Asia Times: India/Pakistan


	June 28, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Cynics doubt law to reform Pakistani religious schools
By Nadeem Iqbal

ISLAMABAD - President General Pervez Musharraf's grand plan to ensure that Pakistan's 8,000 religious madrasah system schools will not be used to propagate extremism is being met with pessimism.

Although many observers say it is a step in the right direction, they also say that the legal measures drawn up to see the plan through are rather weak and unlikely to help bring in the desired results.

But there are a few who are still willing to wait and see what happens once the plan is put in effect, which officials say will be a week from now.

Shortly after the rules under a reform plan first announced earlier this year were announced last week, the English-language daily Dawn commented, "These regulatory rules have come at a time when serious efforts are being made to check the growth of militancy and sectarianism, which have often been linked to certain madrasah.

"The latter," it added, "could not be brought under scrutiny because of the absence of a governing mechanism and a competent authority to regulate and oversee the working of the madrasah system. That deficiency has now been removed."

On June 20, the cabinet gave the green light to a three-year program to reform madrasah schools, which teach some 1.7 million students, some of whom are widely believed to have been part of the jihadist network operating in Afghanistan and Indian-controlled Kashmir. This means in part making students take subjects other than those connected with religion.

In addition, the cabinet approved a new law stipulating that anyone teaching militancy or sectarian hatred in religious schools could be face two years of rigorous punishment.

The madrasah registration ordinance, however, actually seeks to have every religious school to be registered with an education board that would monitor, among other things, the schools' sources of funding. The new law also bars a religious school from admitting a foreign student or hiring a foreign teacher without first securing a no-objection certificate from the government.

Almost on reflex, the Muttahida Majlis-I-Amal, a coalition of about a dozen religious parties, rejected the new law, dubbing it "foreign-sponsored". It noted that the US$25 million for the program to "reform" madrasah students would be coming mostly from the European Union and the United States.

The program and the new madrasah law are also seen as part of Pakistan's efforts to comply with international pressure to support the United Nations Security Council Counter Terrorism Resolution 1373, which was passed several days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The EU in particular has been putting pressure on Islamabad to "undo" the jihadist network believed to be based in the country, and which Delhi insists has been sponsoring violent activities in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

In a January report regarding its anti-terrorism efforts, Islamabad said it had already tightened the security on its long, porous borders as well as at its airports. It also said the bank accounts of those it believed to be involved in terrorist activities had been frozen. Islamabad reported that it was working on plans to curb money-laundering and to bring religious schools in the mainstream of the education system.

Interestingly enough, although that report elicited sharp reactions from local fundamentalists, these were restricted only to biting media statements and failed to result in the usual street protests. The recent announcement of the new law on the madrasah, meanwhile, has prompted another round of scathing remarks from religious leaders and groups.

Munawar Hassan, general secretary of the leading religious party Jamat-i-Islami, fumes that the decision to register schools was made on the dictates of Washington.

In truth, many religious leaders are irked by the fact that the new laws restrict them from eliciting funds from foreign - mainly Muslim - countries or wealthy individuals.

Jamiat Ulmai Islam chief Maulana Fazalur Rehman wonders aloud why - if there is no restriction on secular nongovernment organizations getting aid from Western countries - should aid received by madrasah from Muslim countries be restricted and put under strict government scrutiny? Some observers, however, say that many students of Rehman's schools somehow wound up as members of the Taliban.

In the meantime, how Islamabad plans to persuade the madrasah to register, thereby signaling their willingness to be part of the change process, remains to be seen.

Najum Mushtaq, an analyst working with International Crisis Group, said the most outstanding feature of the madrasah ordinance is its prescriptive rather than mandatory nature, aimed at introducing changes as smoothly as possible.

"The ordinance seeks voluntary registration," says Mushtaq, who has just completed a study on the madrasah system. "Changes in the curricula and new procedures of financial transparency will come into force after that."

He adds that attempts by the late military dictator Zia ul-Haq to regulate the madrasah system in early 1980s failed because of stiff opposition from the clergy, "which was unwilling to compromise its autonomous financial and administrative status".

Mushtaq also notes that Religious Affairs Minister Mehmood Ahmed Ghazi himself had described the new law as a "continuation of the process" started by Zia. But, Mushtaq comments, Ghazi failed to say how the clergy would be persuaded to comply by the law this time when a general with modernist leanings calls the shots.

Mushtaq explains that the main difference between Zia's and Musharraf's reforms is that the former wanted to make Pakistan a theocratic state, so while upgrading the standards of religious schools, he also wanted to introduce religious subjects in secular schools. Yet even then, Mushtaq says, the clergy resisted the government interference in the schools.

He says Musharraf may be up against even greater resistance, since he is doing things in reverse, and wants to introduce secular subjects in the religious schools.

Islamic University lecturer Aziz ur-Rehman says that among the law's complications is the fact that education in a religious school lasts about eight years.

"In this short duration, the students who mainly come from poor families barely become prolific in reading and writing. They are trained to lead rituals in mosques. The question remains, at what level should they be taught the new subjects, and could they also understand them?" ur-Rehman says.

(Inter Press Service)