Primers Of Hate

The following is an article written by Amir Mir, a prominent journalist of Pakistan on its educational system.

Primers Of Hate
History or biology, Pakistani students get anti-India lessons in all their textbooks

- Amir Mir [A prominent Pakistani journalist]


When Mohammad Qasim stepped out to participate in the declamation contest held to celebrate Pakistan's Independence Day, the topic he was to speak on was: 'Why Islam and Pakistan are integral to each other'. Instead, this Class XI student of Lahore's Government Central Model School lashed out against the Hindus, giving vent to inexplicable anger and hatred. This was particularly shocking because the Hindu community, constituting an infinitesimal percentage of Pakistan's population, hasn't been an aspect of Qasim's life. Asked to explain his outpouring in the contest, the 14-year-old boy said, "We hate Hindus because they are Hindustanis and the number one enemies of both Islam and Pakistan.

Quote:
How is it that no one asks why jehad and references to Quran should find mention in bio textbooks?


We know it all through our history and Pakistan Studies books. We learn what happened years ago all the time at school."



Qasim's explanation illustrates vividly the inimical impact of school textbooks, where history is manipulated to foster national
chauvinism, where knowledge becomes a vital tool in the construction of national identity, where the sense of nation is promoted through veritable lessons in bigotry, hatred and gross misrepresentation of history. The extracts (see box) culled out from textbooks taught in government schools demonstrates how the ruling establishment, under the aegis of President Pervez Musharraf, is misusing books to develop an anti-India, anti-Hindu mindset—and also fan sentiments against Christians, Jews and the West. The regime's control over the education system is exercised through Lt Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Qazi, who heads the federal education ministry.

Head of the ISI between 1993 and 1995, Qazi supervised the recruitment of students from Pakistan's madrassas for constituting the extremist Taliban militia.

These textbooks came under the scanner following a story in the Los Angeles Times highlighting the tilt against non-Muslims. "Thousands of Pakistani children learn from...

Quote:

LA Times expressed surprise that such lessons were being taught in schools of a country whose leader was an ally of the US.

....history books each year that Jews are tight-fisted moneylenders and Christians are vengeful conquerors," the newspaper said. It expressed astonishment that such lessons are taught not in madrassas but in government schools of a country whose leader (Musharraf) is an ally of the US in the war against terror. The LA Times report prompted the US administration to voice its grave concern over the textbooks to Islamabad. US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a news briefing last August, "The issue is a matter of serious concern for Washington and the Bush administration would like the Pakistani leadership to effectively address it."

Minister Qazi subsequently claimed efforts were afoot to revise and reform the public school curriculum. But the gargantuan nature of the task can be illustrated through the mindset dominant in the Islamabad-based National Curriculum Wing (NCW). Functioning directly under Qazi's ministry, the NCW sets the guidelines for the four provincial textbook boards which publish course material for government schools. The NCW issued a directive in 2002 laying out the following objectives: nurture in children a sense of Islamic identity and pride in being a Pakistani and regard Pakistan as an Islamic country and acquire deep love for it. Ignored was the possibility that a child in school could be non-Muslim and might feel alienated because textbooks equate the Pakistani with Muslim. Although the subject of Islam, or Islamiat, is compulsory only for Muslims, the directive awarded an extra 25 per cent marks to a non-Muslim student should he or she opt for the course. The 2002 directive was issued a month after then education minister Zubaida Jalal had directed the NCW to revise history books taught in public schools.

Scientist and educationist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy feels the ongoing redefinition of education, first initiated under President Zia-ul-Haq, will have profound illiberal implications for Pakistan.

"A new concept of education now prevails, the full impact of which will probably be felt when the present generation of schoolchildren attains maturity."

Not only have the Pakistan rulers divorced education from liberal and secular ideals, they also view it as essential for Islamising society and forging a new national identity. Hoodbhoy explains, "Important steps have already been taken in this direction: enforcement of chador in educational institutions; organisation of congregational afternoon prayers during school hours; compulsory teaching of Arabic as a second language from Class VI onwards; introduction of reading the Quran as a matriculation requirement; alteration of the definition of literacy to include religious knowledge; establishment of an Islamic university in Islamabad; introduction of religious knowledge as a criterion for selecting teachers; and the revision of conventional subjects to emphasise Islamic values."

Renowned historian Dr Mubarak Ali says the westernised liberal elite, which had inherited power from the British, had given to education a basically secular and modern character.

Quote:

The NCW under Qazi ignores that a non-Muslim student could feel alienated.

"However, the self-seeking and opportunistic elite in independent Pakistan simply abandoned liberal values because of political and economic exigencies," explains Dr Ali, adding that this trend has impacted adversely on the education system.

The debilitating role of the political class in Islamising
the education system can best be illustrated through an example. In March 2004, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), the fundamentalist alliance of five religious parties, disrupted the National Assembly proceedings and staged a walkout claiming that a certain reference to jehad as well as other Quranic verses had been excluded from the new edition of a state-prescribed biology textbook. The MMA threatened to launch a protest movement if the Quranic verses were not reinstated. However, then education minister Zubaida Jalal clarified that no chapter or verses relating to jehad (holy war) or shahadat (martyrdom) had been deleted from textbooks, and that the particular verse referring to jehad had only been shifted from the biology textbook for intermediate students (Classes XI and XII, that is) to the matriculation level course (Class X).

Quote:

American math for Pak kids: 'If a man has 5 bullets and 2 go into heads of Russians, how many are left?'

The education ministry never bothered to inquire—as most people familiar with the discipline of biology logically would—why there were references to jehad in the biology textbook in the first place.

The illiberal nature of Pakistan's education system was brought out in pitiless detail by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad, in its report 'The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan'. Authored jointly by A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim, the 140-page SDPI report illustrates, through examples, how the education system is contributing to the culture of sectarianism, religious intolerance and violence.

Some of the important findings of the SDPI are: the current curriculum and textbooks are "impregnating young and impressionable minds with seeds of hatred" to serve a self-styled ideological straitjacket; substantial distortion of the nature and significance of actual events in Pakistan's history; insensitivity to the existing religious diversity of the nation; promotion of perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially women and religious minorities and other nations; a glorification of war and the use of force; and incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of loaded concepts like jehad and martyrdom.

The SDPI report, however, also exposes America's hypocrisy.Claiming that the concepts of jehad and martyrdom were incorporated into the Pakistani curricula after the start of the so-called Afghan jehad against the Soviet occupation troops, the SDPI report says, "At that point, it suited the US and its most allied of allies, Pakistan, to encourage and glorify the so-called mujahideen, or holy warriors, in the war against the Russians. An American institution of higher education was asked to formulate textbooks for Pakistani schools accordingly. The University of Nebraska at Omaha, which has a center for Afghan Studies, was subsequently tasked by the Central Intelligence Agency in the early eighties to rewrite textbooks for Afghan refugee children. The new textbooks included hate material even in arithmetic books. One question asked, 'If a man has five bullets and two go into the heads of Russian soldiers, how many are left'?"

But the context changed dramatically post-9\11. A research thesis exposed in 2002 the role of Americans in writing pernicious textbooks. The SDPI report states, "Since the Soviets are no more, the mujahideen have not only mutated into Taliban but have also outlived their usefulness, the same American University (the University of Nebraska at Omaha) has been given an additional grant by the Bush administration to re-re-write textbooks, taking out material on jehad, etc."

America's hypocrisy apart, it is in Pakistan's interest to delete from textbooks hate material and ensure today's schoolchildren are groomed into liberal, democratic, secular Pakistanis, harbouring hatred for none and love for all.

SOURCE

A chilling message for the infidels

Just six weeks before last Saturday's terrorist atrocity in Bali, in a jail cell in Jakarta, I interviewed Abu Bakar Bashir, the alleged spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), al-Qa'eda's main ally in the region, and the group on which western attention is focused in the hunt for culprits.

Bashir was celebrating the news that an Indonesian court had agreed to reduce his 30-month sentence for conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings by more than four months, meaning that he will soon walk free.

Ever since the first bombings, in which 202 people died, Indonesian authorities have been woolly in their response to terrorism for fear of alienating a largely anti-American population. Nothing illustrates this better than the appeal court's judgment on Bashir's early release - they took the decision even though he was implicated in a JI plot to

overthrow Indonesia's previous government, and despite independent testimony from senior JI operatives in custody that he had approved the 2002 bombings.

At 66, Bashir is a lanky, bespectacled Hadrami, who, like Osama Bin Laden, traces his family back to the Hadramawt region of Yemen. Surrounded by acolytes - including known JI bombers - serving him dates, he answered questions with a strong voice and easy laugh.

Scott Atran: What are the conditions for Islam to be strong?

Abu Bakar Bashir: The infidel country must be visited and spied upon. If we don't come to them, they will persecute Islam. They will prevent non-Muslims converting.

SA: What can the West, especially the US, do to make the world more peaceful?

ABB: They have to stop fighting Islam. That's impossible because it is sunnatullah [destiny, a law of nature], as Allah has said in the Koran. If they want to have peace, they have to accept to be governed by Islam.

SA: What if they persist?

ABB: We'll keep fighting them and they'll lose. The batil [falsehood] will lose sooner or later. I sent a letter to Bush. I said that you'll lose and there is no point for you [to fight us]. This [concept] is found in the Koran.

SA: Have you met Osama Bin Laden?

ABB: No, no. I want to though. After my release, I hope I can meet him.

SA: Where will you find him?

ABB: If he still exists - but how could I? I have sympathy for his struggle. Osama is Allah's soldier. When I heard his story, I came to the conclusion that he's mujahid, a soldier of Allah.

SA: You will always be on his side?

ABB: His tactics and calculations may sometimes be wrong, he's an ordinary human being after all. I don't agree with all of his actions. Osama believes in total war. This concept I don't agree with. If this occurs in an Islamic country, the fitnah [discord] will be felt by Muslims. But to attack them in their country [America] is fine.

SA: So this fight will never end?

ABB: Never. This fight is compulsory. Muslims who don't hate America sin. What I mean by America is George Bush's regime. There is no iman [belief] if one doesn't hate America.

SA: How can the American regime and its policies change?

ABB: We'll see. As long as there is no intention to fight us and Islam continues to grow there can be peace. This is the doctrine of Islam. Islam can't be ruled by others. Allah's law must stand above human law. There is no [example] of Islam and infidels, the right and the wrong, living together in peace.

SOURCE: http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=2&subID=46

Maximum Terror and its mechanics


PRAVEEN SWAMI
in Mumbai

Evidence points to a Lashkar-e-Taiba role in the serial explosions on trains in Mumbai on July 11.

SANTOSH VERMA/BLOOMBERG NEWS



AT MATUNGA, AFTER the terror strike on July 11.

RAHEEL ABDUL REHMAN SHEIKH, reads the title of a classified dossier on India's most wanted terrorist. There is no photograph. For all of his adult life Sheikh refused to have one taken on the grounds that Islam forbade graven images.

Justice for the more than 200 innocent people killed in the July 11 serial bombings in Mumbai will depend on whether India's covert services and the police in three States will be able to fill the blank space in the dossier. Sheikh, along with Aurangabad resident Zabiuddin Ansari and Beed-based Zulfikar Fayyaz Qazi, is thought to be the principal author of the maximum terror inflicted on what the author Suketu Mehta described as the "Maximum City".

Until his relationship with the Lashkar-e-Taiba drew the attention of the police and the intelligence services, Sheikh lived in a one-room apartment in a nondescript building near Shalimar Talkies, an old landmark in decline for the last two decades just like the neighbourhood around it on Grant Road.

Growing up in a climate defined by economic despair and the rise of Hindu chauvinist forces, Sheikh appears to have rejected Mumbai's sometimes-aggressive modernity. He turned, in his late teens, to the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, an ultra-conservative religious sect which urges its followers to model their lives on a literalist reading of the times and life of Prophet Mohammad. The Markazi Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis, the sect's central body in India, endorses the secular state and condemns terrorism.

Much of the Lashkar's cadre, though, has been drawn from the ranks of the organisation and Sheikh proved receptive to its call. Sheikh is said to have begun working with the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) before its 1999 convention in Aurangabad, where the organisation's linkages with the Lashkar first manifested themselves. So far there is no evidence to show that Sheikh actually joined SIMI, but there is little doubt that he was drawn to the organisation.

If he was indeed at the 1999 convention, he may well have made his first contacts with the Lashkar there. Many of the speeches delivered at the convention were inflammatory. "Islam is our nation, not India," thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad, one of the dozens of SIMI-linked Lashkar operatives who would one day accept Sheikh as their commander. Among those listening to the speech was Azam Ghauri - one of the founders of the Lashkar in India.

Little is known about how Sheikh met the two other men alleged to have played a central role in the Mumbai bombings. However, the three shared an interest in the campaigns for moral purification and proselytising organised by the Ahl-e-Hadis. Sheikh, some say, attended a 2003 convention of the Ahl-e-Hadis in Srinagar, where he met top Lashkar operatives in Jammu and Kashmir. What is certain is this: within three years, Sheikh was at the centre of the largest-ever pan-India terror offensive.

Terror cells

Despite the charge of intelligence failure, there has rarely been a terrorist outrage so predictable - indeed, in fairness to the covert services, predicted so precisely. In late April, the Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) learned that a major consignment of arms had entered Maharashtra through India's western coast. Late on May 9, the Maharashtra Police recovered a part of that consignment - over 24 kilograms of Research Department Explosive (RDX) packed in computer cases, along with 11 AK-47 assault rifles, grenades and ammunition - but Zabiuddin Ansari, who was in charge of the Aurangabad cell, succeeded in escaping.

Investigators soon learned that the consignment was just part of a larger wave of explosives the Lashkar was pushing into western India and that the men they had arrested were only foot soldiers. Gujarat Police officials learned that a part of the explosives were intended for Zulfikar Fayyaz Qazi, who had earlier executed a terror strike in Ahmedabad. Of Sheikh, there was no trace.

As Maharashtra Director-General of Police P.S. Pasricha acknowledged, warnings of a large-scale terror strike had flowed in. What worried officials more was the large-scale flow of explosives to parallel terror cells than the escape of Sheikh or his associates. Intelligence Bureau officials learned that mafia lord Dawood Ibrahim - the architect of the 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai - had made his network available to the Lashkar to facilitate its operations against India.

Gujarat, like Maharashtra, had been witnessing a flow of explosives, again linked to the Maharashtra-based cells Sheikh was running. One such consignment of 9 kg of RDX was delivered to Sheikh for use in a terror attack on Ahmedabad. Lashkar operative Mohammad Iqbal, a Bahawalpur resident who operated in Jammu and Kashmir in 2002-03 and whom the Delhi Police shot dead in March, had arranged for mafia-linked traffickers to smuggle the RDX across the Rann of Kutch and deliver it to Sheikh.

Sheikh handed over the consignment to new recruits, Feroze Abdul Ghaswala, an automobile mechanic, and Mohammad Ali Chippa, a computer engineer, to carry out the bombing. He had earlier arranged for both men to fly to Teheran, from where they drove across the unpoliced Balochistan border with Pakistan. Azam Cheema, the Lashkar's overall military chief, received the new recruits, who underwent a four-week bomb-making course before returning to Mumbai.

However, the Delhi Police penetrated and broke the Ghaswala-Chippa cell and recovered the 9 kg of RDX. But a part of an earlier consignment of explosives sent through the Bhuj border was used in a bomb that exploded on a railway platform in Ahmedabad on February 19, injuring 25 people. This was the first time an RDX-based explosive was used in Gujarat. Sheikh is believed to have used Qazi to execute the bombing, which could have claimed dozens of lives had the electronic timer on the device not malfunctioned.

Dawood Ibrahim's renewed support for the Lashkar could be out of desperation and also the outcome of the mafia's new ideological affinities with Islamist terror groups. Some members of his mafia have links with the Tablighi Jamaat, a religious organisation that has considerable influence amongst Pakistan's military. During Dawood Ibrahim's long stay in Karachi, these links flowered into an operational relationship. In fact, much of the jehadi leadership is drawn from seminaries like the Jamia Islamia at Binori in Karachi.

Notably, the mafia's role in terror strikes is not restricted to shipping weapons. Dawood Ibrahim-affiliated ganglord `Chhota' Shakeel Ahmad Babu helped ship Ahmedabad residents recruited by the Jaish-e-Mohammad through Dhaka in 2001. Mafia operative Javed Hamidullah Siddiqui, who was arrested in 2004, told Indian authorities that Shakeel had arranged to have the group flown from Dhaka to Karachi on fake passports. Another mafia operative, Rasool Khan `Party', received the recruits in Pakistan.

Dawood Ibrahim's lieutenant Fahim Machmach is also believed to have handled a separate group of terror recruits through Bangkok, including two Bangalore residents who identified themselves using code names `Iqbal' and `Sohail'. Machmach, interestingly, is alleged to have supervised personally a 2003 attempt on the lives of Bharatiya Janata Party leaders Bharat Banot and Ashok Bhat, using the services of a long-standing mafia hit man, Vikram Parmar, also known as Ali Mohammad Kanjari.

Kashmir connections

SHASHI ASHIWAL



ABOVE THE BLUE plastic sheet is the third-floor apartment near Shalimar Talkies on Grant Road where Raheel Abdul Rehman Sheikh lived.

Some experts believe that the real impetus for the Lashkar's pan-India war is coming from Jammu and Kashmir - pointing to the eight grenade attacks in Srinagar hours before the Mumbai bombings. The jury is still out on this proposition, for there is nothing to suggest that the explosives used in Mumbai came from Jammu and Kashmir. But evidence exists that for several years the Lashkar has been attempting to establish all-India capabilities.

In December, the Mumbai Police arrested Arshad Badroo, a National Conference-affiliated Municipal Councillor, and two other Jammu and Kashmir residents, Haji Mohammad Ramzan and Khurshid Ahmad Lone, key figures, it turned out, in a Lashkar bombing operation targeting the city. The three had been despatched to Mumbai by the Lashkar's north Kashmir `commander', an elusive 6-foot 6-inch Pakistani national known only by aliases `Bilal' and `Salahuddin.'




While Badroo had been tasked with picking up passports and a Rs.300,000 payment for the Lashkar, Ramzan and Lone had been asked to transport electronic circuits and detonators, essential components of bombs, to contacts in Mumbai. All three men were arrested before they could make contact with their local Lashkar contact, who some believe was Sheikh himself. Investigators are exploring whether the detonators were intended for the Lashkar's Mumbai operations.

Evidence that `Bilal' had contacts in Mumbai is significant in the context of the serial bombings - not least because of his demonstrated expertise in executing such attacks. As second-in-command to his predecessor, a Pakistani national known only by the code name `Abu Huzaifa', Bilal had helped organise the serial bombings in New Delhi last year. While Abu Huzaifa was killed soon after the bombings, the pan-India networks he set up were, for the most part, inherited by Bilal.

Lashkar networks in Mumbai have evolved steadily since the Kargil war. In August 1999, the I.B. succeeded in breaking a pan-India network led by Lashkar operative Amir Khan, which had been tasked with recruiting cadre from amongst communities hit by communal violence. Despite this success, the Lashkar was still able to build offensive capabilities. In November 2000, the police arrested three Lashkar cadre, all Pakistani nationals, who were planning to assassinate Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray.

By 2004, Bilal's unit was poised to execute even more ambitious operations targeting Mumbai. Shahid Ahmad, a Rawalpindi resident who had served with the Lashkar for several years, was tasked with organising a major attack against the Bombay Stock Exchange. He turned to Manzoor Ahmad Chilloo, a one-time Hizb ul-Mujahideen member who had left Jammu and Kashmir to study medicine in Pune. Chilloo, in turn, turned to former members of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) for help. A dramatic I.B. operation led to the detection and exposure of the cell. (The same operation also led to the controversial elimination of Lashkar operative Ishrat Jehan Raza and her lover Javed Sheikh in an encounter.) Few commentators paid attention, though, to the real lessons that emerged. Despite the threat of an India-Pakistan war forcing a reduction of levels of violence within Jammu and Kashmir, the Lashkar was looking to take its jehad to a new level.

Long war ahead

"The Hindu," wrote the Lashkar's founder and spiritual guide Hafiz Mohammed Saeed in 1999, "is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers, who crushed them by force." Most of the few people who read Saeed's article dismissed it, correctly, as the rant of a lunatic and then made the error of dismissing his repeated promises to deliver maximum terror. It is impossible after July 11 to make that mistake again.




More likely than not Sheikh, Qazi and Ansari will be arrested or killed. The three men are thought to be hiding out in Kathmandu. What is less clear is whether India will be able to act against the real authors of the serial bombings. Sheikh's immediate superior, a Pakistani Lashkar operative codenamed Junaid, who is responsible for pan-India terror operations, is ensconced in Dhaka. Azam Cheema, the Lashkar's overall military chief, in turn, is in Pakistan.

For the most part, Pakistan has dismissed Indian demands for action against terrorists operating from its soil. Journalists like Amir Mir, who exploded the official claim that Dawood Ibrahim was not in Pakistan, were subjected to state-sponsored attack, while affirmations by the United States about Dawood's presence in Pakistan have been met with silence. India's demand for the extradition of at least 20 other terrorism suspects, put forward in the midst of the 2001-2002 near-war, have also been ignored.

Pakistan's repeated denials that it harbours and trains terrorists are starting to wear thin, and not just in India. Shahzad Tanweer, one of the men who bombed the London underground system in July 2005, is thought to have been trained at a Lashkar-run facility.

Assem Hammoud, a Lebanese national arrested in Beirut this April for planning to bomb New York City, has also told his interrogators that he intended to acquire the specialist skills needed for the operation during a four-month terror course in Pakistan.

Incensed with Pakistan's support for Islamist terror groups operating in Afghanistan, the United States is also starting to turn on its long-standing ally. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has made no secret of her anger with Pakistan's military regime, choosing not to address a joint press conference with Pakistan's Foreign Minister, Khurshid Kasuri, at the end of his recent visit to the United States - a gesture of disapproval that left little to the imagination.

Some signs of action are already evident. The police in Kathmandu, generally loath to involve themselves in international contention, arrested two Lashkar-linked Pakistani nationals on June 12. The arrests are reported to be related to the 2001 recovery of RDX from the home of Mohammad Arshad Cheema, a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence officer operating under diplomatic cover. Cheema was expelled from Nepal amidst allegations that he had facilitated the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.

But the script that will decide the Lashkar's long jehad will be authored in Islamabad, not Washington. As things stand, the Lashkar and other jehadi organisations have the resources to perpetrate acts of ever-increasing violence, secure in the knowledge that Pakistan's nuclear shield makes war near-impossible.

Poised at a crossroads in its history, the military-dominated establishment in Pakistan will have to decide if the next episode will see a happy ending or just another phase in a war without an end.

SOURCE: http://www.frontline.in/stories/20060728004600400.htm