An official of the Madrassa Education Board was quoted as saying on
June 2 that the federal government had decided to stop funding 115
religious schools across the country for alleged involvement in
extremism and militancy. This official spoke at a news conference
called explicitly for this purpose. This news was also picked up by
the internationally recognized newswire service, Agence France-Presse
(AFP), and reported by the local papers. The official was clearly
quoted as saying that: "There is no room for such institutions which
promote sectarianism or terrorism or exploit religious sentiments.
The government has, therefore, blacklisted 115 Madaris [seminaries]
involved in such ugly activities."
It is, therefore, surprising that the Federal Ministry for Religious
Affairs should have deemed fit to issue a clarification the next day
(reported June 4), denying the veracity of the earlier report. The
religious ministry's press note said that since no seminary is
involved in sectarian, extremist or jehadi activities, the question
of stopping funding to any seminary on that basis does not arise. We
are at a loss to understand what is going on not only because of the
obvious contradiction in the two statements but also because of a
host of questions that arise from this contradiction. Here's why.
Leaving aside the issue of funding, the religious ministry's
statement that no seminary is involved in any unlawful activity flies
in the face of scores of statements made in the past not only by the
Federal Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider but also by General Pervez
Musharraf himself - not to mention scores of police and intelligence
reports (some of which have also been leaked to the press over the
years) that clearly speak of seminaries as training and nourishing
grounds for religious intolerance, bigotry and sectarian violence. So
someone is clearly fibbing. But the "facts" are troubling too.
A report by Jama'at-e-Islami's Islamabad-based Institute of Policy
Studies puts the number of seminaries in Pakistan at 6,761. The same
report puts the number of students at these seminaries at over a
million. Figures given by the Ministry of Religious Affairs are
fairly close to the IPS report. But the interior ministry has its own
figures. It puts the number of seminaries at nearly 20,000 with
nearly 3 million students. This latter figure nearly triples the
number of such seminaries. The discrepancy is obviously very great.
Similarly, while there have been innumerable reports about the role
of the seminary in inculcating religious extremism and denominational
exclusivity, numbers tend to vary about how many seminaries may
actually be involved in imparting armed training to their students.
Nonetheless, there is one undisputed fact as opposed to the "facts"
we have just discussed: the seminary has an archaic syllabus and it
thrives on an exclusionary discourse woven around denominational
lines. This per se translates into sectarian bigotry.
It is this established fact, which has forced the government to look
into the way these seminaries have been run and resolve to bring them
into the mainstream. It is here that one runs into the issue of
whether the concerned ministries and departments are - or indeed, can
- function in a coordinated way. The figures put out by them and the
statements made by their officials do not inspire much confidence.
There can be two reasons for this: either it is part of a strategy to
take action against entrenched religious interests less overtly, with
one ministry playing the good cop and the other the bad one, or the
ministries are working at cross purposes because of old or new vested
interests. The first explanation doesn't seem to ring true. For
instance, the minister for religious affairs has given many
statements that run at cross-purposes from what the interior ministry
has been trying to do or what the interior minister has been saying.
From the issue of seminaries and sectarianism to jehadi groups, riba
and Afghanistan policy, the minister for religious affairs has often
publicly taken positions at variance with the stated policies of the
Musharraf government.
A policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, which
is what we seem to have cobbled, sends out all the wrong signals.
Government policy on religious extremism has both domestic and
external dimensions. Decisions in this regard relate not just to the
external need for immediate cleansing to change critical perceptions
but to internal requirements that are in the best interest of
Pakistan and in keeping with the ideals of the country's founding
father. We don't have to marshal arguments to prove what religious
bigotry and retrogressive legislation based on such mindsets have
done to this state. That story is too well known. What is required
today is the ability of the government to act in good faith and stay
the course. If this requires some plain speaking and acting, so be it.