SRINIGAR, India -- They're prep schools for holy war. That, or they're the Islamic equivalent of Boys Town.
In Pakistan, religious schools known as madrassas have graduated legions of Muslim boys directly into the boot camps of the Taliban and other extremist groups.
But here in the part of predominantly Muslim Kashmir that is controlled by India, madrassas are careful to avoid politics and anything resembling radical Islam. Regulated by the Indian government and routinely checked by police and security forces, the schools here stick to reading, writing and, in moderation, religion.
``We practice education, not politics,'' said Mufti Abdul Hai Azad, assistant headmaster at Dar-ul-Uloom Qasmia, the largest of some 60 madrassas located on the Indian side of the Kashmir Valley. ``Taliban, fighting and jihad are wrong.
GOODBYE, FINISH
``If a student ever comes to me asking to go for jihad, I will call his parents and they can take him home, goodbye, finish.''
Jihad in this sense is violent. As a basic teaching of Islam, jihad means the inner struggle to overcome weakness and temptation. It also can mean holy war -- a struggle against evil in the world. What is evil, and what means of attacking it are acceptable, can be interpreted in different ways.
In Pakistan, many madrassas embraced Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says he is trying to close those madrassas.
Some graduates of the more radical madrassas in Pakistan have been sent here, to Indian Kashmir, where they've been assigned to take up jihad, or holy war, by launching attacks on the army, police and paramilitaries. Both countries claim Kashmir, and their troops are massed along the border.
Musharraf said he would force madrassas in Pakistan to broaden their curriculums to include science, mathematics, history, even English. He said he wants to end the lopsided education that ``produces only half-baked religious minds.''
FREE SCHOOLING
The sons of impoverished Pakistani farmers and laborers still attend madrassas, of course. Tuition, room and board remain free, and for many poor families in South Asia, madrassas are the only way for their sons to receive a passable education.
Musharraf has long backed the madrassa system as ``a great welfare system'' for the poor. But a growing number of extremist schools have ``indoctrinated young minds with religious hatred,'' contributing to a religious intolerance so rabid that Pakistanis are now ``slaughtering each other in mosques, the houses of God,'' the Pakistani leader has said.
Only the most devout and able jihadis are selected by their leaders in Pakistani madrassas for duty in Kashmir. Back in their madrassas, they've been taught they won't exactly die while fighting inside Kashmir. Instead, they'll ``embrace martyrdom'' in a noble cause.