ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced that foreign students at Pakistani religious madrassas would be expelled.
The Itehad al-Madaris, the largest federation of Muslim seminaries, with which the government was supposed to negotiate an arrangement, has ended its negotiations, however.
The Daily Times reported that the Pakistan Muslim League party chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, has vowed that he will guarantee that foreign Islamic seminarians continue to come to Pakistan for religious instruction. Musharraf also faces opposition from within his own government. Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao has taken a slightly different perspective on Musharraf's proclaimed policy by saying that he will expel foreigners only after an "investigation."
Pakistani analysts acknowledge there are troubles in the madrassas and foreigners have exacerbated them. But the biggest problem for Musharraf's government are copuntries that ignoreng its own indigenous extremist problems, they said. A report published in The Friday Times in 2004 enumerated how foreign students were flowing into Karachi's seminaries. According to the Friday Times, of the 20,000 that entered Pakistani madrassas in 2004, nearly 1,100 were from Thailand. As with its relationship with Great Britain in the aftermath of the July London bombings, Pakistan denied exporting violence to southern Thailand, even as the madrassa, which trained the Thais, lost at least four of its leaders to terrorism in Pakistan.