Lahore, Pakistan - Mohammad Usman, a 25-year-old seminary student with a lean face, scraggly beard and a shy smile, boarded a crowded city bus on one of Lahore's busiest thoroughfares one recent morning to run some errands. Before long, he noticed the bus was half empty.
At every stop, passengers were spilling out. Some even bolted while the bus was still navigating the tangle of traffic.
"It was cold and foggy and I had a big green cloak around me and it was bulky," said Usman, who wears a Muslim prayer cap to go along with his beard and attends Jamia Naeemia, a madrassa, or local religious school.
"I guess everybody on the bus thought I had a bomb. I could see some of them looked anxious. I tried to wrap my cloak a bit tighter so it didn't look like there could be anything underneath.
"It was a misunderstanding."
There are as many as 18,000 madrassas throughout Pakistan and as western nations ponder where Pakistan really sits in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism, they are at the centre of the conversation. Do they inculcate terrorism or are they simply an expression of devout education for poor boys?
The Star spent a recent week at Jamia Naeemia in an effort to better understand both its 1,500 students and teaching philosophy because, as one teacher remarked, "You westerners come here and after an hour and a cup of tea ask our children what they think about jihad and the Taliban."
It's understandable why teachers and students might be suspicious of western outsiders. Popular opinion suggests madrassa students are typically limited in their instruction to lessons about the Qur'an and the evils of western culture
Usman and others here say that attitude represents yet another, even more damaging misunderstanding.
While it's true that many madrassas in Pakistan are struggling to modernize their curriculum without the help of their cash-strapped government, there's evidence at least at Jamia Naeemia that an effort is being made to teach English and other secular subjects.
"The reality is that some of these madrassas are changing with the times, learning to be flexible," says Khalid Rahman, director general of the Institute of Policy Studies, an independent think tank in Islamabad. "You go to some and you see students playing sports which was not common a few years back, and while they are still saying they are here to produce religious scholars, not lawyers, doctors and engineers, there is increasingly a willingness to develop programs about Islam's place in the world."
In a recent survey of 56 Pakistani madrassas for the Henry L. Stimson Center in Washington, Rahman discovered economics, political science and comparative studies of religions are included in some of the schools' curriculum. Some provide programs on Islamic trade, and business and family law.
In what many would consider a surprising twist, some madrassas even publish magazines in English to encourage student journalism, while at least one in Karachi teaches Spanish and is said to be considering Chinese and French lessons.
Jamia Naeemia, a three-storey white-marble madrassa steps from the main train station in the chaotic centre of the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, is home to students as young as 8 and as old as 26.
Students sleep on mats, four to a room, on the second and third floors of the school. The cement walls are bare save for the odd mouldy patch.
Each morning at 4, students wake to recite the Fajr, the first of the five daily prayers for practising Muslims. (In the winter, students are allowed to sleep in until 6.) They then practise reciting the Qur'an in Arabic, and bathe and brush their teeth before a breakfast of tea, bread and fruits is served at 7. An hour later, classes start and stretch to noon.
After a daily lunch of spicy lentils and bread - spicy mutton is sometimes served at dinner - and a nap, students spend every afternoon from 2:30 to 6 p.m. studying English, science and social studies. One recent afternoon, a class of 15-year-old boys read together a chapter from their tattered English textbook titled "Women Unite!"
On another afternoon, a group of students between 15 and 17 ditched Asr, as the afternoon prayer is known, to play cricket at a nearby railway yard while a group of 22-year-olds sweated over essays on English composition and climate change.
Jamia Naeemia publishes a monthly magazine called Arfad and encourages students to contribute. The January issue featured a discussion on the Qur'an, poems about the madrassa's recently murdered headmaster, and a feature story about etiquette in mosques. There were also columns about converting Christians to Islam and how contested property inheritances should be decided.
"We cover it all," a teacher who edits Arfad said proudly.
The school's library, fringed by purple, green and red streamers, is well stocked with Islamic texts. There are a handful of English books covered in dust, such as A Dictionary of Modern War and A Review of Medical Microbiology. Those are the exciting titles.
The school also has a lab with 24 computers funded by the Lahore Lions Club. Just one, however, is connected to the Internet.
Evidence of technology, of course, is no assurance students will shun militancy. Osama bin Laden's biographer Hamid Mir reportedly watched "every second Al Qaeda member carrying a laptop computer" in the snowy mountain ranges of west Pakistan in late 2001.
During social studies class one afternoon, several Jamia Naeemia students shared their views about the U.S. and jihad. "We don't hate Americans," Usman said through an interpreter. "It should be good to live there and we know that the country also has Muslims. It's not the people there that are bad. It's the things America does in other countries that are bad. Does anyone in the west think the drone strikes in Pakistan are a good thing?"
Pakistan has become a witch's brew of peril.
In Peshawar, auto rickshaw drivers refuse to take passengers to any of the city's main markets, while in Islamabad, restaurant owners say their business has dried up because many residents are afraid to go out at night. In Lahore, men wearing jackets and blue jeans whip around the city on motorcycles with AK-47s slung from their shoulder and a girl's school banned blue jeans because it's worried about upsetting the Taliban. A newly released report claimed 3,021 Pakistanis were killed last year in insurgent attacks - more than the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan.
Usman was among several students who shook their heads and frowned when asked about the Taliban and jihad.
"This is all wrong," Usman said. "They have twisted the name of jihad and are using it against women, children and elderly people."
Jamia Naeemia is noteworthy for more than its English and social sciences classes. It's also paid a steep cost for its stance on extremism.
Last spring, headmaster Sarfraz Naeemi organized a coalition of 22 leaders from across Islam's various sects, including the arch-conservative Deobandi sect. With the support of his alliance, the Sunni Itehad Council, Naeemi issued a religious decree, or fatwa, that denounced suicide attacks, a move that garnered headlines across Pakistan and captured attention in all corners. They held rallies in Lahore's chaotic streets, chanting "Go Taliban Go, Go America Go."
"America needs to worry about its own people who have no jobs and no hope," said a student, who said he was 20. "Whatever they touch over here becomes cursed."
In June, Naeemi received an anonymous phone call.
"We are going to finish you," the caller said to Naeemi, according to several of the madrassa's students.
"He didn't get angry or raise his voice," Usman said. "He just told the person, `Son, what you are doing is wrong.' "
Two days later, on June 12, a few minutes after afternoon prayers, Naeemi was in his madrassa's office with another teacher when a suicide bomber walked into the school. He triggered his explosives at the doorway to Naeemi's office.
"I was in my room," Usman said. "The whole room shook, there was smoke everywhere. I ran out of my room to see what had happened and there were pieces of flesh everywhere. I went back in my room and shut the door and sat on the floor."
Naeemi died en route to hospital. His son Raghib has succeeded him as principal. "There was destruction everywhere, it was all destroyed," Raghib said over biscuits and a cup of steaming tea in his father's office, repaired and repainted a light brown. "We still have an enmity for the Taliban and we're still working the same way we used to. Nowhere in the world has Islam been helped with the sword."
Not everyone is convinced.
Some of Pakistan's leading thinkers remain suspicious of madrassas and say it's dangerous for students to receive an education so steeped in religion.
"None of them are good," says Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent Pakistani lawyer who led a well-publicized lawyers' movement here to restore the country's chief supreme court judge to his position after he had been ousted by former president Pervez Musharraf.
Ahsan said madrassas across Pakistan should be forced to reform their curriculum. "They have to introduce modern subjects like world history, geography, general sciences, physics and chemistry," Ahsan said in his office in Lahore. "If they do that, (the students) stand a better chance of being able to go on and get jobs. Why can't they at least show the students National Geographic or Discovery Channel dubbed in Urdu? They come out of there so narrow-minded."
That's a critique Raghib Naeemi rejects.
"It's fair to say our students may leave the madrassa unaware about some things, but they are not narrow-minded," he says, smiling. "Our students have a fair knowledge of the world around them. They read the local newspapers.
"You might ask `how many students know about Canada?' but then how many people in Canada really have any idea about Lahore or events in Pakistan?
"Our goal here is not to train students to become doctors or lawyers, but we still do have some students go on to masters programs in English and mass communications and some who want to become businessmen."
Walking through Jamia Naeemia's marble courtyard, past an elderly man nestled in a corner selling leather slippers and sweets, Naeemi smiled and nodded to a young couple dragging a goat they had brought as a donation. As Naeemi stopped to say hello, a young teacher said in a whisper that the school is considering adding cable TV, a move teachers at many madrassas would consider sacrilege.
During conversations throughout the week, students were asked what was mankind's greatest achievement of the 20th century. One student said reaching the moon. Another answered email. A third, perhaps 15, said harnessing nuclear power. That student then scampered off before he could be asked his views about Pakistan's status as a nuclear power and all the subplots that entails.
Some scholars argue Jamia Naeemia remains a rare exception and most madrassas present a tangible danger to the west. U.S. President Barack Obama was surely speaking for many when he said in a September 2008 speech that he worries, "the child who goes to a radical madrassa outside of Karachi can end up endangering the security of my daughters in Chicago."
Ahmed Rashid, a veteran Pakistani journalist who has advised the Canadian government on security issues, says the Pakistan government has stood idle while some militant groups have seized control of otherwise "normal" madrassas.
"They have just walked in and ousted the staff and headmaster and introduced a new ideology on students," Rashid says. "Since 9/11 we're talking about more than 3,000 new madrassas."
In an interview in his office at Islamabad's Quaid-I-Azam University, professor Pervez Hoodbhoy opens his laptop and flips it around to show visitors. On the screen is a leaflet given to first graders. "A is for Allah," the paper reads. "B is for bandook (gun). T is for thakrau (collision)." That letter is printed next to a picture of the burning World Trade Center. "Z is for zenoub (sin)," illustrated by pictures of kites, guitars, a TV set and chess pieces.
Still, questions remain about where the Taliban cultivates its suicide bombers and other recruits.
The World Bank reported in a recent study there is limited evidence that madrassas contribute substantially to the recruitment of violent extremists. Its study of 130 families who had lost at least one son in fighting in Kashmir and Afghanistan found a very small fraction had attended a madrassa and far fewer were recruited from madrassas.
In fact, researchers discovered 517 "jihadis" arrested after fighting in Afghanistan had mostly attended public schools.
It would be foolish, of course, to say madrassas are models of education.
They have their own unique share of issues. Many madrassas won't allow the government to monitor their finances. None receive financial support from the government and argue that means they should have no obligation to open their books. Moreover, madrassa headmasters say the government typically refuses to accept their degrees as a qualification to attend state-run universities.
That contributes to most madrassa graduates remaining unqualified for skilled labour.
Many students at Jamia Naeemia, indeed the majority, say they hope to become muftis (Islamic scholars) and teach in a madrassa. "It's true there are a number of unemployed muftis," says Arif Hussain with a shrug. Hussain, 25, is a student who hopes to land a 6,000 rupee-per-month teaching job at the madrassa when he finishes school next year.
A five-hour drive away in Multan, a city in southern Punjab, Maulana Hanif Jalandhari says his 5,000 students have been learning English and other secular subjects since 1989.
Headmaster of a madrassa that follows the teachings of Islam's conservative Deobandi sect, he says his teachers, too, preach that the Taliban is an enemy of Pakistan - like Naeemia, the school has issued a fatwa condemning suicide bombings.
"We teach there should be harmony and peace between religions, not just sects of Islam," Jalandhari said from the back seat of his champagne-coloured Toyota Corolla. A glass ornament that looks like a bunch of cherries swings from his rear-view mirror as his driver reaches 155 km/h.
It's impossible to judge Jalandhari's statements without speaking to his students. At the last minute, an emergency has called Jalandhari to Lahore and his second-in-command at the school is suffering from cancer. A visit isn't possible.
But Jalandhari says that doesn't mean he doesn't want visitors.
During a recent meeting at the Canadian High Commission in Islamabad, Jalandhari says he asked if Canadian teachers might help his students learn improved English and secular subjects. A Canadian diplomat confirmed Jalandhari's request but said funding issues make his request impractical.
To the lawyer Ahsan, Jalandhari's claims are smoke and mirrors.
He believes many madrassas operate with cunning, saying the publicly acceptable thing while encouraging something else.
Ahsan wants newscasts to routinely feature a Taliban "greatest hits" package: beheadings, the desecration of graves and historic sites, the torching of schools. The lawyer also wants the government to finally start tracking money pouring into Pakistan's madrassas from abroad. "We must increase the exposure of money coming in from Saudi Arabia for these madrassas," Ahsan says.
Students at Naeemia say they understand that sentiment and acknowledge not all madrassas share their views.
As the sun sets over the Naeemia minarets and the temperature slips near freezing, a group of teens sits in the mosque, huddled under blankets, to read to each other. On this night, the readings included passages about an encounter between Islam's Prophet Muhammad and Christianity's angel Gabriel.
But as one student said quietly out of earshot of his classmates, "I enjoy English and science, too. I have much to learn."
