“Policies regarding madrassa education must be devised from academic perspective, not through the security lens.”
This was the message emerging from the session ‘Madrassa Education: The Idea of Madrassa Education Board, Progress and the way forward’ held at the Institute of Policy Studies, Islamabad, on February 18, 2015.
The panelists of the session included Dr. Aamir Tuaseen, chairman, Pakistan Madrassa Education Board (PMEB), Prof. Dr. Habib-ur-Rehman Asim, International Islamic University, Islamabad, Dr. Moeen-ud-Din Hashmi, Allama Iqbal Open University, Islamabad, Maulana Mohammad Rafique Shinwari and DG-IPS Khalid Rahman.
The session started with a presentation on the role of Pakistan Madrassa Education Board, in light of its vision, mission, objectives and the challenges faced today.
The presentation was followed by an interactive consultative discussion which raised several important issues relating to the subject including the divergences between different schools of thought while devising the madrassa curricula, complications in developing model madrassas, present madrassa examination system, degree equivalence and recognition problems, monitoring and regulatory mechanisms, etc.
The scholars were of the view that each country has its own peculiar environment and therefore copying the examples of any other country by establishing model madrassas may not be an ideal approach. They urged that the government needs to play the role of a facilitator rather than pursuing a strategy of control. Else the deficit of trust would rise and complicate the matters further.
