In the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States (US) in 2001, researchers, analysts, and policymakers trained their eyes on madrasas. [a] Their initial investigations at the time found that many Taliban leaders and Al-Qaeda members had been radicalised in these Islamic educational institutions. In July 2004, a report prepared by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United Sates (or the 9-11 Commission) described madrasas as “incubators of violent extremism.” [1] It did not specifically say, however, whether any of the 19 individuals who had executed the 9-11 attacks themselves attended madrasas for their education. [2] The following year, then Secretary of Defence Donald H. Rumsfeld declared that madrasas “train people to be suicide killers and extremists, violent extremists.” [3] Subsequently, such a narrative around madrasas made these institutions easy targets of criticism, even as analyses have shown that out of the 79 terrorists involved in the five worst attacks on Western democracies, [b] only eleven percent of them had madrasa education. [4] Madrasas in India are the subject of similar criticism, with students being branded as “terrorists”. [5]
Authors
- Published in
- India
