KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Friday he was concerned about Malaysians studying Islam in Pakistan, saying they could be trained as militants to overthrow his government.
"We are now worried over these parents who are fond of sending their children to Pakistan and maybe some other places," he said in comments carried by the national Bernama news agency.
"Do they (actually) study about religion or something else?" he asked.
Mahathir did not say if Malaysia would stop its students from going to Pakistan's religious schools, or madrassas.
The government of mainly Muslim Malaysia does not know how many of its nationals attend the schools but officials say privately the numbers could be significant.
Malaysian police are tracking 200 suspected Muslim militants after earlier arrests netted men trained at camps in Afghanistan and the southern Philippines.
Authorities are holding 48 men under security laws allowing detention without trial following arrests going back to May.
Police say some of the home grown militants had contacts with members of the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, Washington's prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Mahathir said he was worried Malaysians attending Pakistani madrassas might forge links with Afghanistan's ousted Taliban movement and al Qaeda to learn about weapons, making bombs and the tactics of war.
"They have been trained on all these there and when they return, they will attempt to carry them out here," he said.
Many ethnic Malay families send their sons to religious schools out of piety, with some paying for a religious education abroad in the well-known madrassas of Egypt and Pakistan.