The Yemeni government has put thousands of religious schools between a rock and a hard place by demanding schools to either close doors or come under its full supervision. Education Minister Abdel Salam Al-Joufi threatened to crack down hard on schools found in violation of law, which puts the country's education system under government scrutiny. "It has been always the case for the government to encourage non-governmental education and give licenses to more schools as long as they abide by the ministry's curricula," he told IslamOnline.net on Monday, April 25. He stressed that the ministry will not tolerate schools that breach such a commitment. The minister declined to comment on a report by a government ad hoc committee assigned to tally and evaluate religious and non-governmental schools in the country. The committee, which swung into action on June 29, 2004 till March 13, 2005, found that anti-regime and —democracy publications were found in some schools outside the state's supervision. It said that foreign students, including Americans, were enrolled at some of these schools, including 150 in one school in the northern city of Sada. The committee starkly warned that swift action must be taken against potential ethnic tensions as some schools were strictly following sects like Salifism, Sufism, Yazidi and Ismailites.
Yemeni authorities have closed down over the past two months 1400 unauthorized schools for preaching violence, hatred for the west and hardline ideas. In an address last week, Prime Minister Abdel Qadir Bajamal said there were up to 330,000 students enrolled in unauthorized schools, vowing to shut them.