| Submit your comments on this article |
| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Binori Town students going home |
| 2005-08-05 |
| Abdul Samad, a 23-year-old of Bangladeshi descent, worries about what is in store for him back home in Britain as he talks about Pakistan's plan to expel foreign students from the country's Islamic schools. Responding to worries after the July 7 London bombings that some of the schools, known as madrasas, were militant recruiting grounds, President Pervez Musharraf announced a ban last week on foreign students coming to Pakistan for religious education. Musharraf said an estimated 1,400 overseas students, mostly from Southeast Asia, Europe, North America and Africa, enrolled in Pakistani madrasas would be sent home. Facing up to the stigma of becoming a deportee, British-born Samad derided the directive as a violation of human rights. "I came here on a proper visa. But since they are sending us back forcibly, we will be treated like deportees," he told Reuters at Jamia Binoria, one of Karachi's largest madrasas. "Given the mood back home, they will interrogate me. But I have nothing to hide. I am not a jihadi," says Samad, whose family settled in England after his grandfather left Bangladesh. Revelations that one of the suspected London suicide bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, a Briton of Pakistani descent, had visited madrasas in Pakistan months before the attacks stoked alarm in the West that some schools were preaching hatred. Musharraf says all madrasas should register by December as part of a plan to introduce a mainstream curriculum in the schools and to correct any leaning towards extremist teachings. The number of foreign students fell sharply after al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States spread alarm among governments abroad that their nationals were being indoctrinated with radical ideas preached by some Pakistani madrasas. Analysts say the government will have to tread carefully on the issue of madrasas, as there are about 12,000 in the country, many of which provide food, lodging and at least a rudimentary education to close to a million boys from poor families. Most students from the West, however, go to madrasas recognised for teaching Islamic thought, jurisprudence and Arabic. A national organisation of madrasas wants Musharraf to rethink the ban on foreign students and plans for madrasa reform. Maulana Mohammad Hanif Jallundri, liaison secretary of the Ittihad Tanzeemat Madaris Dinya Pakistan (Alliance of the Organisations of Religious Schools Pakistan), said the expulsion of foreigners was "an emotional decision". "We are trying to meet General Musharraf, and if the issue is not resolved through talks then we will go to the Supreme Court," he told Reuters from the central city of Multan, where he runs a huge madrasa, Jamia Khair-ul-Madaras. Almost half the foreign students registered at Pakistani madrasas study in the southern city of Karachi. But madrasa officials say the number of foreign students is probably more than officially estimated, as many were admitted to schools without a student visa or a government "no objection certificate". Some madrasas, officials said, took in overseas students who entered Pakistan on tourist or business visas. Imtiaz Baksh, a Canadian national, had no student visa when he first began studying at Jamia Binoria. "I have been in this madrasa for the last five years. My wife and son are with me. We do nothing but study Islam," he said, berating the government for punishing every foreign student for the actions of a few. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #6 It sounds like Imtiaz Baksh has gone native. He needs to buy a nice little house in Pakistan, put his son down for a good local public school, get a job -- perhaps teaching English? He must do better than the locals -- plant a garden, etc. It's time for his mummy and daddy back in Canada to stop supporting him, and force him to grow up. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-08-05 15:39 |
| #5 Social Worker, wha? WHAM! |
| Posted by: Shipamn 2005-08-05 15:37 |
| #4 Hans Island has oil. If Imtiaz studies there, it will soon become the 13,753rd holiest place in Islam. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-08-05 14:42 |
| #3 Sorry, I was thinking of the other devout student quoted, Imtiaz Baksh. He appears to need peace and quiet to continue his studies. |
| Posted by: john 2005-08-05 14:37 |
| #2 No we shouldn't. We're a western society, and we have laws. We don't jug people who are innocent. Yes, yes, I know the old saw about how the splodydope is 'innocent' til he pushes the button, but these folks, most of them anyways, are truly innocent. They may also be mopes, and may be excitable and prone to eye-rolling and face-making, and that's something the Brits have to fix. So Samad, for example, needs to return to Britain, get a degree in something useful (accountant, registered nurse, teacher, social worker, mechanical engineer, systems analyst, something). Then he needs to get a job and join a club. Then he needs to marry a nice, professional Muslim woman (doctor, lawyer, etc) and have a couple of kids, buy a house, identify with a good soccer club (Arsenal?), learn to like a pint of warm beer, put a good English garden in behind the house -- -- in other words, he needs to become British. And if he can do that, he won't have any trouble at all. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2005-08-05 14:29 |
| #1 We should relocate him to Hans Island. |
| Posted by: john 2005-08-05 13:43 |