Over the years, I have read considerable material by and about the madrasas and have visited several dozens of them across India and abroad. Although charges about Indian madrasas being involved in training terrorists are unfounded, the allegation that, generally speaking, they teach, preach and foment obscurantist and ultra-reactionary beliefs in the garb of Islam certainly cannot be dismissed easily. Nor can the assertion that, under certain circumstances, such beliefs can indeed lead to extremism and even violence, as the case of Pakistan illustrates, be ignored. Likewise, the argument that such beliefs, projected by the mullahs as normative and binding, constitute a major hurdle to Muslim progress and that they play a vital role in keeping Muslims shackled under the sway of a class of self-serving, patriarchal narrow-minded clerics, largely ignorant of the demands of the contemporary world, has to be recognized as legitimate.