Madrassa reforms

Sindh government’s gambit

Surely the Sindh government factored in a degree of stiff resistance from the religious right when it decided to move on with madrassa regulation. Registration and regulation of religious seminaries is, after all, right at the centre of the Nation Action Plan (NAP) – at number 10. And now that that resistance has come in the shape of Maulana Fazl’s stiff warning – of not making any movement minus input from ‘ulemas’ – this matter is now going to become the litmus test of NAP implementation, however limited, in at least one province.

And as far as the Maulana’s concerns about being left in the dark are concerned, there’s no reason not to take the clergy on board, provided it cooperates in matters of funding, curricula, etc. Investigating funding of seminaries is not to cast doubt on all of them. It just means it is essential to register and regulate all sorts of seminary funding; because some indeed have dubious sources of patronage. There are also cases where seminaries are clearly teaching regressive interpretations of religion, often even amounting to propagating hate literature. That there is an urgent need to sort out these irregularities is but stating the obvious.

The Maulana and his like are welcome, therefore, to partake in the process. But hurling threats and virtually demanding an unquestioned veto is not the way to go about it. Nor will this posture be tolerated for long. The federal and provincial governments have so far been too slow off the mark on NAP. And this lethargy has not gone unnoticed in the brass – especially since the military’s performance so far has been pretty up to the mark. Now that the Sindh government has finally decided to move forward on the issue, it must ensure its initiative does not run out of momentum. If it caves in to the far right at this point, it will be near impossible to restart the process later.