Is anyone minding the seminaries?

Urgent action needed

A number of negative reports about the madaris or seminaries have recently appeared in the media. Early last week a seminary head was arrested in Mansehra in a gang rape case. An earlier report told of as many as 20 seminaries in Rawalpindi being used by the Taliban for terrorist attacks. Another report by police claimed that suicide bombers are provided the last-moment support by the administrations of some of the seminaries and mosques located in the targeted areas. Victims of kidnapping for ransom too have been kept here before being shifted to tribal areas. Another report named seminaries avowedly assisting the TTP with the collection of extortion and ransom money from Islamabad and arranging deals between the militants and their victims. Despite the dramatic revelations there was no action by the government because of its soft corner for TTP.

Viewed from a broader perspective the rise of the madaris is the outcome of the abysmal neglect of education by successive governments including the present one. Most people are forced to send their children to seminaries because there are no educational facilities where they live or they are unable to afford the expenses. Unlike government schools, the seminaries also provide free food and lodging and the prospect of a secure job afterwards in mosques or madaris or as self-employed Qaris in cities.

Irrespective of their pompous claims the governments in Pakistan have never given priority to education. In Balochistan half of the population is deprived of education, with the literacy rate in some areas is as low as 10 per cent, according to the chief minister’s adviser on education. A government girls high school located in the heart of Quetta with 2500 students has no functional toilet. One can understand the plight of other schools in the interior of the province. The previous federal government passed Article 25-A making it mandatory for provincial administrations to provide free and compulsory education to school age children. Sindh is the only province which has enacted a law in pursuance of the constitutional requirement. Ironically, the province has over 6,000 ghost schools. KP remains reluctant to enact the law on free education on account of paucity of funds. So is Punjab, which doesn’t have money to construct 78,000 new classrooms to accommodate out-of-school children. Such is the state of neglect in the province that 12,000 students of junior classes await text books a month and a half after the start of the academic year. This explains why the madaris, flush with petrodollars supplied by Gulf patrons with a sectarian agenda, continue to flourish and create problems.