Seminaries in NWFP do not fear any crackdown by security agencies as teachers and students say that these institutions did not impart military training.  âThe impression that religious seminaries are spreading militancy is totally wrong as no military or terrorist training was being imparted in any seminary,â said Maulana Hassan Jan, in charge of the Jamia Imdadul Uloom, a prominent religious seminary in the Peshawar Cantonment area. Maulana Hassan Jan was the member of a delegation that met Taliban after the 9/11 in Kandhar to persuade Mulla Omar to expel Osama Bin Laden from Afghanistan.
| ... and we saw how well that worked. |
âPeople carry out terrorist activities in reaction to wrong policies of America and its allies and as long as America continued subjugating Muslims, it would face such terrorist attacks,â he said. Maulana Jam said that they considered suicide bombing as un-Islamic but these were carried out in utter desperation.
| "So, really, it's okay..." |
US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair killed thousands of Muslim women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq but those whom they called terrorists had not killed a fraction of that number, he added.
| Not in Afghanistan, anyway... |
The cleric said that since NWFP was close to Afghanistan, a large number of Afghans were studying in religious seminaries here.
| Curiously, very few Paks seem to make the journey to Afghanistan to study in seminaries there... |
| ... mebbe 'cause their seminaries aren't as holy ... |
However, he dismissed allegations that any military training and sectarian education was given to students. âThe situation will remain the same as long as America and its allied forces are in Afghanistan and Iraq,â he added.
Maulana Rahat Gul, who runs a religious seminary near Peshawar, said that Muslims who took arms for their defence were being called terrorists. âAfghans and Iraqis are defending themselves against foreign invaders,â he added.
| "So, really, it's okay..." |
The planes that hit the World Trade Centre were neither flown by the Taliban nor did they have prior information about the incident, Maulana Gul said. âJews are behind the 9/11 incident and the London bomb blasts and are trying to defame Muslims,â he added.
| "We've seen the yarmulkes! 'Mohammad Atta'? What kind of Muslim name is that? Sounds Jewish to me..." |
Maulana Gul said that the government and intelligence agencies should conduct surprise visits of seminaries to get first hand knowledge before accusing them (seminaries) of promoting militancy.
Ihsanullah, a student of Markaz-e-Uloom in Rahatabad, said that none of the suicide bombers â held for London attacks â had studied in religious seminaries. In fact all of them were educated in the UK, and therefore, the UK institutions should be accused of producing militants instead of religious seminaries,â he added.
| "Those stopovers at Muridke? They were trying to scrub it out of their pointy little British heads, but it was too late. By the time they got there they all had stiff upper lips. They drank warm beer. They owned shelties. There was nothing we could do..." |
Dr Altafullah, professor in the Communication Department of the Peshawar University, said that the western media â without any investigation â put blame on Muslims particularly on Pakistanis.
| ... despite the fact that only four out of four of them were Muslim and three out of four were Pakistanis. Now what kind of evidence is that? |
In the case of the London bombings, he said, media blamed Pakistanis for the attacks before the completion of investigation by forensic officers. Dr Altafullah said that on one hand, Western countries talk about inter-cultural dialogue and on the other they degrade Muslims by singling them out as terrorists.
| ... usually when they explode. |
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