ISLAMABAD, 14 September 2005 — With thousands of madrasas refusing an order to register with authorities, Pakistani officials said yesterday they would seek to soothe clerics’ anger over what they see as discrimination.
President Pervez Musharraf, addressing concerns abroad that some madrasas were breeding grounds for terrorism, ordered the expulsion of foreign students in July, and said Islamic schools should register and account for their funding.
On Monday, a day after Musharraf left for New York to attend the UN General Assembly and meet US President George Bush and India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an alliance of madrasas threw down the gauntlet, saying schools would not register.
Mohammad Hanif Jallundri, a spokesman for Ittihad Tanzeemat Madaris Dinya Pakistan (Alliance of the Organizations of Religious Schools Pakistan), derided the order as “discriminatory”, complaining that private institutions and schools had been exempted from such scrutiny.
Vakil Ahmed Khan, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, said the government planned to invite the representatives of madrasas for talks later this week.
“We will try to remove their reservations. We hope we will find out some solution to this issue,” he told Reuters, stressing that as yet there were no plans to penalize madrasas that failed to comply. Last month authorities began distributing forms to madrasas seeking details on the number of teachers and students and information on where they got their money and how they spent it.
The forms also urged madrasas to refrain from teaching, including publishing literature that promotes militancy or sectarian hatred.
“We believe it is in the interest of the madrasas to fall under some regime so that their image is improved,” Khan said.
Pakistan saw a spectacular rise in madrasa numbers in the 1980s when the schools, backed by funding from the West and Arab countries, became recruiting grounds for volunteers fighting Soviet forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Some madrasas later supplied recruits for the Taliban regime, which was toppled by US-led forces in late 2001 for sheltering Al-Qaeda militants.
Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, launched a drive in 2003 to reform madrasas — but the effort faltered because of opposition from hard-line groups.
