Mainstreaming madrassas: Call for registration of seminaries with education departments

Trust-deficit between govt, madrassas hindering reform, says scholar.

Pakistan Ulema Council (PUC) Chairperson Maulana Tahir Ashrafi has proposed registration of religious seminaries with the provincial education departments.

Speaking at a seminar on “Just and Sustainable Peace in Pakistan” organised by Peace Education and Development (Pead) Foundation, the religious scholar blamed the government for back-pedalling on the issue of madrassa reform.

Ashrafi suggested that the government should constitute a board comprising of representatives from all the sects as well as educationists and designate it as the exam-administering and degree-awarding body for all the seminaries in the country.

Commenting on religious extremism, the scholar said that only a few seminaries getting foreign funding were a cause of the problem. He said that it was wrong to paint all madrassas with the same brush.

Scholar and former Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) chairman Dr Khalid Masud also identified trust deficit between madrassas and the government as the main hurdle to progress on the issue of reforms.

He said that madrassas must review their curricula to meet the latest standards of education.

Dr A. H. Nayyar said that the improvement in literacy rate was not reflected on the ground.

He pointed at lack of clarity on the part of the state and the decision-makers in arriving at a consensus on what the education system should aim to achieve, as the primary problem.

The physicist and peace activists said that the national curriculum taught in public schools discriminated against minorities as non-Muslim students had no option but to study Islamiyat (Islamic studies).

Jennifer Jag Jivan of the Christian Study Centre highlighted systemic, social and constitutional discriminations that exist against minorities and called for affirmative action on behalf of the state.

She lamented that along with a history of incidents of mob violence against Christians, there was an equally disappointing and discouraging history of state inaction.

Human rights activist Tahira Abdullah called for legislation to ensure respect for all faiths and sects in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2015.