KARACHI: Leaders of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) on Thursday staged a rally to protest against what they called a move to ban madressahs in Sindh and said they would establish seminaries at the Bilawal House and the Sindh chief minister’s home in Khairpur “if needed”.

A large number of people — most of them belonging to the seminaries of Karachi — gathered near the Gurumandir roundabout, walked for a few furlongs and staged a demonstration. The organisers alleged that the government did not allow them to march towards the Tibet Centre, where most political and religious parties often hold their rallies.

The speakers threatened the government of grave consequences in their speeches, prompting the participants in the rally to chant slogans. They claimed that the country was in the hands of “secular rulers who acted at the behest of their Jewish masters”.

Maulana Ataur Rehman, a JUI-F leader and younger brother of the party’s chief, said the Sindh government’s plans would never materialise as such plans had been envisaged in the past as well and thwarted.

He asked the Sindh government to review its plans and claimed that what the government and its provincial assembly were doing was against Islam and the 1973 constitution.

“The government is saying it will ban the madressahs which do not get registered. I declare here before the government implements its agenda, we’ll end the government’s own registration,” the leader warned.

He hinted at the street power of the hundreds of thousands of madressah students in Karachi and in the rest of Sindh and warned that they were capable of making “the world shrink for the rulers”.

“Don’t push us to the wall; otherwise you’ll be the final victims of the fallout,” he said. “Don’t underestimate us, we are a big force among the religious parties.”

Sindh JUI-F leader Khalid Mehmood Soomro said the world’s first madressah and mosque was built by the Prophet (PBUH) himself and that institutions were “meant to spread love and tranquillity and not the hatred as was being propagated”.

He said there had been bloody battles reported in schools and colleges but not a single such incident had been reported in a madressah.

He accused the US of dictating the government to ban madressahs in Pakistan and added that no one since the British Raj had succeeded in their designs against seminaries.