A madrassa in Kenya has been closed down.
The school in Machakos, about 65km (40 miles) from the capital, was targeted after local youths were detained on suspicion of joining Somali militants.
It is the first Kenyan madrassa to be closed because of allegedly extremist teachings. A police chief warned that others could follow.
Madrassas aren’t really “schools” in the normal sense, as I understand it. They train children to memorize the Koran in Arabic, whether or not they understand the language, and they don’t teach anything else. That’s not really a school.
Interior Ministry spokesman Mwenda Njoka told the BBC the decision had been taken to close the Daarul-Irashad centre, which opened in 1997, on the advice of the police’s CID, anti-terror and intelligence units.
The recent arrest in the Machakos area of 21 young men suspected of being recruited for al-Shabab first raised suspicions, he said.
The police then profiled suspects arrested in other terror crackdowns and found that others had passed through that madrassa, the spokesman said.
Memorizing a holy book isn’t an education.