July 09, 2007	Monday	Jamadi-us-Sani 23, 1428

ISLAMABAD, July 8: With the Lal Masjid saga gripping the attention of the whole world media, the importance of madressah reforms in the country has become even more significant whereby the students of religious seminaries could be imparted modern education.

If the government fails to introduce the much talked about madressah reforms now, there would be more Lal Masjid-like confrontations in future, where clerics would attempt to influence the government to secure their vested interests.

At present, except a few hundreds, majority of the 13,000 religious seminaries exclusively provide religious education to their students.

Due to their complete seclusion from the rest of society throughout the period they spend at a certain religious school, the seminaries’ students find it difficult to adjust themselves with the outside world after graduation.

Similarly, due to their peculiar nature of training, they restrict their social life to the precincts of a mosque/madressah and cannot become part of the mainstream life.

Hence, the policy makers have to put their heads together to come up with such reforms through which the madressah students could be able to compete with their counterparts of regular schools. At present, the madressah graduates have only one job in their hand which is to be a prayer leader.

The five-year multi-billion Madressah Reforms project, which was launched in 2002-03, completed its implementation period on June 30. However, it failed to achieve its objective of bringing the seminaries at par with the regular school system of the country.

In a recent meeting, the National Security Council headed by President General Pervez Musharraf decided to revise the PC-I of the madressah reforms and directed the officials concerned to put the project on hold till then.

According to an official document, various reasons have been cited for the failure of the project. It says federal education minister Javed Ashraf Qazi has largely blamed the religious affairs ministry for the failure of the project, saying the ministry could not be entrusted with the job in future as it was biased in providing funds to madressahs.

Earlier, the ministry of education was in charge of the project, and some officials believe that under the revised PC-I, the religious affairs division should be tasked with the job as it has got more control on madressahs due to its coordination with the Wafaqul Madaris. The Wafaqul Madaris controls five different madressah boards representing seminaries of different sects.

Moreover, according to the document, minister for religious affairs Ijazul Haq never extended his full cooperation to the project during the last five years, as he wanted transfer of complete control over the project from the education ministry.

However, the document says, the ministry of religious affairs does not have administrative set-up in the provinces. It had already failed to implement the Madressah Board Act 2001 to facilitate the seminaries and could not streamline 105 madressahs which were affiliated with the ministry at that time. Therefore, it’s not possible for the religious affairs ministry to execute such an important project.

Officials in the Planning Commission also say majority of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) leaders led by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain do not like the project and would never bother about its progress. The officials substantiate their argument by saying that despite serious efforts made by the education minister, the project has so far failed to move forward. Mr Qazi is considered one of the close aides of General Musharraf and carries good amount of influence in the federal cabinet.

On the instruction of President Musharraf, the Rs6 billion project was prepared by the education ministry in consultation with the ministry of religious affairs. It was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) in 2002-03.

The project aimed at upgrading 8,000 madressahs of the five boards. However, during the last five years the government has only been able to purse around 500 of them to get benefit from it. According to official documents, a sum of Rs2,248 million was released between financial years 2002-03 and 2006-07, out of which only Rs215 has been utilised.

The main objective of the project was to bridge the gap between madressah education and the formal education system of the country by introducing formal subjects from primary to intermediate level.

A significant amount of trust deficit between the government and the five boards was also quoted as one of the major hurdles in the project’s failure. They (Wafaq) had been arguing that in the name of reforms, the government was planning to eventually take over the seminaries.

It’s worth mentioning that top US government officials have always linked growing religious extremism in the country with the madressah education and have asked the government to bring them at par with its regular education system.

Slow verification of madressahs by the interior division also adversely affected the implementation of the project. The Punjab government had refused to set up a provincial implementation unit due to its differences with the federal project implementation unit of the madressah reforms programme over administrative issues. Hence, the province, which has the maximum number of religious schools, could not take the initiative forward. Largely, provincial governments remained non-serious in the project’s implementation.

According to the national education census, which the ministry of education unveiled last year, Punjab took the lead with 5,459 madressahs followed by NWFP with 2,843; Sindh, 1,935; Federally Administrated Northern Areas (FANA), 1,193; Balochistan 769; AJK 586; Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (Fata), 135, and Islamabad capital territory, 77 seminaries. At present, over 1.5 million students are getting religious education in the 13,000 madressahs in the country.