Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral home, has shut down nearly 1,400 unlicensed religious schools in the last two months for promoting militant ideology and hatred towards the West. Sheikh Yahya al-Najar, an official at the Religious Guidance and Endowments Ministry, said that a government committee had investigated 4,000 religious schools and centres and found that 65 per cent of them violated education laws. He said authorities had shut down around 1,400 of them over the last two months and would carry out more closures.There are hundreds of religious schools in Yemen, many of them unlicensed. Reformists and some officials say these institutions promote fundamentalism in the impoverished country, which is a staging ground for al Qaeda militants. Last June, the government ordered the closure of religious schools deviating from formal education as part of its drive to fight militants and teach moderation and tolerance.