Primary Sources

Schooled in Jihad

Chicago Tribune:

In the struggle for the soul of Islam, few things are as important as education reform. Terrorists can be defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, but if nothing is done to end the intolerance and the teaching of hard-line Islam in classrooms, militants will have a never-ending supply of new recruits. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pakistan, whose schools were described as “incubators for violent extremism” by the Sept. 11 commission.

Little has changed inside the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa, where Maulana Samiul Haq still preaches the same anti-American rhetoric and praises Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“He is a brave and courageous man,” says Samiul, the madrassa leader who scoffs at the idea of government reform at the school. “We will remain here no matter what.”

At public schools in Karachi, children as young as 5th graders still learn about the glories of jihad and martyrdom in textbooks the government approves. One 9th-grade student told a Tribune reporter that he dreamed of going to fight in a jihad when he grows up, if he could get his mother’s blessing.