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Reports

Reforming Pakistan’s ‘Dens of Terror’

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Posted on Jan 22, 2007
Abbas Hussein
photo by Nicholas Schmidle

Abbas Hussein during a lecture on multiple intelligences.

By Nicholas Schmidle

(Page 3)

Hussein told the mullahs that, amid their intense (he tactfully used the word dedicated) focus on Islam, they were neglecting parts of their brain. To illustrate this, he sketched out Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences on the board. Gardner’s theory classifies nine types of intelligence: verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, naturalistic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and existential. Currently, Hussein said, a madrassa education utilizes only a few. The mullahs agreed. They eventually all concurred that teaching non-Islamic subjects could be beneficial for their students’ intelligence. Some of them told me afterward that they planned to incorporate science and math into their teachings as soon as they got home.

Later, I asked Hussein how he thought the ulema had absorbed Gardner’s theory. “I expected more resistance from them,” he admitted. “I have been to similar workshops in the past and been asked if Howard Gardner is a Jew.”

I was snacking on tomato-and-mayonnaise breakfast sandwiches one morning when a mullah grabbed my hand. The previous night, while flipping through the channels on the television in his room, he had “paused” on WWE, or World Wrestling Entertainment. Now he looked at me with a quizzical expression: What is the deal? Are those women with the big breasts really their wives? Why don’t the guys in spandex bleed more when they get smacked on the head with a foldable chair? Finally, he had the chance to put his questions to a flesh-and-blood American. “I have seen foreigners in the market in Quetta,” he said, “but you are the first who I have shaken hands with and eaten with.” With all the Stars and Stripes flags being waved in the crowd, he naturally assumed that pro wrestling was a pastime for Americans as a whole. I explained that WWE wrestling isn’t real, and no, not all women in the United States wear flag-printed bikini tops in public. He looked a little disappointed, as if his idea of grossly behaving Americans was somehow less complete.

On one of the last days, we took a field trip to St. Thomas Theological College, the second-largest Protestant college in Pakistan. We went on foot and immediately had to weave through eight lanes of Karachi traffic—which means 10 or 12 “lanes” of cars, motorcycles, rickshaws and buses. The mullahs shuffled across the street, giggling as their turbans unraveled and sandals went flying off their feet. When we arrived at the college’s church, Dr. Pervaiz Sultan, the middle-aged, spectacled principal of St. Thomas, welcomed us into a classroom. The mullahs squatted in children’s chairs at knee-high desks. Once we were seated, five men filed into the room. They assembled behind a table with a harmonium and a pair of tablas [drums], and broke into a hymn. I couldn’t make out the verses, but the chorus repeated, “Badshah aye,” or “The King has come.” With the exception of one or two, who couldn’t bear to watch and fumbled with their phones, the visitors had fixed their gaze on the singers. On the walk back to the Mehran Hotel, I asked Abdul Rauf, a small-framed man wearing a hand-stitched turquoise prayer cap, whether he had ever seen music performed before. He shook his head. “That was my first time even in a church,” he said. He pursed his lips and made the face of someone who is pleasantly surprised—but can’t quite admit it.

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On the final day of the workshop, Maulana Mohammad Amin, one of the most senior workshop participants and a squat man with a maroon, henna-stained beard, stood on the same podium where the woman in pink had stood before. During a five-minute speech, his voice rose and fell with the dramatic flair of a Baptist preacher. He goaded his fellow mullahs to act, to inspire a revival in Islamic education. “This is now our responsibility,” his voice boomed. “We have to ask ourselves: How can we better educate our children? In the future, we will go forward with new techniques and new thoughts.” He said he will “always be lukewarm to the idea of ‘modern’ education,” but that “we cannot bring good religious and social change until we accept [these subjects].”

Mohammad Amin paused and then added: “This week, a lot of my misperceptions have melted away. We had a lot of bad information about our own political and religious leaders. I am angry I believed this. Just as the West has bad information about us, we had bad information about the West.” All 25 of the mullahs listened intently, nodding and scratching their beards. A few mumbled “al hamdulilla”—Praise Allah—under their breath. It seemed that some things were sinking in.


Elsewhere: .

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By paluka, January 25, 2007 at 6:40 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

RE: Levi Civita

You’re an idiot. If you think you can solve war with war, why don’t you go to war with yourself and leave the rest of us out of it? When you’ve won and lost, you will find that you are still at war.

This article is talking about one side of the only real solution to world ‘terror’, the other side being us changing our leadership’s selfish and aggressive foreign policies, by peaceful means. Let’s go to it.

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By irfan, January 25, 2007 at 12:50 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Islam is religon of peace. Islam teaches love and peace. Madrassa is name of relgious school where student get islamic education. In all madrassa education of islam is given. Madrassas not provide then any education to fight with others. madrassa is nt producing Jihadists.

In the linguistic sense, the Arabic word “jihad” means struggling or striving and applies to any effort exerted by anyone. In this sense, a student struggles and strives to get an education and pass course work; an employee strives to fulfill his/her job and maintain good relations with his/her employer; a politician strives to maintain or increase his (1) popularity with his constituents and so on. The term strive or struggle may be used for/by Muslims as well as non-Muslims; for example, Allah, the One and Only True God says in the Qur’an:

“We have enjoined on people kindness to parents; but if they STRIVE (JAHADAKA) to make you ascribe partners with Me that of which you have no knowledge, then obey them not…” (29:8; also see 31:15)

In the West, “jihad” is generally translated as “holy war,” a usage the media has popularized. According to Islamic teachings, it is UNHOLY to instigate or start war; however, some wars are inevitable and justifiable. If we translate the words “holy war” back into Arabic, we find “harbun muqaddasatu,” or for “the holy war,” “al-harbu al-muqaddasatu.” WE CHALLENGE any researcher or scholar to find the meaning of “jihad” as holy war in the Qur’an or authentic Hadith collections or in early Islamic literature.

. STRIVING FOR RIGHTEOUS DEEDS:

Allah declares in the Qur’an:

“As for those who STRIVE (JAHADU) in Us (the cause of Allah), We surely guide them to Our paths, and lo! Allah is with the good doers.” (29:69)

DID ISLAM SPREAD BY FORCE, SWORDS OR GUNS?

The unequivocal and emphatic answer is NO! The Qur’an declares:

“Let there be no compulsion (or coercion) in the religion (Islam). The right direction is distinctly clear from error.” (2:256


Islam does not teach, nor do Muslims desire, conversion of any people for fear, greed, marriage or any other form of coercion.

In conclusion, jihad in Islam is STRIVING IN THE WAY OF ALLAH by pen, tongue, hand, media and, if inevitable, with arms. However, jihad in Islam does not include striving for individual or national power, dominance, glory, wealth, prestige or pride.

A few muslims r individually doing jehad due to opression of foreigne forces.

In afganistan talban were made due to opression of war lords to innocent afgan peoples. Any Afgan war lord can kidnap any woman earlier. So talban fought againest corrupt evil warlords and brought peace and justice in afganistn, So people can leave their shops alone full f goods in it.

bush have killed more than 650000 iraqi in iraq in so called war of terror.
now in somalia talban were made due to opression od evil doers warlords in country.who deprived nation from peace and justice for a long time.
President bush now invaded on them by suggesion of his neocons advisers who enemy of all muslims in world. But islam teaches love and peace to all mankind

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By PatrickHenry, January 24, 2007 at 8:30 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

There are a few charter schools in this country which could bear further scrunity.

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By Ga, January 24, 2007 at 4:47 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Since the word madrassa means school, not all “madrassas” in Muslim popolated countries are for “jihad.”

If there are any problems with schools it is with “fundamental religious schools.” And that includes fundamental Christian and Jewish schools as well.

Any school that preaches one doctrine, one faith, one way of live, is by definition, going to produce crazy people who look upon all others as “evil.”

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By Jackie T. Gabel, January 24, 2007 at 12:50 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

RE:  “jihad universities””...American, British and Pakistani governments have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to reform Pakistan’s madrassa system at a macro-level…support from the CIA and Saudi Arabia…”

>>>>>> the expression al CIA-duh doesn’t come from nowhere

“reform” is one way of cloaking your operation, education in general is a time-honored method for recruiting assets.

e.g. Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in U.S. Network of Wahhabi Mosques, Schools, Web Sites Probed by FBI By Susan Schmidt, Washington Post Staff Writer; Thursday, October 2, 2003; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31402-2003Oct1?language=printer.

This can all be quite confusing. Alphabet spooks spend a lot of time investigating terrorist recruiters, just as seen before 9/11, only to have their investigations blocked by moles with another agenda: let the patsies play out their roles, until the operation unfolds, then round them up and charge them…if they’re still alive — you see these agencies looking ever more incompetent and wonder why. These are not intelligence “failures.” These are intelligence “successes.”

London’s Brixton and Finsbury mosques aren’t for nothing being referred to as MI-5/MI-6 Patsy Schools.

e.g. FULL TRANSCRIPT: The July 29, 2005 edition of British FOX News Channel’s Day Side

programme:

MIKE JERRICK [FOX NEWS]: John Loftus is a terrorism expert and a former prosecutor for the Justice Department. John, good to see you again. So real quickly here, have you heard anything about this Osman Hussain who was just picked up in Rome? You know that name at all?

JOHN LOFTUS: Yeah, all these guys should be going back to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. It was the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work.

JERRICK: So a couple of them now have Somali connections?

LOFTUS: Yeah, it was not unusual. Somalia, Eritrea, the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook, the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat.

JERRICK: Aswat, who they picked up.

LOFTUS: Right, Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London.

JERRICK: On 7/7 and 7/21, this is the guy we think.

LOFTUS: This is the guy, and what’s really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government,

MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him.

continued here http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2005/August_06/2.html

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By levi civita, January 23, 2007 at 9:38 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Give me a break!

Making a mullah mild mannered changes the facts on the ground?

The mullah’s army has no gun-ships and no 1000-pounders. His land is being occupied by public-funded Militaries from half-way across the globe on behalf of Exxon and such like.

The mullahs’ people are supposed to lay down, preferably face-down, and allow the invaders to build their pipelines from which they will get nothing but chemical pollution and disease like the people of the Niger delta!

A bleeding-heart liberal here does more killing in a day by not raising his or her voice, fearing Homeland Security, than a gaggle of madrassa’s will do in a decade.

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