Viral Islamism Seminary

"This act will alarm the international community, and their reaction won’t be good."
"If they are trying to mainstream the seminary, then money alone won’t serve the purpose."
Muhammad Amir Rana, Islamabad-based security expert

"They are my students. In our tradition, a teacher is like a father, like a spiritual leader. Afghans should be allowed to fight for their freedom."
"[As 'father of the Taliban' his] students [should fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan]."
Samiul Haq, leader, Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary

Men perform a special evening prayer on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at a mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, on June 6. (Asif Hassan/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

The government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif like other administrations before his, assures the United States, NATO and the world at large that Pakistan is a reliable supporter and aid in the fight against terrorism. He has also made the pledge that "any enemy of Afghanistan is an enemy of Pakistan", which is passing strange given the verifiable fact that Pakistan originated the Taliban and supported the Afghan Taliban while it gave haven to Osama bin Laden, and itself gave bin Laden haven in Abbottabad.

When the winter months set in making it too intolerably harsh for the Taliban to remain in the mountainous regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan to conduct raids and attack the Afghan military and police, the Taliban find a temporary home in Pakistan which tolerates its presence since it provides an invaluable service, tormenting neighbouring Afghanistan. Pakistan is concerned that Afghanistan not have a too-close relationship with its arch-enemy India. It suits its purpose that it is kept in a destabilized condition.

And that the United States recently decided to support India's domestic nuclear program, while Congress stalled the sale of U.S.-made jets to Pakistan, hasn't endeared it to the government of Prime Minister Sharif. So that the decision by Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government to fund the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary to the tune of $3-million is shrugged off as an affair of the province, not the national government to decide.

This is a seminary popularly referred to as the "University of Jihad". "A large number of students study, live and eat in this seminary, and it's doing great service for the poor people", explained Mushtaq Ghani, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's information minister, of the 4,000 students currently enrolled and housed there. Sounds downright philanthropic. But the reality is that the seminary represents one of the world's most egregious Islamist institutions, turning out fundamentalist Islamists who naturally gravitate toward membership with the Taliban.

Pakistan has over 100,000 madrassas, servicing the educational needs in Islamist studies of over three million Pakistani children. "The Taliban are killing our children and our government is giving money to their sympathizers", observed a Pakistani senator, Shahi Syed. A year and a half ago close to a hundred and fifty Pakistani schoolchildren between the ages of eight and eighteen were killed by terrorists in Peshawar in an attack on the Army Public School.

Former Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, struck and killed by a U.S. drone strike last month was an alumni of the Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary, according to Tariq Afaq, a militancy expert from Peshawar. He estimates that 80 percent of the Haqqania seminary students have either joined or are sympathizers of the Taliban. It was reported by the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, that two suspects in the 2007 murder of Benazir Bhutto were seminary attendees.


The seminary is one of the largest of Islamist teaching centres whose focus is promulgating the Deobandi hard-line strain of Islam, advocating for Sharia law. Seminaries that are considered to be religiously moderate in Pakistan are not, strangely enough, being considered for this type of financial support, complain critics of this initiative.

In this Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011file photo, Sami-ul-Haq, center in grey turban, a Pakistani Islamist politician and head of the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Haqqania, is surrounded by students as he leaves after delivering a lecture at his seminary in Akora Khatak, Pakistan. A Pakistani provincial government allocated $3 million to a Taliban-linked seminary in the region, along the border with Afghanistan, a local minister said Thursday. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed, File)