“Madrasas have nothing to do with terrorism,” All India Coordination Committee for Madrasas (AICCM) said in a report that also negates the allegations that Muslim seminaries in India are breeding ground for terror. The report said, “A concerted campaign to malign madrasas” had led to the deterioration of educational standards in Muslim seminaries. “A concerted campaign was going across the country to malign madrasas’ image by branding them as breeding ground of terrorism. There is no truth in it,” said AICCM general secretary Maulana Shaukat Ali Bastavi.
Bastavi said an AICCM team prepared the report on madrasas after visiting different seminaries all over the country. “None of the madrasas across India has been a centre of terrorism,” the report concluded. It said the terror charges against madrasas and the students were baseless and “none of the madrasas in India is involved in any anti-national activity. We probed into allegations against madrasas,” Bastavi said.
There are over 4,000 madrasas in Bihar, including the seminaries where the staff gets the salary from the state government. There are 2,459 unaided madrasas. According to the first-ever status paper brought out by the AICCM, there are only 32 madrasas for girls under the government-aided category and 576 madrasas in the unaided category. Some madrasas in Bihar have begun modernising their education system by introducing computers and science subjects. They even encourage students to join the National Cadet Corps (NCC) training.