Dr Christine Fair, a noted scholar of the US Institute of Peace (USIP), said the Pakistan government is sincerely trying to reform and bring madressas into the mainstream educational system.
Dr Fair, who had recently visited Pakistan, was speaking at a roundtable conference on 'Religious Education in Pakistan,' at the USIP, in which a number of noted scholars participated. She dilated on registration, curriculum, marketability and connectivity.
She said mainstreaming of madressas would certainly help provide more employment opportunities to the madressa educated, besides imparting gainful "worldly" grasp of knowledge and skills. During the visit, Dr Christine Fair met with madressa leadership to learn more about Islamic education in Pakistan, and she interviewed administrators of Pakistan's most important madaris in all provinces of Pakistan. Besides, she met federal and provincial officials, and nazims, and visited the Islamic Ideology Council (IIC).
As part of the study, 13 madressas were identified, and she visited three of them in Karachi and Lahore. She quoted Federal Education Minister stating that "we want madressa students who are employable and socially acceptable."
Dr Fair said the government of Pakistan was itself doing a lot of surveys about madressas, and according to the Ministry of Education, their total number in the country was 6,741.
She said the Ministry of Education "understands" the importance of data, and in fact, a comprehensive survey of all educational schools is now underway in all districts around Pakistan and "a visible progress" in latest data compilation was in sight, and hoped in a couple of years, proper data was expected to come forth.
She said density of madressas was visible around the border areas from Pishin onwards in the west, as a consequence of US policies in the cold war era, seeking ouster of the former Soviet Union from Afghanistan.
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