WASHINGTON, June 13: The Pakistani government has not followed through on pledges to regulate the madressahs, says a report published in the Washington Post on Sunday.
The proposed reforms include the teaching of secular subjects such as math and science and to control their funding, the report said. Several analysts told the newspaper that the government is reluctant to enforce the regulation because it wants to remain on good terms with Islamic political parties.
The parties, along with the army, constitute a vital part of the government's power base, even if it has little use for their ideology, the report said. Government officials, however, told the newspaper that most madressahs do not promote extremist violence.
They described them as an important part of Pakistan's social safety net, providing free schooling and often room and board for hundreds of thousands of people.
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told the Post: "If there are one or two rogue elements in any institution, it certainly doesn't seem prudent to close down the entire madressah. Such rogue elements can be found in any institution."
Mr Hayat rejected criticism of the government on regulating the madressahs, saying their curriculum was being modernized. The report said some madressahs had produced a large number of radicals as well.
It quoted a May 4 Dawn report saying that a number of students from the Jamiatul Uloom Islamiya madressah in Karachi are being held at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It said that students from this madressah had also been found involved in a number of violent acts in Pakistan and abroad. The founder of Harkat-ul-Mujahiddeen was a student of this madressah.
Another student is Maulana Masood Azhar and so was Maulana Azam Tariq, it said. It said Karachi police had traced the May 7 bombing of a mosque in Karachi to another former student, Qari Ghulam Murtaza.
