Foreign students leaving madrassas

KARACHI, Pakistan — Foreign students are leaving Pakistan’s Islamic seminaries, known as madrassas, in droves for fear of arrest under the government crackdown against Islamic extremism, a seminary official said.

“Pakistan is no longer a safe place for foreign students studying in our madrassas,” said Mufti Mohammed Jamil, spokesman for the Federation of Madrassas.

“About 500 have already moved to South Africa in a year. Others are also planning to pack their bags.”

The students, most of whom hail from Arab and African nations, were reluctant to leave Pakistan, but feared they could be arrested in the name of al Qaeda, Mr. Jamil said.

“They used to feel Pakistan was their second home, but not anymore,” he said.

“Pakistan now looks like an American colony.”

There are around 10,000 religious schools registered with the Wifaq-ul-Madaris central board of seminaries, which prepares syllabi and holds examinations, but another 10,000 are thought to run independently in rural and remote tribal areas — particularly along the Afghan border.

Islamic clerics say thousands of foreign nationals from Muslim countries annually seek admission to the seminaries in Pakistan, but have been denied visas under strict policies by the government of President Pervez Musharraf, which considers the madrassas laboratories for Islamic extremism.

“It is sad, but I have no other option. I will soon leave either to my own country or to South Africa,” said a Nigerian student on the condition of anonymity. He is one of an estimated 15,000 young men to arrive here in the past decade in search of an Islamic education.

Those numbers have tapered somewhat since the September 11, 2001, attacks, which sparked a change in attitude toward Islamic militancy by an Islamabad government eager to ally itself with the United States in the battle to oust the hard-line Taliban militia from Afghanistan.

Many thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda remnants are believed to have fled across the border during the U.S. military campaign in late 2001 and have mingled with legitimate students at Pakistan’s madrassas, which has renewed suspicions of militant activity being fomented inside seminary walls.

The seeds of the particularly hard-line brand of Islam practiced during the brutal 1996-2001 Taliban regime in Afghanistan were sowed over the border at madrassas in Pakistan, specialists believe.

And police say that while madrassa students are not schooled in violence and military training, their minds are seen as fertile ground to implant thoughts of jihad, or holy war.

“These madrassas do not provide military training to the students, but brainwash them,” a Pakistani police investigator said. “If we have to stop terrorism, then we have to monitor and regulate these madrassas.”

Religious leaders say madrassas provide “religious education” and are not engaged in terror activities.

“The seminaries are the nurseries of the Islamic revolution,” said the chief of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Maulana Fazalur Rehman. “But the Americans wants to abolish all madrassas, because these are producing faithful Muslims.”

Education department officials insist foreign students are still welcome to come to Pakistan for Islamic instruction — just so long as they leave when they have completed their course.

“Our message to foreign students is clear,” an Education Ministry official said. “Complete your education and leave for your country.”