ISLAMABAD: Jamaat-e-Islami Chief Senator Sirajul Haq on Thursday urging the government to provide all out support to seminaries has said the rulers have badly failed in fulfilling their responsibilities regarding madaris providing free education, food and shelter to 3.5 million students across the country.

He said this while talking to media men here while visiting Jamia Fareedia to inspect the examination center of the leading religious seminary in the federal capital.

The JI chief also congratulated the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdo?an on re-conversion of Hagia Sophia into mosque, saying that the entire Islamic world welcomed the decision announced by the Turkish court.

He said those who were crying foul on the step should instead take up the issue with Israel for its occupation of mosques and Islamic buildings. He said Turkey government corrected the history and restored the building status into its original form.

He said no one was banned to go to Hagia Sophia mosque now as its historical status as building would remain intact. He said the religious seminaries were fortresses of Islam, and asked the government to stop step-motherly treatment with the madaris and provide them all the benefits being enjoyed by other educational institutes of the country.

He said closure of religious seminaries for an indefinite period was causing damage to the education of the thousands of students, besides, the step aimed at depriving the teachers from earning their livelihood.

He said the government should announce the compensation package for students and teachers of madaris. The Western and secular mindset, he added, always labelled the seminaries as bastion of terrorism contrary to the fact that never a single terrorist was arrested from any religious seminaries in the past. There was a need to act against this baseless propaganda against the seminaries, he emphasized.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020