Syed Nisar Hussain Shah, one of Malik’s pharmacology professors at Bahauddin Zakariya University, said there was nothing to suggest she was influenced by the turmoil outside the university gates.
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Malik was a “hardworking, friendly, helping, obedient and positive-minded student”, the institute said in a statement, expressing disbelief that she could “do such a awful thing that is 100 percent against Islam”.
Saudi Arabia’s officials said that Tashfeen Malik, the alleged woman shooter in mass killings in California, did not spend much time in the kingdom and she had also been to India.
The officials identified the school on Monday as the Al-Huda International Seminary, a women-only madrassa with a chain across Pakistan and branches in the US and Canada.
While both the organization and Farhat Hashmi, its Pakistan-born founder who lives in Canada now, have proved controversial in the past, a statement from its Canadian wing stresses that it neither supports nor contributed to the bloody attack that struck California earlier in December.
While Hashmi has been criticized for being very conservative, her schools, however, have no known links to extremists.
Malik was enrolled in classes including translation of the Koran in 2013, said Amir, the administration official.
Malik and her husband Syed Farook, 28, were hailed as “soldiers” of the self-proclaimed caliphate following the massacre on Wednesday at a social services centre in San Bernardino. “I don’t know where have they gone”, said Zulfiqar, a resident of the area.
Hashmi, who has a doctorate in Islamic studies from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, said in a 2010 interview that Al Huda is “a kind of women’s empowerment program”.
“Then, in 2013, she arrived on June 8, from Pakistan, and departed for India on October 6 of the same year”, Turki was quoted as saying in the NYT report.
The foundation said it promotes the peaceful message of Islam and denounces extremism, violence and acts of terrorism.
Her father, Gulzar Malik, who was estranged from relatives in Pakistan, became more religious after the move to Saudi Arabia.
Porter, her colleague, said neither shooter spoke before firing.
Analyst Arif Rafiq said that while Malik’s attendance at the madrassa may have made her “more susceptible” to the ideology of groups like Islamic State, her attendance there alone did not explain “how she made the leap from being a conservative… into a jihadist”.
“They just say that she is very knowledgeable and she is actually teaching the pure Islam. We have installed security cameras around the university, including in all dorms”, said the officer.
University spokesman Babar Khaqaan said the university was involved in the “promotion of good values”, and he condemned Malik’s actions. Unlike most Pakistani religious madrasas that teach low-income, uneducated and mostly male pupils, Al Huda began by catering to the well-educated wives of military officers and businessmen – and was entirely driven by a woman.
The report quoted Turki as saying there was “no evidence” that Malik met Farook in Saudi Arabia, but as per information provided by him, they were in kingdom at the same time for about five days in October 2013.
Rubina Saigol, a Lahore-based researcher who has studied women’s seminaries, said Al Huda schools – and others like them – give women “a sense of belonging” even if the material being taught is far from progressive.
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A second university student who also requested anonymity confirmed the account.
