Original version

BBC World Service Online

Heart and Soul

Documentaries

Religion & Ethics

Personal approaches to spirituality from around the world.

Heart and Soul: The Bin Laden School for Girls: Inside the Osama Bin Laden Imam School

Magazines & Reviews

Osama Bin Laden Imam School

08/11/2014 GMT

Inside the Osama Bin Laden Imam School

The Bin Laden School for Girls

BBC World Service - Heart and Soul, The Bin Laden School for Girls, Inside the Osama Bin Laden Imam School

The web of schools promoting the ideaology of Osama Bin Laden in Islamad

The web of schools promoting the ideaology of Osama Bin Laden in Islamad. Mobeen Azhar investigates.

All over Pakistan a web of Imam schools are appearing to create Imams that propagate a purist understanding of Islam. Students dedicate eight years of their lives to the seminary after memorising the entire Koran. In return, they achieve ‘Imam’ status. Once they graduate, they are accredited to deliver fatwas and offer theological guidance on everything from contraception to mortgages.

Many Pakistanis believe these new-world Imam schools are responsible for a march towards a puritanical, fundamentalist Pakistan. In these schools, Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yusafzai is a ‘whore of the secular west’ and Osama Bin Laden is ‘the leader of the true Muslims’.  The man behind the schools is a hugely controversial and divisive figure.  

Mobeen Azhar has been given access inside the controversial Jamia Hafsa madrassa in Islamabad to ask why so many parents are sending their children to these schools and what their children are taught. And, he hears the fears that the teaching the girls receive is simply fuelling a dangerous, fundamental Islamic fervour in the country.
 
Mobeen joins lessons which are a heavy mix of housekeeping, theology, politics and Quranic recitation, and where students are taught that martyrdom should be aspired to and that the Pakistani government should be overthrown.

(Photo: A young boy studies the Koran in a classroom. Credit: Richard McIlroy)

Heart and Soul: The Bin Laden School for Girls

BBC World Service

Mobeen Azhar reports from the controversial Jamia Hafsa madrassa in Pakistan on why parents send children to these schools.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Heart and Soul

The Bin Laden School for Girls

Inside the Osama Bin Laden Imam School

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC World Service Online

About BBC World Service