Another confrontation soon?
Madrassah reforms were never going to sit well with the people running, and patronising, religious seminaries. Which is why the JUI-S, JUI-F reactions – so aptly summed up in Qari Hanif Jalandhari’s warnings of western conspiracy – were expected. And the government’s response to this expected reaction, or the lack of one, will tell how thorough its new approach really is. One would expect, especially after Peshawar, that the laid-back approach would finally be shed, and the sternest measures would be taken to identify and apprehend all fountainheads of terror, be they academic or militant.
Yet, unfortunately, there is little to reflect any homework on the part of the government. Qari Hanif represents the Ittehad-i-Tanzeemat-i-Madaris-i-Deenia, an umbrella organising gathering five different schools of thought, and jurisprudence. And already, they have come out strongly against a suspected government move against religious madaris. They have dared the government to show proof of its allegations, that suspicious funding and faulty curriculum make some of these schools terrorist-making institutions, and offered help in apprehending outlets that are found guilty.
That makes a clear official position that much more important. Not only will the government now have to counter accusations of ‘western conspiracy’ to ‘undermine Islam’, etc, it will also have to ‘put its muscle where its mouth is’, and take out madaris that have been accepting foreign aid and imparting terrorist training to their students. It is no secret – anymore—that secret agencies of many a power, Islamic and western, leveraged religious seminaries, inside our borders, to prepare mujahideen of the Soviet war jihad. And it is also no secret that while the Americans quickly retreated across the Atlantic to celebrate their victory when the Soviets left, other winners of the Great Game found it a little more difficult to shed the old habit. Hence the intervening two and a half decades of Strategic Depth over here and petrodollar lubricated Riyal Politik in mainland Arabia. But it is for Islamabad now to identify any factories of terrorism that, according to them, still exist in Pakistan. And the leadership would not be worth its salt if it still allows them to operate.
