After passage of the 18th amendment, the federal government in Islamabad has washed its hands of the subject of `Islamic education`; the subject falls within the purview of the four provinces of the country; whether the secular dispensation in the Talibanised North-West Frontier Province, now called   Khyber Pakhtunkhwa nor the politically powerful Punjab province  have shown any inclination to come to grips with the madressah phenomenon which is at the root cause  religious violence that has been rocking the land of the pure. The killing of 13 Shia Muslims near Quetta on Oct 4, while on their way to their holy sites in Iran is the latest grim reminder of how intolerant Pakistan has become when it comes to religious freedom. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a highly respected NGO, estimates that 418 people were killed in various attacks on Muslim sects, including 211 in suicide bombing in 2010.

The Musharraf government negotiated the madressah reforms with Itehad Tanzeemat-i-Madaris Pakistan (ITMP) but failed to achieve any tangible results. The Zardari government is more or less pursuing the same line with the very same ITMP, and the results are no different either.  

As Dawn report highlights the dichotomy is there to see clearly. One the one hand the government talks about establishment of a central regulatory authority to oversee working of all five Wafaqs, which manage seminaries representing different schools of thoughts. At the same time, it claims helplessness under the 18th amendment while professing commitment to madressah reforms aimed at ‘rationalization of the syllabus’ and their ‘mainstreaming’. More importantly, rather significantly enough, the Zardari government in 2009 transferred the project of madressah reforms from the education ministry to the interior ministry led by Rehman Malik.  And Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khurshid Shah, who is the government’s interface with ITMP, is busy as President Zardari’s trouble shooter as the PPP government is hurtling from one crisis to another with each ally demanding their own pound of political flesh.

The number of registered religious schools in Pakistan stands at 10,973, according to data available up to August 2011 under the Madressah Registration Ordinance, 2005, according to the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khurshid Shah. This number is in addition to 8,749 institutions which had been registered prior to the promulgation of the ordinance. “The madressah registration is a continuous process and is making good progress’, he told the National Assembly (Parliament) on Oct 17, 2011.

Success of Madressah reform hinges on two factors – syllabus and integration with the mainstream school education.  On both counts, the minister does not hold out any hope, going by his statement in the National Assembly.  The ITMP insisted on extension of recognition of its five Wafaqs/Tanzeemat as fully-fledged boards. The government conceded the demand with the caveat that the central regulatory authority on Madrassas would oversee their functioning as well those affiliated with them. When the government, political parties and the army have conceded space to religious groups, the regulator will have to be content with either being a post-man or yes-man.  What else he can ever be? Any move to tinker with the system will invite charge of being blasphemy. Nothing less. For the record (read to satisfy the ever generous Yankee Samaritans) however, the issue was remitted to a committee consisting of two government nominees and two representatives of the ITMP in October 2010.  And there it is resting.

The ITMP, after negotiation with the government, agreed to introduce compulsory contemporary subjects at tenth class (Matric) and 12th class (Intermediate) levels.  This is a great concession on their part, no doubt, but it doesn’t address the much larger question of ‘mainstreaming and dovetailing’ madressah teaching with the existing educational system.

If Pakistan is to emerge out of the vortex of religious strife, it must sanitize its school text books and make them compulsory across all streams of school education.  That goal doesn’t appear like a spec in the sky.  What is visible, however, is full throated condemnation every time the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) carries out a massacre and fortifies its position as the ‘Good Muslims’. As a reader pointed out in Dawn recently, terming such killings as ‘sectarian’ violence is a joke. It’s nothing but genocide of Shia Muslims, who constitute 22 percent of the population of Pakistan.  Those who think that US withdrawal from Afghanistan is the only way to end terrorism in Pakistan are living in fool’s paradise. All those who are supporting morally and financially the killers of innocent Muslims on the ground they are not Sunnis, are part of the problem Pakistan, and the country has come the antithesis of all that Islam stands for