PESHAWAR, Jan 14: The provincial Auqaf Department, which is supposed to deal with religious affairs, having no record of the unregistered seminaries and mosques in the province.

Information collected by Dawn revealed that only 1,100 Madaris have been registered in the province where more than 150,000 students are getting religious education.

However, the number of unregistered Madaris is not known, but presumably they are being run in hundreds in view of their mushroom growth in southern parts of the province and adjoining tribal areas, specially in South and North Waziristan Agencies.

The Deo Bandis, Barelvis, Ahl-i-Hadith and Shias are running their own Madaris in the country under their respective boards. At present roughly 100,0000 students are enrolled in 10,000 Madaris.

Moreover, Jamaat-i-Islami is also running its own seminaries in various parts of the country where science subjects and religious education are taught side by side.

The official sources said that after the Taliban set up their government some of the Pakistan-based Madaris established their branches inside Afghanistan and in refugee camps.

The sources said that Middle East-based NGOs and Arab philanthropists had been directly financing these Madaris and constructed mosques in urban and rural areas of the province.

A senior official of the provincial Auqaf department said that the concerned department had no record of newly constructed mosques and unregistered Madaris, adding none of the foreign NGOs or individual had sought government approval for the construction of mosques or Madaris. In principle, the Auqaf Department should have to maintain record of the mosques and seminaries, but the government had vested the task with the secret agencies, he informed.

Provincial minister for Auqaf and Religious Affairs, Qari Ruhullah Madni, said that all over the world, except Pakistan, mosques were registered with the religious affairs ministries, while in our country Auqaf Department was totally bypassed. One of the reasons, he said, was that the government had no financial resources to manage the affairs of mosques and Madaris.

The federal ministry of religious affairs had developed a curriculum for the proposed model Madaris which would be introduced shortly in all these seminaries, managed by the religio-political organizations and other sectarian groups.

In the new curriculum, modern subjects like economics, English, history, computer, general science, philosophy and politics have been made compulsory to be taught in these seminaries.

The minister said that many Madaris have agreed in principle to introduce new curriculum, but it would take time, for lack of resources.