ISLAMABAD, Sept 13: With thousands of Madressahs refusing to get registered, officials at the religious ministry said on Tuesday they would seek to soothe clerics’ anger over what they see as discrimination.

President Pervez Musharraf, addressing concerns abroad that some Madressahs were breeding grounds for terrorism, had ordered expulsion of foreign students in July, and said Islamic schools should register and account for their funding.

On Monday, a day after Musharraf left for New York to attend the UN General Assembly and meet US President George Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an alliance of Madressahs threw down the gauntlet, saying schools would not register.

Maulana Mohammad Hanif Jallundri, a spokesman for Ittihad i Tanzeemat Madaris i Dinya Pakistan (Alliance of the Organisations of Religious Schools of Pakistan), derided the order as “discriminatory”, complaining that private institutions and schools had been exempted from such scrutiny.

Vakil Ahmed Khan, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Religious Affairs, said the government planned to invite the representatives of Madressahs for talks later this week.

“We will try to remove their reservations. We hope we will find out some solution to this issue,” he said, stressing that as yet there were no plans to penalise Madressahs that failed to comply.

Last month authorities began distributing forms to Madressahs seeking details on the number of teachers and students and information on where they got their money and how they spent it.

The forms also urged Madressahs to refrain from teaching or publishing literature that promotes militancy or sectarian hatred.

“We believe it is in the interest of the Madressahs to fall under some regime so that their image is improved,” Khan said.

The country saw a spectacular rise in Madressah numbers in the 1980s when the schools, backed by funding from the West and Arab countries, became recruiting grounds for Islamic volunteers fighting Soviet forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Some Madressahs later supplied recruits for the Taliban regime, which was toppled by US-led forces in late 2001 for sheltering al Qaeda militants.

Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, launched a drive in 2003 to reform Madressahs— but the effort faltered because of opposition from hard-line Islamist groups.

Revelations that three of the four bombers in the July 7 attacks on London were Muslims of Pakistani origin, and that at least one of them was believed to have visited Madressahs in Pakistan, turned an unwanted spotlight back on the country’s religious schools.—Reuters