Pak madrasas still host hundreds of foreign students

President Pervez Musharraf pledged to expel all 1,400 non-Pakistanis from the Islamic schools following the revelation that one or more of the suicide attackers attended a seminary before the blasts on July 7, 2005.

At Karachi's sprawling Jamia Binoria al-Alamia, a moderate Sunni madrasa and one of the biggest in the southern city, there is still a separate section for foreigners. Those who remain here say the schools do not teach hate.

"I am surprised the Pakistani government wants all foreign students to leave. It hurts you as a Muslim and peaceful human being," a 19-year-old Canadian national who gave his name only as Ejazullah told AFP.

He condemned the London transport attacks -- which killed 56 people including the young British Muslim bombers -- as un-Islamic.

"Whether it is 9/11 or 7/7, killing innocent people is against the teachings of Islam," he said.

In the huge courtyard below the dingy room that Ejazullah shares with four pupils, some of the madrasa's 5,000 boys mill around in traditional Pakistani smocks, waiting for the prayer call. A girls' school is next door.

Pakistan's estimated 13,000 madrasas have long been accused of fostering militant Islam, but Ejazullah's roommate, 15-year-old Noor Elahi, is no radical.

Elahi said he missed the social life back home in the United States. His father Fazal Rahim, a taxi driver who moved from Pakistan 14 years ago, sent him and his younger brother to Karachi in August 2004.

"I love learning about Islam, but there is no life here in the hostel," he said.

"I want to go back but my father wants me to stay for a few more years."

He too condemned the bombings, saying: "Those who are killing innocents are misguided people. They may have their own cause but it cannot be Islamic."

Saeed Hasan, 17, a Somalian national who has lived in Canada and Britain, praised the education at the madrasa, saying he cares more for life after his Islamic teaching than he ever did in the West.

But the London bombings should be seen in the context of the West's policies throughout the Muslim world, he added.

"It's sad that several people were killed in London bombing, but it's also sad when you hear about killing of innocents elsewhere," Hasan said.

Pakistani madrasas like Jamia Binoria al-Alamia offer more than 1.5 million young people -- mostly men -- a free education in one of only 12 countries that spends less than two percent of its gross national product (GNP) on education.

However many were set up, often with US and Saudi funding, as indoctrination and military training sites during the 1979-1989 US-backed guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan.

The most hardline schools, particularly near the Afghan border, went on to produce thousands of young recruits for the Taliban regime, both when it ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and then after it was ousted.

After the London bombings, Britain pressed Pakistan to move against radical madrasas, and Islamabad insists it is doing so.

Pakistan has so far deported around 470 foreign madrasa students and the rest of them would be sent home soon, in line with General Musharraf's promise, a senior interior ministry official said.

A campaign to register all Islamic schools and bring them into mainstream education was also on course, he said.

"We are doing it in a phased programme. The others who are still here are being deported. There is no fresh admission in any madrasa here of any foreign student," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The official said some of the opprobrium heaped on the schools since the London bombings had been unfair.

"Why should we take the blame for everything nasty happening in the world -- blaming Pakistani madrasas," the official said. "These students should study in their own countries, after all there are religious schools in their countries as well."

The senior cleric of the Jamia Binoria al-Alamia's madrassa echoed his comments, urging British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the West not to blame madrasas or Pakistan for the London bombings.

"Investigations conducted by British intelligence prove that madrasas have no role in it," Mufti Mohammad Naeem told AFP.

"It's high time that the West changed its concept of madrasa teaching and they are welcome to visit them any time."