Saddam’s back-to-religion campaign has an ulterior motive. Olivia Ward reports

“I am ready for martyrdom,” said the smooth-faced young man in the immaculate white robe. “This is what our faith teaches us, that we must defend our land, our home and our religion.”

Mahar Abdul Aziz, 17, is one of 119 students in the Al Hassan al Basri religious high school, or madrassah, in Basra, a threadbare southern town.

And the answers that he gives the teacher are a playback of what he has learned in class. As Aziz speaks, his teacher and class members nod approvingly, and the teenagers add their own interpretations.

In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq today, the young are outdoing their elders in taking up Islam with new seriousness. Many religious schools were closed after 1968 when Saddam’s secular, socialist Ba’ath party came to power.

Now hundreds of government-funded madrassahs have sprung up throughout the country as part of a “back to religion” campaign promoted by Saddam since the mid-1990s.

“We could take many times the number of students who are enrolled here now,” said the Basra school’s director, Yusuf Yakum Mohammed. “And since the threat from the United States increased, in the past few months, we have had to turn many more away.” Although the madrassah’s five-year diploma programme centres on religion - the students learn techniques of preaching and do apprenticeships at local mosques - it is not entirely faith-based.

“Islam is a faith that is closely connected to science,” said Dr Mohammed. “Our students get a good education in basic and scientific subjects, like any school. We don’t want to teach extremism, and tell women not to work, like the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moderation is our main principle.”

If the militant phrases recited by the students seem a contradiction, they can be traced to the complex goals of the religious campaign, which aims to eradicate the division between the ruling Sunni Muslims and the majority Shia, by establishing a single Islam, with adherents who are loyal to Saddam first, and religion second.

Saddam exacerbated those divisions when his forces killed thousands of Shias and drove more than 100,000 of them from their homes after the Gulf war. Now, Islam’s stress on defending the faith and homeland is a useful tool for recruiting young people willing to die for their country.

The madrassahs are ideal venues for the programme of religious patriotism, and young people who have spent most of their lives under threat of war need no urging to sign up for them.

Unlike ordinary secular schools, which are struggling to provide basic education, the madrassahs are well funded. “We have everything we need,” said Dr Mohammed. “The students even get a salary for attending.”

In the sweltering classrooms, young men sit at small wooden desks, read pages from the Koran, recite verses and listen attentively to their teachers. Then they break for prayers.

As the students stream out of the classroom, white robes flapping in the hot desert wind, 16-year-old Salem Jafar pauses: “I have no fear for what may happen here in the future,” he said. “It is natural for everyone to die in the end. But the best is to die fighting for what you believe.”