Pak seminaries would remain independent of official influence: Clerics

Pakistani radical cleric Maulana Fazlur Rehman said that the bill was passed by the National Assembly and the Senate. He added that the government should have referred the bill to the joint sitting after the objections by the President, according to Dawn. File
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Pakistani clerics made it clear to the government that their seminaries would remain independent of official influence by not becoming part of government department, a departure from the stance adopted by them in 2019.

In 2019, traditional madrassas boards had agreed to cede some control to the Federal Education Ministry.

The Ittehad Tanzeemat-i-Madaris Pakistan, a representative body of seminaries run by clerics belonging to different sects of Islam, made the announcement after a meeting on Tuesday (December 17, 2024).

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A joint delegation of clerics called on Maulana Fazlur Rehman, chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) at his residence in Islamabad to throw their weight behind him in the current controversy of a bill regarding registration of madrassas.

The JUI-F leader is pressing the government to issue a gazette notification for the Societies Registration (Amendment) Bill 2024, which would roll back the 2019 agreement and make the district administration the authority to carry out registration of seminaries.

Dawn reported that the joint delegation by the clerics represented madrassas boards belonging to the Barelvi, Deobandi, Shia and Ahle Hadith schools of thought, while the fifth board belonged to seminaries under the control of the Jamaat-i-Islami.

In a statement issued after the meeting, Mufti Taqi Usmani said that the boards’ collective decision to come under the administrative control of the education ministry in 2019 was taken under pressure, as at the time they thought it was better to be under the control of the education ministry than anyone else.

Mr. Usmani said that seminaries will remain autonomous, adding that they would not become subservient to authorities in Pakistan like they were in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt.

In the National Assembly session on Tuesday (December 17, 2024), the government and the JUI-F both seemed to favour talks to sort out the controversy surrounding the proposed legislation.

Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar admitted that a legal complexity had been created regarding the Societies Registration (Amendment) Bill 2024 and offered that Maulana Rehman should sit with the government to sort out the issue.

Maulana Rehman said that the bill was passed by the National Assembly and the Senate. He added that the government should have referred the bill to the joint sitting after the objections by the president, according to Dawn.

A joint sitting of the two houses planned for December 17 was not held due to differences between the government and the JUI-F. The government wanted to place the bill before the joint sitting of the National Assembly and the Senate but the clerics refused and demanded the bill had become a law and just needed a formal declaration by the government.

The issue of proper accountability of over 35,000 seminaries, with hundreds of thousands of students, has been unresolved for decades despite several efforts by the authorities. The main reason is that clerics want to keep their hold on the syllabus and financial matters of their seminaries.

However, they agreed in 2019 to get registered with the Directorate of Religious Education working under the Ministry of Education. Reportedly, over 18,000 seminaries with over 2 million students have been registered with the board.

But using his clout during the urgency for the government to pass the 26th constitutional amendment in October, Maulana Fazl succeeded to get the Societies Registration (Amendment) Bill 2024 passed by the parliament to allow seminaries to get registered under this act.

However, the bill, which gives greater authority to seminaries, was not signed by President Asif Ali Zardari. The current controversy is if the bill has become a law as asserted by the maulana or needed approval by the joint session of the parliament.