Punjab Education Minister, Mian Imran Masood has said the government was planning to bring religious seminaries into the mainstream of education to enable seminaries' students to get jobs in government and private sectors.
While speaking at a seminar on 'Islam, Terrorism and the West' arranged by Punjab University Pakistan Study Centre on Wednesday, he called for projecting image of Islam in its true perspective. He said that approaches towards religion varied in different parts of the world. "We should promote tolerance in our views and actions through education and religion should not be exploited to gain political ends," he said.
Keynote speaker, Dean Quaid-e-Azam University Faculty of Social Sciences, Professor Dr Muhammad Waseem said there was a big gap between the Islamic world and the West and this gap was main cause of misperceptions and misunderstandings between the two groups. He said there were four problems: first discourse of difference, second, text-based approach, third, conflict in state and religion approach and fourth, society-based approach which had been instrumental in driving a wedge between Islam and the West. Dr Waseem said that apart from other problems the Palestine issue had pitted Muslim world against the West especially US as Muslims thought that they were being deprived of their rights due to the hardened approach of the US and the West.