Norway Bankrolls Madrassas in Pakistan

I reported last night that Sweden is paying illegal Muslim immigrants to go home.

And now we learn that Norway is paying to radicalize madrassa students in Pakistan.

According to Aftenposten:

Critics blast Norwegian aid to ‘Koran schools’ in Pakistan

Norway’s Foreign Ministry has been sending financial aid to controversial religious schools in Pakistan. Researchers and local Pakistani experts want it to stop, as does a conservative politician.

As much as NOK 6 million (more than USD 1 million) has gone to 118 so-called “Koran schools” in northwest Pakistan. Some local experts, however, fear Norway risks supporting fundamentalist groups because it makes no demands on the schools’ curriculum.

Karin Ask, a researcher at the Christian Michelsen Institute, told newspaper Dagsavisen that Norway could wind up even supporting jihadists, those encouraging holy war.

The research institution International Crisis Group (ICG) also worries about any “uncritical” support of the schools, claiming that they mount a “considerable danger” to international security.

The ICG noted that Koran schools in Karachi, for example, have trained jihad warriors and sent them to both Afghanistan and Kashmir. Ask told Dagsavisen that there’s no reason to believe schools in northwestern Pakistan wouldn’t do the same, not least because that area is known as a recruiting ground for jihadists.

Norway’s government minister in charge of foreign aid, Erik Solheim, claims the goal of the aid project was to “promote dialogue.”

If any more “dialogue” is promoted in the West, we will have literally talked ourselves to death. How much dialogue with Muslims has occurred in the last six years? How many outreach efforts have been launched? How many presidents, prime ministers, and interior ministers (if female, suitably veiled) have made the mandatory visit to a mosque or Islamic center?
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Every time a Muslim terrorist kills a new batch of infidels, another round of “dialogue” is initiated.

This is mass insanity. It’s time to stop talking and start acting.

Solheim, of the Socialist Left (SV) party, said he also hoped the aid to the schools would further religious tolerance. “We figure that the schools that choose to take part in the project are hardly those that are in tight with al-Qaida,” he said. “We want to be a counterbalance to the fundamentalists.”

And what evidence does Mr. Sondheim have for this conclusion? What makes him think that the radical madrassas won’t take all those kroner and then laugh at the Norwegians?

They don’t have to buy the rope with which they will hang us: we’ll pay them to take it.

Not every politician in Norway agrees:

The foreign policy spokesman for the Progress Party, Morten Høglund, remained concerned and wants the aid cut off.

“At a time when people all over the globe are working to fight fundamentalism and terror, the Norwegian authorities chose to sponsor the type of schools known for breeding fundamentalism,” Høglund claimed. “That must end immediately.”

So common sense is still alive in Norway, at least vestigially.


Hat tip: Fjordman.