New report: Pakistan’s madrassas are a breeding ground for jihad terrorism

Pakistan’s schools are saturated with anti-West, jihad ideology, and no one has kept track of who is funding them, and the extent to which their Salafist indoctrination has proliferated. In an era of open-door migration, the news of Pakistan’s madrassas being breeding ground for jihad violence is disturbing. With unvetted migration, no one knows who is entering America and other Western countries.

Students in Pakistani madrassas come from states “with emergent Islamic extremist groups. These include students from China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.” According to the Economic Times, since the 1980s, madrassas have proliferated in Pakistan. There are now some 30,000 in the country. As for funding: “U.S. and Arab funding transformed them into recruitment hubs for Islamic volunteers to fight Soviet forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Many future Taliban leaders were educated in these institutions, where some teachers endorsed the anti-U.S. ideology of al-Qaida.”

According to Qatar-funded Brookings, however, Saudi Arabia has had an enormous influence. “The Saudi funding of Pakistan’s madrassas derives from Saudi Arabia’s anti-Iran ambitions and its bid to control the version of Islam, and specifically Sunni Islam, taught and practiced in Pakistan.”

Since Pakistan and Islamic countries are now tight-lipped about Salafist indoctrination, it is up to the West to revamp immigration policies, as well as to monitor what is being preached in mosques in Western countries. It is a duty in the interests of national security.

Meanwhile, just as mainstream Islamic groups do across the West, Pakistan routinely accuses neighboring India of “Islamophobia,” while the country is saturated with jihadist groups and terrorist madrassas.

“Pakistan’s Madrassas Breeding Ground For Extremism: Report,” Ommcom News, November 29, 2025:

Colombo: Madrassas play a double-edged role in Pakistan, providing primary education in a country where the government has failed to deliver, while at the same time perpetuating a system of ideological indoctrination that erodes social cohesion and global security, a report detailed on Saturday.

It added that Pakistan’s madrassa sector remains largely unregulated, with estimates of registered institutions ranging from 10,000 to 40,000, and no credible data on unregistered ones — a lack of transparency that hinders oversight and enables radical elements to operate freely.

“The madrassa system in Pakistan occupies a paradoxical space: it is both a lifeline for the poor and a potential conduit for radicalisation. This duality has made madrassas a focal point in debates on education, militancy, and global security. In the years following the September 11 attacks, Pakistan’s madrassas, Islamic religious schools, have come under intense scrutiny from both domestic and international observers. While many Pakistani intellectuals lament this attention as unfair and externally imposed, arguing that madaris are wrongly portrayed as ‘jihad factories,’ the reality is far more complex,” a report in the Sri Lankan leading newspaper ‘Daily Mirror’ detailed.

According to the report, one of the most disturbing aspects of the madrassa system is the psychological dependency it fosters.

“Many students are separated from their families at a young age, creating a vacuum of parental authority that is filled by clerics and teachers….