Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data

Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data

Amitabh Dubey 

Ever since the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001 , the world has focused on Islamic radicalism in South Asia , and in particular on networks of religious seminaries, or madrassas, in Pakistan and Afghanistan . The conventional wisdom is that radical Islamists in an important minority of madrassas in the two countries have used their control of these institutions to spread militant Islam. Formerly protected by the state and by radical Islamist parties, madrassas have acted as incubators of a radical ideology that today threatens political stability in South Asia and beyond, perhaps some day contributing to an Islamist revolution in nuclear-armed Pakistan . (more)