'We want to help people know the Koran and to promote flexibility, and there are a lot of problems in our society - social, political, all,' one student, Halima Kachkach, 29, explains. With her is Zakia Haddad, who has a BA in English from the University of Fez, where her family live. Her father is a retired shopkeeper, her mother a housewife, and she is one of six children. After university she worked as an administrative assistant on a news-paper, taught in a school and studied in a Koranic school, where it took her five and a half years to learn the Koran by heart. For her interview at the Dar al-Hadith al-Hassania, she was asked to recite passages aloud, with examiners checking for pronunciation, elongation, word stress and intonation. All students live outside the seminary, so Haddad now lodges with her sister in Rabat.