Alexander Evans (“Madrasah Education: Necessity or Rational Choice,” Fall 2008) is correct in focusing on the state’s failure in South Asia to provide quality education. He, however, is wrong on two counts. He believes that some parents in urban centers make a deliberate choice in sending their children to madrasahs. That is certainly not the case in Pakistan, where children at madrasahs, urban or rural, are predominantly from the poorest sections of the population. Given a failing state education system in the countryside, those desperate to educate their children certainly have no other choice than the madrasah. But because madrasahs provide free religious education, boarding and lodging, they are also essentially the schools of the poor in Pakistan’s cities.

Secondly, Evans claims that the public policy response in states such as Pakistan has been a tightening of regulation. On the contrary, because there has been little attempt to regulate and reform the madrasah sector, jihadi madrasahs and even their more moderate counterparts are a threat to the Pakistani citizen and state.

Not all Pakistani madrasahs propagate hate and incite violence, but some 10 to 15 percent certainly are jihadi madrasahs, linked to or run by violent extremist groups and radical Islamist parties. And as the numbers of jihadi madrasahs have drastically increased over the years, so have the numbers of young people who have passed through them. While the vast majority of some 10,000 madrasahs do not fall under this radical category, sectarian preaching sows the seeds of sectarian hatred. Sectarian conflict, which claims hundreds of lives every year, occurs because every major sect and sub-sect runs its own madrasahs and therefore indoctrinates its students with unique teaching.

Abdicating its responsibility to educate its citizens and to protect the more than 1.5 million children who are enrolled in Pakistan’s madrasahs, the state has failed to regulate and reform the madrasah sector. On the contrary, the very phenomenon of jihadi madrasahs was largely state-sponsored. In 1947, at Pakistan’s independence, there were only 137 madrasahs. During Zia ul-Haq’s military regime, close to 4,000 madrasahs were established, churning out hordes of religious graduates, many of whom later served as foot soldiers in the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the students from these madrasahs were also used for other jihads—in Kashmir and within Pakistan against their sectarian rivals. With Saudi sponsorship and support, Alhe Hadith madrasahs, such as those run by the Laskhar-e-Taiba, now held responsible for the November 2008 terror attacks in India, also flourished.

Following September 11, under international pressure, Pakistan’s military government vowed to regulate and reform the madrasah sector. Nine years later, following Musharraf’s departure and the return to democracy, an elected government has inherited an unreformed, unregulated sector, which is still churning out foot soldiers for internal jihads against their sectarian adversaries, regional jihads in Afghanistan and India, and transnational jihads that support al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups.

Because madrasahs serve important purposes, including the provision of free basic literacy, eliminating them would be undesirable, even if it were feasible. There is, however, urgent need for reform that goes beyond modernizing their curriculum to ensure that they impart a reasonable quality of education. The state must also ensure that they do not preach and incite hatred and violence. All madrasahs should be placed under a centralized regulatory authority, which, beyond instituting curriculum reform, should require that they disassociate from militant activities. As far as the jihadi madrasahs are concerned, these are beyond reform, and there is only one remedy—closing them down permanently.