Students, teachers, and parents have gathered on the second floor of a large building in old Rawalpindi – Pakistan’s fourth-largest city by population – to celebrate Result Day. Graduation caps pulled snug over white headscarves, young girls approach the podium one by one to honor the academic achievements of their peers.
At first glance, the Al-Khalil Quran Complex looks like any other school. In fact, it is a madrassa, the Arabic name for a religious seminary where children, often from the poorest segments of society, are provided with room, board, and an education.
Yet some madrassas have also developed a reputation of being “nurseries of extremism,” radicalizing young, disenfranchised men. The Pakistani madrassa system has been linked to high-profile members of the Taliban, and is blamed for bolstering the insurgency in India-occupied Kashmir by providing fighters and financial support.
Why We Wrote This
As the India-Pakistan conflict brings these controversial Islamic boarding schools back into the spotlight, Pakistan is trying to improve the quality of madrassa education with new regulations.
After a recent attack on tourists in India-controlled Kashmir, Delhi conducted a series of airstrikes against what it described as “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan – including several madrassas. Pakistan officials say the schools have no connections to the attack.
Since madrassas have historically operated with minimal oversight, it is impossible to know how many of the country’s approximately 30,000 Islamic seminaries have actually been involved in spreading extremism. But, says Waqas Sajjad, an assistant professor at Beaconhouse National University in Lahore and expert in madrassa education, “There is a history of quite a few madrassas being involved in nefarious activities.”
For its part, the Pakistani government would like all madrassas to operate more like the Al-Khalil Quran Complex, which combines religious education with secular subjects like English and math. Late last year, Parliament passed a new set of laws seeking to improve the quality of madrassa education, both to uplift student outcomes and to help madrassas shed their tag as terrorist hotbeds.
On paper, the laws prohibit madrassas from teaching or publishing any material that “promotes militancy, or spreads sectarianism or religious hatred,” and enjoins them to phase in more secular subjects of instruction. It’s a rare moment of consensus between the state and the clerics who run these seminaries.
“I think it’s become very clear that a good madrassa has to be a place … where students are getting all kinds of knowledge,” says Dr. Sajjad. “It’s not just religious knowledge, but there’s also secular knowledge.”
Why now?
For the proprietor of the Al-Khalil Quran Complex, Nasim Khalil, the decision to introduce “worldly” subjects was made years ago to boost graduates’ employment prospects.
His father, the madrassa’s founder, “wanted to ensure that our students weren’t left behind,” he says. “He didn’t want them to end up hawking in the streets or, in the best case, to become imams or muezzins. He wanted them to become doctors, engineers, lawyers, and so forth.”
An added benefit of having madrassa graduates enter the workforce is that it might keep them away from extremist activities.
Though there were only about 250 madrassas in Pakistan when the country was created, that number is said to have proliferated in the 1980s during the Soviet-Afghan war. The Darul Uloom Haqqania in Akora Khattak, perhaps the most famous madrassa in Pakistan, is responsible for educating a significant number of the Taliban leaders who took control of Afghanistan in August 2021.
This might also explain the timing of the legislation. Some experts argue that the deteriorating relationship between Islamabad and Kabul has led the military-backed Parliament to try to sever the ideological connection between Pakistani madrassas and the Taliban who studied there. Pakistan, which has a history of providing clandestine support to the Taliban, has blamed the latter for providing a safe haven to terrorists who commit atrocities on Pakistani soil. The Taliban leadership of Afghanistan has continuously denied these accusations.
“Given the deep tension the establishment is having with the Taliban, there may be a bit of buyer’s remorse creeping in and a recognition that Pakistan’s close embrace of the Taliban … has hurt the country more than it’s helped it,” says Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington.
The legislation, which also requires madrassas to have their accounts formally audited, “appears to be an effort to make much-needed changes to the education system that reduce the risks of youth radicalization,” he adds.
Step toward transparency
Critics say the law doesn’t go far enough to address the problem of sectarianism in madrassas, and human rights activist Farzana Bari argues that the entire debate around madrassas obscures a more central issue: the existence of parallel systems of education in a country already riven by disparate identities.
These parallel systems “create divisions in society,” she says. “If you ask me, there should be one system of education, and every child should have equal opportunities” under that system.
In what is believed to be a concession to the Islamist political party the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F), the legislation rolls back a 2019 change that placed madrassas under the oversight of the Ministry of Education, allowing these seminaries to be registered under the Ministry of Industries instead. Critics say this ministry has neither the power nor the expertise to keep madrassas in check. The rollout of the new law, including the timeline for compliance and plans for enforcement, also remains a mystery.
Nevertheless, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) Sen. Kamran Murtaza says the law is a step in the right direction. “Previously it was said that [madrassa] funds were being used for terrorism,” he says. “Now you’ll be able to see both where the money comes from and where it is sent to, so no one will be able to make this accusation.”
Mr. Khalil of the Al-Khalil Quran Complex agrees and hopes that this transparency will lead to greater trust between the schools and the government.
In practice, he feels that madrassas have been under strict oversight for more than 20 years.
Before the U.S.-led war on terror, when the Al-Khalil Quran Complex used to host more than 100 boarders from various parts of the country, “Intelligence agents would come here demanding to know everything about our students,” Mr. Khalil explains, noting that there was a perception that students from the north might be associated with the Taliban. “These were poor children who came from underprivileged areas. Their parents often didn’t have identity cards. How were we supposed to investigate their backgrounds?”
As a result, Mr. Khalil changed his enrollment policy so that only children from the local neighborhood could join the madrassa. Today, it houses roughly 30 students.
