Through a new $255 million reform package, the Pakistani government is trying to do something that has never been done before: wrest control of the country’s 8,000 religious schools from the mullahs.
The clerics, obviously, have pledged to resist.
The Muslim religious schools, known as madrassas, are blamed for spreading intolerance and hatred against the West. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in the war against terror, has pledged not to allow this to continue.
Previous attempts to bring the madrassas under the government’s control have failed, but the Musharraf government says it will succeed.
“We are not looking to confront the [religious scholars], we want a constructive engagement,” says Information Minister Shaikh Rashid.
But Maulana Fazlur Rahman, who leads the country’s largest religious political alliance — the MMA or Muttahid Majlis-e-Amal — says what the government really wants is to control the madrassas. “We will not let that happen — never.”
There are thousands of madrassas in Pakistan, and along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Through these madrassas, religious leaders such as Mr. Rahman exert enormous influence over hundreds of thousands of madrassa students and often use them to promote their brand of violent politics.
The madrassas produce a good volunteer force for rallies, strikes and protests that may include stoning cars, setting fire to buildings and forcing people to close their businesses.
To take away this tremendous disruptive power from the mullahs, the three-year reform plan aims at expanding the job market for the madrassa graduates who are currently forced to look for jobs in religious institutions alone, because the education they have gotten is so poor.
The new plan hopes to open up other opportunities for the graduates by bridging “the existing gulf between the mainstream formal education system and the traditional religious schools by introducing a new, integrated curriculum,” says a policy brief distributed by the Pakistan Embassy in Washington.
The new system introduces such modern subjects as English, mathematics, Pakistan studies, social studies, and general sciences to the madrassas from a primary to a secondary level.
At the intermediate level, English, economics, Pakistan studies and computer technology will be made an integral part of the curriculum.
Currently madrassas teach only the Koran, and elementary Arabic and Urdu.
“The new program will reach some 800,000 students in 8,000 madrassas across the country,” says the brief.
Under the project, the government says it will train some 28,000 teachers to improve their knowledge of modern subjects and teaching methods. It hopes the plan will help integrate madrassa students into the social mainstream and improve their prospects for employment.
The brief says the government has increased allocation of funds in the 2003-04 budget for universal primary education and literacy, which, it hopes, will allow it to strengthen the existing education system and open new schools.
“This will provide students with an alternative to the madrassas,” says the brief, supporting the view many parents are forced to send their children to madrassas because there are no alternative schools available.
Under the provisions of the 2001 madrassa Education Board Ordinance, three model madrassas were established in Karachi, Sukkur, and Islamabad last year.
The Islamabad school was designed exclusively for girls. These schools are following the new curricula devised to achieve the proposed integration of the madrassa and regular school systems.
Several madrassas have already been registered, and the government is offering incentives — including the payment of salaries for teachers of newly introduced subjects and financial assistance for the establishment of science and computer laboratories — to encourage other schools to do the same.
To ensure proper administration of the program, the government also is introducing a monitoring and evaluation system.
Madrassas will be required to report to the government to ensure facilities provided are properly used, the brief says.
The issue is a controversial one. Critics of the madrassa system believe it has become a breeding ground for Islamist militants all over the world.
Until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the schools were the only source of education for the poor.
Most madrassas are two-room ramshackle huts with tin roofs and run usually on alms provided by the affluent members of Pakistani society.
Besides being free, the madrassas provide two meals a day, and two sets of clothes and a pair of shoes every year.
Larger madrassas, however, underwent a huge change after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when policy planners in Islamabad, Saudi Arabia and Washington realized the schools could provide good foot soldiers to fight the Russians.
In the 1980s, madrassas received millions of dollars in aid from Western and rich Arab nations, and some of them blossomed into huge complexes.
Teachers at the schools, earlier too poor to buy bicycles, were seen driving expensive cars and in the company of armed bodyguards.
They got a further boost in the mid-1990s, when the madrassa-educated Taliban took control of 90 percent of neighboring Afghanistan.
Madrassas provided the Taliban with volunteers to fight their wars against other Afghan warlords, giving the internationally isolated government moral support.
The schools also developed links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network when the Saudi exile shifted his base of operations to Afghanistan and allied with the Taliban.
After the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington — blamed on al Qaeda — Pakistan dumped its former Taliban allies and joined the U.S.-led war against terrorism.
Washington and other Western allies increased pressure on Islamabad to reform the madrassa system of education, saying it produced religious fanatics.
Last year, Pakistan formed several groups to consider various proposals to reform the system and came up with the plan that was announced in Washington recently.
“The program is well-meaning but ignores the political dimensions of this issue,” says Rashid Khalid, who teaches politics at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University.
“There’s no denying that most madrassa students would like the opportunity to work as lawyers, engineers and software developers. But is it what the mullahs who run the madrassas want, too?” asks Mr. Khalid.
Mr. Khalid and other critics point out that a properly educated madrassa graduate will be lost to the mullahs as soon as he is absorbed in the mainstream job market.
“He will not be there to close down shops and throw stones at cars in a strike. Why should the mullah support such reforms?” asks Mr. Khalid.
So far the Pakistani government has not offered an answer to this question.
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