The amazing anti-India syllabus of Pakistani madrassas

In the 1965 war, Pakistan conquered several areas of India and staring at a certain defeat, New Delhi requested the United Nations to arrange for a ceasefire.

During the 1971 war, the Pakistan Army demonstrated great courage and valour and inflicted humiliating blows on the Indian forces on both the Eastern and Western fronts."

These excerpts may puzzle you, but according to some madrassahs in Pakistan, it is nothing, but history. Ten year olds in those madrassahs are injected with such and more distorted 'facts', says a confidential Intelligence Bureau report.

Besides the impressionable minds are further indoctrinated with a textbook called 44 ways to support Jihad, written by Anwar-al-Awalaki.

The IB report, which is based on textbooks from madrassahs and the interrogation of several arrested terror suspects including those involved in the Mumbai terror attacks, says that the number of such "anti-India madrassahs" is on the rise.

The report says that a typical text book for Class I starts with chapters on culture before moving on to subjects like the wars with India.

With the context set, and India painted as the enemy, the textbooks swiftly move on the importance of jihad and martyrdom.

The curriculum also lays a bit of emphasis on English. A chapter teaches the letters of the alphabet with examples like: b for bandook (gun), k for knife, r for rocket, t for tank, and s for sword.

Studies on these madrassahs also show that these outfits glorify violence. Even the games the kids play involve shooting practice with air guns and war games.

On culture and history, the textbooks, which are not available in the market and are distributed directly in the madrassahs, mostly run by the Jammat-ud-Dawa, teach how Muslim saints 'reformed' Hindus and helped abolish their 'superstition' and ''wrong practices'.

A chapter on Muhammad Ali Jinnah states that he saved Muslims from being enslaved by the 'Hindu' Congress party, which "encouraged slavery".

A select group of children from these madrassahs are then inducted into terror outfits like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, whose group of children is called the 'White Falcons', which begins grooming children for jihad right from when they are 10.

The report says that there are around 6,000 madrassahs in Pakistan, most of which, an official said, are rooted in such a culture of hate.

"At least half of the madrassahs in Pakistan adopt the Lashkar's curriculum and at present there are around 583,000 students studying in such madrassahs."

"Though most students are from Pakistan, there are also around 16,000 Afghan children and some 18,000 foreign students," the official said.

The report says that outfits like the LeT are very choosy about the induction into such schools.

"They pick and chose children from very poor families. Till the education is complete, they are taken care of and the families are given some money each month," the officer said.

The report says that some students realise that they are unfit to take up any vocation after a stint in these schools and by the time they reach Class X, decide to join other legitimate madrassahs which also teach mathematics, science, medicine and other subjects.

Truth as we know it does not exist in their world.

Pakistan serially hoodwinks

The Pioneer

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Swapan Das Gupta

Judging by the unseemly displays of triumphalism by the Congress and its cheerleaders to Pakistan’s response to the Indian dossier on the 26/11 attack, a casual observer may be forgiven for imagining that New Delhi has emerged victorious from a long and arduous battle. There is a we-told-you-so smugness over Islamabad’s grudging admission that the only surviving murderer is a Pakistani national and that a fraction of the conspiracy was hatched within the boundaries of the rogue State. The is much back-patting in South Block that a delicate diplomatic admission aimed at forcing Pakistan to stand in the corner like an errant schoolboy, has succeeded. And there is a mood of expectancy among the poll managers that this great triumph will yield a handsome poll dividend and ensure another term for the only regime blessed by an invisible Prime Minister.

To be fair, this outburst of exuberance wasn’t reflected in Pranab Mukherjee’s measured statement to the Lok Sabha last Friday afternoon. His observation that “the authorities in Pakistan itself will have to choose the kind of relationship they want with India in future” is a reinforcement of the all-options-are-open stand. Since the future Pakistan policy will depend on the Government that assumes charge after May, it is just as well that Mukherjee didn’t commit India to the next step.

Yet, some celebrations are entirely in order. Once again Pakistan, this time by its own admission, has been shown to be a net exporter of global terror. Juxtaposed with Islamabad’s earlier protestations of absolute innocence and the loose talk of its leaders, the formal reply will serve as confirmation that this is a country which is pathologically dodgy. India’s patience in the face of such provocation may even win admirers in Barack Obama’s set-up. It may even suggest to the new establishment in Washington DC that the initial doubts of the George W Bush-Manmohan Singh bonhomie was, perhaps, over-emphasised. With Obama coming to realise with each passing day that his much-reviled predecessor wasn’t exactly a fool or a monster, there is hope that the new Afghanistan-Pakistan policy of the US will be more appreciative of Indian concerns.

There are, however, unattended concerns. The most important of these is the underlying impression conveyed by the pro-Congress media and commentariat that the 26/11 saga is now history. Yes, the court proceedings will continue and there may even bouts of tension with Pakistan over the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba leadership and the involvement of treacherous Indian nationals. But judging from those in the policy loop who are now advocating offering Pakistan a carrot, it would seem that the age-old Hindu penchant of using loftiness to cover up for weakness is manifesting itself again.

The implications of the let-us-move-on approach, which seems to also have the tacit backing of a section of the US policy establishment, are frightening. If Pakistan gets the impression it can escape the consequences of the Mumbai massacre by a qualified confession but no real punishment, it will be the green signal for other operations against India. Only this time, the controllers in the cantonment will ensure that there are no footprints which can be traced back to Pakistan. There is nothing communal or divisive in admitting that the 10-member commando squad responsible for the butchery in Mumbai had local facilitation. Whether these facilitators were Dawood Ibrahim’s henchmen or were ideologically-driven jihadis is a matter of detail. What is important is to realise that there is a minusculity in India that is willing to act on the instructions of India-haters in Pakistan. The Government’s wilful denial of this not merely hampers investigations — as it seems to be doing in Mumbai — but suggests future operational possibilities to the enemy.

South Block must come to recognise that it is dealing with a neighbour that values duplicity and deceit as theological dogma. Pervez Musharraf’s broadcast to his country justifying the abandonment of the Taliban after 9/11 referred to this explicitly. Since then, Pakistan has undertaken a twin-track policy of pretending to support the anti-Taliban operations in Afghanistan but subverting it simultaneously. Again, in the case of AQ Khan, Pakistan imposed some token curbs on the head of its nuclear black market operations but it didn’t the Khan infrastructure. Having done his bit to avert full-scale international retribution, Khan has now been graciously rehabilitated.

Even someone as hard-nosed as Indira Gandhi was taken for a ride by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto at Simla in 1972. Bhutto was willing to offer a multitude of unwritten assurances to secure the release of 92,000 Pakistani prisoners-of-war. Subsequent events demonstrated that these assurances were completely meaningless. Lying and even genuflecting to get out of a sticky situation has become central to Pakistani statecraft. India knows this far better than others but even the US has experienced Pakistan’s penchant for being contrite in public and pursuing aggression in public. The strategy has been institutionalised in the craft of jihad as al Taqiya.

A scholarly assessment of the phenomenon is worth repeating: “Al-Taqiya, from the verb Ittaqu, means… (to) dodge the threat. Politically it means simulate whatever status you need in order to win the war against the enemy. According to Al-Taqiya, Muslims were granted the Shar'iya (legitimacy) to infiltrate the Dar ul-Harb, infiltrate the enemy's cities and forums and plant the seeds of discord and sedition. These agents were acting on behalf of the Muslim authority at war, and therefore were not considered as lying or denouncing the tenants of Islam. They were "legitimate" mujahedeen, whose mission was to undermine the enemy's resistance and level of mobilisation.” (note by Walid Phares in the website of the Texas-based Freeman Center for Strategic Studies). The passage should be obligatory reading for those who believe that the insatiable jihadi thirst for Indian blood can be met by a bunch of carrots.

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