Clues on devout Malik’s turn to California violence

She returned to Pakistan in 2006 and studied pharmaceutical science at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan between 2007 and 2013, according to intelligence officials.

The statement said that Tashfeen Malik remained enrolled at Al-Huda International’s Multan branch for a brief period between 2013 and 2014.

Still, in the turbulence of that moment, and in the broader generational tensions stemming from Pakistani families who, like Malik’s, go to Saudi Arabia for opportunity and return practising a more conservative brand of Islam, there are clues to the cultural and religious way stations of her apparent transformation.

While Hashmi has been criticized for being very conservative, her schools, however, have no known links to extremists.

Al-Huda’s spokeswoman Farrukh Chaudhry says she can not confirm whether Malik studied there until she goes through the records because “we have thousands of students”.

An administration official at the academy in Multan said he could neither confirm nor deny that Malik had studied there, and said he would discuss the issue with management.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, Tashfeen Malik pledged her allegiance to ISIS shortly before she and her husband, Syed Farook, opened fire at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.

“She told us that she was going to get married in two months, and after that she will leave for America”.

Hashmi, who has a doctorate in Islamic studies from the University of Glasgow in Scotland, said in a 2010 interview that Al Huda is “a kind of women’s empowerment program”.

India has asked Saudi Arabia for travel details of Tashfeen Malik, the Pakistani woman suspect in the California mass shooting, after Saudi authorities claimed that she had travelled to India in 2013. Former classmate Afsheen Butt said Malik showed drastic changes after a trip to Saudi Arabia in late 2008 or early 2009, and distributed Islamic religious literature.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into whether the mother of one of the San Bernardino attackers knew anything about the shooting in advance.

“One of the teachers at the seminary, Aalia Qamar, said Malik attended classes regularly, and introduced three or four of her friends to the school”.

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. He said he had no record of Ms. Malik having ever entered the kingdom.

Some media reports say she lives in Canada.

A male classmate said a “rigid environment” in the department might have made her cautious as teachers used to discourage intimacy between men and women.

Tariq Masood, regional police officer for Multan, confirmed police had “taken action” after university authorities requested that they intervened, but he declined to give more details.

Farzana Hassan, a liberal Muslim who is on the board of directors with the Muslim Canadian Congress, recalls attending one of Hashmi’s lectures out of curiosity and said she heard a “very fundamentalist brand of Islam”, which includes condoning polygamy and the segregation of women, among other things.

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”.