PESHAWAR, Aug 9: Seminaries have awarded degrees to 228,021 students, including foreigners, over the past 10 years, while 223,990 students were studying in religious institutions in the NWFP, official data revealed.
According to data collected by provincial security agencies, 1,761 institutions are imparting Islamic education to Pakistani and foreign students, including Afghans.
Sources said that a total of 849 registered and 1,034 unregistered madressahs were functioning in the province.
However, a senior official in the labour and industrial department, said that so far 1,823 seminaries had been registered in the province. He added that 1,433 madressahs had been registered before the government banned the registration of new seminaries in 1994. Since the lifting of the ban on registration in February this year, 390 more madressahs have been registered.
On a query about the difference in the list of madressahs prepared by the security agencies and the department responsible to register seminaries, he said that a lot of madressahs had stopped providing Islamic education but did not inform them.
“He cannot deny the list of madressahs prepared by the provincial security agencies,” he maintained.
He said that approximately 1,000 registered religious schools were providing education to the students in the NWFP. However, he did not elaborate about the unregistered madressahs in the province.
The security agencies, which have prepared the record and handed it over to the federal agencies recently, said that 1,761 registered and unregistered religious schools were providing educations to 223,990 students, including Afghans and foreign students.
The security agencies, while compiling the list, did not treat Afghans as foreigners and included them in the list of Pakistanis. Official sources said that the managements of madressahs did not maintain separate record of the students from Afghanistan, because most of them were of Pashtun origin.
However, the documents suggest that 64 students from Europe and Asian countries are getting education from madressahs situated in Swat, Buner and Manshera districts.
The official documents show that Swat district is on the top of providing religious education to students in the province.
The madressahs across the province had produced 228,021 scholars and awarded them Islamic degrees of different disciplines in the last 10 years. While, 223,990 were still acquiring Islamic education in these seminaries.
Last year 32,177 students including foreigners were awarded religious degrees, which indicates that the percentage of acquiring Islamic education have been increased in the province.
According to the security agencies list about seminaries, 1701 registered and unregistered madressahs were providing education according to Deobandi school of thoughts in the NWFP. While 113 seminaries are of Barelvi, 44 Ahl-i-Hadith, 18 Ahl-i-Tashih and seven madressahs of other schools of thoughts are providing religious education to the students.
There are 19,465 students studying in 70 seminaries in Peshawar. Seminaries in other districts and students are; Nowshera 52 madressahs 13,288 students; Charsadda 61 madressahs 1,961 students; Mardan 61 madressahs 6,923 students; Swabi 64 madressahs 10,370 students; Malakand 40 madressahs 7,312 students; Swat 139 madressahs 30,266 students; Buner 50 madressahs 7,159 students; Shangla 67 madressahs 8,077 students; Dir Lower 73 madressahs 11,424 students; Dir Upper 57 madressahs 12,543 students; Chitral 124 madressahs 13,481 students; Haripur 17 madressahs 1,548 students; Abbottabad 70 madressahs 7,047 students; Mansehra 106 madressahs 8,739 students; Batagram 86 madressahs 11,178 students; Kohistan 38 students 1,471 students; Kohat 50 madressahs 4,974 students; Karak 78 madressahs 5,659 students; Hangu 56 madressahs 8,870 students; Bannu 128 madressahs 12,636 students; Lakki 129 madressahs 7,885 students; Dera Ismail Khan 101 madressahs 8,385 students and Tank 53 madressahs 3,301 students.