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
USA
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