Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Frontline Pakistan
per cent of charitable donations made by Pakistani individuals and
business corporations went to the religious institutions. Though most
donors did not support the politics of religious parties, they felt that
Islamic education and the preservation of Islam were the most worthy
choice for their donations. Many religious leaders who ran the Islamic
seminaries had strong links in Arab countries that went back to the
Afghan jihad. For many it had become a ‘status symbol’ to receive
funding from foreign sources.
Muslims in Britain had been one of the largest donors to the
Pakistani Islamic institutions and Muslim militant groups, some of
whom had been declared terrorists and outlawed by Pakistan’s
military government. UK-based charities were the main financiers for
Islamic groups. Diversion of funds for educational and humanitarian
projects to the Islamic militant groups had become a normal practice.
‘It is difficult to separate finances for terror from those for charity,’
said the ICG report. LeT and JeM, reportedly collected more than £5
million each year in mosques in Britain. Although both the groups
were banned in Britain, the Kashmiri diaspora continued to make
donations to them. 26
While Islamabad had repeatedly downplayed the link between
extremism and the madrasas, most religious schools continued to
preach jihad. After the failed attempts on Musharraf’s life in December
2003, the administration launched raids on some extremist madrasas,
but such half-hearted and piecemeal measures could hardly help
improve the situation. Pakistan’s failure to curb extremism owed less
to the difficulty of implementing reforms than to the administration’s
own unwillingness. Musharraf had promised to ban the use of
mosques and madrasas for spreading religious and sectarian hatred.
However, all those pledges remained largely rhetorical and seemed
to have been made under international pressure. The sectarian groups
continued to challenge the authority of the state in different ways.
Pakistan’s failure to strictly enforce laws against the preaching of
religious hatred and reining in of the extremist madrasas had largely
been responsible for the rise in sectarian-based violence. The failure
to deliver to any substantial degree on pledges to reform madrasas
and contain the growth of jihadist networks had not only given rise to
religious extremism in Pakistan, but also continued to present a threat
to domestic, regional and international security.
Several madrasas continued to provide recruits for Taliban insurgents
in Afghanistan. Run by JUI, part of the coalition government in the