Experts: Pakistani school taught conservative strain of Islam

ISLAMABAD,Pakistan—Herbespectacled face hidden behind ablack veil, Farhat Hashmi’s voice is measured and confident as she mixes motherly advice about diet and child-rearing with solemn guidance about how to be a proper Muslim.

Hashmi, an Islamic scholar in her 50s, founded a network of religious schools that has educated thousands of mainly urban, upper-middle-class Pakistani women in a conservative strain of Islam. Recordings of Hashmi’s lectures, which have made their way to YouTube and iTunes, often show her speaking to classrooms filled with rapt young women eagerly scribbling notes.

Al Huda, Hashmi’s chain of schools, has more than 70 locations across Pakistan — including in the central city of Multan, where, for several months beginning in 2013, the students included the future San Bernardino, Calif., shooter, Tashfeen Malik.

Last week’s rampage by Malik and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, which killed 14 and injured 21, has cast a fresh spotlight on the teachings of Al Huda, part of a vast patchwork of Islamic seminaries, Quran prayer groups and other religious institutions that operate outside Pakistani government control and are often accused of fueling radicalism.

Pakistani officials and experts who have studied Al Huda say this is the first time it has been linked to a militant attack, and an official with the organization said Monday that it “does not support terrorism.”

Yet experts say Al Huda seminaries promote anti-Western views and hard-line practices — including gender segregation and veils for women — that could encourage some adherents to lash out against nonbelievers.

“What happens in these Al Huda classes is teaching these urban, educated, upper-middle-class women a very conservative interpretation of Islam that makes them very judgmental about others around them — that it’s their job to go out and reform people and bring them toward the path of true Islam,” said Faiza Mushtaq, a Pakistani scholar who wrote her doctoral dissertation on the organization.

“Nothing that happens in the classroom explains the actions of this woman (Malik) but it can predispose people” to violence, Mushtaq said.

Malik and her husband both died in a shootout with police after the rampage at the nonprofit Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino.

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that Malik, 29, who was born to a well-off family in the Pakistani province of Punjab, attended classes at Al Huda while she was enrolled at a university in Multan. A woman who identified herself as director of Al Huda’s office in Multan confirmed Monday that Malik began a two-year course in religious studies in 2013 but left after “a few months” without earning a diploma.

“We had no contact with her afterwards,” said the official, who declined to give her name, citing a school policy.

However, The Associated Press cited a spokesperson for the school, Farrukh Chaudhry, as saying that Malik had studied there for slightly more than a year, from April 17, 2013, until May 3, 2014, when she handed in her last paper.

A statement on Hashmi’s personal website also confirmed that Malik had left Al Huda before finishing the program. “It seems that she was unable to understand the beautiful message of the Quran,” the statement said.