Religious Education

The Darul Uloom Haqqania campus is a sprawling labyrinth of ashen buildings where young men in black beards and white skullcaps spend their days and nights on hard concrete floors learning all 77,701 words of the Koran. Some people call it the University of Jihad. The fact that some of Haqqania's graduates go on to become Taliban fighters and suicide bombers isn't the school's concern, said Syed Yousef Shah, the head of the 3,000- student madrasa, or Islamic seminary.

Leaders of a Jewish seminary in Los Angeles are arguing against a proposal by its parent organization that could lead to the closure of the campus as part of a larger financial restructuring. The head of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion has raised the possibility of closing two of its three U.S. campuses. The three are in Los Angeles, Cincinnati and New York.