Pakistan's Girls: Uneducated, Radicalized & Anti-West

Leaving no doubt how they feel about educating girls, the Taliban blew up a girls’ school in Pakistan’s Khyber district, where government troops are fighting against militants.

Militants detonated explosives overnight at the government-run school in Bazgarah town, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of Peshawar, capital of the violence-plagued North West Frontier Province.”The building had 21 rooms. All have been completely demolished,” local administration chief Shafeerullah Wazir told AFP by telephone. No one was injured.

This was the ninth school to be blown up in the Khyber region over the past six weeks. Militants have blasted more than 185 schools in the NWFP. Estimates are that about 130 schools were girls only.

A 2007 article in Christian Science Monitor reminds us that the education of girls is perceived as a moderating force against growing Islamist militancy. An educated mother not only impacts her family’s standard of living but the values of her children, both boys and girls.

Pakistan has a literacy rate of 49.9 percent, one of the lowest in South Asia and the rest of the world. Pakistan’s male and female literacy rates are 61.7 percent and 35.2 percent. The female literacy rate drops to 25 percent in rural areas, and girls’ school enrollment of fifty-five percent drops to twenty percent from Grade 1 to 6. via author Amna Latif

Staying with the story, I’ve just watched this video:

Girls of the Red Mosque - Pakistan

It’s important to understand that all over Pakistan, including Islamabad, there’s an effort to radicalize the young women, making them religious activists on behalf of Allah and Islam. Many young women espouse the teachings of Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque cleric Abdul Aziz, arrested and detained for two years, but released in April 2009.

Hameeda Sarfraz, in the dark burqa, teaches Islamic religious lessons to children in her village, about 50 miles north of Islamabad, Pakistan.Within Pakistan many young women embrace the law of the Taliban, believing in the principles of sharia, no education for girls. These women want to embrace the lifestyle of Afghan women under the Taliban.

Under this brand of Islam, there is a total rejection of all secularism in culture. All attention is focused on the afterlife:

“In heaven you get everything without hardship,” explained Miss Sarfraz, daughter of a bus driver. “In heaven, if a martyr feels hungry, food appears, the best quality food, and you won’t even know where it came from.”

Miss Sarfraz, an alumna of the now bullet-ridden Jamia Hafsa Islamic school for girls, says she deeply regrets missing her chance to be a martyr. She fled through the back door of the school on July 3, just hours after a gun battle began between Pakistani special forces and militants holed up in the neighboring Red Mosque, the parent institution of Jamia Hafsa. via NYTimes

America’s secretary of state Hillary Clinton says that the US seeks a significantly stronger relationship with Pakistan. Under her leadership, aid to Pakistan has increased significantly. The US has provided about half ot the international assistance to displaced families in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including families from Swat, Buner, Bajaur, and South Waziristan. Another part of U.S. assistance includes efforts to help repair and upgrade key power stations in an effort to end chronic energy shortages that have caused blackouts across Pakistan, leaving families in the dark for days, forcing factories and businesses to close. via Voice of America

More reading: At Pakistan’s Red Mosque, a Return of Islamic Militancy TIME April 2009

Red Mosque Fueled Islamic Fire in Young Women NYTimes