Pakistan Announces Ban on Unlicensed Madrasas

By Rob Crilly

20 Dec 2011

 Photo: A Pakistani child weeps after being rescued by police Photo: AP

About 24,000 madrasas are licensed. However, analysts believe there are just as many unlicensed schools operating…they have also been associated with extremism, educating thousands of young men who formed the Afghan Taliban or acting as recruiting grounds for terrorist groups. And last week police in Karachi raided a Madrasa where they found 54 boys and young men chained in underground dungeon where they had been sent by their parents for drug abuse or bad behaviour. Rehman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister met religious leaders this week and announced that unlicensed madrasas would be declared illegal on January 1. 

"We all condemn the Sohrab Goth incident in Karachi when police rescued around 50 students of a Madrasa found chained in the basement during a raid," he said. Young boys and men were chained up for days on end in a brutal form of religious rehab. Police said they found boys as young as eight who had been beaten raw.

Parents told The Daily Telegraph they paid £25 a month for the service and provided their own chains. Two members of staff have been arrested but police are still searching for the mufti who ran the school. However, reform of the sector is likely to be problematic in a country where so many children rely on informal education. Khadim Hussain, of the Baacha Khan Trust Educational Foundation, said he believed abuse was the norm in most madrasas. Simply banning unlicensed schools, he said, would simply leave millions of boys with nowhere to go. "A large part of the population is using them, people who are marginalised, largely because of a crumbling public education system," he said. "If the government would put money into improving the public system then no one would use the madrasas in the first place."

Source: The Daily Telegraph

URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-culture/pakistan-announces-ban-unlicensed-madrasas/d/6195