Imran Khan’s Gift For ‘University of Jihad’

Pakistan’s Darul Uloom Haqqania seminary is a known breeding ground for extremists and has been branded as University of Jihad. But this kind of notoriety doesn’t seem to deter a $3 million grant by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government.

The highly controversial seminary advocates an extreme form of Deobandi Islam. As Time notes here, founder and leader of Taliban for long, Mullah Mohammad Omar, Asim Umar, head of al-Qaeda’s South Asian affiliate, and the head of the Haqqani network, all are believed to have studied there.

The grant was announced at a meeting of the provincial assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa last week. Washington Post here notes that leaders said that the grant was needed to keep the Islamic seminary operational. The seminary currently enrolls and houses about 4,000 students.

“A large number of students study, live and eat in this seminary, and it’s doing great service for the poor people,” Mushtaq Ghani, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s information minister, said in an interview with The Washington Post.

But the intriguing aspect of the grants is the comment made by cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan.

As reported here by Dawn, “the seminary, located in Nowshera district and currently run by Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Sami chief Maulana Samiul Haq, has faced controversy in the past as its students have been accused of involvement in the murder of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto”

The seminary, though, has denied having any connection with the suspects.

Said Shahi Syed, a Pakistani senator: “The Taliban are killing our children, and our government is giving money to their sympathizers”.

This seminary was founded in 1947 and as the above cited Washington Post report says, it gained prominence in the 1980s when US and Pakistan intelligence officials used it in their battle against the Soviets in Afghanistan by recruiting from, and training rebels in the seminary.

The allocation of the money indicates the extent of the influence that religious conservatives still yield in Pakistani politics.