ISLAMABAD, 1 August — Pakistan has exempted graduates of religious schools from a new electoral law that bars non-university graduates from running for general elections, in what critics have branded yet another concession to religious groups.
The Election Commission issued a ruling, carried in state-run media late Tuesday, stating that graduates of government-recognized religious schools, known as madrasas, will be considered eligible to contest general elections in October.
“For the purpose of forthcoming general elections the holders of the ‘Sanad Shahadatul Almiya Fill-Uloom-ul-Arabia Wal Islamia’ (certificates in Arabic and Islamic Studies)... shall be eligible to contest the forthcoming general elections,” the ruling said.
The certificates were “recognized as equivalent to MA Arabic Islamic Studies for teaching purposes by the University Grants Commission,” it said. The order overruled earlier objections by the state University Grants Commission (UGC) which said the madrasa alumni did not meet the criteria for graduation, the Nation daily reported. The UGC had said that graduates need to have completed English and Pakistan Studies, an UGC official told the paper. Anlaysts said the move was the latest government concession to the small but vocal religious clergy, coinciding with its decision to rewrite a draft law on modernizing religious schools after intensive opposition from clergy leaders.
The government also Tuesday decided to constitute a committee to fine-tune Madrasa Registration Ordinance, a draft law, and make it acceptable to religious institutions by amending it to suit them.
Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider told reporters that “not a single word is being changed” in the schools’ curricula.
“They are allowed to teach the same, whatever they have been imparting for the last 150 years.” The decision shows that the “government is buckling under pressure from religious extremists,” analyst and columnist Imtiaz Alam said. Alam disputed the equating of certificates from madrasas with degrees.
“Diplomas issued by madrasas cannot be termed degrees as such by international or national standards,” he said.
Analyst Naham Mushtaq, from the Brussels-based non-government think-tank International Crisis Group (ICG), said the move “will benefit the religious sector.”
“In effect, madrasas have been granted parity with the formal sector of education,” he said. Mushtaq co-authored a report released by ICG this week which accused the military government of being beholden to the religious groups for their support of its policies on India and Kashmir.
Analysts said this exemption suggests the government is succumbing to mounting pressure from the religious right.
“The government is buckling under pressure from religious extremists,” political analysts and columnist Imtiaz Alam said.
The law barring non-graduates from elections was issued by President Pervez Musharraf on June 22, and upheld by the Supreme Court on July 11. It sparked a massive uproar, with critics saying it eliminated more than 90 percent of the population of 145 million. The ruling also eliminated scores of former parliamentarians and several ex-ministers, including the leaders of pro-government parties.
The new ruling averts feared protests from religious parties, many of whose leaders, including Jamiat Ulema Islam chief Fazlur Rehman, would have been barred from running in the October polls.
