The world knows the "Taliban" as armed fighters who have unleashed a wave of violence in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, including devastating suicide bomb attacks by them and their allies, the most recent on the luxurious Marriott Hotel in high-security Islamabad last week.But not all taliban wield guns. In seminaries scattered over the restive, northern parts of Pakistan, taliban - an Arabic-based word that means student in Pashto, the language of Pakistan's Pakhtoons and Afghanistan's Pashtuns - study the Koran and swear by peace.
"Yes. I'm proud to be a talib. Because being a talib I am able to study Koran and teach it to others," says Rahimdad, 21, from the Darul Uloom Islamia seminary in Khairabad village of Mardan district, 120 kilometers north of this border city, when asked if he was a talib.