Pakistan - Madrassa reform

It is nearly one year since the National Action Plan mandated madrassa reforms. Unfortunately, the government has failed to meet its objectives. The numbers are stark: Pakistan currently has 22,000 registered madrassas, with a total of 1.5 million students enrolled. Estimates put unregistered madrassas as high as another 15,000. The vast majority of these madrassas fall outside government control. While not all madrassas can be said to propagate a fierce polemic, it is well established that a substantial number have become recruitment centres for terrorist organisations.

Where some action has been taken against such errant madrassas, it has been left woefully incomplete. According to the Punjab Bureau of Statistics, the provincial government has shut down75 percent of mosque schools by over the last 10 years. This was done in an effort to encourage attendance in formal educational institutions, yet instead of increasing the number of government schools to accommodate such displaced students, the government slashed the number of government schools by five percent. This action simply deprives students of one kind of inadequate, even dangerousschooling without offering any better alternative. It also fails to recognise the fact that one of the attractions of mosque schools or madrassasis board, lodging and the rudiments of religious educationfor the children of poor families. If the state is unable to compete with these facilities, at least it should create a regime that monitors the curricula, finances, etc, of madrassas in a transparent manner to ensure they do not act as conveyor belts for terrorism. In addition, the state must broaden their curriculum to include modern education that prepares students as useful contributors to society in diverse fields, not just as mullahs (or terrorists).

Recent police investigations into Punjab’s seminaries are welcome albeit overdue. A total of 293 madrassas were found to have links to terrorism, resulting in the arrest of activists from a myriad of terrorist organisations, including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and Sipah-e-Muhammad.Such madrassas are schooling young people with violent teachings and radicalised literature; it is not difficult to see the impact in the growth of extremism, fanaticism and terrorism.In the last 14 years, we have lost over 65,000 lives to sectarian and religiously motivated violence — an incalculable tragedy that has darkened our society’s horizon and will continue to do so unless and until comprehensive and decisive action to break the nexus between madrassa education and terrorism is taken.