Ulema decry ‘vilification drive’ against seminaries
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LAHORE: The Tanzeemat-i-Madarisul Islamia (TMI), the central body of the religious educational institutions, has asked the government to stop a campaign against religious educational institutions under the cover of the Peshawar tragedy.
A meeting of the TMI clerics presided over by Jamaat-i-Islami chief Sirajul Haq was held at Mansoora here on Saturday and declared that the seminary students were not only loyal to Pakistan but were also ready to lay down their lives for the country.
A declaration unanimously adopted at the meeting termed the Peshawar terrorist attack and bloodletting of innocent citizens a mischief of the last degree and noted that Islam did not permit the killing of innocent people, women, minors and the elderly even during the war.
The meeting fully supported the unanimous plan adopted by the political parties and the armed forces for wiping out terrorism and said this was the need of the hour for the internal security of the country and for the restoration of peace and stability.
The meeting said seminaries had nothing to do with terrorism or extremism in the country. Those charged with terrorism or sentenced by the courts on the charges of terrorism, only a few related to the seminaries.
It said: “The responsibility of any terrorist act of an individual having past link with a seminary cannot be placed on the seminaries in general.”
It also demanded that the reference made to the seminaries in the National Action Plan and the official advertisement be dropped.
It demanded that the names of the seminaries should also be included in the list of the educational institutions receiving government grants.
Sirajul Haq said a terrorist had no religion but the propaganda against seminaries was in fact the agenda of the West and the US to keep the humanity away from Islam. “We make it clear that any action against the mosques and the madrressahs under the cover of terrorism will not be allowed,” he said.
TMI President Mufti Munibur Rahman, Maulana Qari Muhammad Hanif Jaulandhri, Maulana Yaseen Zafar, Maulana Abdul Mustafa Hazarvi, Maulana Ghulam Muhammad Sialvi and Maulana Abdul Malik also attended the meeting.
Published in Dawn, January 4th, 2015
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