Karzai to Pakistan: Close the Madrassas

Hamid Karzai, who has strong U.S. support, has engaged in some sniping with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on countering terrorism.

"There will not be an end to terrorism unless we remove the sources of hatred in madrassas and the training grounds," Karzai said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for scholars.

Karzai is practically begging for a fatwa on his head, or worse, with a call for Pakistan to shutter the madrassas. It's those madrassas that have been the fountains from which much of the malignant and militant Islamist philosophy and theology has emenated.

Now, closing those schools wont happen overnight, and it wont happen easily because those schools are providing services that the Pakistani government itself is incapable of providing. Yet, those schools which focus on religious training to the exclusion of all other education, are sources of instability in the region these schools are being used to indoctrinate children into the extremist ideologies.