Effort to rein in madrassas begun

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Pakistan's education minister said yesterday that her nation's campaign to rein in thousands of unofficial Islamic schools, seen as a prime recruiting ground for Muslim radicals, will require a decade or more.

Education Minister Zubaida Jalal also cautioned against an idea floated by some in the Bush administration to funnel private donations to Islamic schools with a pro-Western outlook.

"We are making good progress, but you can't hope to see real results in just two or three years. It doesn't happen that way, much as we would all like to see it," Mrs. Jalal said in an interview.

"We are talking about changing attitudes and mind-sets of children who have 10 to 12 years of schooling ahead of them," she added.

The network of private Pakistani schools, known as madrassas, became the focus of global attention in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Many prominent Islamic fundamentalist militants, including a large number of senior ministers in the ousted Taliban regime of Afghanistan, were alumni of the Pakistani schools, which received substantial funding from Saudi and other Arab sources and promoted a particularly strict, anti-Western version of Islam.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a leaked memo last month, suggested creating a private foundation to channel funds to pro-Western Islamic schools. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has proposed a similar effort.

When asked about the idea, Mrs. Jalal said: "I would very much hope they wouldn't do that."

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in January 2002 announced a wide-ranging effort to revamp the curriculum, financing and oversight of the schools, many of which were formed because the officially sanctioned local public school was either weak or nonexistent.