistan,`` says Zaharullah, 22, who uses only one name. He lives near Samiul`s village but is not a madrassa student. ``All the religious scholars, including Samiul Haq, said, `Go. There is a jihad.```
Sitting in his study, Samiul, 62, toys with his glasses in his lap. He pulls his graying beard into a point and occasionally adjusts his gray-and-white turban.
``We are not against reforms,`` he says. ``We are trying our best to reform ourselves.``
He says he has added a computer room and English classes to his school. He dismisses government officials who advocate madrassa reform as stooges of the U.S. Madrassas will change on their own terms, he says, not those imposed by the government.
Many madrassa leaders agree, arguing they have already incorporated other subjects into their curricula. Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, the secretary general of a group representing about 8,000 madrassas, says his coalition developed a syllabus and published its own textbooks in math, English and Pakistan studies 15 years ago.
But buried in these books are matter-of-fact references to fighting and war. On page 65 of the English book, the focus switches from geography to Islam. Stories feature violent lessons against idol worship--a pointed reference against Hindus in neighboring India. In grammar lessons, the book includes these examples: ``You had been participating in Jihad`` and ``Go and fight the enemy.``
In science classes at a girls` madrassa in Islamabad, students learn that the sun was made by God. They study English translations of the Koran. A math lesson includes a formula that says God made the world in seven days. ``God created everything,`` says Shameem Akhtar, vice principal of the madrassa. ``So every subject relates to God.``
In contrast, just outside Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Sciences could be a model for the kind of madrassa reform the government envisions. It teaches English and math. Students from the madrassa performed better than most students from public schools in federal board tests for 10th graders. Seven students from this Islamic school scored among the top 10 in the nation.
President Faiz-ur-Rahman Usmani says jihad is just one of 70 subjects being taught at his school. He hauls out two dog-eared volumes of the 18th Century Islamic text that forms the basis of education in most Pakistani madrassas--out of 1,100 pages, only 15 deal with jihad.
But jihad is a captivating subject. Some of Usmani`s top students resent the government`s attempts to change their syllabus. It must include jihad, they argue, so they can learn the circumstances that lead to holy war. Teachers tell them it`s justified against an aggressive country. Right now, the young men say, jihad is justified both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Abdul Basit, 23, who just graduated, says he will go to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight America if ordered by a religious leader. ``Every religious man would go to defend our brothers,`` Basit says. ``I would like to go there.``
``Why not? I am ready for it,`` adds Azam Khan Tanoli, 23. ``Whenever our leaders say.``
At other madrassas, the sentiment is also hostile to the West. Many students do not believe that bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. They routinely attend protests against U.S. aggression. They talk of superpower ruthlessness, preferring to see the world through the prism taught inside madrassas: Muslims against the West.
The students firmly believe that America is out to destroy Islam, to crush any Muslim nation. For every argument, they cite some French book or an American newspaper article they once heard about, even if they never saw it.
They claim to know for a fact that thousands of Jews stayed home from jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. They believe Musharraf to be a lackey of America. They show a lack of tolerance for any other religion.
``Islam comes in the world to dominate the world,`` says Syed Ali Mohiuddin, 20, who graduated from a madrassa in Rawalpindi.
In the madrassas that allow visitors, younger children can be seen memorizing the Koran, each one starting at a different place, each one talking over the next, a mumble of broken Arabic that echoes in other classrooms. The young students sit on the floor in dark rooms occasionally lit by bare fluorescent light bulbs. There is no air conditioning, often no fans, and children are sometimes drenched in sweat.
The West believes madrassa students would be better off in a public school. But a message extolling conflict and extremism is easy to find there too.
Public schools in disarray
In a nation where the line between church and state often is blurred, students at public schools face some of the same problems as those at madrassas. Jihad is on everyone`s mind.
The public education system is a mess. State-funded schools are undercut by corruption and politics. Some schools are shams, existing only on paper but still eating into the limited education budget, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group. As a result, students have suffered. The literacy rate for adults is 41.5 percent.
The state maintains iron-fisted control over every aspect of the public school system from curricula to key jobs. Critics say the lessons promote the goals of a government highly influenced by the military: Recent public school curricula instructed educators to teach that fighting India is a religious duty and that the Kashmir (news - web sites) dispute is legitimate. India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmiri territory since 1947.
As early as 5th grade, public school students learn about jihad and martyrdom. A recent 5th-grade Urdu textbook devoted a chapter to Pakistani soldiers killed by the Indian army. The chapter quoted religious texts emphasizing that a Muslim has no faith if he does not wish for martyrdom, and that martyrs earn a special place in heaven.
One high school principal in Karachi turned Independence Day celebrations two years ago into an assembly encouraging students to fight jihad--if the opportunity arose.
``If you look at Pakistan`s educational system, it encourages you to fight in jihad. It glorifies the military,`` says A.H. Nayyar, who has studied the country`s schools. ``It imbibes the student with the philosophy of martyrdom and jihad.``
Like madrassa students, those who choose a public education often graduate ill-equipped for the modern job market, end up marginalized and can become easy recruits for militant groups. Messages promoting jihad or anti-Western views simply reinforce what they learned back in school.
Reform of the public school sector doesn`t seem likely. The new head of the Education Ministry is a former leader of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the feared intelligence agency in Pakistan that maintains strong ties to militant clerics. He has no experience in education.
Nayyar, who helped write a recent study on public schools for a Pakistani non-profit, found that the state-issued textbooks also promote prejudice and discrimination against religious minorities and women. Islamic studies permeate nearly every subject, from social studies to language. Clerics questioned his study, and Nayyar received death threats.
Critics say the government has failed to change public school textbooks because of fierce opposition from clerics. Nayyar says that earlier this year, the government removed some jihadi language from textbooks. But the clerics objected, and the government issued new textbooks, he says. This time, an entire chapter in at least one textbook was devoted to jihad. Nayyar says the chapter read like a lesson on jihad from the literature of banned militant groups.
Changes face stiff resistance
Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq strolls confidently into the conference room of a Peshawar hotel. He is impeccably dressed in Pakistani attire--a starched tunic-length shirt, baggy pants and dark vest.
As minister of religious affairs, he is one of the key people the president has tapped for madrassa reform.
Ijaz, 52, is a religious man who nonetheless smokes, which is frowned upon in conservative Islamic circles. He says he first turned down the job when Musharraf offered it last winter, fearing he would be caught between the government and the clerics.
``If officials wanted me to do something controversial or implement something the people didn`t want, it would be very embarrassing for me,`` Ijaz says.
But eventually he relented.
As the son of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the former president who set Pakistan on its path to Islamic fundamentalism, Ijaz can attempt to span the political divide between the government and the madrassas.
Everywhere he goes, he hears the name of his father, who took power in a 1977 coup and ruled until he died in a 1988 plane crash, the longest reign of any Pakistani head of state.
Under Zia`s rule, madrassas sprang up across the country. Madrassa leaders to this day remain grateful to Zia for his political and financial support. Muslims from around the world began using Pakistan as a base and a training ground for holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia supported the Afghan jihad and indirectly strengthened the madrassas. The two countries infused some $3.5 billion into Zia`s Pakistan, according to Milton Bearden, CIA (news - web sites) station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989. Bearden says most of that money went into buying weapons, but Saudi Arabia and other gulf states independently gave additional money to madrassas. Saudi officials acknowledge building schools during the war but say their involvement ended there.
``Zia didn`t directly give us money,`` recalls Maulana Muhammad Hasan Jan, who runs a madrassa in Peshawar. ``But in his time, the world gave us lots of money.``
Ijaz portrays himself as a realist schooled in the world of Pakistani politics and aware of the political booby trap that madrassa reform poses for Musharraf, already the target of failed assassination attempts.
Musharraf called for madrassa reform as part of a broad anti-terrorist program designed to appease the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the U.S. has provided additional aid and pledged $3 billion over five years.
The Pakistani president also began pushing legislative and constitutional measures that would solidify the military`s control of the government and extend Musharraf`s term until 2007. Musharraf succeeded largely because of support from the religious political parties, a bloc of which was newly elected into the Pakistani parliament.
This alliance now poses a problem: To satisfy his American patrons, Musharraf must crack down on madrassas. But if he succeeds, he will anger the clerics, the people he needs in order to stay in power.
In Musharraf`s January 2002 speech, he said all madrassas must register in two months and adopt a government curriculum by the end of the year. He vowed to close any madrassas that promote extremism or keep weapons.
Today, most madrassas remain unregistered, and no national syllabus has been imposed. Pakistan claims it shut down some madrassas, although no official could identify which ones. The government has opened three model schools with about 300 students each.
But some madrassas linked to banned militant groups still have been allowed to operate.
At a school raided in August after leaders were accused of Al Qaeda links, female students with sticks attacked police, said Faisal Saleh Hayat, the interior minister at the time. A Kalashnikov was found in the madrassa. The school remained open.
Most government officials, including Ijaz, now say that no extremism or violence is being taught in any madrassa in Pakistan. They refuse to publicly say anything negative about madrassas. They also admit they have no idea how many madrassas exist or where they are.
Ijaz`s goal is to get the clerics to accept a plan far more modest than Musharraf`s original proposals--a new curriculum that includes some secular subjects. It may not be the kind of reform the Americans want, but that`s about all Pakistan can accomplish in the current political climate.
``Everyone`s resisting,`` Ijaz says. ``Nobody`s on board yet.``
Critics: Reform talk is lip service
When Ijaz talks to clerics, he does not seem like a man bent on changing anything. He seems like a man who wants to be liked.
At this year`s ceremony to mark the death of his father, more than 1,000 people crowd into a hotel basement filled with posters of Zia. ``Man of the truth, man of the believers!`` they shout. ``Zia ul-Haq! Zia ul-Haq!`` Along with Ijaz, clerics get seats of honor onstage and in the front rows.
Every speech contains the language of Islamic struggle. The country`s information minister tells the crowd that jihad is part of Islam. Ijaz offers a message of support to oppressed Kashmiris, Afghans and Palestinians.
``For the preservation of Islam and the ideology of Pakistan, we will sacrifice even our last droplet of blood,`` Ijaz booms over the microphone.
The previous week, at the hotel in Peshawar, Ijaz is more direct to some 30 clerics, all wearing peaked hats, white caps or the signature turbans of the Pashtuns, who hail from one of the most conservative parts of Pakistan.
``It is widely believed that the government has a nefarious agenda against madrassas,`` Ijaz says. ``It is sheer misunderstanding. I have met with the president and told him that I had an age-old relationship with madrassas. I never noticed any sort of terrorism.``
Many critics believe that such scenes represent the true face of the Pakistani government--officials who pay lip service to education reform and to the Americans while currying favor with the clerics.
After a long day of reassuring clerics in Peshawar, Ijaz starts driving home to Islamabad in a Land Cruiser. Just before 10p.m., he grabs his mobile phone. ``Are you awake?`` Ijaz asks. ``I`m coming over just for five minutes. . . . Put on a good turban.``
The government minister pulls up in front of Haqqania, the madrassa run by Samiul Haq. Near a photo of Samiul holding the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, the two men hug.
Ijaz walks into Samiul`s office, leans back on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table and asks if he can light a cigarette. Samiul nods and grabs Ijaz`s arm.
Samiul says the religious affairs minister needs to teach people in other countries that Islam is a religion of peace.
``It`s up to him now, to get rid of the misunderstanding about Islam in the West,`` Samiul says. ``That`s his No. 1 job.``
- - -
PAKISTAN (map)
Population: 159 million
Percent Muslim: 97 (77% Sunni, 20% Shiite)
Government type: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: 1947, from Britain
Literacy rate: 41.5%
Legal system: Based on English common law but with provisions recognizing it as a Muslim nation
Poverty rate: 35% (2001 est.)
Industries: textiles, clothing, food processing, construction
materials
Agriculture: cotton, wheat, rice, sugar cane, fruits, milk, beef Sources: CIA World Factbook, U.S. State Dept., UN Development Report, ESRI
- - -
Islam at the center of Pakistan`s history
INDEPENDENCE AND CONFLICT
Aug. 14, 1947 Pakistan, a mostly Muslim area that had long been part of British controlled India, becomes an independent state. West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) lie on either side of newly independent India and are separated by more than 1,000 miles.
1947-49 Pakistan and India fight a war over Kashmir after the northern region`s Hindu maharaja opts to join India despite the fact that much of Kashmir`s population is Muslim. Both sides eventually retreat behind a mutually agreed cease-fire line.
1956 Pakistan becomes a republic, and a constitution is approved.
1958 Martial law is declared, and Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan eventually assumes the presidency.
1965 Pakistan and India again clash over Kashmir.
1969 Khan resigns amid widespread social unrest. The country is placed under martial law, and Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan becomes president.
CIVIL WAR AND ISLAMIZATION
1971 Cultural and political differences lead to civil war in Pakistan, with East Pakistan declaring independence and renaming itself Bangladesh. India backs Bangladesh in the conflict, and war breaks out between India and Pakistan. More than 1 million people are killed.
1973 Pakistan adopts a new constitution, with a president, prime minister and two-chamber legislature.
1977 Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq overthrows Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and declares martial law. He later introduces Islamization policies, including legal punishments based on the Koran.
1979 After being convicted of ordering a political opponent`s murder, Bhutto is executed. Also, Pakistan begins supporting Muslim rebels against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
NEW LEADERS AND A NEW WEAPON
1988 Zia dies in a plane crash. For the next 11 years, Pakistan is led alternately by the Pakistan People`s Party, led by Benazir Bhutto, the former leader`s daughter, and the Pakistan Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif.
1989 After the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan, Pakistan continues to support Islamic extremists in the country, including the Taliban, many of whom attended Pakistani madrassas. The Taliban regime later takes over Afghanistan.
1998 Responding to Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan conducts tests of its own, confirming that it has nuclear weapons.
1999 Gen. Pervez Musharraf leads a coup that overthrows the Sharif government.
2001 Musharraf declares himself president and dissolves parliament. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., he allows American forces to use Pakistani military bases and airspace to help overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Zia ul-Haq Benazir Bhutto Sharif
Sources: World Book, Encyclopedia Britannica; AP and Reuters photos
Chicago Tribune
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Schooled in jihad
Sun Nov 28, 9:40 AM ET Top Stories - Chicago Tribune
By Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah and Kim Barker Tribune staff reporters
President Pervez Musharraf had the ears of the world for his groundbreaking speech. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, he needed to show that the only nuclear-armed Islamic nation was not a threat.
Wearing a dark jacket instead of his army uniform, he denounced religious extremism and vowed to fix the Islamic schools in his back yard accused of fomenting hatred, the ones that crank out militants the way Harvard churns out MBAs.
But almost three years later, Pakistan remains a country where promises come easier than progress. Indeed, travels through the dense cities and dusty provinces of this Muslim nation that relies heavily on U.S. aid show just how little has been done to reform education--both in the Islamic madrassas and the failed public schools.
In the struggle for the soul of Islam, few things are as important as education reform. Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites), but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools were described as ``incubators for violent extremism`` by the Sept. 11 commission.
Little has changed inside the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, where Maulana Samiul Haq still preaches the same anti-American rhetoric and praises Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).
``He is a brave and courageous man,`` says Samiul, the madrassa leader who scoffs at the idea of government reform at the school. ``We will remain here no matter what.``
At public schools in Karachi, children as young as 5th graders still learn about the glories of jihad and martyrdom in textbooks the government approves. One 9th-grade student told a Tribune reporter that he dreamed of going to fight in a jihad when he grows up, if he could get his mother`s blessing.
Pakistani leaders, under enormous American pressure, have not sat idly. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has arrested more than 600 suspected Al Qaeda members and flushed out terrorists and their local allies from cities and tribal areas. Earlier this year, Musharraf called on Muslims around the world to replace extremism with an ideology of ``enlightened moderation.``
Musharraf appointed Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq, a longtime politician and son of a legendary Pakistani president, to head the Religious Affairs Ministry, one of the key agencies responsible for reforming madrassas. Ijaz brings considerable political skills and credibility to the reform effort, particularly among the powerful clerics skeptical of the government`s objectives.
But Ijaz has seemed reluctant to push hard for change. The lesson so far in Pakistan: While making arrests is important in the war on terror, adopting education reforms to combat the extremist teachings that foster violence is far more difficult, like asking ward bosses in Chicago to voluntarily relinquish power.
The International Crisis Group, a non-profit specializing in conflict resolution, blames the Musharraf government for not confronting the religious lobby. Critics say Musharraf has failed to tackle extremism in public schools and has not lived up to his promises to revamp madrassas.
``None of it has come true, nothing,`` says Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group.
Carved from India in 1947, Pakistan is an Islamic nation of 159million people with a volatile ethnic mix, a history of tribal conflict and a three-tiered education system that serves the rich but not the poor.
Elite private schools, a legacy of British colonial rule, remain a haven for the children of wealth and privilege. Graduates are destined for influential jobs in the government and military.
The state-run school system forms the second tier, which critics say has long been plagued by neglect, corruption, incompetence, a bloated state payroll and financial problems. Pakistan, which has a constitutional mandate to provide education until age 16, now is one of only 12 countries that spend less than 2 percent of national economic output on education, not even half the amount earmarked for the military.
Madrassas, the final and some believe most troublesome tier, are secretive religious schools controlled by politically powerful clerics who advocate conservative Islam coupled with religious intolerance. They prosper on the financial donations of wealthy Muslims around the world.
Madrassas are thriving, partly because they offer free room and board and partly because parents are frustrated by the public schools` problems. In 1971, Pakistan had about 900 madrassas. Today, an estimated 20,000 madrassas educate as many as 1.5 million students a year.
One of the few things public schools and madrassas have in common is the teaching of jihad, an Islamic concept that has two meanings -- one a personal struggle against temptation and another a war of Muslims against aggressors. In Pakistan, particularly in the madrassas, jihad has essentially come to mean war.
A rare glimpse inside a madrassa
Almost 3,000 boys and young men attend Darul Uloom Haqqania, perhaps Pakistan`s best-known madrassa, often referred to in media reports as the University of Jihad. Its most famous student was Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed cleric who led the Taliban, the puritanical regime that once ruled neighboring Afghanistan.
On a rare visit inside Haqqania, boys can be seen locked in a courtyard for most of the day, rocking back and forth, memorizing the Koran and staring at a white wall. They are not allowed to talk to or look at each other. They do not understand the Arabic language they memorize, the teachers say.
Centuries-old textbooks are still in use, and the school`s leader, Samiul Haq, speaks with pride of Mullah Omar and his followers.
``I was pleased they became the rulers of Afghanistan,`` Samiul says. ``They restored law and order there. They respected human rights. They respected women`s rights. They completely eliminated heroin and drug use.``
Sprawled over 7 acres next to Samiul`s home northwest of Islamabad, Haqqania features vast dormitories with arches, administration buildings, even a graveyard. For a limited tour, school officials asked two women reporters to wear black robes and veils that covered everything but their eyes.
Samiul denies that Haqqania and other madrassas have been a source of jihad and militancy, but ample evidence suggests otherwise.
Only months before the Sept. 11 attacks, a conference at Samiul`s madrassa brought some of Pakistan`s most notorious militants to the pulpit. In the courtyard, masked men in camouflage marched and carried Kalashnikovs, as seen in a documentary called ``Pakistan and India Under the Nuclear Shadow.``
When the U.S. attacked Afghanistan in October 2001, Samiul and fellow clerics raised money to help the Taliban. One madrassa nestled in a working-class neighborhood gave almost $2,500 in donations--no small sacrifice for poor Pakistanis--to the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, receipts show.
Students at many madrassas have told reporters they went to Afghanistan to fight U.S. troops. Samiul denies that any students left Haqqania, but Shah Abdul Aziz Mujahid, a friend and former student of Samiul`s, says about 1,000 Haqqania students took off for Afghanistan.
``They announced in the mosque, the Americans had come to Afghanistan,`` says Zaharullah, 22, who uses only one name. He lives near Samiul`s village but is not a madrassa student. ``All the religious scholars, including Samiul Haq, said, `Go. There is a jihad.```
Sitting in his study, Samiul, 62, toys with his glasses in his lap. He pulls his graying beard into a point and occasionally adjusts his gray-and-white turban.
``We are not against reforms,`` he says. ``We are trying our best to reform ourselves.``
He says he has added a computer room and English classes to his school. He dismisses government officials who advocate madrassa reform as stooges of the U.S. Madrassas will change on their own terms, he says, not those imposed by the government.
Many madrassa leaders agree, arguing they have already incorporated other subjects into their curricula. Muhammad Hanif Jalandhry, the secretary general of a group representing about 8,000 madrassas, says his coalition developed a syllabus and published its own textbooks in math, English and Pakistan studies 15 years ago.
But buried in these books are matter-of-fact references to fighting and war. On page 65 of the English book, the focus switches from geography to Islam. Stories feature violent lessons against idol worship--a pointed reference against Hindus in neighboring India. In grammar lessons, the book includes these examples: ``You had been participating in Jihad`` and ``Go and fight the enemy.``
In science classes at a girls` madrassa in Islamabad, students learn that the sun was made by God. They study English translations of the Koran. A math lesson includes a formula that says God made the world in seven days. ``God created everything,`` says Shameem Akhtar, vice principal of the madrassa. ``So every subject relates to God.``
In contrast, just outside Islamabad, the Institute of Islamic Sciences could be a model for the kind of madrassa reform the government envisions. It teaches English and math. Students from the madrassa performed better than most students from public schools in federal board tests for 10th graders. Seven students from this Islamic school scored among the top 10 in the nation.
President Faiz-ur-Rahman Usmani says jihad is just one of 70 subjects being taught at his school. He hauls out two dog-eared volumes of the 18th Century Islamic text that forms the basis of education in most Pakistani madrassas--out of 1,100 pages, only 15 deal with jihad.
But jihad is a captivating subject. Some of Usmani`s top students resent the government`s attempts to change their syllabus. It must include jihad, they argue, so they can learn the circumstances that lead to holy war. Teachers tell them it`s justified against an aggressive country. Right now, the young men say, jihad is justified both in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Abdul Basit, 23, who just graduated, says he will go to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight America if ordered by a religious leader. ``Every religious man would go to defend our brothers,`` Basit says. ``I would like to go there.``
``Why not? I am ready for it,`` adds Azam Khan Tanoli, 23. ``Whenever our leaders say.``
At other madrassas, the sentiment is also hostile to the West. Many students do not believe that bin Laden was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. They routinely attend protests against U.S. aggression. They talk of superpower ruthlessness, preferring to see the world through the prism taught inside madrassas: Muslims against the West.
The students firmly believe that America is out to destroy Islam, to crush any Muslim nation. For every argument, they cite some French book or an American newspaper article they once heard about, even if they never saw it.
They claim to know for a fact that thousands of Jews stayed home from jobs at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. They believe Musharraf to be a lackey of America. They show a lack of tolerance for any other religion.
``Islam comes in the world to dominate the world,`` says Syed Ali Mohiuddin, 20, who graduated from a madrassa in Rawalpindi.
In the madrassas that allow visitors, younger children can be seen memorizing the Koran, each one starting at a different place, each one talking over the next, a mumble of broken Arabic that echoes in other classrooms. The young students sit on the floor in dark rooms occasionally lit by bare fluorescent light bulbs. There is no air conditioning, often no fans, and children are sometimes drenched in sweat.
The West believes madrassa students would be better off in a public school. But a message extolling conflict and extremism is easy to find there too.
Public schools in disarray
In a nation where the line between church and state often is blurred, students at public schools face some of the same problems as those at madrassas. Jihad is on everyone`s mind.
The public education system is a mess. State-funded schools are undercut by corruption and politics. Some schools are shams, existing only on paper but still eating into the limited education budget, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group. As a result, students have suffered. The literacy rate for adults is 41.5 percent.
The state maintains iron-fisted control over every aspect of the public school system from curricula to key jobs. Critics say the lessons promote the goals of a government highly influenced by the military: Recent public school curricula instructed educators to teach that fighting India is a religious duty and that the Kashmir (news - web sites) dispute is legitimate. India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmiri territory since 1947.
As early as 5th grade, public school students learn about jihad and martyrdom. A recent 5th-grade Urdu textbook devoted a chapter to Pakistani soldiers killed by the Indian army. The chapter quoted religious texts emphasizing that a Muslim has no faith if he does not wish for martyrdom, and that martyrs earn a special place in heaven.
One high school principal in Karachi turned Independence Day celebrations two years ago into an assembly encouraging students to fight jihad--if the opportunity arose.
``If you look at Pakistan`s educational system, it encourages you to fight in jihad. It glorifies the military,`` says A.H. Nayyar, who has studied the country`s schools. ``It imbibes the student with the philosophy of martyrdom and jihad.``
Like madrassa students, those who choose a public education often graduate ill-equipped for the modern job market, end up marginalized and can become easy recruits for militant groups. Messages promoting jihad or anti-Western views simply reinforce what they learned back in school.
Reform of the public school sector doesn`t seem likely. The new head of the Education Ministry is a former leader of the Inter-Services Intelligence, the feared intelligence agency in Pakistan that maintains strong ties to militant clerics. He has no experience in education.
Nayyar, who helped write a recent study on public schools for a Pakistani non-profit, found that the state-issued textbooks also promote prejudice and discrimination against religious minorities and women. Islamic studies permeate nearly every subject, from social studies to language. Clerics questioned his study, and Nayyar received death threats.
Critics say the government has failed to change public school textbooks because of fierce opposition from clerics. Nayyar says that earlier this year, the government removed some jihadi language from textbooks. But the clerics objected, and the government issued new textbooks, he says. This time, an entire chapter in at least one textbook was devoted to jihad. Nayyar says the chapter read like a lesson on jihad from the literature of banned militant groups.
Changes face stiff resistance
Muhammad Ijaz Ul Haq strolls confidently into the conference room of a Peshawar hotel. He is impeccably dressed in Pakistani attire--a starched tunic-length shirt, baggy pants and dark vest.
As minister of religious affairs, he is one of the key people the president has tapped for madrassa reform.
Ijaz, 52, is a religious man who nonetheless smokes, which is frowned upon in conservative Islamic circles. He says he first turned down the job when Musharraf offered it last winter, fearing he would be caught between the government and the clerics.
``If officials wanted me to do something controversial or implement something the people didn`t want, it would be very embarrassing for me,`` Ijaz says.
But eventually he relented.
As the son of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the former president who set Pakistan on its path to Islamic fundamentalism, Ijaz can attempt to span the political divide between the government and the madrassas.
Everywhere he goes, he hears the name of his father, who took power in a 1977 coup and ruled until he died in a 1988 plane crash, the longest reign of any Pakistani head of state.
Under Zia`s rule, madrassas sprang up across the country. Madrassa leaders to this day remain grateful to Zia for his political and financial support. Muslims from around the world began using Pakistan as a base and a training ground for holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia supported the Afghan jihad and indirectly strengthened the madrassas. The two countries infused some $3.5 billion into Zia`s Pakistan, according to Milton Bearden, CIA (news - web sites) station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989. Bearden says most of that money went into buying weapons, but Saudi Arabia and other gulf states independently gave additional money to madrassas. Saudi officials acknowledge building schools during the war but say their involvement ended there.
``Zia didn`t directly give us money,`` recalls Maulana Muhammad Hasan Jan, who runs a madrassa in Peshawar. ``But in his time, the world gave us lots of money.``
Ijaz portrays himself as a realist schooled in the world of Pakistani politics and aware of the political booby trap that madrassa reform poses for Musharraf, already the target of failed assassination attempts.
Musharraf called for madrassa reform as part of a broad anti-terrorist program designed to appease the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks. Since then, the U.S. has provided additional aid and pledged $3 billion over five years.
The Pakistani president also began pushing legislative and constitutional measures that would solidify the military`s control of the government and extend Musharraf`s term until 2007. Musharraf succeeded largely because of support from the religious political parties, a bloc of which was newly elected into the Pakistani parliament.
This alliance now poses a problem: To satisfy his American patrons, Musharraf must crack down on madrassas. But if he succeeds, he will anger the clerics, the people he needs in order to stay in power.
In Musharraf`s January 2002 speech, he said all madrassas must register in two months and adopt a government curriculum by the end of the year. He vowed to close any madrassas that promote extremism or keep weapons.
Today, most madrassas remain unregistered, and no national syllabus has been imposed. Pakistan claims it shut down some madrassas, although no official could identify which ones. The government has opened three model schools with about 300 students each.
But some madrassas linked to banned militant groups still have been allowed to operate.
At a school raided in August after leaders were accused of Al Qaeda links, female students with sticks attacked police, said Faisal Saleh Hayat, the interior minister at the time. A Kalashnikov was found in the madrassa. The school remained open.
Most government officials, including Ijaz, now say that no extremism or violence is being taught in any madrassa in Pakistan. They refuse to publicly say anything negative about madrassas. They also admit they have no idea how many madrassas exist or where they are.
Ijaz`s goal is to get the clerics to accept a plan far more modest than Musharraf`s original proposals--a new curriculum that includes some secular subjects. It may not be the kind of reform the Americans want, but that`s about all Pakistan can accomplish in the current political climate.
``Everyone`s resisting,`` Ijaz says. ``Nobody`s on board yet.``
Critics: Reform talk is lip service
When Ijaz talks to clerics, he does not seem like a man bent on changing anything. He seems like a man who wants to be liked.
At this year`s ceremony to mark the death of his father, more than 1,000 people crowd into a hotel basement filled with posters of Zia. ``Man of the truth, man of the believers!`` they shout. ``Zia ul-Haq! Zia ul-Haq!`` Along with Ijaz, clerics get seats of honor onstage and in the front rows.
Every speech contains the language of Islamic struggle. The country`s information minister tells the crowd that jihad is part of Islam. Ijaz offers a message of support to oppressed Kashmiris, Afghans and Palestinians.
``For the preservation of Islam and the ideology of Pakistan, we will sacrifice even our last droplet of blood,`` Ijaz booms over the microphone.
The previous week, at the hotel in Peshawar, Ijaz is more direct to some 30 clerics, all wearing peaked hats, white caps or the signature turbans of the Pashtuns, who hail from one of the most conservative parts of Pakistan.
``It is widely believed that the government has a nefarious agenda against madrassas,`` Ijaz says. ``It is sheer misunderstanding. I have met with the president and told him that I had an age-old relationship with madrassas. I never noticed any sort of terrorism.``
Many critics believe that such scenes represent the true face of the Pakistani government--officials who pay lip service to education reform and to the Americans while currying favor with the clerics.
After a long day of reassuring clerics in Peshawar, Ijaz starts driving home to Islamabad in a Land Cruiser. Just before 10p.m., he grabs his mobile phone. ``Are you awake?`` Ijaz asks. ``I`m coming over just for five minutes. . . . Put on a good turban.``
The government minister pulls up in front of Haqqania, the madrassa run by Samiul Haq. Near a photo of Samiul holding the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, the two men hug.
Ijaz walks into Samiul`s office, leans back on the couch, puts his feet up on the coffee table and asks if he can light a cigarette. Samiul nods and grabs Ijaz`s arm.
Samiul says the religious affairs minister needs to teach people in other countries that Islam is a religion of peace.
``It`s up to him now, to get rid of the misunderstanding about Islam in the West,`` Samiul says. ``That`s his No. 1 job.``
- - -
PAKISTAN (map)
Population: 159 million
Percent Muslim: 97 (77% Sunni, 20% Shiite)
Government type: Parliamentary democracy
Independence: 1947, from Britain
Literacy rate: 41.5%
Legal system: Based on English common law but with provisions recognizing it as a Muslim nation
Poverty rate: 35% (2001 est.)
Industries: textiles, clothing, food processing, construction
materials
Agriculture: cotton, wheat, rice, sugar cane, fruits, milk, beef Sources: CIA World Factbook, U.S. State Dept., UN Development Report, ESRI
- - -
Islam at the center of Pakistan`s history
INDEPENDENCE AND CONFLICT
Aug. 14, 1947 Pakistan, a mostly Muslim area that had long been part of British controlled India, becomes an independent state. West Pakistan and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) lie on either side of newly independent India and are separated by more than 1,000 miles.
1947-49 Pakistan and India fight a war over Kashmir after the northern region`s Hindu maharaja opts to join India despite the fact that much of Kashmir`s population is Muslim. Both sides eventually retreat behind a mutually agreed cease-fire line.
1956 Pakistan becomes a republic, and a constitution is approved.
1958 Martial law is declared, and Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan eventually assumes the presidency.
1965 Pakistan and India again clash over Kashmir.
1969 Khan resigns amid widespread social unrest. The country is placed under martial law, and Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan becomes president.
CIVIL WAR AND ISLAMIZATION
1971 Cultural and political differences lead to civil war in Pakistan, with East Pakistan declaring independence and renaming itself Bangladesh. India backs Bangladesh in the conflict, and war breaks out between India and Pakistan. More than 1 million people are killed.
1973 Pakistan adopts a new constitution, with a president, prime minister and two-chamber legislature.
1977 Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq overthrows Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and declares martial law. He later introduces Islamization policies, including legal punishments based on the Koran.
1979 After being convicted of ordering a political opponent`s murder, Bhutto is executed. Also, Pakistan begins supporting Muslim rebels against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
NEW LEADERS AND A NEW WEAPON
1988 Zia dies in a plane crash. For the next 11 years, Pakistan is led alternately by the Pakistan People`s Party, led by Benazir Bhutto, the former leader`s daughter, and the Pakistan Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif.
1989 After the Soviets withdraw from Afghanistan, Pakistan continues to support Islamic extremists in the country, including the Taliban, many of whom attended Pakistani madrassas. The Taliban regime later takes over Afghanistan.
1998 Responding to Indian nuclear tests, Pakistan conducts tests of its own, confirming that it has nuclear weapons.
1999 Gen. Pervez Musharraf leads a coup that overthrows the Sharif government.
2001 Musharraf declares himself president and dissolves parliament. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., he allows American forces to use Pakistani military bases and airspace to help overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Zia ul-Haq Benazir Bhutto Sharif
Sources: World Book, Encyclopedia Britannica; AP and Reuters photos
Chicago Tribune
ON THE INTERNET
- For more stories and photos in the series ``Struggle for the
soul of Islam,`` go to chicagotribune.com/news/specials.
Musharraf’s Radical Kashmir Proposals
Pakistani definition of terror
Posted by
mumbaikar
Nov 4, 2004 09:18 pm
http://www.balawaristan.net/GltDetainees.htmlPakistani definition of terror
Bangladesh Memories
http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,..._110304,00.html
Joe Galloway: Rest in Peace Archer Blood, American Hero
November 3, 2004
[Have an opinion about this article? Visit the Joe Galloway discussion forum.]
WASHINGTON - When Archer K. Blood died last month, in retirement in Colorado, there was family, a few old friends and an entire nation to mourn his passing, but the nation that grieved for him was not his own. It was Bangladesh.
Arch Blood was 81 years old and a retired diplomat. He might have had an unremarkable if satisfying career, moving from Greece to Germany to Afghanistan to New Delhi, but in the bloody year of 1971 he found himself consul-general in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
There Blood witnessed the beginning of a massacre that would take hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. The Pakistan army, faced with an incipient rebellion among the Bengalis, slaughtered thousands in a pre-emptive attack on the University of Dacca and the barracks of Bengali police. Columns of troops followed the roads throughout the country, burning and killing.
Blood in his first cable described what he termed a ``selective genocide,`` alerted President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger to what was happening and urged them to pressure Gen. Yahya Khan, the Pakistani dictator, to stop the killing.
His cable, dated March 28, 1971, was declassified last year. In it Blood wrote: ``Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror of the Pak military ...``
The trouble was that Nixon and Kissinger had tilted toward Pakistan as a counter to Soviet influence in the subcontinent. The administration didn`t want to hear what Blood was reporting.
That cable was followed by another, signed by 20 Americans stationed in East Pakistan with various U.S. government agencies, decrying the official American silence as serving ``neither our moral interests broadly defined nor our national interests narrowly defined ...``
Blood did not sign that cable, but he added a footnote subscribing fully to the views it expressed and then wrote prophetically: ``I believe the most likely eventual outcome of the struggle under way in East Pakistan is a Bengali victory and the consequent establishment of an independent Bangladesh.`` He argued strongly against ``pursuing a rigid policy of one-sided support to the likely loser.``
Nixon chose an option of trying to help Khan negotiate a settlement with the Bengalis, but added, in his own handwriting, ``To all hands: DON`T squeeze Yahya at this time.`` So nobody in authority squeezed Yahya Khan, the killings continued and 20 million Bengali refugees poured into India.
To counter reports of the army`s massacre, the Pakistanis brought in a few foreign journalists for a tightly controlled tour that it said would prove that it was actually Bengali Hindus slaughtering non-Bengali Muslims. At the end of the tour the reporters would be packed off without hearing any other stories.
I was on that trip. At the end of the tour, on ancient crop-duster planes literally coated with DDT, I simply declared myself deathly ill and refused to leave. Security was heavy when I left the hotel and so it was too dangerous to interview on the streets, but they couldn`t follow me into the American consulate.
There I met Arch Blood, who told me that he had been officially ``silenced`` by Washington, but that my suspicions of a continuing slaughter of Bengalis by the Pakistan army were quite correct.
Blood said he couldn`t speak, but he had scores of Bengalis on the consulate staff. He pointed to an office across the hall and said: ``It`s yours for as long as you need it. Those staffers who want to tell you their stories will come visit you there.``
For the better part of a day I listened to men and women who wept as they told how parents, siblings, even children had died in Dhaka and in towns from Chittagong to Naryanganj to the hill country tea plantations. When my plane lifted off from Dhaka I began banging out a lead I still remember:
``Fear, fire and the sword are the only things holding East and West Pakistan together ... ``
I never saw Arch Blood again, but I never met a more upright and courageous diplomat. Not long after that he was called back to Washington and put in the doghouse, for as long as Nixon was in the White House.
In 1971 his colleagues in the American Foreign Service voted Arch K. Blood the recipient of the Christian A. Herter Award for ``initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent.``
His death made headlines in Bangladesh, the nation that emerged in 1971 as Blood predicted. A delegation of Bengalis attended his memorial service in Fort Collins, Colo. His wife, Margaret, has been swamped with mail from Bangladesh.
Arch Blood spread the news of a new nation being born amid calamity. He ought to be remembered as an American hero as well.
Posted by
mumbaikar
Nov 4, 2004 09:18 pm
http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Galloway_110304,00.htmlhttp://www.military.com/Opinions/0,..._110304,00.html
Joe Galloway: Rest in Peace Archer Blood, American Hero
November 3, 2004
[Have an opinion about this article? Visit the Joe Galloway discussion forum.]
WASHINGTON - When Archer K. Blood died last month, in retirement in Colorado, there was family, a few old friends and an entire nation to mourn his passing, but the nation that grieved for him was not his own. It was Bangladesh.
Arch Blood was 81 years old and a retired diplomat. He might have had an unremarkable if satisfying career, moving from Greece to Germany to Afghanistan to New Delhi, but in the bloody year of 1971 he found himself consul-general in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
There Blood witnessed the beginning of a massacre that would take hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. The Pakistan army, faced with an incipient rebellion among the Bengalis, slaughtered thousands in a pre-emptive attack on the University of Dacca and the barracks of Bengali police. Columns of troops followed the roads throughout the country, burning and killing.
Blood in his first cable described what he termed a ``selective genocide,`` alerted President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger to what was happening and urged them to pressure Gen. Yahya Khan, the Pakistani dictator, to stop the killing.
His cable, dated March 28, 1971, was declassified last year. In it Blood wrote: ``Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror of the Pak military ...``
The trouble was that Nixon and Kissinger had tilted toward Pakistan as a counter to Soviet influence in the subcontinent. The administration didn`t want to hear what Blood was reporting.
That cable was followed by another, signed by 20 Americans stationed in East Pakistan with various U.S. government agencies, decrying the official American silence as serving ``neither our moral interests broadly defined nor our national interests narrowly defined ...``
Blood did not sign that cable, but he added a footnote subscribing fully to the views it expressed and then wrote prophetically: ``I believe the most likely eventual outcome of the struggle under way in East Pakistan is a Bengali victory and the consequent establishment of an independent Bangladesh.`` He argued strongly against ``pursuing a rigid policy of one-sided support to the likely loser.``
Nixon chose an option of trying to help Khan negotiate a settlement with the Bengalis, but added, in his own handwriting, ``To all hands: DON`T squeeze Yahya at this time.`` So nobody in authority squeezed Yahya Khan, the killings continued and 20 million Bengali refugees poured into India.
To counter reports of the army`s massacre, the Pakistanis brought in a few foreign journalists for a tightly controlled tour that it said would prove that it was actually Bengali Hindus slaughtering non-Bengali Muslims. At the end of the tour the reporters would be packed off without hearing any other stories.
I was on that trip. At the end of the tour, on ancient crop-duster planes literally coated with DDT, I simply declared myself deathly ill and refused to leave. Security was heavy when I left the hotel and so it was too dangerous to interview on the streets, but they couldn`t follow me into the American consulate.
There I met Arch Blood, who told me that he had been officially ``silenced`` by Washington, but that my suspicions of a continuing slaughter of Bengalis by the Pakistan army were quite correct.
Blood said he couldn`t speak, but he had scores of Bengalis on the consulate staff. He pointed to an office across the hall and said: ``It`s yours for as long as you need it. Those staffers who want to tell you their stories will come visit you there.``
For the better part of a day I listened to men and women who wept as they told how parents, siblings, even children had died in Dhaka and in towns from Chittagong to Naryanganj to the hill country tea plantations. When my plane lifted off from Dhaka I began banging out a lead I still remember:
``Fear, fire and the sword are the only things holding East and West Pakistan together ... ``
I never saw Arch Blood again, but I never met a more upright and courageous diplomat. Not long after that he was called back to Washington and put in the doghouse, for as long as Nixon was in the White House.
In 1971 his colleagues in the American Foreign Service voted Arch K. Blood the recipient of the Christian A. Herter Award for ``initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent.``
His death made headlines in Bangladesh, the nation that emerged in 1971 as Blood predicted. A delegation of Bengalis attended his memorial service in Fort Collins, Colo. His wife, Margaret, has been swamped with mail from Bangladesh.
Arch Blood spread the news of a new nation being born amid calamity. He ought to be remembered as an American hero as well.
Balkan Tragedy: A Re-enactment of the 1971 Genocide in Bangladesh
http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,..._110304,00.html
Joe Galloway: Rest in Peace Archer Blood, American Hero
November 3, 2004
[Have an opinion about this article? Visit the Joe Galloway discussion forum.]
WASHINGTON - When Archer K. Blood died last month, in retirement in Colorado, there was family, a few old friends and an entire nation to mourn his passing, but the nation that grieved for him was not his own. It was Bangladesh.
Arch Blood was 81 years old and a retired diplomat. He might have had an unremarkable if satisfying career, moving from Greece to Germany to Afghanistan to New Delhi, but in the bloody year of 1971 he found himself consul-general in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
There Blood witnessed the beginning of a massacre that would take hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. The Pakistan army, faced with an incipient rebellion among the Bengalis, slaughtered thousands in a pre-emptive attack on the University of Dacca and the barracks of Bengali police. Columns of troops followed the roads throughout the country, burning and killing.
Blood in his first cable described what he termed a ``selective genocide,`` alerted President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger to what was happening and urged them to pressure Gen. Yahya Khan, the Pakistani dictator, to stop the killing.
His cable, dated March 28, 1971, was declassified last year. In it Blood wrote: ``Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror of the Pak military ...``
The trouble was that Nixon and Kissinger had tilted toward Pakistan as a counter to Soviet influence in the subcontinent. The administration didn`t want to hear what Blood was reporting.
That cable was followed by another, signed by 20 Americans stationed in East Pakistan with various U.S. government agencies, decrying the official American silence as serving ``neither our moral interests broadly defined nor our national interests narrowly defined ...``
Blood did not sign that cable, but he added a footnote subscribing fully to the views it expressed and then wrote prophetically: ``I believe the most likely eventual outcome of the struggle under way in East Pakistan is a Bengali victory and the consequent establishment of an independent Bangladesh.`` He argued strongly against ``pursuing a rigid policy of one-sided support to the likely loser.``
Nixon chose an option of trying to help Khan negotiate a settlement with the Bengalis, but added, in his own handwriting, ``To all hands: DON`T squeeze Yahya at this time.`` So nobody in authority squeezed Yahya Khan, the killings continued and 20 million Bengali refugees poured into India.
To counter reports of the army`s massacre, the Pakistanis brought in a few foreign journalists for a tightly controlled tour that it said would prove that it was actually Bengali Hindus slaughtering non-Bengali Muslims. At the end of the tour the reporters would be packed off without hearing any other stories.
I was on that trip. At the end of the tour, on ancient crop-duster planes literally coated with DDT, I simply declared myself deathly ill and refused to leave. Security was heavy when I left the hotel and so it was too dangerous to interview on the streets, but they couldn`t follow me into the American consulate.
There I met Arch Blood, who told me that he had been officially ``silenced`` by Washington, but that my suspicions of a continuing slaughter of Bengalis by the Pakistan army were quite correct.
Blood said he couldn`t speak, but he had scores of Bengalis on the consulate staff. He pointed to an office across the hall and said: ``It`s yours for as long as you need it. Those staffers who want to tell you their stories will come visit you there.``
For the better part of a day I listened to men and women who wept as they told how parents, siblings, even children had died in Dhaka and in towns from Chittagong to Naryanganj to the hill country tea plantations. When my plane lifted off from Dhaka I began banging out a lead I still remember:
``Fear, fire and the sword are the only things holding East and West Pakistan together ... ``
I never saw Arch Blood again, but I never met a more upright and courageous diplomat. Not long after that he was called back to Washington and put in the doghouse, for as long as Nixon was in the White House.
In 1971 his colleagues in the American Foreign Service voted Arch K. Blood the recipient of the Christian A. Herter Award for ``initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent.``
His death made headlines in Bangladesh, the nation that emerged in 1971 as Blood predicted. A delegation of Bengalis attended his memorial service in Fort Collins, Colo. His wife, Margaret, has been swamped with mail from Bangladesh.
Arch Blood spread the news of a new nation being born amid calamity. He ought to be remembered as an American hero as well.
Posted by
mumbaikar
Nov 4, 2004 09:18 pm
http://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Galloway_110304,00.htmlhttp://www.military.com/Opinions/0,..._110304,00.html
Joe Galloway: Rest in Peace Archer Blood, American Hero
November 3, 2004
[Have an opinion about this article? Visit the Joe Galloway discussion forum.]
WASHINGTON - When Archer K. Blood died last month, in retirement in Colorado, there was family, a few old friends and an entire nation to mourn his passing, but the nation that grieved for him was not his own. It was Bangladesh.
Arch Blood was 81 years old and a retired diplomat. He might have had an unremarkable if satisfying career, moving from Greece to Germany to Afghanistan to New Delhi, but in the bloody year of 1971 he found himself consul-general in Dhaka, East Pakistan.
There Blood witnessed the beginning of a massacre that would take hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. The Pakistan army, faced with an incipient rebellion among the Bengalis, slaughtered thousands in a pre-emptive attack on the University of Dacca and the barracks of Bengali police. Columns of troops followed the roads throughout the country, burning and killing.
Blood in his first cable described what he termed a ``selective genocide,`` alerted President Richard Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger to what was happening and urged them to pressure Gen. Yahya Khan, the Pakistani dictator, to stop the killing.
His cable, dated March 28, 1971, was declassified last year. In it Blood wrote: ``Here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign of terror of the Pak military ...``
The trouble was that Nixon and Kissinger had tilted toward Pakistan as a counter to Soviet influence in the subcontinent. The administration didn`t want to hear what Blood was reporting.
That cable was followed by another, signed by 20 Americans stationed in East Pakistan with various U.S. government agencies, decrying the official American silence as serving ``neither our moral interests broadly defined nor our national interests narrowly defined ...``
Blood did not sign that cable, but he added a footnote subscribing fully to the views it expressed and then wrote prophetically: ``I believe the most likely eventual outcome of the struggle under way in East Pakistan is a Bengali victory and the consequent establishment of an independent Bangladesh.`` He argued strongly against ``pursuing a rigid policy of one-sided support to the likely loser.``
Nixon chose an option of trying to help Khan negotiate a settlement with the Bengalis, but added, in his own handwriting, ``To all hands: DON`T squeeze Yahya at this time.`` So nobody in authority squeezed Yahya Khan, the killings continued and 20 million Bengali refugees poured into India.
To counter reports of the army`s massacre, the Pakistanis brought in a few foreign journalists for a tightly controlled tour that it said would prove that it was actually Bengali Hindus slaughtering non-Bengali Muslims. At the end of the tour the reporters would be packed off without hearing any other stories.
I was on that trip. At the end of the tour, on ancient crop-duster planes literally coated with DDT, I simply declared myself deathly ill and refused to leave. Security was heavy when I left the hotel and so it was too dangerous to interview on the streets, but they couldn`t follow me into the American consulate.
There I met Arch Blood, who told me that he had been officially ``silenced`` by Washington, but that my suspicions of a continuing slaughter of Bengalis by the Pakistan army were quite correct.
Blood said he couldn`t speak, but he had scores of Bengalis on the consulate staff. He pointed to an office across the hall and said: ``It`s yours for as long as you need it. Those staffers who want to tell you their stories will come visit you there.``
For the better part of a day I listened to men and women who wept as they told how parents, siblings, even children had died in Dhaka and in towns from Chittagong to Naryanganj to the hill country tea plantations. When my plane lifted off from Dhaka I began banging out a lead I still remember:
``Fear, fire and the sword are the only things holding East and West Pakistan together ... ``
I never saw Arch Blood again, but I never met a more upright and courageous diplomat. Not long after that he was called back to Washington and put in the doghouse, for as long as Nixon was in the White House.
In 1971 his colleagues in the American Foreign Service voted Arch K. Blood the recipient of the Christian A. Herter Award for ``initiative, integrity, intellectual courage and creative dissent.``
His death made headlines in Bangladesh, the nation that emerged in 1971 as Blood predicted. A delegation of Bengalis attended his memorial service in Fort Collins, Colo. His wife, Margaret, has been swamped with mail from Bangladesh.
Arch Blood spread the news of a new nation being born amid calamity. He ought to be remembered as an American hero as well.
Musharraf’s Radical Kashmir Proposals
| Special to Gulf News | 2004
Print friendly format | Email to Friend
Since the creation of their state, Pakistani politicians have maintained that Kashmir is a national issue, far more important than any other issue, and that the legitimacy of their entity would not be complete without having full sovereignty over the entire Kashmir territory. Additionally, it has been repeatedly said that any Pakistani leader giving up on this issue would be doomed to death.
Current debates on Pakistani websites, however, show that such ideas no longer have supporters other than extremist religious groups.
Young and educated Pakistanis seem to be more concerned about peace in the subcontinent, as a prelude to development, prosperity and better standards of living, than the fate of Kashmir. It was not surprising, therefore, that the recent assassination attempts against General Pervez Musharraf were solely organised by fundamentalist groups.
After years of unsuccessful policies aimed at forcing India to end its sovereignty over Kashmir, Pakistan seems to be yielding to the voice of reason and realism by clearly acknowledging that it is impossible to find a solution to the Kashmir issue through the outdated UN resolutions of 1948 and 1949.
It should be noted that Pakistan, not India, created obstacles in the path of the implementation of these resolutions. India was the party which took the case to the UN first, hoping justice would be done.
Despite its displeasure with the UN resolutions, India agreed to implement them and hastened to hold several meetings with Pakistan in the early 1950s for this purpose. But Pakistan`s reluctance to withdraw its invading troops from Kashmir prior to holding a plebiscite, as stated in the resolutions, complicated the whole situation.
Should Musharraf stick to his recent public declaration that he has left aside the concept of a plebiscite to end the Kashmir dispute in favour of other realistic mechanisms, and should he translate this into action before being assassinated or overthrown by fanatic forces, he would be remembered in history as the first Pakistani leader to turn the chapter of the most serious cause of hostility and instability in South Asia.
What forced Musharraf to give up a long-held taboo? The simple answer is that Pakistan is currently facing unprecedented internal and external situations, in which its own survival is threatened. Hence, Musharraf probably thought it better for his nation to pursue a more realistic policy towards Kashmir than seizing upon a dream that would never come true in a changing world governed by new strategic equations and norms.
In this context, one can point to the following developments:
First: There is now a growing tendency towards the notion of independence among Kashmiris rather than a UN plebiscite that only gives them the option to become either a part of India or Pakistan.
Should this get deeper, Pakistan could be obliged to abandon the Kashmiri territories under its control since 1947. This, in turn, could encourage separatist sentiments among Pakistan`s different ethnic groups.
On the other hand, anti-independence Kashmiris increasingly realise that Pakistan is not an attractive state to be annexed to, hence they prefer to remain part of a technologically and economically rising India but under new terms that give them a wider margin of sovereignty.
Second: During the last two years, India succeeded in holding fruitful, direct negotiations with many Kashmiri political leaders who until recently were fully pro-Pakistan and refused to talk to the Indians. As a result, Pakistan became isolated with only one or two Kashmiri factions.
Third: Pakistan undertook an international campaign against India`s security measures in Kashmir to win sympathy from human rights organisations.
But these organisations came to the conclusion that crimes committed against non-Muslim Kashmiris by the Pakistan-sponsored Jihadi movements were no different from those allegedly committed by the Indian forces.
Thus, Islamabad was deprived of one of its weapons, as far as the Kashmir issue is concerned.
Fourth: In recent years, India has successfully forged stronger relations with a number of influential regional powers such as Iran, Turkey and Malaysia. This led to these countries adopting a more neutral stance on the Kashmir. This even included China, Pakistan`s long-standing strategic ally. As a result, Pakistan`s Kashmir policy came to be only advocated by a number of ineffective international players.
Fifth: After the fall of the Taliban, Islamabad lost its influence in Afghanistan. More important was the loss of its northern backyard, which had been used for recruiting, training, and arming Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri fighters prior to their infiltration into Indian Kashmir.
Sixth: The military balance in the Indian subcontinent is tipped unfavourably against Pakistan following the security and military agreements between India and Israel and India`s success in building up a strategic relationship with Washington, acquiring military bases in Central Asia, developing its naval forces, and winning Moscow`s approval to jointly manufacture Russian fighters and tanks. Against such developments, it has become costly for Pakistan to continue its policies of harassing India.
Seventh: While India is emerging as one of the world`s largest economies, Pakistan`s economy is declining and becoming heavily dependent on foreign aid. With such an unhealthy economic position, it had become impossible for Pakistan to continue its old Kashmir policy.
Abdullah Al Madani is a Bahrain-based Gulf researcher and writer on Asian affairs. He can be contacted at aelmadani@gulfnews.com 04_soltn.jpg (160x180)
http://www.gulf-news.com/
Posted by
mumbaikar
Nov 2, 2004 12:22 pm
Dr. Abdullah Al Madani: Towards a more realistic Pakistan stance on Kashmir | Special to Gulf News | 2004
Print friendly format | Email to Friend
Since the creation of their state, Pakistani politicians have maintained that Kashmir is a national issue, far more important than any other issue, and that the legitimacy of their entity would not be complete without having full sovereignty over the entire Kashmir territory. Additionally, it has been repeatedly said that any Pakistani leader giving up on this issue would be doomed to death.
Current debates on Pakistani websites, however, show that such ideas no longer have supporters other than extremist religious groups.
Young and educated Pakistanis seem to be more concerned about peace in the subcontinent, as a prelude to development, prosperity and better standards of living, than the fate of Kashmir. It was not surprising, therefore, that the recent assassination attempts against General Pervez Musharraf were solely organised by fundamentalist groups.
After years of unsuccessful policies aimed at forcing India to end its sovereignty over Kashmir, Pakistan seems to be yielding to the voice of reason and realism by clearly acknowledging that it is impossible to find a solution to the Kashmir issue through the outdated UN resolutions of 1948 and 1949.
It should be noted that Pakistan, not India, created obstacles in the path of the implementation of these resolutions. India was the party which took the case to the UN first, hoping justice would be done.
Despite its displeasure with the UN resolutions, India agreed to implement them and hastened to hold several meetings with Pakistan in the early 1950s for this purpose. But Pakistan`s reluctance to withdraw its invading troops from Kashmir prior to holding a plebiscite, as stated in the resolutions, complicated the whole situation.
Should Musharraf stick to his recent public declaration that he has left aside the concept of a plebiscite to end the Kashmir dispute in favour of other realistic mechanisms, and should he translate this into action before being assassinated or overthrown by fanatic forces, he would be remembered in history as the first Pakistani leader to turn the chapter of the most serious cause of hostility and instability in South Asia.
What forced Musharraf to give up a long-held taboo? The simple answer is that Pakistan is currently facing unprecedented internal and external situations, in which its own survival is threatened. Hence, Musharraf probably thought it better for his nation to pursue a more realistic policy towards Kashmir than seizing upon a dream that would never come true in a changing world governed by new strategic equations and norms.
In this context, one can point to the following developments:
First: There is now a growing tendency towards the notion of independence among Kashmiris rather than a UN plebiscite that only gives them the option to become either a part of India or Pakistan.
Should this get deeper, Pakistan could be obliged to abandon the Kashmiri territories under its control since 1947. This, in turn, could encourage separatist sentiments among Pakistan`s different ethnic groups.
On the other hand, anti-independence Kashmiris increasingly realise that Pakistan is not an attractive state to be annexed to, hence they prefer to remain part of a technologically and economically rising India but under new terms that give them a wider margin of sovereignty.
Second: During the last two years, India succeeded in holding fruitful, direct negotiations with many Kashmiri political leaders who until recently were fully pro-Pakistan and refused to talk to the Indians. As a result, Pakistan became isolated with only one or two Kashmiri factions.
Third: Pakistan undertook an international campaign against India`s security measures in Kashmir to win sympathy from human rights organisations.
But these organisations came to the conclusion that crimes committed against non-Muslim Kashmiris by the Pakistan-sponsored Jihadi movements were no different from those allegedly committed by the Indian forces.
Thus, Islamabad was deprived of one of its weapons, as far as the Kashmir issue is concerned.
Fourth: In recent years, India has successfully forged stronger relations with a number of influential regional powers such as Iran, Turkey and Malaysia. This led to these countries adopting a more neutral stance on the Kashmir. This even included China, Pakistan`s long-standing strategic ally. As a result, Pakistan`s Kashmir policy came to be only advocated by a number of ineffective international players.
Fifth: After the fall of the Taliban, Islamabad lost its influence in Afghanistan. More important was the loss of its northern backyard, which had been used for recruiting, training, and arming Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri fighters prior to their infiltration into Indian Kashmir.
Sixth: The military balance in the Indian subcontinent is tipped unfavourably against Pakistan following the security and military agreements between India and Israel and India`s success in building up a strategic relationship with Washington, acquiring military bases in Central Asia, developing its naval forces, and winning Moscow`s approval to jointly manufacture Russian fighters and tanks. Against such developments, it has become costly for Pakistan to continue its policies of harassing India.
Seventh: While India is emerging as one of the world`s largest economies, Pakistan`s economy is declining and becoming heavily dependent on foreign aid. With such an unhealthy economic position, it had become impossible for Pakistan to continue its old Kashmir policy.
Abdullah Al Madani is a Bahrain-based Gulf researcher and writer on Asian affairs. He can be contacted at aelmadani@gulfnews.com 04_soltn.jpg (160x180)
http://www.gulf-news.com/
Musharraf’s Radical Kashmir Proposals
By Sonia Jabbar
NEW DELHI - Adding to the complexity of the ``Kashmir Problem`` which has dogged India and Pakistan for more than 50 years has been the fate of the minority Hindu population of Kashmir, otherwise known as the Pandits.
If little is known about the 300,000 Pandits who fled the Kashmir Valley between 1989 and 1991, at a time of popular support for militancy, to become refugees in India, less is known about the tiny number of 17,860 Pandits who chose not to leave.
The mass exodus of the Pandits is still shrouded in mystery. Why they left is a question still levelled at them by the Muslims of the valley.
``Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims have died either at the hands of security forces or militants, but we are still here,`` says Shafi, an artist in Anantnag whose group of friends was almost entirely Pandit before the exodus. That there was a real, palpable fear among the Pandits of being exterminated is a fact dismissed by Shafi. He feels, like most Muslims, betrayed by them. They left without saying goodbye.
In Delhi, an old man`s sense of betrayal is of equal intensity. He was a government servant in Kashmir who trusted his Muslim neighbors. He feels they gave him no choice once the killings of the Pandits started in 1989, that they did nothing to allay his fears, that they drove him out of his homeland. ``I asked my Muslim friend why did you throw us out, why? Did we murder you? Did we rob you? Did we rape your women?`` he shouted, ``we taught you to read and write, we taught you . . . `` His friend, he said, had no answer.
The Pandits of Kashmir are all Brahmins, and pride themselves on being the only caste to have resisted conversion when Islam was introduced peacefully to the Kashmir Valley in the 14th century by the Sufis of Central Asia. They held considerable power, as they were the only people who had a tradition of being highly educated. But this also meant that they bore the brunt of the tyranny unleashed by certain ruthless invaders, particularly during the Afghan occupation of Kashmir in the mid-eighteenth century.
Even though the Kashmiri Pandits have had greater sympathies and links with the Indian Union than their Muslim counterparts, they bore severe economic losses after the Maharaja of Kashmir acceded to India when, in 1949, Kashmir`s leader Sheikh Abdullah introduced land reform measures, redistributing land largely held by the Pandits to the Muslim tiller.
``We have suffered at the hands of tyrants through history,`` says Yuvraj Raina, a Panun Kashmir activist in New Delhi. ``There have been four migrations of Pandits. This is the fifth, and the last.`` Panun Kashmir is an organization of Kashmiri Pandits formed in 1991 which believes that the only solution to the problems faced by Kashmiri Pandits is a separate homeland carved non-violently out of the Kashmir Valley.
This portion of the Valley, called Panun Kashmir, would be a secular state autonomous of Srinagar, and would abide by the Indian Constitution. They feel this is the only way to safeguard the interests, values and culture of the Kashmiri Pandit.
``Look, we told those who remained behind, it`s just a matter of time before they get you,`` says Raina. ``The Muslim fundamentalists want to ensure a pan-Islamic State from the Middle East and Central Asia to Kashmir and the world keeps quiet.`` He recounts the recent killings of the Pandits in the Valley - five last month, one more a couple of weeks later. ``We told them it is either homeland or perish.``
But this is not a sentiment shared by the Pandits who choose to remain in the Valley. In Mattan, south Kashmir, a young school teacher, Jyoti, continues to live with her family and extended family amongst her Muslim neighbors. ``This is the only home I`ve known. These are the only friends and neighbors I have ever had and they`ve been very good to us - so why should we leave?`` she asks.
``Yes, we do feel scared sometimes,`` she concedes. ``You see, no one knows anymore who the killers are. It`s not like the old days where everyone knew who belonged to which militant outfit. Now they are nameless, faceless.``
About the Pandit exodus she says, ``We never knew they were leaving. No one told us anything. In the evening they`d be chatting with us quite normally, perhaps a little afraid, and then the next morning we`d find a big lock on their front doors.``
The exodus of the Pandits has also meant that it becomes increasingly difficult for someone like Jyoti to find a suitable husband. In Srinagar there is a sizeable concentration of Pandits, but in rural areas there are barely a few families among the larger Muslim population. ``I really don`t know what I will do. My parents don`t want me to marry into a family who lives in some isolated hamlet. They`d worry for my safety. I suppose they`ll marry me off to someone in Jammu and I`d be forced to leave the Valley,`` she says quietly.
In Srinagar, the Hindu Welfare Forum, founded in 1991 to protect the interests of the Pandits who chose to remain behind, are an angry lot. They are visibly upset by the recent killings of the Pandits and fear another migration. ``Neither the state government nor the government of India has done anything to protect us. Nobody even knows we even exist. Neither the Indian media nor the international media has bothered to see how we live, highlighted our problems. Even our own community in India and abroad calls us traitors because we refused to leave,`` said a Forum member.
Apart from the myriad problems faced by this tiny community, they are a determined lot. Says Wanchoo, a businessman and a member of the Forum: ``We will never leave Kashmir, and we don`t believe in a separate homeland.
``This is our homeland and we wish to live in peace here. As for the killings, well it`s a problem faced by all Kashmiris, not just the Hindus. Everyday you read that 8-10 people have been killed and they`re usually Muslims. But the militants must realize that they only get discredited when they kill the minorities.``
His wife, who has lived through these terrible 12 years, witnessing much of the violence, experiencing much of the pain, relates a recent experience which makes her smile with delight and hope. ``At a wedding recently a whole lot of us had gathered after a long, long time - Muslim women as well as Sikh and Pandit women - and we really had fun, singing and dancing late into the night just as we used to before the militancy started.
``As I was turning in to sleep I heard the Muslim women whispering among themselves in the kitchen. `After so long,` they said, `after so many years all of us have come together`.
``It`s true, isn`t it, that a garden is most beautiful when there is a profusion of many kinds of flowers.``
Posted by
mumbaikar
Nov 2, 2004 12:22 pm
Hindu minority refuses to bow out of KashmirBy Sonia Jabbar
NEW DELHI - Adding to the complexity of the ``Kashmir Problem`` which has dogged India and Pakistan for more than 50 years has been the fate of the minority Hindu population of Kashmir, otherwise known as the Pandits.
If little is known about the 300,000 Pandits who fled the Kashmir Valley between 1989 and 1991, at a time of popular support for militancy, to become refugees in India, less is known about the tiny number of 17,860 Pandits who chose not to leave.
The mass exodus of the Pandits is still shrouded in mystery. Why they left is a question still levelled at them by the Muslims of the valley.
``Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Muslims have died either at the hands of security forces or militants, but we are still here,`` says Shafi, an artist in Anantnag whose group of friends was almost entirely Pandit before the exodus. That there was a real, palpable fear among the Pandits of being exterminated is a fact dismissed by Shafi. He feels, like most Muslims, betrayed by them. They left without saying goodbye.
In Delhi, an old man`s sense of betrayal is of equal intensity. He was a government servant in Kashmir who trusted his Muslim neighbors. He feels they gave him no choice once the killings of the Pandits started in 1989, that they did nothing to allay his fears, that they drove him out of his homeland. ``I asked my Muslim friend why did you throw us out, why? Did we murder you? Did we rob you? Did we rape your women?`` he shouted, ``we taught you to read and write, we taught you . . . `` His friend, he said, had no answer.
The Pandits of Kashmir are all Brahmins, and pride themselves on being the only caste to have resisted conversion when Islam was introduced peacefully to the Kashmir Valley in the 14th century by the Sufis of Central Asia. They held considerable power, as they were the only people who had a tradition of being highly educated. But this also meant that they bore the brunt of the tyranny unleashed by certain ruthless invaders, particularly during the Afghan occupation of Kashmir in the mid-eighteenth century.
Even though the Kashmiri Pandits have had greater sympathies and links with the Indian Union than their Muslim counterparts, they bore severe economic losses after the Maharaja of Kashmir acceded to India when, in 1949, Kashmir`s leader Sheikh Abdullah introduced land reform measures, redistributing land largely held by the Pandits to the Muslim tiller.
``We have suffered at the hands of tyrants through history,`` says Yuvraj Raina, a Panun Kashmir activist in New Delhi. ``There have been four migrations of Pandits. This is the fifth, and the last.`` Panun Kashmir is an organization of Kashmiri Pandits formed in 1991 which believes that the only solution to the problems faced by Kashmiri Pandits is a separate homeland carved non-violently out of the Kashmir Valley.
This portion of the Valley, called Panun Kashmir, would be a secular state autonomous of Srinagar, and would abide by the Indian Constitution. They feel this is the only way to safeguard the interests, values and culture of the Kashmiri Pandit.
``Look, we told those who remained behind, it`s just a matter of time before they get you,`` says Raina. ``The Muslim fundamentalists want to ensure a pan-Islamic State from the Middle East and Central Asia to Kashmir and the world keeps quiet.`` He recounts the recent killings of the Pandits in the Valley - five last month, one more a couple of weeks later. ``We told them it is either homeland or perish.``
But this is not a sentiment shared by the Pandits who choose to remain in the Valley. In Mattan, south Kashmir, a young school teacher, Jyoti, continues to live with her family and extended family amongst her Muslim neighbors. ``This is the only home I`ve known. These are the only friends and neighbors I have ever had and they`ve been very good to us - so why should we leave?`` she asks.
``Yes, we do feel scared sometimes,`` she concedes. ``You see, no one knows anymore who the killers are. It`s not like the old days where everyone knew who belonged to which militant outfit. Now they are nameless, faceless.``
About the Pandit exodus she says, ``We never knew they were leaving. No one told us anything. In the evening they`d be chatting with us quite normally, perhaps a little afraid, and then the next morning we`d find a big lock on their front doors.``
The exodus of the Pandits has also meant that it becomes increasingly difficult for someone like Jyoti to find a suitable husband. In Srinagar there is a sizeable concentration of Pandits, but in rural areas there are barely a few families among the larger Muslim population. ``I really don`t know what I will do. My parents don`t want me to marry into a family who lives in some isolated hamlet. They`d worry for my safety. I suppose they`ll marry me off to someone in Jammu and I`d be forced to leave the Valley,`` she says quietly.
In Srinagar, the Hindu Welfare Forum, founded in 1991 to protect the interests of the Pandits who chose to remain behind, are an angry lot. They are visibly upset by the recent killings of the Pandits and fear another migration. ``Neither the state government nor the government of India has done anything to protect us. Nobody even knows we even exist. Neither the Indian media nor the international media has bothered to see how we live, highlighted our problems. Even our own community in India and abroad calls us traitors because we refused to leave,`` said a Forum member.
Apart from the myriad problems faced by this tiny community, they are a determined lot. Says Wanchoo, a businessman and a member of the Forum: ``We will never leave Kashmir, and we don`t believe in a separate homeland.
``This is our homeland and we wish to live in peace here. As for the killings, well it`s a problem faced by all Kashmiris, not just the Hindus. Everyday you read that 8-10 people have been killed and they`re usually Muslims. But the militants must realize that they only get discredited when they kill the minorities.``
His wife, who has lived through these terrible 12 years, witnessing much of the violence, experiencing much of the pain, relates a recent experience which makes her smile with delight and hope. ``At a wedding recently a whole lot of us had gathered after a long, long time - Muslim women as well as Sikh and Pandit women - and we really had fun, singing and dancing late into the night just as we used to before the militancy started.
``As I was turning in to sleep I heard the Muslim women whispering among themselves in the kitchen. `After so long,` they said, `after so many years all of us have come together`.
``It`s true, isn`t it, that a garden is most beautiful when there is a profusion of many kinds of flowers.``
How that Other Democracy (India) Differs
Reviewed by M. Abul Fazl
The author, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay is not a Marxist. But he takes into account the materialistic factors in his analysis, which makes the book more comprehensive than many others. Secondly, it is not an ideological book, allotting all credits to the Congress and debits to the Muslim League. He makes an effort to understand the objective reasons for the behaviour of the various actors on the political scene.
This is really the story of the British Indian Empire after 1857. The author points out that, like all agrarian empires, the Mughal state collapsed when its administrative weight could no longer be supported by agricultural production. But of the successor states of the 18th century, he says they were strong and viable but still agrarian. So they were no match for the East India Company, specially after it acquired the riches of the richest province of India, Bengal. Only Tipu`s Mysore made an attempt like Mohammad Ali of Egypt a 100 years later, to consolidate the landholding peasantry and go on to industrialization. But he was not supported by the Nizam or the Marathas against the Company. The author does not mention that Tipu, in his young days, had been a member of a ``Liberty Club`` which disseminated the ideas of the French revolution.
Until about the end of the 19th century, the Indian modern bourgeoisie, confined to Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, aspired to concessions within the British imperial system. The annual meetings of the Indian National Congress petitioned the government for reforms of a bourgeois nature e.g. Indian representation in the legislative council, Indianization of the civil service, import duty on cotton goods, reduction in India`s tribute to England and extension of the permanent settlement of Bengal to the rest of India. They did nothing to enlist the support of the lower classes. Neither did they question the right of the British to rule India.
However, a nationalist ideology did emerge in response to the imperialist one. But it not only ``came to be associated with the defence of Hindu religion... patriotic literature both in Bengal and Marathi started defining Indian nationalism in terms of Hindu imageries``. (p.217) This alienated the Muslims and the first communal riots in Indian history took place in the 1870s.
This period also saw the laying of the two main lines in the nationalist ideology. Tilak identified Indian nationalism with Hindu nationalism, while Gokhale was secular.
Gandhi was meanwhile making a name for himself with a non-violent movement in South Africa. He arrived in India in 1915, when the country, though industrializing, was in a fiscal crisis, as it had to bear a heavy burden for the First World War. He was patronized by Gokhale. However, he accepted Tilak`s view that the content of Indian nationalism had to be Hindu nationalism.
Gandhi`s greatest achievement was to bring the masses into politics while preventing a social revolution. This he did by forging an alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie and the rich peasantry. Both the classes favoured independent development within the capitalist framework. Gandhi`s non-violence was, of course, meant to blunt the colonial state`s violence. But its more basic purpose was to prevent the initiative passing into the hands of the industrial and rural workers. As Bandyopadhyay puts it: ``he wanted not just any upsurge, but a `controlled mass movement``` (p.292) and ``Gandhian movement meant to dislodge the British without disturbing social harmony`` (p.31).
As against this success, his greatest failure was in dealing with the Muslims. He was of a religious bent, though it appears religion was at the service of his politics rather than the other way. It also seems that his non-violence was a method and not a creed.
He regarded the Muslims as a minority and expected them to conduct themselves as such i.e. accepting that India was a Hindu country and had to be a Hindu-dominated state, though a liberal one. He probably drew upon the European experience in this regard. But here he overlooked the peculiarities of the Hindu society, specially its caste system, which he never opposed. While the communities in the European societies could assimilate, this was not possible with Hinduism.
As a result, Gandhi never came to grips with ``the Muslim question``. The only time he collaborated with the Muslims seriously was over the Turkish Caliphate which had nothing to do with the Muslims` material interests. There too he scuttled the movement on the pretext of there having been violence. Obaidullah Sindhi believed that he did so because the Muslims were then in the forefront of the movement and Gandhi did not want India to accede to freedom with Muslims leading. Anyway violence did not seem to bother Gandhi in 1931 and 1942 when Hindus had the leading role in the movements.
In fact, he lost all interest in the Muslims after 1924. When Jinnah raised the subject with him in 1937, he replied that he had left it to God. Meanwhile he let the Hindu chauvinists exercise influence in Congress. At the end, he preferred the partition of India to sharing power with the Muslims. As the author says, Congress` secularism could express Hindu nationalism but excluded Muslim nationalism.
The British took their Indian empire seriously and made concessions in form from time to time in order to preserve the essence of rule. It was only after the Second World War, with the Indian national army and the naval mutiny that they knew that their time was up. Then they wanted to preserve a united India as a strategic ally and secure their investments there. They succeeded in the latter objective.
Bandopadhyay is an objective historian. It is obvious that considerable research has gone into the book. At every stage, he presents the Muslims` view of point fairly. And unlike the Congress and pro-Congress historians, he does not say that Jinnah left the Congress because he disliked the association of the masses with politics. He also details the closeness of the Congress to the Hindu chauvinist parties. However, it is not quite the book to be read casually.
From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India
By Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
Orient Longman, 3-6-276, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad 500 029, India
Tel: 91-040-3224294
Email: editor@pol.net.in
ISBN 81-250-2596-0
524pp. Indian Rs250
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/books14.htm
Posted by
mumbaikar
Oct 23, 2004 07:39 am
REVIEW: Evolution of a nation Reviewed by M. Abul Fazl
The author, Sekhar Bandyopadhyay is not a Marxist. But he takes into account the materialistic factors in his analysis, which makes the book more comprehensive than many others. Secondly, it is not an ideological book, allotting all credits to the Congress and debits to the Muslim League. He makes an effort to understand the objective reasons for the behaviour of the various actors on the political scene.
This is really the story of the British Indian Empire after 1857. The author points out that, like all agrarian empires, the Mughal state collapsed when its administrative weight could no longer be supported by agricultural production. But of the successor states of the 18th century, he says they were strong and viable but still agrarian. So they were no match for the East India Company, specially after it acquired the riches of the richest province of India, Bengal. Only Tipu`s Mysore made an attempt like Mohammad Ali of Egypt a 100 years later, to consolidate the landholding peasantry and go on to industrialization. But he was not supported by the Nizam or the Marathas against the Company. The author does not mention that Tipu, in his young days, had been a member of a ``Liberty Club`` which disseminated the ideas of the French revolution.
Until about the end of the 19th century, the Indian modern bourgeoisie, confined to Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, aspired to concessions within the British imperial system. The annual meetings of the Indian National Congress petitioned the government for reforms of a bourgeois nature e.g. Indian representation in the legislative council, Indianization of the civil service, import duty on cotton goods, reduction in India`s tribute to England and extension of the permanent settlement of Bengal to the rest of India. They did nothing to enlist the support of the lower classes. Neither did they question the right of the British to rule India.
However, a nationalist ideology did emerge in response to the imperialist one. But it not only ``came to be associated with the defence of Hindu religion... patriotic literature both in Bengal and Marathi started defining Indian nationalism in terms of Hindu imageries``. (p.217) This alienated the Muslims and the first communal riots in Indian history took place in the 1870s.
This period also saw the laying of the two main lines in the nationalist ideology. Tilak identified Indian nationalism with Hindu nationalism, while Gokhale was secular.
Gandhi was meanwhile making a name for himself with a non-violent movement in South Africa. He arrived in India in 1915, when the country, though industrializing, was in a fiscal crisis, as it had to bear a heavy burden for the First World War. He was patronized by Gokhale. However, he accepted Tilak`s view that the content of Indian nationalism had to be Hindu nationalism.
Gandhi`s greatest achievement was to bring the masses into politics while preventing a social revolution. This he did by forging an alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie and the rich peasantry. Both the classes favoured independent development within the capitalist framework. Gandhi`s non-violence was, of course, meant to blunt the colonial state`s violence. But its more basic purpose was to prevent the initiative passing into the hands of the industrial and rural workers. As Bandyopadhyay puts it: ``he wanted not just any upsurge, but a `controlled mass movement``` (p.292) and ``Gandhian movement meant to dislodge the British without disturbing social harmony`` (p.31).
As against this success, his greatest failure was in dealing with the Muslims. He was of a religious bent, though it appears religion was at the service of his politics rather than the other way. It also seems that his non-violence was a method and not a creed.
He regarded the Muslims as a minority and expected them to conduct themselves as such i.e. accepting that India was a Hindu country and had to be a Hindu-dominated state, though a liberal one. He probably drew upon the European experience in this regard. But here he overlooked the peculiarities of the Hindu society, specially its caste system, which he never opposed. While the communities in the European societies could assimilate, this was not possible with Hinduism.
As a result, Gandhi never came to grips with ``the Muslim question``. The only time he collaborated with the Muslims seriously was over the Turkish Caliphate which had nothing to do with the Muslims` material interests. There too he scuttled the movement on the pretext of there having been violence. Obaidullah Sindhi believed that he did so because the Muslims were then in the forefront of the movement and Gandhi did not want India to accede to freedom with Muslims leading. Anyway violence did not seem to bother Gandhi in 1931 and 1942 when Hindus had the leading role in the movements.
In fact, he lost all interest in the Muslims after 1924. When Jinnah raised the subject with him in 1937, he replied that he had left it to God. Meanwhile he let the Hindu chauvinists exercise influence in Congress. At the end, he preferred the partition of India to sharing power with the Muslims. As the author says, Congress` secularism could express Hindu nationalism but excluded Muslim nationalism.
The British took their Indian empire seriously and made concessions in form from time to time in order to preserve the essence of rule. It was only after the Second World War, with the Indian national army and the naval mutiny that they knew that their time was up. Then they wanted to preserve a united India as a strategic ally and secure their investments there. They succeeded in the latter objective.
Bandopadhyay is an objective historian. It is obvious that considerable research has gone into the book. At every stage, he presents the Muslims` view of point fairly. And unlike the Congress and pro-Congress historians, he does not say that Jinnah left the Congress because he disliked the association of the masses with politics. He also details the closeness of the Congress to the Hindu chauvinist parties. However, it is not quite the book to be read casually.
From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India
By Sekhar Bandyopadhyay
Orient Longman, 3-6-276, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad 500 029, India
Tel: 91-040-3224294
Email: editor@pol.net.in
ISBN 81-250-2596-0
524pp. Indian Rs250
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/books/books14.htm
Hindi films in Iraq and Palestine
Koreans Will Taste Bollywood Masala
By Prabhat K. Mukherjee
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200410/kt2004101715575254060.htm
Posted by
mumbaikar
Oct 22, 2004 08:27 pm
This one is about Bollywood in Korea ...Koreans Will Taste Bollywood Masala
By Prabhat K. Mukherjee
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200410/kt2004101715575254060.htm
Can Pakistan Work?
‘Distorted history is breeding hatred’
By Zakir Hassnain
PESHAWAR: A famous Pakistani historian says that the distorted facts and the “fictitious” history that is being taught in Pakistani schools is responsible for breeding hatred among the young.
Dr Mubarak Ali, a historian and editor of the magazine, Tareekh, told the audience at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday that the language used history and textbooks was provocative.
He referred to the words “conspiracies, intrigues, treachery, prejudices, enmity with Muslims, collusion, Hindu mentality and political tactics” being frequently used that gave an impression that “Hindus could not be friends with Muslims”.
He said that the Hindu enmity was frequently mentioned in the history books.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-10-2004_pg7_26
Posted by
mumbaikar
Oct 21, 2004 09:22 am
‘Distorted history is breeding hatred’
By Zakir Hassnain
PESHAWAR: A famous Pakistani historian says that the distorted facts and the “fictitious” history that is being taught in Pakistani schools is responsible for breeding hatred among the young.
Dr Mubarak Ali, a historian and editor of the magazine, Tareekh, told the audience at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday that the language used history and textbooks was provocative.
He referred to the words “conspiracies, intrigues, treachery, prejudices, enmity with Muslims, collusion, Hindu mentality and political tactics” being frequently used that gave an impression that “Hindus could not be friends with Muslims”.
He said that the Hindu enmity was frequently mentioned in the history books.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-10-2004_pg7_26
Beating History
By Zakir Hassnain
PESHAWAR: A famous Pakistani historian says that the distorted facts and the “fictitious” history that is being taught in Pakistani schools is responsible for breeding hatred among the young.
Dr Mubarak Ali, a historian and editor of the magazine, Tareekh, told the audience at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday that the language used history and textbooks was provocative. He referred to the words “conspiracies, intrigues, treachery, prejudices, enmity with Muslims, collusion, Hindu mentality and political tactics” being frequently used that gave an impression that “Hindus could not be friends with Muslims”.
He said that the Hindu enmity was frequently mentioned in the history books.
Delivering a lecture on “What should be the Pakistan studies”, Dr Ali noted that history had no connection with religion and culture and that secularism was indispensable for democracy.
He said the Pakistani history had been distorted and that it was the need of hour that students be enlightened regarding the history of culture, archaeology and popular movements of different regions of Pakistan. He said folk stories and literature were an important part of history and these should be brought into the limelight.
He said the authors of the history books had not been professional with the result that the students were unaware of the “true” history of Pakistan.
Dr Ali refuted the frequent claim that the Muslims of the sub-continent blamed the British and Hindus for their backwardness. “If we go through the real history, we find that Muslims were not as oppressed as they have been painted in the history books,” he said.
He said that the books had stated that Allama Iqbal had dreamt of an independent Islamic state and that the Quaid-e-Azam had fulfilled the dream, resulting in the emergence of Pakistan.
“That’s all that our history books tell us. There are no other facts included. Personalities like Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr Ansari and Qidwai have been ignored in our history books and children know nothing about them,” Dr Ali said.
He said Punjab’s contribution to the Pakistan Movement had been minimal as the Punjabi and Sindhi feudal lords had only joined the Muslim League after they were certain that their lands would be safe.
Dr Ali, who launched his career from Jamshoro University in 1979 and has written around 60 history books, said that the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 was the result of West Pakistan’s wrongdoings. “It is not right to say that Bangladesh emerged as an independent country owing to the Hindus’ intrigues,” he said.
He said that history should be taught in its proper context. “It has nothing to do with religion and culture,” he said. Popular movements launched by peasants and labourers had been ignored in the history books, said Dr Ali, adding that social and cultural history highlighted public contributions while political history only narrated the lives of political figures.
He said there was a dearth of professional history teachers in Pakistan. He said research institutions should initiate research on history and that the Pakistan history should be re-written by institution that were not state-run.
He said Napoleon had changed the entire syllabus to infuse his people with patriotism. “History is a process of change and if we accept changes, there should not be any problem in accepting new realities,” said the historian.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-10-2004_pg7_26
Posted by
mumbaikar
Oct 21, 2004 09:22 am
‘Distorted history is breeding hatred’By Zakir Hassnain
PESHAWAR: A famous Pakistani historian says that the distorted facts and the “fictitious” history that is being taught in Pakistani schools is responsible for breeding hatred among the young.
Dr Mubarak Ali, a historian and editor of the magazine, Tareekh, told the audience at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday that the language used history and textbooks was provocative. He referred to the words “conspiracies, intrigues, treachery, prejudices, enmity with Muslims, collusion, Hindu mentality and political tactics” being frequently used that gave an impression that “Hindus could not be friends with Muslims”.
He said that the Hindu enmity was frequently mentioned in the history books.
Delivering a lecture on “What should be the Pakistan studies”, Dr Ali noted that history had no connection with religion and culture and that secularism was indispensable for democracy.
He said the Pakistani history had been distorted and that it was the need of hour that students be enlightened regarding the history of culture, archaeology and popular movements of different regions of Pakistan. He said folk stories and literature were an important part of history and these should be brought into the limelight.
He said the authors of the history books had not been professional with the result that the students were unaware of the “true” history of Pakistan.
Dr Ali refuted the frequent claim that the Muslims of the sub-continent blamed the British and Hindus for their backwardness. “If we go through the real history, we find that Muslims were not as oppressed as they have been painted in the history books,” he said.
He said that the books had stated that Allama Iqbal had dreamt of an independent Islamic state and that the Quaid-e-Azam had fulfilled the dream, resulting in the emergence of Pakistan.
“That’s all that our history books tell us. There are no other facts included. Personalities like Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr Ansari and Qidwai have been ignored in our history books and children know nothing about them,” Dr Ali said.
He said Punjab’s contribution to the Pakistan Movement had been minimal as the Punjabi and Sindhi feudal lords had only joined the Muslim League after they were certain that their lands would be safe.
Dr Ali, who launched his career from Jamshoro University in 1979 and has written around 60 history books, said that the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 was the result of West Pakistan’s wrongdoings. “It is not right to say that Bangladesh emerged as an independent country owing to the Hindus’ intrigues,” he said.
He said that history should be taught in its proper context. “It has nothing to do with religion and culture,” he said. Popular movements launched by peasants and labourers had been ignored in the history books, said Dr Ali, adding that social and cultural history highlighted public contributions while political history only narrated the lives of political figures.
He said there was a dearth of professional history teachers in Pakistan. He said research institutions should initiate research on history and that the Pakistan history should be re-written by institution that were not state-run.
He said Napoleon had changed the entire syllabus to infuse his people with patriotism. “History is a process of change and if we accept changes, there should not be any problem in accepting new realities,” said the historian.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-10-2004_pg7_26
Bombs, Missiles and Pakistani Science
‘Distorted history is breeding hatred’
By Zakir Hassnain
PESHAWAR: A famous Pakistani historian says that the distorted facts and the “fictitious” history that is being taught in Pakistani schools is responsible for breeding hatred among the young.
Dr Mubarak Ali, a historian and editor of the magazine, Tareekh, told the audience at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday that the language used history and textbooks was provocative. He referred to the words “conspiracies, intrigues, treachery, prejudices, enmity with Muslims, collusion, Hindu mentality and political tactics” being frequently used that gave an impression that “Hindus could not be friends with Muslims”.
He said that the Hindu enmity was frequently mentioned in the history books.
Delivering a lecture on “What should be the Pakistan studies”, Dr Ali noted that history had no connection with religion and culture and that secularism was indispensable for democracy.
He said the Pakistani history had been distorted and that it was the need of hour that students be enlightened regarding the history of culture, archaeology and popular movements of different regions of Pakistan. He said folk stories and literature were an important part of history and these should be brought into the limelight.
He said the authors of the history books had not been professional with the result that the students were unaware of the “true” history of Pakistan.
Dr Ali refuted the frequent claim that the Muslims of the sub-continent blamed the British and Hindus for their backwardness. “If we go through the real history, we find that Muslims were not as oppressed as they have been painted in the history books,” he said.
He said that the books had stated that Allama Iqbal had dreamt of an independent Islamic state and that the Quaid-e-Azam had fulfilled the dream, resulting in the emergence of Pakistan.
“That’s all that our history books tell us. There are no other facts included. Personalities like Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr Ansari and Qidwai have been ignored in our history books and children know nothing about them,” Dr Ali said.
He said Punjab’s contribution to the Pakistan Movement had been minimal as the Punjabi and Sindhi feudal lords had only joined the Muslim League after they were certain that their lands would be safe.
Dr Ali, who launched his career from Jamshoro University in 1979 and has written around 60 history books, said that the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 was the result of West Pakistan’s wrongdoings. “It is not right to say that Bangladesh emerged as an independent country owing to the Hindus’ intrigues,” he said.
He said that history should be taught in its proper context. “It has nothing to do with religion and culture,” he said. Popular movements launched by peasants and labourers had been ignored in the history books, said Dr Ali, adding that social and cultural history highlighted public contributions while political history only narrated the lives of political figures.
He said there was a dearth of professional history teachers in Pakistan. He said research institutions should initiate research on history and that the Pakistan history should be re-written by institution that were not state-run.
He said Napoleon had changed the entire syllabus to infuse his people with patriotism. “History is a process of change and if we accept changes, there should not be any problem in accepting new realities,” said the historian.
Posted by
mumbaikar
Oct 21, 2004 09:22 am
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-10-2004_pg7_26‘Distorted history is breeding hatred’
By Zakir Hassnain
PESHAWAR: A famous Pakistani historian says that the distorted facts and the “fictitious” history that is being taught in Pakistani schools is responsible for breeding hatred among the young.
Dr Mubarak Ali, a historian and editor of the magazine, Tareekh, told the audience at the Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday that the language used history and textbooks was provocative. He referred to the words “conspiracies, intrigues, treachery, prejudices, enmity with Muslims, collusion, Hindu mentality and political tactics” being frequently used that gave an impression that “Hindus could not be friends with Muslims”.
He said that the Hindu enmity was frequently mentioned in the history books.
Delivering a lecture on “What should be the Pakistan studies”, Dr Ali noted that history had no connection with religion and culture and that secularism was indispensable for democracy.
He said the Pakistani history had been distorted and that it was the need of hour that students be enlightened regarding the history of culture, archaeology and popular movements of different regions of Pakistan. He said folk stories and literature were an important part of history and these should be brought into the limelight.
He said the authors of the history books had not been professional with the result that the students were unaware of the “true” history of Pakistan.
Dr Ali refuted the frequent claim that the Muslims of the sub-continent blamed the British and Hindus for their backwardness. “If we go through the real history, we find that Muslims were not as oppressed as they have been painted in the history books,” he said.
He said that the books had stated that Allama Iqbal had dreamt of an independent Islamic state and that the Quaid-e-Azam had fulfilled the dream, resulting in the emergence of Pakistan.
“That’s all that our history books tell us. There are no other facts included. Personalities like Hakim Ajmal Khan, Dr Ansari and Qidwai have been ignored in our history books and children know nothing about them,” Dr Ali said.
He said Punjab’s contribution to the Pakistan Movement had been minimal as the Punjabi and Sindhi feudal lords had only joined the Muslim League after they were certain that their lands would be safe.
Dr Ali, who launched his career from Jamshoro University in 1979 and has written around 60 history books, said that the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 was the result of West Pakistan’s wrongdoings. “It is not right to say that Bangladesh emerged as an independent country owing to the Hindus’ intrigues,” he said.
He said that history should be taught in its proper context. “It has nothing to do with religion and culture,” he said. Popular movements launched by peasants and labourers had been ignored in the history books, said Dr Ali, adding that social and cultural history highlighted public contributions while political history only narrated the lives of political figures.
He said there was a dearth of professional history teachers in Pakistan. He said research institutions should initiate research on history and that the Pakistan history should be re-written by institution that were not state-run.
He said Napoleon had changed the entire syllabus to infuse his people with patriotism. “History is a process of change and if we accept changes, there should not be any problem in accepting new realities,” said the historian.
Can Pakistan Work?
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-10-2004_pg3_2
It is an irony that those who conceived and wrote the
Posted by
mumbaikar
Oct 21, 2004 08:03 am
Good Muslim, bad Muslim, not Muslim http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_21-10-2004_pg3_2
It is an irony that those who conceived and wrote the