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Binori Town students going home
Abdul Samad, a 23-year-old of Bangladeshi descent, worries about what is in store for him back home in Britain as he talks about Pakistan's plan to expel foreign students from the country's Islamic schools.Responding to worries after the July 7 London bombings that some of the schools, known as madrasas, were militant recruiting grounds, President Pervez Musharraf announced a ban last week on foreign students coming to Pakistan for religious education. Musharraf said an estimated 1,400 overseas students, mostly from Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and Africa, enrolled in Pakistani madrasas would be sent home. Facing up to the stigma of becoming a deportee, British-born Samad derided the directive as a violation of human rights. "I came here on a proper visa. But since they are sending us back forcibly, we will be treated like deportees," he told Reuters at Jamia Binoria, one of Karachi's largest madrasas. "Given the mood back home, they will interrogate me. But I have nothing to hide. I am not a jihadi," says Samad, whose family settled in England after his grandfather left Bangladesh. Revelations that one of the suspected London suicide bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, a Briton of Pakistani descent, had visited madrasas in Pakistan months before the attacks stoked alarm in the West that some schools were preaching hatred. Musharraf says all madrasas should register by December as part of a plan to introduce a mainstream curriculum in the schools and to correct any leaning towards extremist teachings. The number of foreign students fell sharply after al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States spread alarm among governments abroad that their nationals were being indoctrinated with radical ideas preached by some Pakistani madrasas. Analysts say the government will have to tread carefully on the issue of madrasas, as there are about 12,000 in the country, many of which provide food, lodging and at least a rudimentary education to close to a million boys from poor families. Most students from the West, however, go to madrasas recognised for teaching Islamic thought, jurisprudence and Arabic. A national organisation of madrasas wants Musharraf to rethink the ban on foreign students and plans for madrasa reform. Maulana Mohammad Hanif Jallundri, liaison secretary of the Ittihad Tanzeemat Madaris Dinya Pakistan (Alliance of the Organisations of Religious Schools Pakistan), said the expulsion of foreigners was "an emotional decision". "We are trying to meet General Musharraf, and if the issue is not resolved through talks then we will go to the Supreme Court," he told Reuters from the central city of Multan, where he runs a huge madrasa, Jamia Khair-ul-Madaras. Almost half the foreign students registered at Pakistani madrasas study in the southern city of Karachi. But madrasa officials say the number of foreign students is probably more than officially estimated, as many were admitted to schools without a student visa or a government "no objection certificate". Some madrasas, officials said, took in overseas students who entered Pakistan on tourist or business visas. Imtiaz Baksh, a Canadian national, had no student visa when he first began studying at Jamia Binoria. "I have been in this madrasa for the last five years. My wife and son are with me. We do nothing but study Islam," he said, berating the government for punishing every foreign student for the actions of a few. Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-08-05 |
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