Book Review: Pakistani Madrasas and Militancy

Name of the Book: The Madrassah Challenge—Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan
Author: C. Christine Fair
Publisher: United States Institute of Peace Press, Washington DC
Year: 2008
Pages: 143
Reviewed by: Yoginder Sikand

Long ignored by the international media, policy makers and academics, traditional madrasas or Islamic schools shot into the limelight following the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 and, not long after, the take-over of Afghanistan by the Taliban, led by madrasa graduates. Today, madrasas in general, and Pakistani madrasas in particular, are routinely projected in the international media as ‘dens of terror’ and ‘factories of militancy’. Governments and international organizations continue to issue calls for radical reforms in Pakistan’s madrasas, warning that failure to do so will allow these schools to turn out literally tens of thousands of militants every year, posing grave danger to regional, indeed international, stability. The raging debate about madrasas in Pakistan is at the centre of a war of ideas in Muslim South Asia.

This slim book is an outcome of empirical research undertaken by the author in Pakistan, and is based on her personal interactions with numerous Pakistani ulema, heads of madrasas, government officials, as well as American policy-makers. Fair’s basic concern is to seek to understand the reality or otherwise of widespread accusations about Pakistan’s madrasas being heavily involved in promoting terrorism and other forms of violence.

Fair’s central contention, which she backs with an impressive array of statistics, is that unqualified and sweeping claims about Pakistani madrasas in general as training centres for militancy in the name of jihad need to be viewed with circumspection. Based on her interviews with family members of 140 slain Pakistani militants, she argues that only a small minority of Pakistani militants active in the violence in Kashmir have a madrasa background. The vast majority of these men had studied in regular public, or, less often, private, schools. Relatively few were madrasa students or graduates. One reason for this, she argues, is that Pakistan-based militant groups involved in warfare with Indian forces in Kashmir need better qualified activists than what madrasas can offer. At the same time, however, Fair notes a heavy presence of Pakistani madrasa students and graduates in suicide bombing operations in Afghanistan and in Pakistan’s Pakhtun borderlands, as well as in sectarian violence involving rival Muslim sects in large parts of Pakistan.

Although Fair contends that, overall, the proportion of Pakistani madrasa students and graduates involved in international militancy is relatively low, she notes that madrasas might help create an atmosphere conducive to calls for what they often describe as jihad. In particular, this has to do with how madrasa students are socialized to view the world around them, including what they are taught about non-Muslims and religions other than Islam. Fair rightly concludes that madrasa teachers and students tend to be considerably less tolerant of other religions and their adherents, and significantly more supportive of violence as a means to solve territorial disputes, as, for instance, with regard to the conflict in Kashmir between India and Pakistan. It would have added weight to her contention if she had surveyed the texts taught in Pakistani madrasas that deal with issues related to the notion of jihad and the portrayal of non-Muslims in these texts. She could also have conducted in-depth interviews with her numerous Pakistani respondents on these crucial issues that are central to the debate about madrasas and militancy. That would have greatly added to the merit of her argument.

Another interesting finding that Fair presents to her readers is that, contrary to what is generally thought, full-time madrasas account for probably less than 5 per cent of all students in Pakistan, they being greatly outnumbered by students enrolled in public and private schools. This indicates that the influence of the madrasas is considerably less than what is often imagined. Not all madrasa students come from impoverished families, as is generally supposed. Fair estimates that more than 10 per cent of madrasa students are sons of fairly rich parents. Then, again, contrary to popular perception, not all Pakistani madrasas teach only religious subjects. Many of them have included basic secular subjects in their curriculum. Others allow for admission only to students who have completed at least a few years in a general school.


Madrasas might not simply produce what Fair calls ‘intolerant’ students. It may also be the case that ‘intolerant’ families might choose to send their children to madrasas because they believe that madrasa teachers espouse similar worldviews. But even here generalizations are hazardous, Fair writes, as most parents who have at least one child studying in a madrasa choose to send at least one of their other children to a general, private of public, school. She adds that it is not just Pakistani madrasa students who are generally characterized by considerable hostility to religious minorities and advocate what they consider as jihad with India over Kashmir. Almost the same proportion of students in government schools hold similar views, she tells us. This points to the fact that Government-approved Pakistani textbooks are replete with negative references to India and Hindus and reflect a particular version of Islamic supremacism that promotes extreme intolerance towards others. It is thus not just Pakistan’s madrasas’ whose teachings about other faiths and their adherents need to be critically examined and reformed. The same holds true for Pakistani Government-approved texts.

Fair adduces several reasons for the involvement, albeit limited, of Pakistani madrasas in promoting international militancy: Saudi financing of conservative Sunni madrasas in Pakistan to counter Shia groups or even Sunni groups inspired by Iran’s anti-imperialist and anti-monarchical revolution; American and Saudi backing for militant madrasas in Pakistan during the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan; and the increasing salience of ulema-led political parties in Pakistan that can rely on a steady supply of madrasa students as their foot-soldiers. She refers to the continued use by the Pakistani state of radical Islamist groups, including those associated with madrasas, particularly of the Deobandi, Ahl-e Hadith and Jamaat-e Islami sort, in the ongoing conflicts in Kashmir and Afghanistan. She rightly points out that as long as this continues, madrasa-related militancy can hardly be curbed. She also draws attention to the deeply sectarian nature of the madrasa system in Pakistan, with each madrasa being associated with one or the other rival Muslim sect. This, naturally, tends to generate conflict of the sectarian kind, given that one of the madrasas’ major functions is to defend their version of Islam as supposedly genuine and to brand the others’ as allegedly aberrant.


However, at the same time, Fair misses out on numerous other factors (perhaps deliberately, for hers is a study funded and published by a Right-wing organization close to the US establishment) that continue to fuel considerable Muslim resentment, including among madrasa students, in Pakistan—the on-going conflicts in Palestine and Iraq, in which the US is heavily implicated, and the continued American bombing of Afghanistan and now parts of Pakistan, too, being the most important. Fair also misses out the role of Pakhtun nationalism in the current militancy in Pakistan’s North-West frontier as well as the role of Islam as a vehicle for expressing violent dissent against Pakistan’s corrupt ruling class and its deadly alliance with the United States. Fair’s analysis is, therefore, extremely limited, in that she seems to locate militancy as somehow internal to those madrasas that are said to be involved in it, and as seeming to have little to do with external factors, such as those just mentioned—which is surely not the case.

The book’s concluding chapter looks at the halting efforts on the part of the Pakistani state in promoting madrasa reforms. These reforms, Fair argues, have been largely, though not entirely, sought to be introduced at the behest of the United States. She frankly admits, based on her conversations with high-level officials in the US State Department, that that ‘de-Islamisation’ of Pakistan’s education system is, in fact, one of their goals’ (p.95). Much money has been allocated by the US to Pakistan for this purpose, but, she notes, the ulema of the madrasas have quite naturally refused to bite the bait. They rightly suspect, she says, the intentions of the US and the Pakistani Government, and consider their agenda for madrasa ‘reform’ to be goaded by what they see as sinister purposes. It is thus not surprising that most of the reform measures recently introduced by the Pakistani Government for the country’s madrasas have pathetically failed. This is not, Fair tells us, because of any supposed support for militancy on the part of most Pakistani madrasas, but mainly because of suspicions of the intentions of the Pakistani state and the USA, the fear of governmental interference, as well as, in many cases, the apprehension that state intervention would curb the influence of, or disturb the power and privileges of, the families that manage most madrasas.

Fair frankly confesses that US involvement in ‘reforming’ Pakistani madrasas has ‘hurt more than it has helped, because it has served to de-legitimise the Government’s efforts and reduced them to mere action items directed by Washington and London.’ (p.92). Hence, she argues, ‘the US would do well at least to consider ceasing public calls for madrassah reform in Pakistan’ because of the backlash these calls have produced, making such ‘reform’ increasingly difficult. In this regard, she advises that ‘The US should consider diminishing its public role and encouraging its partner and multilateral agencies to take a discreet role in these initiatives’ (p.95). In other words, she does not advocate that the US must cease trying to intervene (or meddle or interfere, as many would describe it) in the affairs of Pakistan’s madrasas. All she suggests is that it must continue to intervene, but in a much more subtle manner.


At the same time, Fair admits that many madrasa managers, as well as the majority of ordinary Pakistanis, do feel the need for substantial reforms in Pakistan’s madrasas, in order to produce a class of ulema who can suitably address and respond to contemporary needs and concerns. Given this, she suggests that, ultimately, the ulema themselves have to take the lead in promoting madrasa reforms internally. It cannot be a top-down process, induced or ordered by the Pakistani Government or the USA. Furthermore, she rightly advises that the Pakistani state as well as international actors must not make madrasas the focus of their policy at the expense of other educational issues, most crucially the pathetic public education system in the Pakistan that caters to some 70% of its school-going children, many of who are, so Fair writes, hardly different from madrasa students in their approach to non-Muslims and to the question of the use of violence to settle conflicts.

This immensely absorbing book cannot afford to be missed by anyone interested in ongoing debates about Islamic or Muslim education.