Tin Thanh Nguyen fled Vietnam with her mother as a child. She was a deeply religious and private woman, destroying any photographs that showed her without a veil.
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Pakistani security forces appeared to be trying to dampen down reporting this weekend on the background of Tashfeen Malik, who mounted an attack alongside her husband that killed 14 people in California.
Batool spoke in the town of Karor Lal Esan, the home of Malik’s family, 280 miles (450 kilometers) southwest of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad. “We can’t believe it”, Aulakh said, according to the AFP. “The Red Mosque has never been associated with this woman”, he said.
On Monday evening CBC’s The National reported that four young women who went to the Al Huda school near Toronto left to support ISIL in Syria, or tried to.
She said the Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation denounces extremism, violence and acts of terrorism and can not be held responsible “for personal acts of any of our students”.
“We have nothing to hide”, he said.
The organisation has mostly attracted middle and upper-class women in Pakistan. “Al-Huda, founded in 1994, is one of the most well-known female madrassas in the country where religious seminaries are thought to teach hundreds of thousands of students each year”.
Hashmi was active in the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political party that sought to establish sharia law in Pakistan, before leaving to obtain a doctorate in Islamic studies from the University of Glasgow.
Helped by donations from wealthy students and supporters, the schools have typically made tuition free or very cheap, while maintaining classes in the best neighborhoods and using modern technologies – which now include apps and podcasts. But Al Huda and a handful of other women’s seminaries have also had a pronounced effect on urban life in Pakistan. Pakistani police and intelligence agents have searched the house where she lived there, seizing documents, family photo albums and a laptop belonging to Malik’s sister.
“Gradually she became more serious and strict”, said the student, requesting anonymity.
“She stayed in the Blind Wing of Mariam Hall, but moved off campus to her family home in the city of Multan in 2009”, they said.
One post from Hashmi’s website, entitled “Tips on How to Be a Successful Wife”, reads: “remember that your husband is the head of the family and as long as obedience to him does not entail any sin, it is your duty to obey him”. While there was no evidence the shooters were directed by a terror network overseas or were part of a broader plot, “the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization”, he said. However, he cautioned, the seminary’s graduates rarely become militants.
The institute has no known extremist links, though it has come under fire in the past from critics who say its ideology echoes that of the Taliban.
“These are teachings that are very relevant to Muslims all around the world”, he said. “The message is basically that America is the source of the trouble”.
Malik took classes six days a week at the school for more than a year, but ultimately left before completing a degree, a spokesperson for the school told the AP. The group also has offices in India, Britain and Hurst, Texas, outside of Dallas.
At Multan College where she studied pharmacy for five years, they insist she was not radicalized there.
“It is in this context that their beliefs have the potential to become dehumanizing, unsafe and harmful for others”, Ahmad said.
The husband and wife were killed in a furious shootout with police hours after they opened fire on a gathering of Farook’s colleagues from the San Bernardino County public health department, where he worked as a restaurant inspector.
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“This kind of radical thinking exists in this area (southern Punjab) in general, and so of course there will be some reflection of it at the university”, the second official said.
