Identifying illegal seminaries: Yet another futile exercise

Instead of taking action against illegal madrassas, ICT administration launches another survey for the same purpose.


Azam Khan May 31, 2011

ISLAMABAD:


Instead of taking any action against the illegally-built seminaries, the Islamabad administration and other relevant government departments have decided to conduct another futile exercise -- to survey and identify more of such illegal constructions.


The Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Capital Development Authority (CDA), Islamabad police and the Auqaf Department have put their heads together to make a law to regulate the mashrooming of madrassas (seminaries) in the federal capital.

The decision was taken at a high-level meeting held on Monday to discuss this thorny issue. The meeting was chaired by Deputy Commissioner Amir Ali Ahmad and attended by officials of ICT and CDA.

Earlier the interior ministry had also directed the CDA to conduct a survey of illegal seminaries popping up in the capital.

The official documents available with The Express Tribune show that at present there are around 305 seminaries functioning in the urban and rural areas of the capital. Out of these, half have been built illegally. Only 158 madrassas, including 139 for male and 19 for female students, are reguistered.

Currently, nine cases of unregistered seminaries are under-consideration for legalising them. The number of seminaries doubled during the last five years from 93 in 2006 to 158 in 2011. Similarly, 10 seminaries for females were functioning before 2007 and six more have been ‘legally’ added to the count in the last five years.

The total number of seminaries for male students in urban areas is 84 and 58 in rural areas. While number of seminaries for female students in urban centres is only six while 10 seminaries are catering to the female students in rural areas. The number of day scholars (maktabs), the children from the vicinity who only attend the classes to recite Quran after Asar prayer, is 101. The total number of students studying in these seminaries is 15,880. The age of 70 per cent students are upto 16 years and 30 per cent are from 16 to 25 years.

The number of unregistered seminaries in ICT is 37. Around 98 per cent of them belong to Deobandi school of thought, the official data reveals.

It has also been learnt that majority of the students enrolled with such unregistered seminaries come from remote areas of the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) and restive parts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The educational boards of all the five schools of thought signed an agreement with the Ministry of Interior, late in 2009, regarding registration of unregistered seminaries with Inter Madaris Board across the country.

The seminaries are also bound, under the same agreement, to modernise the standards of education as well as the syllabus to retain the dignity of such religious schools. However, all of these reforms including the issue of registration might not be addressed in the near future, an official of ICT said.

The said agreement was signed by the representatives of Tanzimul Madaris Ehle Sunnat, Wafaqul Madaris Arabia, Wafaqul Madaris Al-Salfia, Wafaqul Madaris Shia and Rabita Al-Madaris.

CDA had allotted the plots to the seminaries therefore it should also make a law to regulate them, another official of Islamabad administration said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31st, 2011.

COMMENTS (4)

Umayr Masud | 12 years ago | Reply I once pointed out an illegal madrassa sprouting up in F-10 to CDA , after a weeks time moulvis started visiting my home.. then came to my office .. These things cannot be stopped until the departments are cleansed themselves first.
Umar | 12 years ago | Reply This will continuing happening, this happens when state fails to provide adequate education. In our ISLAMIC republic if one wants to get religious education he/she has to go to a seminary. Why our government cannot increase current shameful percentage of budget allocation to education and provide quality religious and modern education through its own system. Instead of using force and confrontation it is wiser to deprive them of students by providing those students an alternate. Unfortunately by looking at current government run education system i do not see that happening any time soon.
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