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Saudis plan to expand madrassa system in South Asia
EFLAccording to reports, the Saudi Arabian Embassy in New Delhi is pushing - somewhat tentatively - India's Human Resource Development Ministry and Minorities Commission to set up new madrassas (seminaries) in India. The same reports claim the Saudi royal family has cleared plans to construct 4,500 madrassas in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka at a cost of US$35 million, to promote "modern and liberal education with Islamic values". The Saudi money would be dispersed through nine Jamaat-e-Ulema organizations in the four countries, and the project is targeted to take off in February 2005, reports indicate. It is difficult to fathom New Delhi acceding to the Saudi request. Presently, there are an estimated 35,000 madrassas in India, big as well as small, with an enrollment of about 1.5 million. This presents a clear security problem for India and other South Asian governments. Madrassas in India ...The Hindu-Muslim relationship, deeply affected by the violent partition of the nation in 1947, got another serious jolt in December 1992 with the demolition of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya. Demolition of this mosque by a large group of anti-Muslim militants sent shockwaves throughout the Muslim community in India and beyond...The proliferation of madrassas in India in the years that followed acted to link India to the increasingly growing militant political agenda of Muslims. Significantly, a large number of madrassas have been set up in the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura, as well as in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. With the exception of Uttar Pradesh, and to a certain extent, West Bengal, these states all have poor law and order records and are affected by violent insurgency activities. According to Indian intelligence authorities in the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Central Bureau of Investigation, some of these madrassas were used by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) organization to indoctrinate young, impressionable minds for future terrorist activities against a "Hindu" state. Unstable Nepal In Nepal, bordering India, a full-blown Maoist movement menaces the Hindu kingdom-nation. Nepal has a small number of Muslims who, as records show, have not participated in the violent Maoist uprising in western and central Nepal. Nonetheless, reports indicate that the Nepalese government has begun regulating madrassas amid growing concern that these institutions might be fanning radicalism in the country. The ISI has established linkages with the Muslims of Nepal, and funding for various anti-India activities are channeled through these Nepali Muslims, who receive foreign funding to run their madrassas. Although not much direct evidence has been presented yet to justify this conclusion, it has been widely accepted in India that in many countries, particularly in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Islamic militants were funded by foreign charitable organizations through madrassas. One such group, Pantech, based in Pakistan and engaged in establishing madrassas in Nepal, has been identified as an ISI front group. Growing fundamentalism in Bangladesh Indian security authorities are also keeping a wary eye on the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh. RAW points out that Pakistani terrorist outfits such as Hizbul Jihad-e-Islam have been implanted in Bangladesh by Pakistani intelligence groups to speed up a violent anti-India Islamic militant movement. RAW correlates the spurt in the growth of madrassas in Bangladesh with such anti-India activities...While there is no doubt that Bangladesh is becoming increasingly fundamentalist, the exact role of madrassas is difficult to ascertain. Nonetheless, it is certain that Saudi Arabia's goal is to spread the more orthodox variety of Sunni theology, known as Wahhabism, throughout the Sunni world. Saudi Arabia has spent oodles of money to achieve this objective all over the Islamic world, particularly where Sunnis dominate. There is compelling evidence that suggests that some, if not most, of the money spent by various Saudi outfits to spread Wahhabism ends up financing militancy and terrorism. Posted by: Paul Moloney 2004-11-23 |
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