The faces of Islam: Are they simply schools of religion or really universities of terrorism? Mary Fitzgerald visits some of Karachi's famous madrassas.
Hana Haq is about as far away from the stereotypical image of a madrassa student as it is possible to imagine. Hana is female, for a start, and she carries an American passport. Fast-talking and opinionated, she spikes her conversation with MTV-style slang. "Get it?" she asks sassily at the end of each sentence.
Sitting cross-legged on the carpet beside her, Mehreen from California comes across like some kind of hijabi Valley Girl. "Islam is, like, sooo cool," she drawls.
Mehreen is 15, Hana five years older. Both are of Pakistani descent and both are studying at Karachi's sprawling Jamia Binoria madrassa, one of Pakistan's largest. Like most of the foreign students here, they, or at least the parents that sent them, consider time spent at the madrassa an important supplement to their conventional education back home.
After grappling with a curriculum that includes Islamic law and Koranic studies taught in female-only classes by male teachers hidden behind a curtain, Mehreen will return to her high school in the US, while Hana plans to study medicine.
Pulling her lime-coloured headscarf loosely around her face, Hana giggles when she remembers telling non-Muslim friends where she was going to spend her gap year. "Some of them had never heard of a madrassa, others thought it was some kind of terrorist training school," she explains. "I told them it's just like a Catholic boarding school, except they teach Islam instead of Catholicism."
According to Pakistan's president, Hana and Mehreen shouldn't even be here. Following the London bombings last year, Gen Pervez Musharraf ordered all foreigners studying at madrassas in Pakistan to leave the country by December. Apparently triggered by flimsy allegations that one of the London bombers had briefly spent time at a Lahore madrassa, the move angered Pakistan's powerful religious leaders and the government backtracked, urging students to leave "as soon as possible".
Pakistani authorities now claim that about 60 per cent of foreign students have left, but like most aspects of the controversial madrassa issue, no one is quite sure.
Before September 11th, the word madrassa - it means simply "school" in Arabic - was used to describe religious-run educational institutions in Pakistan. After the attacks on New York and Washington DC, much was made of the fact that the Taliban - literally "students" in Arabic - was formed from the ranks of men who had once studied at hardline madrassas in the area straddling Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
The word soon entered US government vocabulary. In 2004 then secretary of state Colin Powell denounced madrassas as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists". The year before secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld had wondered: "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
Such rhetoric has riled madrassa leaders in Pakistan. "I categorically deny that there is any sort of what people call extremist teaching in our madrassas," says Hanif Jalandhari of the Wafaq-ul Madaris, a federation set up to represent many of the country's religious schools.
"No madrassa student has ever been found guilty of terrorism. Neither 9/11 nor 7/7 has proved active involvement of a madrassa student. Instead a majority of the terrorists responsible for both attacks were people who had graduated from universities in the West."
In 2002, under US pressure, Musharraf announced all madrassas had to register within two months and adopt a government- approved syllabus by the end of the year. He warned that any madrassas promoting extremist ideologies or harbouring militants would be shut down. Today, most madrassas remain unregistered, and no national curriculum has been enforced.
Madrassas known to have links with banned militant organisations are still operating and no one seems to know any that have been closed down.
But perhaps the most damning proof of Pakistan's half-hearted approach to the madrassa issue is the fact that no official government figures exist for the number of madrassas in the country. Some estimates have put the number at about 10,000. They range from draughty single-room schools in isolated mountain villages to those, such as Jamia Binoria, that resemble a ramshackle university campus.
Located in a grim industrial area in the western outskirts of Karachi, Jamia Binoria has 5,000 students, 3,000 of whom live in dormitories behind the madrassa's high walls. There are 500 female students in a separate section of the campus. The minimum age for admission is six, considered the optimum age for memorising the 6,000-plus verses in the Koran. Succeeding in this and becoming a hafiz - one who knows the Koran by heart - counts among the curriculum's main objectives.
Students are also taught science, computer studies, mathematics, English, Urdu, Arabic and social studies in addition to Islamic jurisprudence, logic, philosophy and Koranic exegesis. The campus includes a department internationally renowned for issuing fatwas and offices where staff produce an in-house newspaper.
Before 9/11, Jamia Binoria was said to have the highest enrolment of foreign students in Pakistan. That number has now been reduced to just over 100. They come from Europe, the US, Canada, the Middle East, Africa and Indonesia, paying fees of just $50 a month. Many are from the South Asian diaspora, second or third generation Pakistani immigrants sent by their parents to get a traditional religious education while learning about their roots.
Brothers Nur and Mahboub Khan arrived from Atlanta two years ago. Nur (15) says Islam, for him, is like "putting ice cubes in a glass of warm Coke" but admits it was his parents' decision to send them both to the madrassa. "They believe it's impossible to really learn about your religion in America," he explains. "The youth is corrupted there, the culture in America is all about money, girls, drugs and guns.
"I cried constantly when I got here first but I feel like I've turned from boy to man since then."
Five months ago Ismael (23) was working as a sales assistant at Macy's in New York. He stands out from the other students with his wraparound shades, embroidered black shalwar kameez and matching kufi, the skullcap worn by Muslim men.
"In the past I would have described myself as an atheist, I didn't believe in anything," he says. "I was into money, girls and I had problems with alcohol. I started to rediscover my religion and realised I wanted to leave all that behind and have a fresh start. My parents, who are from Karachi, were delighted and encouraged me to come here."
All three rise well before dawn and spend most of the day reciting the Koran in rooms crowded with fellow students rocking to and fro as they commit Islam's holy book to memory. Few of the students know Arabic so they cannot understand any of what they recite and memorise. That will come later, teachers say.
Canadian Ejaz Ullah Bakhsh (19) came to Jamia Binoria with his parents in 2000. He is studying to be an alim, or Muslim scholar. "When you tell people back in Canada that you're at a madrassa, there's a certain reaction. All this talk of madrassas being some sort of training camps is just orchestrated by the media."
Sitting in his small office, Jamia Binoria's founder and principal Mufti Muhammad Naeem can observe the campus from three closed-circuit TV screens installed next to his desk. He chortles about the western perception of madrassas. "Did you find any terrorists here?" he bellows, before grumbling about the government clampdown on foreign students.
"It's unfair because it disrupts their studies. Madrassas do not create terrorists, we're training students to be law-abiding people and good Muslims. The focus is on ethics, morality and justice."
Mufti Naeem says he will not tolerate extremist ideas on campus, something that has made him a target himself. Two years ago a bomb exploded at a restaurant outside the madrassa, killing 10 of its students and wounding dozens others. Mufti Naeem, who ate at the restaurant every day, believes he was the intended victim. "I had expelled some students for extremism. They had this extreme, violent mindset and I suspected they were developing links with certain groups. I am sure this was their revenge."
Altogether, he says, between 10 and 12 students have been expelled from Jamia Binoria on similar grounds.
You don't have to go far in Karachi to find a madrassa with a militant edge. The rose-coloured minaret of the mosque at Binori Town madrassa rises over low-slung houses and shabby shopfronts on Karachi's eastern side. Dubbed "the house of the devil" and "a terrorist Vatican" by French writer Bernard-Henri Levy in his book on the murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, Binori Town's reputation is about as notorious as it gets.
Locals roll their eyes when retelling the many rumours that have surrounded the complex. Some, including Levy, believe Osama bin Laden once received medical treatment there. An important centre for the hardline Deobandi school of thought - similar in its rigid austerity to Saudi Wahhabism - Binori Town's imams have publicly praised Bin Laden and his exploits.
Daniel Pearl's LSE-educated kidnapper, Omar Sheikh, was said to have stayed for a time in its dormitories and some believe the complex served as a rendezvous for al- Qaeda associates en route to Afghanistan. One of its former teachers, Masoud Azhar, an associate of bin Laden, went on to found the jihadi group Jaish-e-Muhammad [ Army of Muhammad].
Binori Town is not known to welcome visitors but I am granted a rare interview with its director Abdul Razzaq Sikander, a frail cleric with henna-tipped beard and a walking stick. Not one of his students has ever fought jihad, he insists, and the madrassa makes sure students are "clean of any political agenda".
"In Afghanistan and Kashmir they already have enough trained men, what help would Islamic students trained in Koran and hadith be to them?" he asks rather disingenuously. "What they do after they leave here is their own business and nothing to do with the madrassa."
Dr Sikander goes on to say that he does not believe 9/11 or the London bombings were carried out by Muslims. "There is no proof. It is all propaganda."
He dismisses criticism that Binori Town's curriculum includes a strong anti-western element. "There is no need to teach hatred of the West when there are already so many reasons for that hatred to exist. Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and now Lebanon. Is it any surprise there is hatred?"
Asked his opinion of Osama bin Laden, who enjoys hero status in many parts of Pakistan, Dr Sikander clears his throat loudly and says: "I am not the right person to ask this question. I am a busy man, I don't have time to build an opinion of him."
What would he tell a young European Muslim if they turned up at Binori Town saying they wanted to join the jihad?
"I would ask him to leave this place, go back to his country and decide over there what he wanted to do while remembering that Muslims in Europe should respect the laws of the land and not cause trouble."
I am given a tour of the complex by another member of staff who delights in telling me about the time he stopped off at Shannon airport en route to New York.
It is past mid-day and most of the students are napping before prayer.
"Everyone says there are terrorists at Binori Town," my guide tells me, smiling and gesturing at the rows of sleeping youths stretched out under marble arches.
"Here are your terrorists."
There are some foreign students at Binori madrassa, including some from Britain and the US. I press my guide to meet them but he insists they cannot be disturbed from their sleep. His reply is hardly convincing - it will soon be time for prayer and already there are some students milling about.
It is estimated that 15 per cent of Pakistan's madrassas extol violent jihad as something noble and legitimate. Abdul Rashid Ghazi, a hardline cleric at Islamabad's Lal Masjid, is frank about what is taught in the madrassa that adjoins his mosque. Accused, along with his brother, of al-Qaeda links, Ghazi told The Irish Times jihad is an important part of the syllabus.
"We are teaching Islam and we have to give equal emphasis to everything, including jihad. It is an integral part of Islam, our religion permits it and encourages it.
"This talk of reform? We will not accept any reform in which we have to compromise on our curriculum, particularly when that so-called reform is dictated by the US."
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Pakistan's madrassa system flourished due to tacit government approval and funding from the US and Saudi Arabia. Madrassas near the border with Afghanistan provided Pakistani intelligence services with a steady stream of Afghan refugee recruits to fight the Soviets.
In such circumstances, the government reasoned, the emphasis on jihad was to be encouraged. Since then the madrassas have become an important part of Pakistan's education system, partly due to the country's failed state schools. A significant number are linked to the country's powerful Islamist political parties.
For many children from poor backgrounds, they offer the only hope of education. Some get it for free, others pay nominal fees of 100 rupees a month (€1.30). In return, they are given food and sometimes accommodation - often little more than a piece of carpet and space on the floor.
Some well-off families send their children to madrassas because they appreciate the emphasis on discipline and traditional teaching. A study by The World Bank pointed out that "there is weak evidence to support the hypothesis that poorer and less-educated families are more likely to send a child to a madrassa." The report added that 75 per cent of Pakistani households with a child enrolled at a madrassa also send a child to a private or public school.
Critics lament the type of education madrassas provide, producing students poorly equipped with the skills required to find employment and deal with the modern world. A recent study found some madrassas teaching medicine based on texts written by Avicenna in the 11th century, while others taught mathematics using the works of Euclid alone.
One student was defensive when asked about this: "We don't come here to learn about modern life, that's not the point. Our religion doesn't teach us to be modern, it teaches us to lead simple, humble lives."
Others are concerned that a madrassa education leaves students ripe for radicalisation, whether this is directed towards the West or towards religious minorities in Pakistan, such as the Shia.
Some of the more militant madrassas teach intolerance of other beliefs, something many critics say has contributed to the country's worsening sectarian violence.
The issue of Pakistan's madrassas is one that takes in all the country's complex political and religious strands, and reforming the system is fraught with the possibility of tipping any number of delicately balanced alliances.
No wonder, critics say, there is a sense that the government is reluctant to push hard for change. In the meantime, complains Hana Haq, foreign students are being used as a scapegoat. "Everyone knows a lot of bad stuff has happened and is still happening in Pakistan but very little has to do with the madrassas. Why should we shoulder the blame and have our studies disrupted? It's hard sometimes to know who Musharraf is with - Pakistan or the US."
•Mary Fitzgerald is the winner of the Douglas Gageby Fellowship. Her reports on The Faces of Islam appear in Friday's Irish Times.