Author: Abhijit Bhattacharyya
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 30, 2002
On January 25, 2002, the Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad said that he was "concerned about Malaysians
studying Islam in Pakistan", as they could be trained as militants to overthrow
his Government.
Mr Mahathir said he was "worried
Malaysians attending Pakistani madarsas might forge links with Afghanistan's
ousted Taliban movement and Al Qaida, to learn about weapons, making bombs
and the tactics of war. They have been trained on all these there and when
they return they will attempt to carry them out here." Malaysia's official
religion is Islam and 52.9 per cent of its 23.2 million people are Muslims.
Earlier, on January 14, Islamic
Pakistan's federal minister for communications and railways, Lt General
(retired) Javed Ashraf, said in Abu Dhabi: "The 12,000 madarsas in Pakistan
will not be affected. They will only be moderated. We want to bring them
into the mainstream." He, however, observed: "Some madarsas had been advocating
hatred."
Interestingly, when the Pakistani
minister was speaking of madarsas in Abu Dhabi, Maulana Abdul Aziz, Imam
of Islamabad's main Red Mosque, was threatening an "Islamic revolution".
A "reaction" was brewing. This "government" of Musharraf "is paving the
way for Islamic revolution", as restrictions have been imposed on madarsas.
"New madarsas cannot be built without permission and all of them have to
register and be brought into the mainstream education system."
Notwithstanding the contradictory
posture of the Pakistani minister's declaration and the Maulana's threat,
the police (physically) started checking the unregistered and unrecognised
madarsas to bring them under Government control with the mandatory provision
to provide details of both local and foreign students. Close on the heels
of the madarsa matter in Pakistan, came the warning of British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw. Speaking at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies
on January 25, 2002, Mr Straw blamed Muslim countries of encouraging Islamic
extremism by suppressing dissent and failing to encourage democracy.
Whether, Mr Straw is right or wrong
is not the issue. But the reality is, Pakistan too is feeling the need
to reform its ecclesiastical sector, which thus far had been a forbidden
territory. Once again on Wednesday, January 30, 2002, General Musharraf
appealed to the religious schools and declared that the "madarsa students
should join mainstream". For the first time since assumption of political
power through coup on Tuesday, October 12, 1999, Gen. Musharraf visited
"seminaries" and declared, "I am not critical of madarsas. I want children
to be educated in a way that they could be absorbed in the mainstream.
Pakistan has been left behind in science and technology. We want to close
the gap," differing with "those who interpret the country's Islamic ideology
in a conservative way".
The only unprecedented silver lining
in an area of perennial Indian darkness and ignorance of terrorism and
fundamentalism, is the forceful statement of the Marxist Chief Minister
of West Bengal, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, against some of the madarsas
of Indian Bengal and the need to bring the unregistered seminaries under
the control of the local government. "ISI and Pakistan are the twin dangers
to the state which are trying to break Bengal and sowing the seeds of dissension
and destruction amongst the Muslims thereof."
Hitting out at the critics of the
West Bengal Government, Mr Bhattacharya went to the extent of declaring
that, "Those soft on ISI threat, are enemies of India." One really thought
that the Indian Hindu Bengalis had at last woken up to the reality of threat
to India's security. The suffering of the Indian Hindu Bengalis notwithstanding,
it is a difficult task to stir them in matters fundamentalism and religious
terrorism. The intellectual Hindu Bengali's mind traverses the universe,
transcending all borders. Thus, an educated Hindu Bengali is a "universal
poet", an "international economist" and a "socialist of the mankind". He
is busy for the welfare of the downtrodden of South East Asia or South
Africa, but rarely understands the dangers closer to his cottage. It is
this credulity and cocktail of the mind of an Indian Hindu Bengali, coupled
with the psyche of religious fundamentalist and terrorist of the imported
type, which is a cause for grave concern.
Going back to the international
scene, one finds that even the Muslim countries are in a quandary facing
terrorism and fundamentalism of their own brethren. Even Pakistan, the
cradle of Taliban, the creator of cross-border terrorism in the Indian
subcontinent is saying that, "everyone is sick of Kalashnikov culture."
The Pakistani army chief and the self-appointed President wants to "check
abuse of mosques and madarsas and they must not be used for spreading political
and sectarian prejudices." However, some educated and "secular" Indians
still do not realise that the world has undergone a revolutionary change
since September 11, 2001, when the economy of the White Anglo Saxon Protestant
was hit by Islamic terror.
(The writer is an alumnus of the
National Defence College of India and the views are his personal. The concluding
part of this article will appear Wednesday)
