The Assam government has shut down around 700 madrassas in the past few years, which has led to a massive uproar in the secular (that is, Islamist) coterie. But the state’s Chief Minister is anything but apologetic about having closed these madrassas. While many claims that this is an attack on the country’s secular fabric, the justification for why a secular government must fund religious studies of a particular faith system remains obscure.

There are myriad incidents that demonstrate that madrasas often propagate the jihad ideology; their indoctrinated pupils frequently graduate to become recruits of various jihadi outfits. Despite abundant evidence of jihad preaching and recruitment within the four walls of numerous madrasas, India for a considerable period treated them as if they were harmless educational units. While all madrasas are not jihad recruitment entities, most of these institutions have the potential of becoming jihad recruitment centers at any time.

In India, the most “literate” state of Kerala has sent the maximum number of recruits to the Islamic State, and it is not unjustified to link these numbers to the madrassas active in the state. A 2018 India Today probe found that “several madrasas in Kerala are teaching the theo-Fascist variety of Islam” and Wahhabism. Funded by hawala money from Gulf countries, these seminaries have been indoctrinating impressionable minds to establish a worldwide caliphate through global jihad.

The following year, NDTV published a detailed report on the jihad recruitment going on in West Bengal madrassas, highlighting how Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh used some madrassas in the Burdwan and Murshidabad districts for recruitment of young men to jihad terror activities; the Union Home Ministry also acknowledged this as a fact. In 2020, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) revealed that an Al-Qaeda cadre had planned to run a jihad training camp under the façade of operating a madrassa in West Bengal, and had already raised funds for the purpose.

But even before this revelation, an extensive Firstpost piece brought to the fore the fact that although Indian madrasas have not been as involved in jihad terrorism as their counterparts in the neighboring Islamic nations, their jihad recruitment was indeed very real. By teaching that women are inferior beings and non-Muslims are “kafirs,” they initiate their students into fanatical thinking.

A friend of mine who lives in Meerut decided to send her ten-year-old son to a madrassa during summer vacation to learn the Quran and “something about Islam” told me she was shocked when after a few weeks the child started asking “strange questions” like why she didn’t wear burqa and was it “haram” to watch movies and have photographs in the house? When she asked him who had told him these things, he said his “maulvi saheb” at the madrassa had. “But I was really upset when one day he asked if our Hindu maid was a ‘kafir.’ I told him to stop talking such nonsense and decided that he was not going back to the madrassa,” my friend told me…

The hatred for non-Muslims that is propagated in such establishments is apparent.

While Saudi money is being used to prop up Wahhabism, other rich Arab countries are shelling out millions of dollars to promote conservative Islam in the guise of preserving Islamic culture and keeping children from mingling with children from other communities.

In a 2017 article, Indiafacts quoted retired IPS officer Ram Ohri: “According to a conservative estimate during the last two decades Saudi Arabia alone has rolled out nearly 90 billion dollars for the propagation of Wahhabi Islam through the establishment of thousands of mosques and madrasas. On a rough count, more than 25 percent of the 90 billion petro-dollars are believed to have been pumped into India, Nepal, and Bangladesh for establishing more madrasas. Additionally, huge sums were transferred from other Muslim nations, including Pakistan, to establish lakhs of madrasas in India and other countries of South Asia to step up the campaign of global jihad.”

Back in 2020, the Jammu and Kashmir authorities booked three teachers of a Siraj-ul-Uloom at Jammu and Kashmir’s Shopian district; according to police sources, 13 students of the madrassa had joined various terror outfits, and one of its alumni, Sajad Bhat, turned out to be the jihad suicide bomber who carried out the 2019 Pulwama attack, killing 40 India CRPF personnel.

After a high-intensity explosion took down an entire building of a madrassa in Banka, Bihar last year, Hari Bhushan Thakur, a local politician, stated, “Madrasas are meant to provide the education of terrorism in Bihar. Hence, we have demanded a ban on such institutions in Bihar.” While Thakur received a major backlash for his statement, one is left wondering how this mass of explosives made its way into an educational institution.

Despite the evident history of jihad recruitment in various madrassas, the enormous concessions made by preceding Indian governments towards these Islamic schools are astounding.

The government has been spending exclusively on the Muslim community through the funds allocated to Minority Affairs Ministry. These government funds were also supporting madrassas that were potential jihad recruitment units, and that promoted anti-Hindu sentiments.

Recently, the Uttar Pradesh Minister of State, Raghuraj Singh, called the madrassas “hideouts of terrorists, where they are trained,” and claimed that if given a chance, he would shut down all the madrasas in the country. Of course, he angered the secularists by his statement, but one can’t deny the need to mainstream education and eliminate the ghettoization of a community through religion-based schools promoting religious fanaticism. After all what business do institutions touting the jihad ideology have in secular countries — whether they be India or any democracy in the West?

References:

jihadwatch.org -  ASHLYN DAVIS