A TRULY LAUDABLE EFFORT!!

US kids held in radical Pak madrassas

Islamabad: A Pakistani filmmaker has launched a campaign to secure the release of 78 American teenagers from a Taliban-backed madrassa in Pakistan and asked the US to step in to check students’ enrolment in radical seminaries to close “the pipeline to jihad”.
Imran Raza, who helped secure the release of two US teenagers of Pakistani origin, found up to 80 other boys and girls in Karachi-based Jamia Binoria madrassa while shooting Karachi Kids, a documentary on American children in Pakistan’s seminaries that will be released next week.
Raza’s film focuses on Noor Elahi Khan, 17, and Mahboob Elahi Khan, 16, the two brothers from Atlanta who were forced to study at Jamia Binoria. When he met them three years ago, the brothers wanted to take the “first plane back to America”. Three years later, the boys had been “brainwashed” and said the madrassa had made them “better human beings”.

[Pix; Courtesy Times of India]

The siblings sent to Pakistan by their father, were enrolled in Jamia Binoria, considered one of the most radical seminaries in Pakistan, in August 2004.
“I am grateful for the safe return of the two American children to Atlanta from a Taliban-backed madrassa but the mullah claims to have up to 78 more in his institution. The headmaster comes to the US once a year and personally recruits American children to enrol in his madrassa,” Raza said on his website.

“The remaining 78 children must be returned to the US. This pipeline to jihad must be closed...It is imperative that members of Congress and the state department undertake an accounting of just how many Americans are in the other 20,000 madrassas in Pakistan. Hundreds remain behind,” Raza said.
Raza is also running a campaign on his website karachikids.com asking people to help “spread the word”. He encourages internet surfers to display a Karachi Kids Banner on their blogs or join an affiliate programme to help free other American children of Pakistani descent who are still at madrassas.
US-based Raza has since been joined by many others in his campaign. US Congressman Michael Mc-Caul urged President Pervez Musharraf to help free the brothers and have them returned home. PTI

I say HATS OFF , Imran Bhai!!