Islamabad, Pakistan - Pakistan's Islamic schools or madrassas have long offered free education and shelter to the poor, but some hardline schools have emerged as breeding grounds for anti-Western hatred and terror, analysts say.
The country's estimated 10,000 Islamic seminaries have again come under the international spotlight for fanning Islamic extremism since it emerged that at least one of the London bombers attended a madrassa.
"These seminaries are socialising young minds to strong anti-Western and anti-American sentiments and project that the whole world is out to destroy Islam," said Lahore political scientist Hassan Askari.
"They create a state of mind amongst the young people which is extremist, narrow and purely religious," said the former Punjab University head of political science.
"Some of these young people are vulnerable to the appeals of militant groups like Al-Qaeda who contact them for recruitment as their foot soldiers.
"They are brain-washed into defending Islam against this kind of onslaught. Some of them end up becoming suicide bombers."
President Pervez Musharraf, under international pressure to stop hardline clerics from training the next generation of militants, this week ordered nationwide raids on the madrassas, arresting more than 200 suspects.
Madrassas have traditionally played a key role in Pakistan's education system.
Especially for many poor families living in areas where state schools do not exist or charge school fees, they offer male children the best chance of an education, typically providing free board and religious schooling.
Many Pakistani families living overseas like to send their children to madressas to deepen their religious education.
"Not all seminaries preach hatred," a senior security official told AFP. "It is mainly those run by the follower of a particular Sunni sect which supported the Taliban movement in
Afghanistan."
The teachings in the prayer schools became increasingly militant when clerics started training anti-Soviet jihad fighters during the 1979-1989 Russian occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan.
Many experts see the growth of militancy and extremism in Pakistan as a legacy of that turbulent era, when guns, drugs and jihadi groups mushroomed in the region and Islamic fighters received all-out US support.
When Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, born in the Afghanistan war, launched the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, Musharraf joined the US-led "war on terrorism" and banned some militant groups.
But this week's raids were the first to specifically target madrassas.
The operation follows the London bombings in which three of the four suicide bombers were of Pakistani origin and had links to the South Asian country.
Shehzad Tanweer, 22, who carried out the bombing of an Underground subway train at Aldgate, east London, was said by his uncle to have gone to a madrassa in December last year, wanting to learn to recite the Koran by heart.
Tanweer's trip to Pakistan was by no means unusual, as many Pakistani families who emigrated some 40 or 50 years ago and settled in Britain send their children for religious teaching at madrassas, say analysts.
Some of the radical religious schools in Pakistan have thrived on funds regularly coming to them from supporters in Britain's Muslim community.
Security sources say that in one case, several thousand pounds were sent to outlawed Sunni militant Sipah-e-Sahaba of Pakistan two years ago. Pakistani security officials informed the British authorities and identified the man who sent the money as Mullah Hamid, a prayer leader in a Glasgow mosque.
While the majority of madrassas teach a tolerant form of Islam that benefits the faithful, some teach a more militant interpretation of jihad, or struggle.
"The hardline madrassas have a uni-dimensional view of the world," security analyst and retired general Talat Masood told AFP.
"Some of them are preaching violence and emphasising more the militarist aspect of jihad rather than the self-cleansing aspect of jihad."
He said Musharraf should have cracked down on the radical schools earlier.
"Once again Musharraf is reacting to the international pressure to crack down on these seminaries," he said. "It would have been better if he had realised the danger on his own."
He said it was important for the government of Pakistan to present the anti-extremism campaign as part of its own agenda "rather than giving the impression that they are being dictated to".