Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Frontline Pakistan
regime in 1979 also contributed to the mushrooming of madrasas. For
the first time in Pakistani history, the state started providing financial
support for the expansion of religious education from Zakat and Ushr
funds. 3 The Islamization of education and levying of Islamic taxes had
a profound long-term effect.
Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, had been treated as a private
matter in most Muslim states. General Zia’s regime broke with that
tradition by deducting it from bank accounts each year during the
Islamic holy month of Ramadan. 4 The substantial amount raised by
Zakat was used to finance the traditional religious schools, most of
them belonging to the Deobandi movement, which is akin to Saudi
Wahabism. Zakat did little to improve the lot of millions of Pakistanis
living in abject poverty. The only visible consequence was the
transformation of the religious landscape of the nation. The foreign
and government-funded madrasas also became the main centres for
spreading sectarian hatred. Saudi Arabian patronage, especially of
more radical Ahle Hadith madrasas, played a major role in worsening
the situation.
Madrasas also had a key place in Pakistani religious and social
life. Most of the seminary students came from the poorest sections
of Pakistani society and were provided with free religious education,
lodging and meals. The influx of the impoverished rural population
to the madrasas was a major reason for their growth, with Punjab
and the North West Frontier Province having the highest number
of religious seminaries. Divided along sectarian and political lines,
religious seminaries were largely controlled by the two main branches
of Sunni Islam in South Asia – the Deobandi and the Barelvi. Ahle
Hadith or Wahabi Muslims had their own schools, as did the Shias. The
religious doctrinal differences among these sects were irreconcilable.
Most of the madrasas were centuries apart from the outside world.
Generally the students were poor, from broken homes, or were
orphans. Conditions in schools were regularly condemned by human
rights groups as crowded and inhumane. The students were often
subjected to a regimen as harsh as any jail, and physical abuses were
commonplace. In many schools, students were put in chains and
iron fetters for the slightest violation of the rules. There were almost
no extracurricular activities and television and radio were banned.
Teaching was rudimentary and students were taught religion within
a highly rigorous and traditional perspective, giving them a deeply
retrograde world-view.