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| India-Pakistan |
| Pak madaris, mosques collect $1.1 billion annually |
| 2002-07-29 |
| Madaris and mosques across Pakistan annually collect over Rs70 billion (US $1.1 billion) in donations, both in cash and kind, as against the official Zakat collections of only Rs4.5 billion (US $75 million), a study on Madaris by International Crisis Group (ICG) said. About 15 times as much. That's a whole bunch of money to train About 94 per cent of the charitable donations made by Pakistani individuals and corporations go to religious institutions and causes, ICG said in the study "Pakistan: Madrasa, Extremism and the Military." "94 per cent": That's Urdu for "virtually all of it." The study also shed light on the sectarian strife in Pakistan and its links to madaris of different denominations. Though most of the donors do not support the politics of the religious parties collecting donations, they find Islamic education and preservation of Islam the most worthy causes for giving charity to. "Pakistanis display a curious lack of interest regarding the actual performance of an organization when determining to whom they should give," it noted. The half of Zakat donors did not know or care how their money was used. That's called fatalism. We've seen that in other aspects of Pak life — like the willingness of some generals to waltz into nuclear war with India... Zakat, according to the Qur'anic injunctions, cannot be used for mosques or educational projects like madaris. The Zia's government, it recalled, ignored Islamic injunctions against using Zakat money for mosque and education and its own Zakat ordinance of June 1980 to extend selective financial help. During the Zia's rule when Zakat was used as a tool of state patronage, 100 madaris had initially been identified for Zakat distribution, mostly of Deobandis, including Darul Uloom Haqqaniya of Akora Khattak and Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) madaris in the NWFP, the main supporters of the Afghan Jihad. And also the main opponents of Perv's government... In a summary attached to the study, the ICG expressed doubts on the intent and the will of military government to set Pakistani society on a sustainable course that would lead to political pluralism and religious tolerance. "On a key test - reform of madaris, Pakistani religious schools that breed extremism of many hue - the military government thus far has acted weakly," it added. That's because they're scared to death of the fundos... About a third of all children in Pakistan who get education attend madaris. One third of all kiddies who get an education of any sort are being trained to be clergymen! Amazing! Over a million and a half students at more than 10,000 seminaries are being trained, in theory, for service in the religious sector. But their lack of modern civic education and poverty make them a destabilising factor in Pakistani society. Since they have an "education" and feel like it should be worth something, but lack any hard skills other than getting a good site picture at 300 yards... On the proposed madaris ordinance it said that it did not envisage real intervention in the madaris system because the clergy was opposed to it. It underlined the need for carrying out curriculum reforms in Madaris within six months to introduce vocational training programmes. They mean training children to do something besides recite the Koran and cut infidels' heads off... It demanded banning of all madaris affiliated with banned militant organizations and prosecution of their leaders under the existing criminal laws if they were involved in incitement to violence. Good luck with that one, too... |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 |
| Posted by: sohail mian 2002-08-26 09:38:32 |