There is abundant evidence that there are some madrassahs, which emphasize religious distinction and encourage jihad. These are mostly in the Pushtoon sector of the society. A few may even encourage violence, but these are a very small percentage.

There is no doubt that from the time that the Russians invaded Afghanistan till the US invasion, madrassahs have actively preached jihad against the invading forces, and sent many a young man to his end, in the name of defending his country or religion.

The roots of these specific schools are found in the Afghan madrassahs of the ‘mujahedeen’ days.

UN Amabassador Richard Holbrooke in a PBS interview states, “The traditional madrassahs were encouraged (by the West) to become recruiting grounds for the ‘mujahedeen’ to form a religious guerrilla army to oust the Soviet (communist) occupiers. Many of today’s Northern Alliance people came from these madrassahs. The US didn't really properly clean up after it left Afghanistan.”

As Mufti Muneeb of the Naeemya Madrassah states “Madrassahs were never meant to be recruiting centers for soldiers. Their purpose was and is to be centers of learning and reflection.”

According to Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey of the New York times “While madrassas ‘may’ breed fundamentalists who learn to recite the Koran in Arabic, such schools do not know how to teach the technical or linguistic skills necessary to be an effective terrorist. To date there is little or no evidence that madrassas produce terrorists capable of attacking the West.” .....more