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Madrassahs: The Inside StoryBy: Will Everett on December 10, 2008
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I went into this thinking it would be one of my more dangerous assignments. With 10,000 madrassahs in Pakistan, and roughly 15% of them espousing anti-Western rhetoric, I was pretty sure the odds were on my side.
Reporter Will Everett (left) chats with a mullah | But I didn¹t want to visit exclusively "safe" madrassahs. I wanted a taste of what the bad ones had to offer, an interview with an extremist perhaps, while keeping head and neck intact. My fixer and I agreed that it was best to keep my nationality under wraps. I told them I was Swiss. My fixer and I wandered into a half dozen madrassahs, meeting mostly with hospitable mullahs and boys eager to show off their memory of scripture. But we also paid a visit to the Haqqania, alma mater of Mullah Omar and other Taliban alumni. |
It's one of the most notorious in Pakistan, but it's also on the main road to Afghanistan and thus subject to intense scrutiny. They're trying to show the world their hands are clean since 9/11. We weren¹t allowed to bring cameras or recording equipment. We were given a tour, offered the requisite cup of tea, but without enthusiasm. One cleric said they get at least one journalist there a week. No one would grant us an interview.
At one madrassah near the center of Peshawar we were given freedom to roam the dormitories, talk to the boys and snoop to our hearts' content. At the conclusion of the visit, a dour-looking old mullah sat down with us long enough to take my microphone and say in his language:
"I pray every morning and every night for the death of America. She is the enemy of Muslims around the world, and our religion cannot be still until every trace of her and her heathen people has been obliterated from the face of the planet."
As my fixer was translating this (his face registering discomfort and alarm) the mullah left us. I wanted to ask him more, but I¹d heard this from other mullahs and clerics, though never quite so darkly and succinctly as from this gentleman.
He was the exception, perhaps the exception that proves the rule. Hospitality was the rule. Most mullahs and clerics took pains to explain that while they had differences with American politics, they viewed the American people as friends and brothers. But a dark thread runs through this tapestry, and I was happy to encounter it only once. This interview in Peshawar turned out to be my last visit to a madrassah.
Watch a slideshow of Will's madrassah photos while listening to his story.
