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Pakistan is revamping its school system and trying to weed out extremist Islamic educators. Public and especially religious schools in the country have produced many militant Islamists who threaten the Musharraf regime. Education reform is vital for the country’s stability, but it may take too long to implement.
The government of Sindh, one of the largest provinces in Pakistan, is no longer hiring male teachers for primary school, according to a Pakistani daily, The News. The ruling appears to be aimed at preventing Islamic extremists – who almost exclusively are male – from infiltrating the public school system.
Purging extremist elements from Pakistan’s educational system is vital for the country’s long-term stability. The Taliban’s collapse has weakened militants within Pakistan, allowing President Pervez Musharraf to take a more active role in reducing the influence of Islamic extremists. But the education policy will take years to reach fruition, and Musharraf must hang on to power in the meantime.
The Sindh initiative is part of a new effort to reform both public and religious schools. Pakistan’s public school system is in shambles, and many families cannot afford the small fees that are charged, according to the Associated Press. Religious schools – or madrassas – offer an attractive alternative: free education, free meals, free schoolbooks and even in some cases a stipend. More than 700,000 boys study at 7,000 to 8,000 religious schools in Pakistan, according to the Associated Press.
The curriculums of such schools emphasize knowledge of the Koran and fundamentalist doctrines, with little emphasis on math, science and other academic subjects. Madrassas have existed for centuries, but their numbers skyrocketed in the 1980s when the United States and Pakistan supported fundamentalist Afghan and Pakistani fighters battling the Soviet army.
Fighters in that battle were recruited and trained at madrassas near the Afghan border. The Soviets withdrew a decade ago, but the schools kept churning out extremists.
Islamic fundamentalists are a dangerous political force in Pakistan, and the madrassa students are the foot soldiers. Although the fundamentalist parties were unable to unseat Musharraf after he decided to support the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, they still pose one of the largest internal threats to his regime, especially as the country has not benefited from cooperating with Washington as much as the president had hoped.
The schools are funded both by private donations from Middle Eastern countries and by the “zakat,” a 2.5 percent tax collected by the Pakistani government from the bank accounts of Sunni Muslims once a year. The tax draws in millions of dollars every year.
The Pakistani government is working to keep extremists out of public schools – as the Sindh example shows – but is spending most of its efforts on changing the madrassas. Pakistan doesn’t have the money to replace the schools, but it can reform them.
A proposed national law would force each madrassa to register with the government or else lose its zakat funding and have its staff replaced or face closure. Once a school is registered, the government would scrutinize the courses of study and the school’s other funding sources. The Pakistani daily The Nation reported that more than 100 madrassas receive overseas funding from such countries as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, as well as from terrorist-sponsors Iran and Iraq.
Registered schools also would need to clear their students with Pakistani security agencies. To add teeth to the proposal, Musharraf put the current minister of the interior – a retired lieutenant general – in charge of education reform.
The plan is raising the hackles of Pakistan’s extremist parties, however, which are still smarting over their inability to keep Musharraf from supporting Washington. Most of the parties see the madrassa issue as a way to regain political credibility if they can force Musharraf to back down.
While pushing the education issue, Musharraf also is trying to counter the criticism by incorporating Muslim scholars into the government. The News reported that the regime is considering including at least one religious scholar as an adviser to each provincial government. Many of these scholars likely will be from the Barelvi sect, which is generally moderate, The News reported.
This is a far cry from Musharraf’s old goal of following the model of secular government pioneered by Turkey. But for him, it is still better than facing down a revolt.
Musharraf’s plan is ambitious and very necessary. But it will take years before the effects start to show. In the meantime the president needs to focus on staying in power to see that his changes last.
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