"Religious seminaries are not only the protectors of geographical borders but also of ideological ones,"

"Religious seminaries are not only the protectors of geographical borders but also of ideological ones," Deputy General Secretary of Wifaq-ul-Madaris Al-Arabia said on Monday. 

In a statement issued here, Qazi Abdul Rasheed, the Deputy General Secretary of Wifaq-ul-Madaris Al-Arabia, claimed that security agencies have raided 527 religious seminaries across the Punjab province. 

“Let alone explosives, not even a single objectionable item was recovered from the seminaries,” he claimed. 

Abdul Rasheed termed a statement of Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar as based on facts and urged the government to simplify seminary-registration by introducing a one-window process. 

He blamed the government for carrying out the process of seminary registration at a sluggish pace.“The term religion and sect have been used in the… constitutional amendment, which makes it biased,” said Abdul Qudus, spokesperson for Wafaq-ul-Madaris al-Arabia, the country’s largest grouping of madrassas.

“We are quite sure that the government wants to target religious institutions, but we won’t let it happen,” he said.

Information Minister Pervez Rashid felt the force of the clerics’ influence last month after he called madrassas “universities of illiteracy and ignorance”.

Banners appeared overnight all over Islamabad condemning him and he was forced to apologise on television.

There is also the question of possible resistance from Pakistan’s wealthy friends in the Gulf. In January, a Senate committee heard that seminaries were receiving funding from Middle Eastern countries including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.

The last time Pakistan tried to regulate madrassas, under military ruler Pervez Musharraf, Gulf countries — particularly Saudi Arabia — leaned on Islamabad to persuade it not to push too hard on the curriculum, according to a senior official.

After Peshawar, however, Pakistani media and government ministers began publicly questioning whether financial support from Saudi Arabia for madrassas was fuelling violent extremism, a rare moment of discord between the longstanding allies.

The Saudi embassy issued a statement saying all its donations to seminaries had government clearance, but much of the funding is thought to come through informal channels.

“Madrassas have special representatives who travel across the Arab world and African countries… and those who have access to Europe, they collect the money themselves from Muslim communities there,” Amir Rana, the director of think tank the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, told AFP.

“This is a grey area which is difficult to monitor.”

A senior government official who asked not be named said an estimated 70 million rupees was illegally transferred from two Gulf countries in the space of two months this year after visits by religious leaders.

Pakistan is a deeply religious society and, despite misgivings about madrassas, clergy are generally well respected.

Overcoming resistance from them will take political will and determination, which Rana said he doubts the government can muster.

“They (the government) have political interests and they are well aware of the street power of the clergy and their hold on society,” he said.

Pakistan underwent a “programme of Islamisation” under military ruler Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s and successive governments have sought to make capital from religion.

The government has sought help from religious leaders to persuade parents to immunise children against polio and used mosques and seminaries to build a narrative of patriotism.

Moreover, madrassas remain popular with the poor for financial and social reasons, as well as religion.

For many less well-off families, madrassas offer a cheap way to deal with their numerous children. Unlike many schools, madrassas do not charge fees, and on top of teaching pupils, they also house, clothe and feed them.

In addition, a madrassa education can offer social prestige that in Pakistan’s deeply religious society, secular schooling cannot match.
A boy from a poor family who trains long enough to become a mullah brings respect for his whole family — and the chance to open his own mosque.