Madrassas...Pakistan leaders seek "reform?"

In the country called Pakistan, there are schools. These schools are attended by children who begin at the age of three and continue on until the "student" has either graduated or earned an accredited bachelor"s and master"s degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies, OR, (in far too many cases) graduate their students in a very different field of study. Armed Islamic Jihad! These students tend to be well-grounded in anti-Western Taliban theology but are unable to read or write.

But even if the students at Jamia Naeemia are well-educated, one can question whether they are any less militant, anti-Western or anti-American in their outlook.

Of schools that refuse to register and follow government guidelines, Mr. Naeemi said, "They were preaching jihad before September 11, and they are still preaching jihad."

Those guidelines were announced by Gen. Musharraf in a Jan. 12, 2002, speech in which he proclaimed a new "jihad against backwardness and illiteracy" — an effort that drew much praise in Pakistan and the West.

His plan required all madrassas to stop accepting money from non-Pakistani sources such as wealthy Saudis who adhere to a militant form of Islam that helped inspire and fund the Taliban in past years. It also included a requirement to add four core subjects: math, science, Pakistan studies and English.

"The children in these madrassas need to be brought into the mainstream of life," Gen. Musharraf said a month later at the White House, with President Bush at his side calling the reforms "visionary."

Gen. Musharraf again pledged a crackdown on madrassas after the July 2005 suicide attacks in London"s transit system, in which 52 persons and four bombers died. One of the four bombers, a 22-year-old Briton of Pakistani descent, had studied religion at a madrassa in Pakistan.

Among the harshest critics of the madrassas is opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who often accuses the Islamic seminaries of "brainwashing our children" and of producing "mindless robots" of intolerance.

Given the recent turmoil in Pakistan, including a suicide attack on Mrs. Bhutto"s motorcade last month that killed at least 140 supporters, madrassas and the broader goal of education reform are likely to remain on the back burner.

When Gen. Musharraf appeared on state-run television Saturday night to explain his emergency declaration, madrassas were not mentioned once.

In a report issued more than a month before the latest outbreak of violence in July, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said the madrassa-reform effort was in "shambles."

"Plans are announced with much fanfare and then abandoned," the report said. "In any case, the introduction of secular courses would only be of slight value unless there were also deep changes in the religious curriculum to end the promotion of violent sectarianism and jihad."

At the Jamia Naeemia madrassa, Muhammad Allahyar, 22, expects to complete his bachelor"s degree sometime next year. He said that he once dreamed of studying in the West, but that his ambitions have changed and now he wants to remain in the Islamic world.

"I want to serve my religion. I want to preach Islam. By the grace of God, it will happen over time," he said.

When an American visitor posed a question about bin Laden, he felt compelled to defend the terrorist mastermind.

"Osama is a Muslim, and whatever he is doing is in the interest of Islam."

Posted: November 6, 2007

"Osama is a Muslim, and whatever he is doing is in the interest of Islam?!?

I truly believe that this is why fewer and fewer people believe in moderate Islam

.How can you reform Islam? .. Honestly?

"There"s no jihad, there"s no terrorism here," they swear.

This school will be the only one featured on any report from MSM detailing how Pakistan is changing. Anyone who brings up the madrassas will be challenged with this quote.

accredited bachelor"s and master"s degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies? And what is required to earn these degrees? Will they study the history of Arab peoples before Islam? I doubt it. Islamic Studies? So now we'll have masters in the hadiths. Wow!

Pakistan studies

Meaning what, exactly? The history of Pakistan, all six decades of it?

"I want to serve my religion. I want to preach Islam. By the grace of God, it will happen over time," he said.

Sounds like he's really open to other traditions. He doesn't want to serve people. He can preach Islam today.

The Taliban were the creation of three external forces, which came together. Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, the CIA, the Americans, and thirdly, Saudi intelligence. Now these were young men, recruited from the refugee camps and in particular from the religious training schools, the madrasses in Pakistan. The Taliban were an artificially created force, but like many of these things they then as it were "slipped the leash" - it's a case of the Sorcerer's apprentice.

I said this a long time ago - I see that imams are closer to military officers rather than being comparable to a priest, preacher, or other religious type of leader.

But that goes along with my idea that islam is more of a political system that only uses religion as a front and god as a weapon. But, either way - imams, in my point of view, are comparable to officers in an army.

The West keeps thinking it can somehow sweep back the tide of Islam, and Bright Young Muslim Things talk about "reforming Islam." It's all nonsense. The West can, however, build a dam that will keep the flood of Islam from our Infidel lands, and collapse the structures of the Muslim ones, as the water rises. It doesn't matter what happens in Pakistan as long as Pakistan's major weaponry is somehow held in check. It doesn't matter what happens in Iran as long as Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons. Eventually, out of the nightmarish situations in those nightmarish lands, at first a few, and then more, will be able to make the connection between the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim societies and states, and Islam itself. That will take a long while. Meanwhile, the fewer Muslims who are permitted into the West, the more constraints on the practice of Islam and the support that Saudi billions gives those Muslims now settled deep within the Lands of the Infidels, the smaller the transfer of wealth, the result both of the unavoidable need, but a need that can be steadily reduced, to pay for oil and gas, and of that further, quite unnecessary transfer of wealth, the more than one billions that have gone to Iraq, Egypt, Pakistan, the "Palestinians" and that has bought the Infidel world exactly nothing, but only allowed those countries and those peoples to further wallow in their anti-Infidel hatred and their sloth.
Let them, instead of receiving Infidel aid, be forced to ask the Muslim and Arab pil states, the recipients of ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone, to share with fellow members of the Umma.

'Reforming' a madrassa? (laughing Out Loud).. That reminds me of an episode in the TV serial 'Commish' where a top cop is asked to determine the real psychics from the fake ones.

Memo to the Jamia Shahida madrassa - drop surah 9 from the syllabus, and only teach surah 109. Yep, that should do it.

To keep an eye on the ongoing war, declared on all you "non-believers." There's a site called http://www.jihadwatch.org/ .

I read it every day, if for no other reason than it's very inforative and it's constantly being updated.