Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Protests against Pakistan's moves to secularize education
Ahmad Naeem Khan (OneWorld.net) Lahore, March 31
Religious scholars in Pakistan are up in arms at the government's moves to reduce references to jihad (holy war) and exclude Quranic verses that could fuel religious intolerance from educational curricula.
According to Education Minister Zubaida Jalal, the inclusion of Quranic verses is no longer a requirement in the curriculum. In the province of Sindh, Quranic verses were shifted from the biology textbooks for Class XI and XII to the books for the subject in Class IX and X, informs Jalal.
When the minister told the lower house of Parliament, the National Assembly, about the move last week, several opposition legislators, led by members of the religious alliance Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), staged a walkout in protest.
The controversy erupted after an independent Pakistani thinktank, the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), released a report criticizing the overemphasis on Islamic studies in school and college curricula.
"The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan" observes that the state syllabus feeds hatred against other religions and turns schools into centers of Islamic fundamentalism.
The government appointed a committee to review the findings of the report, which minister Jalal rejected as biased. She also dismisses allegations that changes in the curriculum were made to "secularize" education under pressure from the US.
Dr AH Nayyer, one of the authors of the report and a faculty member of Quaid-i-Azam University in the capital Islamabad, accuses the education minister of not sharing the findings of the committee with the members of the National Assembly.
He hazards that either Jalil was misinformed by ministry officials or she assumed the report was wrong.
Before submitting the report to the education ministry, nine members of the 15-member government review committee endorsed the report while six expressed dissenting views on some findings.
Nayyar muses, "I do not know what prompted the education minister to remark on the floor of the National Assembly that the committee rejected the report."
He points out that different governments over the ages were too scared to make any changes in the syllabus, aware of the fact that the move would not go down well with hardliners in this Islamic state.
Nayyar's claims seem to be borne out by the vocal protests against the move. Criticizing the revision in syllabi, Liaqat Baloch of the MMA alleges, "Under the conditionalities of the US Agency for International Development, all verses containing provisions about jihad or exposing the anti-Muslim prejudices of Jews and Christians are being omitted from the syllabi." Hussain Ahmad of the MMA warns that the party is likely to move a privilege motion against such government censorship.
In the southern port city of Karachi, school and college students held a protest march against the changes.
The Islami Jamiat Talaba, the youth wing of the fundamentalist Jamaat Islami, organized the event. The protesters were carrying banners and placards inscribed with demands to include Quranic verses in the syllabi, dismiss the federal education minister and put an end to US intervention in Pakistan's affairs.
In the eastern Punjab province, the main teachers union has threatened to launch a movement against the government if it fails to restore the orginal syllabus.
Union member Chaudhry Abdul Khaliq Sundho holds the US responsible for the changes. The union set April 15 as the deadline for restoring the Quranic verses and vows to march to Islamabad if its demands are not accepted.
The SDPI report adds, "Some of the most significant problems in the current curriculum and textbooks are: inaccuracies of facts and omissions that serve to substantially distort the nature and significance of actual events in our history, insensitivity to the actually existing religious diversity of the nation, incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of Jihad and shahadat (martyrdom), perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially women and religious minorities, and other nations, a glorification of war and the use of force."
The study points out that the syllabus omits events that could encourage a critical self-awareness among students, and includes outdated and incoherent pedagogical practices that "hinder the development of interest and insight among students."
Parliamentary Secretary for Education Dewan Ashiq Bukhari also defends the changes in curriculum, saying these were made to reduce discrepancies between the syllabus for private schools and colleges and state-run institutes.
He points out that the new syllabus aims at being on par with international standards. The government is also emphasizing science and computer studies as part of changes in the education system.
But public outrage at the move is snowballing.
Already, 22 small Islamic groups have come together to protest against the changes in curricula. Their alliance, Tahafiz Taleemi Nasab Mahaz (Save Education Curriculum Front), plans to hold demonstrations across different cities and organize a convention where people can register their ire.
© Hindustan Times Ltd. 2004.