The Darul Uloom Haqqania campus is a sprawling labyrinth of ashen buildings where young men in black beards and white skullcaps spend their days and nights on hard concrete floors learning all 77,701 words of the Quran. Some people call it the University of Jihad.

The fact that some of Haqqania’s graduates go on to become Taliban fighters isn’t the school’s concern, said Syed Yousef Shah, the head of the 3,000-student madrasa. “One person may become a journalist, another a driver,” he said. “We can’t control what people do afterward.”

Yes, the madrasa gave the one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar an honorary doctorate. And why shouldn’t it? “We did it because he’s smart, upright and has many distinguishing qualities,” Shah said.

Under heavy pressure from the US, President Asif Ali Zardari pledged recently to reform the madrasa system, in a campaign against militancy that has included an Army offensive in Swat.

Most Pakistanis had not been too concerned about the burgeoning influence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the frontier and tribal areas. But as militants have moved closer to the capital, the public has become increasingly wary of extremism. That could strengthen domestic pressure to reform madrasas, some analysts say.

Shah isn’t worried — he’s heard it before. He rattles off a string of past national leaders, Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. “They all said they would change us,” he said, wearing a gold watch and juggling two cellphones. “We are too strong, and it will never happen. This is just talk for the Americans.”

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