Mastering the madrassas

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Through a new $255 million reform package, the Pakistani government is trying to do something that has never been done before: wrest control of the country's 8,000 religious schools from the mullahs.

The clerics, obviously, have pledged to resist.

The Muslim religious schools, known as madrassas, are blamed for spreading intolerance and hatred against the West. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war against terror, has pledged not to allow this to continue.

Previous attempts to bring the madrassas under the government's control have failed, but the Musharraf government says it will succeed.

"We are not looking to confront the [religious scholars], we want a constructive engagement," says Information Minister Shaikh Rashid.

But Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who leads the country's largest religious political alliance -- the MMA or Muttahid Majlis-e-Amal -- says what the government really wants is to control the madrassas. "We will not let that happen -- never."

There are thousands of madrassas in Pakistan, and along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Through these madrassas, religious leaders such as Mr. Rahman exert enormous influence over hundreds of thousands of madrassa students and often use them to promote their brand of violent politics.

The madrassas produce a good volunteer force for rallies, strikes and protests that may include stoning cars, setting fire to buildings and forcing people to close their businesses.

To take away this tremendous disruptive power from the mullahs, the three-year reform plan aims at expanding the job market for the madrassa graduates who are currently forced to look for jobs in religious institutions alone, because the education they have gotten is so poor.