A post is being widely shared on social media claiming that Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam wanted to ban all the madrasas running in India, to curb terrorism. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: APJ Abdul Kalam said, “To curb terrorism in India, madrasas must be banned”.
Fact: There is no evidence to prove APJ Abdul Kalam wanted to ban madrasas to curb terrorism in India. There are no news reports that prove Kalam said such a thing. In early 2019, Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board Chairman Waseem Rizvi had written to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi warning him against indoctrination in madrasas. He also advocated for a ban on madrasas to curb the influence of ISIS (a terror organisation) in India. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We could not find any news articles that say that Abdul Kalam had said such things about madrasas in the past. If APJ Abdul Kalam had actually said such a thing, it would have been reported by all major news outlets. We could not find any evidence from searching online, that Abdul Kalam wanted to ban madrasas in India.
However, to curb terrorism, Abdul Kalam advocated the need for a stringent law so that perpetrators of terror attacks are punished in a time-bound manner. According to Kalam, “India has to have positive counter-terrorism methods so that we can end terrorism once for all. If evil minds combine, good minds have to cooperate and combat them.” According to Srijan Pal Singh, former OSD to Abdul Kalam and who co-authored several books with him, “Dr Kalam’s dream was to make the nation terrorism-free.”
In early 2019, Uttar Pradesh Shia Waqf Board Chairman Waseem Rizvi had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi warning him against indoctrination in madrasas. He advocated for a ban on madrasas to curb the influence of ISIS – a terror organisation – in India. But there are no news reports which state that Abdul Kalam wanted to ban madrasas.
To sum it up, Abdul Kalam did not say that he wanted to ban madrasas to curb terrorism in India.
