No regular meeting of madressah reforms committee
Islamabad: The madressah reforms committee constituted by the government after launching an education policy in September last year has not met on a regular basis because government officials or madressah representatives on the committee did not turn up at the meeting.
A senior government official said that over the past few months, the committee could not hold a single meeting largely because of Interior Minister Rehman Malik's preoccupation with security issues or his absence from the country and occasionally because of madressah representatives' foreign visits.
Under the new education policy, the interior division has been given the task of madressah reforms. Earlier, it was with the education ministry which did not achieve any result.
The official said there was a clear lack of interest on both sides; the government and office-bearers of the Ittihad-i-Tanzeemati Madaris Pakistan (ITMP), a representative body of five madressah boards.
ITMP's spokesperson Qari Mohammad Hanif Jalandhry, who heads the Wafaqul Madaris, is on a visit to the UK these days. Similarly, ITMP General Secretary Mufti Munib-ur-Rehman is on a visit to the Philippines.
"I can recall that since March a number of meetings of the madressah reforms committee were scheduled, only to be cancelled, because its members expressed their inability to attend on the given dates," the official said.
After 9/11, madressah reforms have been in the news, because of seminaries' alleged role in fanning religious extremism in the country. In 2001, Gen Pervez Musharraf promulgated an ordinance to set up the Pakistan Madressah Education Board in the country. However, the plan was shelved because representatives of the five madressah boards refused to operate under the board. The education ministry spent millions of rupees in the name of madressah reforms during 2001-2007, but eventually recommended closure of the project.
The PPP-led government decided in March 2008 to shift madressah reforms from the education ministry to interior division, and a formal decision in this regard was announced in September 2009 with the unveiling of the new education policy.
Since then Interior Minister Rehman Malik could hold only a couple of meetings of the committee which were for setting the agenda. However, it largely failed to initiate the long-awaited reforms, the official said.
The official said: "The project has only been parked in the interior ministry, as I don't see anything significant happening there".
On the other hand, the task of madressah reforms is getting far more challenging with an unprecedented increase in the overall enrolment of seminaries. Late last year, the ITMP which has over 20,000 registered madressahs, registered a 40 per cent increase in the number of their students.
Wafa-qul-Madaris Al-Arabia which belongs to the Deobandi school has over 12,000 seminaries with around 2.5 million students. Rabata-ul-Madaris Al-Islamia which is run by Jamaat-i-Islami has 632 madressahs on its list with 90,000 students. Wafa-qul-Madaris Alsalfia of the Ahl-e-Hadith school has 466 registered madressahs with a total enrolment of over 55,000. Tanzeem-ul-Madaris of the Brelvi school has over 6,000 registered seminaries and 120,000 students.
Wafa-qul-Madaris Ashia, a madressah board belonging to the Shia school has 507 madressahs with over 10,000 students. Dawn
