Who has better madrasas? Pakistan or India?

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Relax. That was a rhetorical question. After the July 7th bombings in London, the Pakistani government was “persuaded” to adopt a policy that denies entry to all foreign students who wish to enroll in its madrasas. That decision however, does not include expeling current foreign students (including western students). For those people that don’t know, many of Pakistan’s madrasas are where future terrorists learn Islamofacism 101. They are analogous to the stagnant ponds that result in a swarm of deadly mosquitos flying forth. However, many of Pakistan’s clerics don’t like this new policy. Why? Free-market principles result in those foreign students that are denied entry to Pakistan, heading across the border for schooling in India. Mid-day.com reports:

This seems to be a classic case of neighbour’s envy. Muslim clerics in Pakistan are miffed over its government’s recent decision which denies entry to foreign students coming to Pakistan’s seminaries, better known as madrasas, for training. What has particularly irked the clerics is that these students are now looking across the border and enrolling themselves in Indian madrasas for their religious training.

“Denying entry to foreign students in our seminaries and allowing them to get admissions in Indian seminaries will certainly improve India’s overall image in the Muslim world at the cost of Pakistan’s reputation,” says Hanif Jalandhari, head of the Wafaq-ul-Madaris al-Arabia, largest among the five Wafaq boards that have sole control of over 9,000 seminaries across Pakistan.

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p>That quote would be funny if that cleric wasn’t serious. Is he actually suggesting that Pakistan’s madrasas have a good reputation? I honestly have no idea how India’s madrasas compare, but they MUST compare favorably. Some foreign students currently enrolled in the madrasas believe that the Pakistani government will relax its rules once international attention on the London bombings fades. Some of these students are simply extending their Visas, betting on a reversal.

Sources say that the government has received hundreds of applications from foreign students for extension of their stay in Pakistan. However, in the case of fresh admissions, there has been a marked decline in the number of foreign students who have enrolled this year.

Mufti Mohammad Naeem, head of Jamia Binoria, one of the largest seminaries in Pakistan, which has over a dozen branches in the country, with over ten thousands students enrolled, has this to say, “None of the former or currently enrolled foreign students have anything to do with terrorist related activities.”

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p>Sure.

In Sep 2003, Pakistani intelligence agencies had arrested six Indonesian and 13 Malaysian students from two Salafi seminaries and from Abu Bakar University.

One of the arrested students was Rusman Gunawan, brother of Hambali, leader of Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah, which allegedly has relations with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda. Last year, the university had admitted 103 foreign students.

12 thoughts on “Who has better madrasas? Pakistan or India?”

  2. the “reformist” deobandi sect which birthed the taliban has its origins in india. remember that the upper gangetic plain, which is all in india, was once the heartland of indian islam, so i assume that remnants of that system can pick the slack….

  3. razib beat me to this while I was looking over SM history on deobandi islam. I dont think the link between the taliban and deobandi islam has been fully explored yet – so fodder for discussion.

  5. Ok, a post on Madrassas and no mention of William Dalrymple’s fascinating article “Inside the Madrasas” ?

    Some excerpts :

    In this case, as in so many others, the link between madrasas and international terrorism is far from clear-cut, and new research has been published that has challenged the much-repeated but intellectually shaky theory of madrasas being little more than al-Qaeda training schools. It is certainly true that many madrasas are fundamentalist and literalist in their approach to the scriptures and that many subscribe to the most hard-line strains of Islamic thought. Few make any effort to prepare their students to function in a modern, plural society. It is also true that some madrasas can be directly linked to Islamic radicalism and occasionally to outright civil violence. Just as there are some yeshivas in settlements on the West Bank that have a reputation for violence against Palestinians, and Serbian monasteries that sheltered war criminals following the truce in Bosnia, so it is estimated that as many as 15 percent of Pakistan’s madrasas preach violent jihad, while a few have been said to provide covert military training. Madrasa students took part in the Afghan and Kashmir jihads, and have been repeatedly implicated in acts of sectarian violence, especially against the Shia minority in Karachi.

    and his usual sprinkling of fascinating historical nuggets :

    When the Mongol invasions destroyed the institutions of learning in the Islamic heartlands, many learned refugees fled to Delhi, turning northern India for the first time into a major center of scholarship. By the time of the Mughal emperor Akbar in the sixteenth century, the curriculum in Indian madrasas blended the learning of the Islamic Middle East with that of the teachings of Hindu India, so that Hindu and Muslim students would together study the Koran (in Arabic), the Sufi poetry of Sa’adi (in Persian), and the philosophy of Vedanta (in Sanskrit), as well as ethics, astronomy, medicine, logic, history, and the natural sciences. Many of the most brilliant Hindu thinkers, including, for example, the great reformer Ram Mohan Roy (1772–1833), were the products of madrasas.

  6. oh, i’ve spent time in a madrassa. to some extent madrassas might be as related to violent terrorism as use of marijuana is to crack-cocaine, most people in south asia who are violent terrorists have madrassa backgrounds, but few people with madrassa backgrounds are violent terrorists.

  7. oh, i’ve spent time in a madrassa.

    Nice post razib. It’s a little clearer now how an atheist knows so much about religion 🙂

    I saw this movie recently. Perhaps you might relate.

  8. Abhi,

    I’m not surprised that the madrassa establishment in Pakistan sees this as a battle for influence within the Islamic world. The dominance of the Saudi-Pakistani school has been threatened by international events, and they fear being passed over by competing schools.

    In this respect I had asked whether a secular state like India has any role promoting its Islamic values in the interests of promoting its own soft power.

  10. “to some extent madrassas might be as related to violent terrorism as use of marijuana is to crack-cocaine”

    I think, it depends where you are. The madrassas I know of, from South India, specifically kerala do not teach anything about the justification of violence. They are pretty fixated with the rituals of islamic life – and nothing more usually. A lot of muslim kids do not have even goto the traditional madrassas, instead they goto a sunday school for religious education. though I have no idea about pakistani or bangladeshi madrassas –

  12. When the Mongol invasions destroyed the institutions of learning in the Islamic heartlands, many learned refugees fled to Delhi, turning northern India for the first time into a major center of scholarship.

    Fascinating historical nuggets? More like piles of shit. First time? Either he is totally ignorant of Indian history or is intentionally misleading. That probably explains his rather weak effort to link madrassas to yeshivas and bosnia.

    How can u relate Madrassas in the 16th century to them now?