Foreign students risk all to study the Koran in Pakistan (Feature)

By Fakhr Ahmad Jul 20, 2008, 2:08 GMT

Karachi, Pakistan - Six-year-old Talha Sheikh wanted to spend vacations with friends in his hometown of Frankfurt but his parents nixed the plan, fearing their child might not be allowed to return and continue his Koranic education in Jamia Binoria, a prestigious Islamic seminary in Pakistan's port city of Karachi.

But he is not the only one at the madrassa whose vacation plans are ruined. One fourth of the 500 international students have felt the same anxiety as they face a sword of Damocles from Pakistan's immigration and intense profiling by local and foreign intelligence agencies.

The country's foreign affairs ministry ostensibly, albeit unofficially, decided last month not to extend education visas for foreign religious students studying across Pakistan, and even blacklisted several of them.

Binoria seems to be the hardest hit by the move made under the growing pressure of western countries on the Pakistani government since it was discovered that one of the suicide bombers who carried out the 2005 London bombings had visited an Islamic seminary in Pakistan.

'Anywhere between 100 and 150 of our students might lose their legal status in the county if their visas were not extended,' Maulana Mufti Mohammad Naeem, founder and current head of this 12-acre sprawling seminary for the last 20 years, said.

As many as eight students have already been blacklisted, of which two American teens were sifted out last week by US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Pakistani authorities back to Atlanta, Georgia, following the intervention by US Rep. Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas.

The rest include an American girl, Muna Abanur Mohammed, four girls from Thailand and one male student from Fiji, who are holed up inside the huge walled compound of Jamia Binoria, anticipating some sort of swoop from the law enforcers anytime.

'The situation is precarious,' said Mufti Naeem, an unexpectedly jolly heavy-weight figure clad in a traditional white shalwar kameez, while squatting in his carpeted office with no chairs and sporting a raffishly-dyed medium sized beard.

'We are not chickens. It is not easy to attack us and to roundup our students from here,' he warned as he quickly fiddled with dozens of switches to look at security and other arrangements through three monitoring screens around his desk.

Attacking us will conjure up the memories of Lal Masjid, he added.

Heavily-armed radicals gave a tough resistance to security forces for more than a week before Islamabad's Lal Masjid, meaning Red Mosque, was finally stormed by army commandoes on July 10, 2007.

The operation received kudos from Western governments but brought a spate of revengeful suicide bombings by Islamic radicals in which over 1,000 people were killed, mostly Pakistani security personnel.

However, the militancy at the Red Mosque did not prompt the government to take swift action to reform the country's 14,000 madrassas, which are giving their students a stereotype religious education, mainly promoting love for Jihad and hate for modern values.

Even though, Mufti Naeem denied that his madressa carry any weapons and ammunition like Lal Masjid, he could not elaborate on how they and the students might defend themselves in case of any operation.

Surrounded with ramshackle homes and factories, ensconced by the heavily armed Pustoon community, mostly from the northern tribal belt, which is currently seeing Islamic insurgency, the Jamia's heavily walled compound is like a small town inhabited by over 7,000 male and female students.

Once inside Jamia Bonoria, the ambience is impressive with students sitting cross-legged on dozens of hall-like lined-up classes reciting and memorizing the Koran, resting on low bookstands made of wood and steel.

But as the foreign students' fate remains unclear and with the madrassa's radical cleric ready to fight government forces, Talha Sheikh continues to live in the strained environment at madrassa together with his four-year-old sister and mother, who choose to stay there since the administration would admit a child at the seminary only when a parent resides there.

'I also want to go on vacation just like my six classmates who are in Germany these days,' he said. 'I like Germany. I love it whenever I go there.'

The German authorities said they were monitoring the situation closely.

'We will take care of our students,' said Freund Dieter, newly- appointed German Consulate General in Karachi, even though he was not aware of the gravity of the situation before Deutsche Presse-Agentur