Author: Ramtanu Maitra
Publication: Asia Times
Date: November 23, 2004
URL: http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FK23Df02.html
According to reports, the Saudi
Arabian Embassy in New Delhi is pushing - somewhat tentatively - India's
Human Resource Development Ministry and Minorities Commission to set up
new madrassas (seminaries) in India. The same reports claim the Saudi royal
family has cleared plans to construct 4,500 madrassas in India, Bangladesh,
Nepal and Sri Lanka at a cost of US$35 million, to promote "modern and
liberal education with Islamic values".
The House of Saud sees the setting
up of madrassas as an exercise to correct the distorted worldwide image
of Islam. Crown Prince Abdullah pulled up the Jeddah-based International
Islamic Council and Riyadh-located World Muslim Council recently for not
having done enough to improve Islam's image.
But similar attempts to put Islam
in the right light were rebuffed in Europe after the Madrid commuter-train
bombings. China, too, has rejected all religious donations coming in from
abroad. India would do well to lead South Asia in doing the same. The Saudi
proposal to set up thousands of madrassas in South Asia comes with a big
bundle of cash, and is admittedly a public relations exercise.
The Saudi money would be dispersed
through nine Jamaat-e-Ulema organizations in the four countries, and the
project is targeted to take off in February 2005, reports indicate. It
is difficult to fathom New Delhi acceding to the Saudi request. Presently,
there are an estimated 35,000 madrassas in India, big as well as small,
with an enrollment of about 1.5 million. Most of these have remained attractive
to the poor as they provide free education. But the madrassas were originally
meant to be purely religio-cultural institutions aimed at preserving and
propagating Islamic traditions. They are no longer centers of knowledge
and excellence, now enmeshed in the grip of orthodoxy and conservatism.
This presents a clear security problem
for India and other South Asian governments. No one can deny that a large
number of Islamic militants using violence to impose Islamic laws in Afghanistan
came from madrassas set up in Pakistan. The Pakistani authorities themselves
no longer consider the students of these madrassas to be law-abiding Islamic
students.
Madrassas in India
Indian madrassas are not a part
of mainstream politics, unlike their Pakistani counterparts. But India
has a large pool of deeply disgruntled Muslims, who feel alienated and
victimized by the majority Hindus. The Hindu-Muslim relationship, deeply
affected by the violent partition of the nation in 1947, got another serious
jolt in December 1992 with the demolition of the Babri masjid in Ayodhya.
Demolition of this mosque by a large group of anti-Muslim militants sent
shockwaves throughout the Muslim community in India and beyond. The act
of demolition was orchestrated by a group of Hindu political-extremists;
but it was backed by a socio-political grouping that chose to use religious
militancy as a front in its quest to emerge as a political party of substance
in the post-Cold War India - namely the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The demolition of the Babri masjid
weakened India's status as a secular nation and made it a breeding ground
of religious orthodoxy. The proliferation of madrassas in India in the
years that followed acted to link India to the increasingly growing militant
political agenda of Muslims. Significantly, a large number of madrassas
have been set up in the Indian states of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya
and Tripura, as well as in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. With the exception
of Uttar Pradesh, and to a certain extent, West Bengal, these states all
have poor law and order records and are affected by violent insurgency
activities. According to Indian intelligence authorities in the Research
and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the Central Bureau of Investigation, some of
these madrassas were used by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
organization to indoctrinate young, impressionable minds for future terrorist
activities against a "Hindu" state.
The madrassas in today's Pakistan
and Bangladesh, as in India, represent the legacy of the spectacular resurgence
of Islamic religious education in India during the late 19th century, beginning
with the establishment of the Deoband madrassa in 1867. Since then, the
madrassa system has played an important role in preserving the orthodox
tradition of Islam in the wake of the downfall of Muslim political power
by training generations of Islamic religious scholars and functionaries;
by providing vigorous religio-political leadership; and, more importantly,
by reawakening the consciousness of Islamic solidarity and the Islamic
way of life among the Muslims of South Asia.
Unstable Nepal
In Nepal, bordering India, a full-blown
Maoist movement menaces the Hindu kingdom-nation. Nepal has a small number
of Muslims who, as records show, have not participated in the violent Maoist
uprising in western and central Nepal. Nonetheless, reports indicate that
the Nepalese government has begun regulating madrassas amid growing concern
that these institutions might be fanning radicalism in the country. Those
running the religious schools, however, insist that such fears are erroneous.
Some analysts believe the government's decision to monitor madrassas in
Nepal was a decision influenced by New Delhi.
Following the hijacking of Indian
Airlines Flight 814 in 1999 by Taliban-linked Islamic militants from Kathmandu,
Indian intelligence has come to the conclusion that Pakistan's ISI has
built up its capabilities inside Nepal. The ISI has established linkages
with the Muslims of Nepal, and funding for various anti-India activities
are channeled through these Nepali Muslims, who receive foreign funding
to run their madrassas. Although not much direct evidence has been presented
yet to justify this conclusion, it has been widely accepted in India that
in many countries, particularly in Pakistan and Bangladesh, Islamic militants
were funded by foreign charitable organizations through madrassas. One
such group, Pantech, based in Pakistan and engaged in establishing madrassas
in Nepal, has been identified as an ISI front group.
Indian security authorities are
also keeping a wary eye on the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Bangladesh.
A number of radical Islamic groups function in Bangladesh under the rubric
of the Jamaat-e-Islami. But Indian authorities are particularly concerned
that these Islamic militants have joined hands with the insurgents of northeast
India. The purpose of this alliance between the Islamic militants and non-Islamic
insurgents of northeast India, Indian authorities believe, is a design
formulated by Pakistan's ISI to further weaken New Delhi's writ over northeast
India. RAW points out that Pakistani terrorist outfits such as Hizbul Jihad-e-Islam
have been implanted in Bangladesh by Pakistani intelligence groups to speed
up a violent anti-India Islamic militant movement. RAW correlates the spurt
in the growth of madrassas in Bangladesh with such anti-India activities.
Growing fundamentalism in Bangladesh
On the other hand, the growth of
the madrassa system in Bangladesh is not wholly unexpected. A poor country,
Bangladesh currently spends only 2.2% of its gross domestic product on
education. The level of academic competency achieved in madrassas,
however, is much lower than that of a formal school, this supports the
belief of many that the madrassas do not equip their students for a productive
life. Instead, in the present-day context, they churn out orthodox religious
students who remain extremely vulnerable to the appeals of Islamic militancy.
While there is no doubt that Bangladesh
is becoming increasingly fundamentalist, the exact role of madrassas is
difficult to ascertain. Nonetheless, it is certain that Saudi Arabia's
goal is to spread the more orthodox variety of Sunni theology, known as
Wahhabism, throughout the Sunni world. Saudi Arabia has spent oodles of
money to achieve this objective all over the Islamic world, particularly
where Sunnis dominate. There is compelling evidence that suggests that
some, if not most, of the money spent by various Saudi outfits to spread
Wahhabism ends up financing militancy and terrorism. As a result, following
September 11, funds moving out of Saudi organizations to various religious
institutions, including madrassas, have been monitored carefully.
Recent reports by Western intelligence
sources splashed all over the media stated clearly the role of some Islamic
charities, such as the Global Relief Foundation that operated within the
United States prior to September 11 and was suspected of helping the terrorists
against the US. Much of Global Relief's funds came from Saudi Arabia.
Another Saudi government-supported
charity, al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, is now under the US Treasury Department's
scrutiny. Once it operated in 50 countries, providing health care and welfare
assistance, and proselytizing for Wahhabism. In March 2002, the US Treasury
designated al-Haramain offices in Somalia and Bosnia as financiers for
terrorists. Washington forced the Saudis to shut them down. As reports
began to trickle out, it became evident that financial support to the Chechen
refugees from al-Haramain, and approved by both Saudi Arabia and Russia,
was in reality diverted to support the mujahideen as well as Chechen leaders
affiliated with al-Qaeda networks. Subsequently, one by one, al-Haramain's
branches in Africa, Asia and Europe were identified and closed. But reports
indicate that al-Haramain functions undisturbed in Bangladesh.
Ramtanu Maitra writes for a number
of international journals and is a regular contributor to the Washington-based
EIR and the New Delhi-based Indian Defence Review. He also writes for Aakrosh,
India's defense-tied quarterly journal.
