California shooter attended Islamic school in Pakistan

From 2007 to at least 2012, Malik studied in Multan, the main city in southern Punjab, famed for its sparkling religious shrines that mark it as a historical centre of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity under regulations.

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 that Malik was an above-average student and dressed conservatively, yet still didn’t stand out by any means.

The spokesperson said that, after asking around the school, “no one ever noticed any signs of radicalization”.

Yet experts say Al Huda seminaries promote anti-Western views and hard-line practices – including gender segregation and veils for women – that could encourage some adherents to lash out against non-believers. The school also has offices in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere, AFP reported, quoting a teacher who gave her name only as Muqadas. 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. The school has no known links to extremists.

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.

He said her father Gulzar Malik, an engineer, grew distant and “never came back even to attend the marriages of close relatives”.

She was a student there from April 17, 2013 until May 3, 2014, when she handed in her last paper in the first-year curriculum, the spokeswoman said. “It seems that she was unable to understand the attractive message of the Quran”.

“This is the first that we are learning of such allegations and [we] are as deeply disturbed as anyone”, Imraq Haq said in a statement.

The U.S. government has said there was vigorous vetting of her background, including in-person interviews, fingerprints, checks against terrorists watch lists and reviews of her family members, travel history and places where she lived and worked.

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.

“We don’t have a very strong formal link with Al Huda Pakistan”, Haq said.

Haq said the non-profit institute is looking at increasing security around its campus as its students and staff have expressed concerns about potential hostility towards Muslims.

“There were people within their circle who saw them change – Farook especially – and no one said a word to the authorities”, the source said. “We are very clear that terrorism is against Islamic teachings … and we emphasize that it is both a civic and religious duty to help keep Canada, and the world, safe from violent extremist ideologies”.

Three professors at the university where Malik studied told Reuters they had been instructed by security forces not to speak to reporters.

“I don’t see how those allegations could fit”, said one former student.

Meanwhile, Farook’s fat-her said his son approved the ideas of ISIS and was fixated with Israel.

Many more women in Islamabad and other cities now cover their hair, part of a trend toward religious conservatism that has been inspired by Sunni religious doctrine from Saudi Arabia. “It’s not just the wearing of the burka and the stoning to death for adultery…it’s also jihad”.

Malik and her husband, Syed Farook, died in a fierce gunbattle with authorities several hours after their commando-style assault on a gathering of Farook’s colleagues from San Bernardino, Calif., County’s health department Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015.