The scariest religious institution I have ever been to is the Darul Uloom in Deoband. In the hour I spent wandering about its grounds on my single uninvited visit a couple of years ago I understood why it had inspired the Taliban. It is an institution that remains frozen in seventh century Arabia, a time when men were primitive and women got a primitive deal. I saw one woman while I was there and she was veiled to the eyeballs. The angry young students I met were Islamists to a man and the maleficent power of Saudi Arabia manifested itself in their refusal to speak to me because they were only allowed to speak Arabic. So they said. This most important Islamic seminary on the Indian sub-continent may not be directly training jihadis but it is responsible for perpetuating a narrow, literal interpretation of Islam which is the ideology that inspires the jihad.

Last week, this seminary was in the news because it declared cinema offensive to Islam and held a conference of bearded clerics at which terrorism was discussed. The cinema fatwa can be ignored because it is meaningless except to literalist interpreters of Islam and they do not go to the movies anyway. The All-India Anti-Terrorism Conference held in Deoband on 17 Safar 1429H (February 25) we need to pay careful attention to. Most newspapers reported on their front pages that the conference had condemned terrorism. As someone who thinks of the Deobandi interpretation of Islam as exactly the kind we do not want in our land of happy infidels, my ears instantly pricked up. Could the Darul Uloom have changed since my one and only visit? Had it now become a place of unveiled women? The head Maulana refused to entertain my request for an interview because I was unveiled. And, I, proud infidel that I am, sent him a message to veil himself if he had a problem with gazing upon the female form.

... contd.