ISLAMABAD, Dec 30: Pakistan backtracked on Friday on a demand for foreign students enrolled in Islamic schools to leave the country by the end of the year but urged the hundreds remaining to go as soon as possible.
President Pervez Musharraf had ordered all foreigners studying at the schools, known as madressahs, to leave by Dec 31 as part of a drive to stamp out terrorism and religious extremism following the July 7 London bombings.
His order came after revelations that at least one of the four London bombers — three of whom were Britons of Pakistani descent — had spent time at a madressah.
Officials have said that around 700 foreign students, out of a total of 1,400, have since left and madressahs have stopped enrolling foreign students.
Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao told Reuters that foreign students might face “some administrative issues” in leaving by Saturday. “As such, there is no deadline for them to leave, but we want them to go back to their countries as soon as possible.”
He said the government was not considering forced deportation of those who failed to meet the deadline.
RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS: Maulana Ghulam Rasool, a senior cleric at the Ittehad-i-Tanzeemul Madaris, (the Alliance of Organizations of Religious Schools), told Reuters that students and madressah managements would resist any deportations.
“Not one foreign student wants to go back,” he said. “They will give themselves up for arrest if the government uses force.”
Maulana Rasool said the government move was aimed at “pleasing European countries and the United States”.
“These students should be given a chance to complete their studies; it’s their basic right,” he said.
Authorities in the southern province of Sindh said that they had cancelled the visas of 92 foreign students still studying at madressahs there.
Pakistan has about 12,000 madressahs. The number of foreign students at madressahs fell sharply after Pakistan imposed tougher visa rules after joining the US-led war on terrorism following the Sept 11 attacks in 2001.
The country saw a spectacular rise in the number of madressahs in the 1980s, when the schools, backed by funding from the West and Arab countries, became recruiting grounds for volunteers fighting Soviet forces in neighbouring Afghanistan.—Reuters