Radical Islamic clerics ignore decree on madrassas

Massoud Ansari:

Radical Muslim clerics have ignored an edict to expel all foreign students from Pakistan's madrassas, heightening fears that the Islamic schools will continue to be recruiting grounds for young Western-born suicide bombers.

After the July 7 London bombings, in which three of four suicide bombers were of Pakistani origin, President Pervez Musharraf pledged to the West that foreigners would be excluded from the schools.

Two of the bombers, Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, are thought to have visited madrassas.

Within three weeks of the attacks, Gen. Musharraf ordered that all non-Pakistanis be expelled by the end of 2005. But he backed down in the subsequent battle of wills with Islamists and the deadline passed on Saturday without the edict being enacted.

Western intelligence agencies suspect that madrassas served as rendezvous points between senior al Qaeda operatives and Tanweer, Khan and other British recruits.

Gen. Musharraf relented on Thursday after clerics said they would rather be incarcerated than comply with orders to expel foreigners or give their names to the authorities.

Hanif Jalandhri, the head of the Federation of Madrassas, said that about 1,000 foreign students had left since July. Of the 700 who remained, those facing forced repatriation saw themselves as victims of the president's efforts to curry favor with the United States and Britain.

Fazlur Rahman, a cleric who heads Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), known for its close ties to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime, said: "We'll do our best to keep the students with us and prefer arrest to giving the foreigners to police."

Pakistan's Interior Ministry abruptly dropped threats to begin arresting violators, and then denied that there had been any ultimatum in the first place. "There is no deadline for it," said Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao.

The JUI leader accused Gen. Musharraf of violating both the Pakistani Constitution and the U.N. Convention on Human Rights by forcing out students in the absence of evidence that they had committed crimes.

Some critics vowed that the measure would be contested in the Pakistani courts if it led to students being deported against their will.

Once again Muslims show their unwillingness to tackle Islamic terrorism.