The privately funded Islamic schools are commonplace throughout Pakistan anda majority of them owe their existence to General Zia's Islamisation drive. Thecurriculum offered there is undeveloped and pertains mostly to religiousinstruction. Some of the books taught, including Mathematics, date back hundredsof years. The result is, the madaris graduates simply cannot competeagainst others for employment. Absent any real understanding of society andsocial complexities, they want destruction. They seek to bring society ontotheir own level, and the only thing they identify with is religion.
Yet these madaris do provide free education along with boarding andlodging, and this attracts the poor. There are no exact figures about how many madarismay be operating in Pakistan, but rough estimates suggest that there are someone million students studying in over 10,000 madaris.
Since the beginning of 2002, General Musharraf has campaigned to reform thereligious schools. In a televised address to the nation in January 2002, the generalunveiled a new strategy which would see madaris teach Mathematics,Science, English, Economics and even Computer Science alongside theirtraditional Islamic programme. "My only aim is to help these institutionsovercome their weaknesses and providing them with better facilities and moreavenues to the poor children at these institutions. These schools are excellentwelfare set-ups where the poor get free board and lodge. And very few madarisrun by hardliner parties promote negative thinking and propagate hatred andviolence instead of inculcating tolerance, patience and fraternity", saidMusharraf in his address.
While embarking on several initiatives to combat zealotry and broadeneducational offerings, the Musharraf administration announced a number ofmeasures to make deeni madaris participate in the modernization programme.These reforms included a five-year, $1 billion Education Sector ReformAssistance (ESRA) plan to ensure inclusion of secular subjects in syllabi ofreligious seminaries; a $100 million bilateral agreement to rehabilitatehundreds of public schools by United States Agency for International Development(USAID), besides increasing access to quality education and the enforcement ofMadrassa Registration and Regulation Ordinance 2002 which required deenimadaris to audit their funding and foreign students to register with the government. At the same time, a Federal Madaris Education Board was established to enablethe students at the religious schools to benefit from the national educationsystem by learning Mathematics, English and vocational sciences in addition tothe normal madrassa education.
However, three years down the road since Musharraf's historic January 2002announcement, the so-called modernization campaign has largely failed, andhardly a few cosmetic changes could be introduced in the madrassa system.Most of the religious leaders and Islamist organisations rejected the governmentlegislation requiring religious seminaries to register and broaden theircurricula beyond rote Koranic learning. Under the reform programme, drafted onthe advice of the Bush administration and financed by USAID, special governmentcommittees were constituted to supervise and monitor the educational andfinancial matters and policies of deeni madaris. Most of these schoolsare sponsored by the country's leading religious parties, be it Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam,Jamiat Ulema-Pakistan, or Jamat-e-Islami Pakistan, while manyothers are affiliated with jehadi groups which preach an extremistideology of religious warfare.
The result is that the deeni madaris are increasingly seen as breedinggrounds for the foot-soldiers of the global menace of militant Islam, who aremotivated and trained to wage jehad - be it in Kashmir, Afghanistan,Bosnia, Chechnya, or other parts of the world. Thus the Bush Administrationbelieved that there were madaris in Pakistan that, in addition toreligious training, give military training to their students. Probably actingunder these very apprehensions, the office of US Defence Secretary DonaldRumsfeld leaked in October 2003 a secret memo, perhaps deliberately, to theAmerican media. In the memo, which was actually intended for Rumsfeld's topmilitary and civilian subordinates, the American Defence Secretary wondered:"Is the US capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terroristsevery day than the madrassas and the radical Muslim clerics arerecruiting, training and deploying against America?"
Three months later in January 2004, the International Crisis Group (ICG) reporttitled, Unfulfilled Promises: Pakistan's Failure to Tackle Extremismfurther strengthened the American fears. The report stated: "The failure tocurb rising extremism in Pakistan stems directly from the military government'sown unwillingness to act against its political allies among the religiousgroups. Having co-opted the religious parties to gain constitutional cover forhis military rule, Musharraf is highly reliant on the religious right for hisregime's survival."