ABSTRACT
The madrasas of Pakistan have been making headlines since 9/11 when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were attacked by Islamic militants in the United States. Predictably, when the London Underground transport system was attacked on 7 July 2005, these institutions once again came under the spotlight. While none of the perpetrators of 9/11 was a student of a Pakistani madrasa, one of the British terrorists had allegedly visited one. According to Maulana Sami al-Haq, head of his own faction of the Jamiat-i Ulama-i Islam and of the Dar alUlum Haqqaniyya in Akora Khattak (North West Frontier Province, or NWFP), ‘linking the London bombing with Pakistani madrasas is only part of a broader campaign against these madrasas’ (Ali 2005). But no matter what the Maulana says, the madrasas are widely seen as promoting Islamic militancy.
