Pacifying the religious right
While attempts to bring the existing seminaries under government supervision have yet to produce results, new seminaries continue to come into existence. According to one of the seminary boards there has been an increase of 10 percent in the number of seminaries and students as compared to the previous year. How many of the new seminaries are foreign funded or impart extremist views or are actually involved in turning out terrorists is yet to be known. Whatever the reasons behind the proliferation, there is a lot for the state to worry about as it has yet to set up a satisfactory oversight mechanism over the existing madrassas
Attempts to establish government oversight has met with strong opposition from religious parties which have branded the efforts as intentions to undermine the religion. The seminary funds are utilised by the religious parties to expand their activities while the student community provides them a captured constituency. The PML-N government has been at pains to pacify the religious right. The attitude has hampered evolving a comprehensive policy of seminary reforms. Off and on under pressure to enforce the NAP, the government has issued figures about what was being done. But there has been no complementary commitment about expansion of the educational facilities in mainstream education sector or improvement of the state run schools and colleges.
Pakistan has a large reserve of unemployed youth which if provided training in skills needed by the market can turn the country around. Failure to do so creates millions of unemployed and disoriented men and women amenable to the propaganda of the terrorist networks. The seminaries provide free education and a career as clergy for the ordinary student and for the more talented individuals a future as well-to-do leaders of religious parties. The policy of looking the other way as gulf charities with dubious agenda set up hundreds of mosques and seminaries has helped in the spread of extremism and terrorism. Pakistan’s insufficient expenditure on education which is the lowest in South Asia has helped in the spread of seminaries.
