Pakistan, US take on the madrassahs

Are the US and its allies taking down terrorists as fast as Pakistan's madrassahs are pumping out new ones?

So far, the answer to the US defense secretary's famous question is, probably not.

As Islamabad touts dozens of Al Qaeda arrests made in recent weeks, 1.5 to 1.8 million boys are attending Islamic seminaries. Many schools are seen as nurseries for radical Islam, with some 10 percent having links to militant groups, Pakistan officials estimate.

Recent reforms haven't touched places like Gujar Khan, a town 35 miles from Islamabad, where boys sit on the floor of a small madrassah. They sway as they recite the Koran under the glare of their teacher, Qari Zahir Shah, who swings a tree branch in the direction of any pupil who errs.

"These are parrots of heaven," says the young cleric at the Jama Masjid Khulfa-e-Rashadeen school. "We teach our students purely Islamic teachings to make them pure and ideal Muslims who will not hesitate to sacrifice their lives for the cause of Islam."

Despite resistance from clerics and the sheer scale of the task - there are some 20,000 madrassahs in Pakistan - the government, with US help, has embarked on several initiatives to combat zealotry by broadening educa- tional offerings. A little over 300 madrassahs have introduced elementary subjects like English, math, science, and computers, and US funds have revitalized some government schools.

"It is a difficult task, but we are very optimistic as changes have started happening," says Pakistan's education minister, Zubaida Jalal. "The message is that we are not touching religious education, but your child needs to be educated in modern subjects to see the other side of the world as well."

The reforms include:

• A five-year, $1 billion plan introduced in 2003 aimed at putting secular subjects on syllabuses and bringing madrassahs under the purview of the Education Ministry.

• A $100 million commitment to rehabilitate public schools signed in 2002 by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

• A 2002 law requiring madrassahs to audit their funding and foreign students to register with the government. The number of foreign religious students has since dropped from thousands to hundreds as the government issued and renewed fewer visas to religious students.

Ms. Jalal says that the five madrassah education boards made up of senior clerics have agreed to the mainstreaming plans, though the program is being rolled out slowly as a pilot project in 320 schools.

The US is helping bankroll the government's madrassah reforms behind the scenes, while providing visible support to Pakistan's public schools through USAID.

The group aims to train 45,000 schoolteachers to improve literacy. They have already opened 200 literacy centers through partnerships with the private sector. And they have rehabilitated 256 schools out of a goal of 1,200 in the underdeveloped provinces of Sindh and Balochistan.

"We are trying to help provide a better, viable alternative to the public by training teachers and improving the educational system so that poor parents do not have to send their children to madrassahs," says Sarah Wright, senior education officer at USAID.

Many religious leaders and clerics are bitterly opposed to the government plans.

"When they cannot run their own educational institutions properly then how can they run madrassahs?" asks the secretary-general of the Wafaq-ul Madaris, the largest education board charged with overseeing 8,000 madrassahs. The board represents the Deoband school of thought, an ideological offshoot of Wahhabism.

Some liberal progressives also oppose the reforms by invoking the public school system. They argue that by reforming and funding madrassahs, the government in effect extends to them legitimacy, and strengthens them as a parallel system.

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