KARACHI: With the rising intolerance and extremism in society, many of the radicalised minds are being traced back to universities in Pakistan. To analyse, a panel discussion was held at the KLF titled ‘Universities or nurseries of terrorism?’ on Friday, the event’s inaugural day.

Moderated by Baela Raza Jamil, representatives of several higher education institutions, both public and private, were part of the panel and shared their views on the controversial topic.

According to scholar Mohammad Ali Shaikh, also vice chancellor of Sindh Madressatul Islam University, universities cannot be islands and they do not function in a vacuum. In fact, he said, what we have injected into society at large is having an impact on universities.

“Radicalisation is taking place in universities, but the [stage] has not yet arrived that we can say they have become the nurseries of terrorism,” he said.

One reason which he highlighted for increasing radicalisation was the lack of diversity of students in universities.

“In the older times, there were so many students of different nationalities and students were exposed to different cultures and identities. When diversity is present, tolerance automatically comes. That is now lacking in the present climate.”

Wasif Rizvi, president of Habib University, said it is not what universities are doing but what universities are not doing that is allowing students to become radicalised.

“If you look at the educational backgrounds of most terrorists, they usually were business graduates, engineers or doctors,” he explained.

“This is because universities have become very narrow in terms of not only the disciplines they offer, but also the interaction they allow with those belonging to other areas of study.

“Students are not being intellectually refined, they are never challenged, and just form a circle of intellectual clones around themselves, which happens in a business school, in an engineering college, and in a medical school,” he added.

Talib Karim, president of IoBM, spoke about how the issue requires more hands-on approach. One such way in which his university is taking steps to negate this is by including more empathy based tests to ascertain the inner workings of prospective students.

Dr Mehtab Karim, a research professor, working extensively on the issue on youth radicalisation in Pakistan, spoke about how the youth bulge in Pakistan was a concerning factor in the path to radicalisation in the country.

“If you look at one of the more recent reports that have come out on terrorism, Pakistan is among the five top countries where the population is suffering from some kind of terrorism and the other countries affected include Iraq, Somalia etc. Two things common in these countries is that they are Islamic countries and all have very high proportion of young people.”

Dr Farrukh Iqbal, director of the IBA, also highlighted several researches conducted internationally, and said that the link between universities and terrorism dates back at least as far back as the 9/11 attacks when many, if not most of the perpetrators were very well-educated.

Published in Dawn, February 10th, 2018