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ICRD is working with madrassah leaders in the North West Frontier Province to reform these training centers of Islamic militancy. By appealing to the schools' centuries-long tradition of education and scholarship, Johnston hopes to add mathematics, science, and literature to their curricula. And he hopes to inspire critical thinking.

Currently the madrassahs teach Islam by requiring students to memorize the Qur'an. "But they don't have any idea what it says," Johnston says. "They're memorizing in Arabic. Their language is Urdu." When local militants come along and "misappropriate a little scripture … these kids are easy prey. They've got no ability to question, no ability to challenge."

ICRD isn't the first group to address the madrassahs, but Johnston is tapping into the desire of leaders and their students to be, first and foremost, good Muslims. "They don't trust the West, and they don't trust Pakistan's government," says Azhar Hussain, ICRD's vice president for preventive diplomacy and a Muslim native of Pakistan. Instead of insisting, as the government and British colonial policy did, that the madrassahs expand their curricula, Hussain first educated leaders on their schools' illustrious history. "That opened the door. As soon as self-criticism began, we could talk about moving forward."

So far, 2,000 teachers have been trained, and ICRD is enlisting Pakistani universities to help because the demand is overwhelming. But Hussain, who once attended a madrassah, says that while many schools are eager to improve, many educators don't know the subjects they're trying to teach, and students might walk away in frustration. "It will be hard to bring them back," Hussain says.

But by expanding the curriculum and promoting critical thinking, Johnston expects ICRD will eventually counter the forces that create militants.

Johnston doesn't approach his work with Naïveté, however. After his Navy service, he worked in the office of emergency preparedness for the Nixon White House, reporting on occasion to Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Johnston has never had the luxury of speaking in platitudes.

Seiple says Johnston "tries to walk the ground in the cold light of day," with the realism of a hard-nosed diplomat. After his work in the White House, Johnston taught international security at Harvard and then ran the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the respected foreign-relations think tank in Washington, D.C.

At CSIS, Johnston began investigating how religion could play a role in resolving intractable conflict. He was inspired by relationships built through the National Prayer Breakfast. In his book (edited with Cynthia Sampson) Religion, the Missing Dimension of Statecraft, Johnston tells the story of how members of the U.S. government worked outside official channels to avert war between Kenya and Somalia.

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September 2008, Vol. 52, No. 9