A decade after Peshawar school attack, Pakistan is back to debating seminaries

It was exactly ten years ago, after the deadly attack by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on the Army Public School in Peshawar, that the Pakistani government introduced a comprehensive document which sought to, among other proposals, oversee the registration of religious seminaries. 

A decade later, the debate has taken another route. Fazal-ur-Rehman, who is head of Pakistan’s largest religious political party – Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUIF) — is currently up in arms about a parliamentary delay in a bill that seeks to amend that registration process for Pakistani madrassas and give them more autonomy again.

After agreeing to Rehman’s demands earlier in order to make a political deal, the government now seems to be backtracking on its commitment, and Rehman has threatened to march with his supporters to the capital to push the government to operationalize the new law. 

Just two months ago, Rehman’s support to the government was critical in getting the crucial 26th Constitutional Amendment passed, which facilitated a re-organization of the Supreme Court and averted a possible removal of the government by the top court. In return, Rehman secured a few legislative favors. But in a move that brings its own credibility into question, the government is backtracking on its promise-- fearing international repercussions, and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list still looming very close in the recent past.

At the center of the controversy is whether some 65,000 religious schools in Pakistan, which constitute about 14 percent of all the schools in the country with an enrolment of around 3.5 million children, should continue to be registered with the federal government’s Directorate General of Religious Education (DGRE) or be facilitated under a colonial era ‘Societies Registration Act’ which would curtail the involvement of the government in seminaries.

The government claims that ten out of the total 15 federations of religious schools want the prevailing system of registration with DGRE to continue, and it’s reported that about 18,000 seminaries (two million people) have already been registered with the DGRE since 2019.

The issue is not an existential one and the level of independence for seminaries will not be very different no matter how they are registered.

Ahmed Bilal Mehboob

Seminaries have existed for a long time in South Asia and many other parts of the Muslim world as non-government entities to impart education and training about various aspects of Islam. The number of seminaries and their enrolment in Pakistan got a huge boost during the decade-long war against the erstwhile Soviet Union which had invaded Afghanistan in 1979. A sizeable part of the financial resources which flowed in to support that war also supported the seminaries to serve as potential recruitment grounds for militants. 

After the war was over, the regulation of seminaries became a top priority for not only the government of Pakistan but the international community as well. Especially after 9/11, efforts to register seminaries, monitor their sources of funding, reform their curriculum and make their graduates more universally employable, gained momentum. 

Though seminaries in Pakistan are largely okay with registering themselves and introducing contemporary subjects like economics, computer science etc., in their curriculum, they are generally sensitive to possible interference by the government into their management. This sensitivity further heightens in the case of those seminaries which fall under a political party like the JUIF. Their students and faculty not only form the backbone of the electorate for these parties, but also come in very handy for flexing muscle during street agitations. 

Rehman’s preference for registration under the archaic Societies Registration Act is in fact an effort to secure greater freedom from possible interference by the government. 

Either way however, the issue is not an existential one and the level of independence for seminaries will not be very different no matter how they are registered. The decisive factor in the ongoing confrontation between the government and Rehman’s party will, however, be whether a consensus on the question can be reached among the 15 federations of the seminaries. 

As of now, it appears likely that a consensus on the mode of registration, followed by a fresh agreement with the government, will be reached soon, hopefully, without yet another showdown. 

- The writer is the president of Pakistan-based think tank, PILDAT.

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