The curious case of madrassa regulation

Between 2016 and 2022, I had the opportunity to make frequent visits to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia underwent tectonic changes in that period, and I consider myself fortunate to have witnessed the transition from KSA-classic to KSA-neo, which coincided with the elevation of Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS) to the position of crown prince.

One of the things that struck me on my first visit was the great number of madrassas across the city, multiple ones in each district. I wondered: do these madrassas operate as much outside the confines set by the state as ours do? As I learned very soon, they do not. Each madrassa was registered with the Ministry of Education and each madrassa displays its registration information on the sign outside its gate.

Given ongoing developments around madrassa registrations in Pakistan, you may ask: what business does the Ministry of Education have registering madrassas? Ought that not be the job of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs? I was of course soon reminded that the Arabic word ‘madrassa’ just means ‘school’ – what I saw were just regular Saudi public schools.

Historically, the government has been trying to register madrassas with this or that department for decades, but madrassas have resisted all such efforts. At present, madrassas are required to register with the DG of Religious Education (DGRE), an office that exists as a PC-1 project under the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFEPT) – that is: an office whose own permanent existence is far from certain. That PC-1 has recently expired and there is still no act on the horizon that would make the office of the DGRE permanent. There is also a perception that the country’s establishment has a significant influence on the activities of the DGRE.

In return for its support in the passage of the 26th Amendment to the constitution, the JUI-F was shown a carrot, the Societies Registration (Amendment) Act 2024. This amendment to the Societies Registration Act (SRA) would do away with the requirement for madrassas to register with the DGRE and register with the Ministry of Industries instead.

Why are the JUI-F’s Maulana and his allies running madrassas (quite literally ‘schools’) so eager to extricate themselves from the influence of the DGRE / MoFEPT? Because the amendment to the SRA trades relatively more effective, centralised oversight for weaker, less effective, but still centralised oversight of madrassas.

I would like to qualify here that not all madrassas are on board with this amendment – approximately 10 of 15 madrassa wafaqs are content with the existing arrangement which allows (on paper, albeit without legal cover and little evidence of implementation as claimed) their students a path to complete domestic SSC/Matric and HSSC/FA/FSc qualifications and are opposing passage of the amendment. Distancing madrassas from the education sector could jeopardise this path for millions of madrassa students who seek the upward social mobility it enables.

Is it possible that some madrassas are not in the business of education but are mere political instruments for their leaders? How else does it make sense for madrassas, a type of educational institution, to be regulated by the Ministry of Industries? What does the Ministry of Industries know about regulating any educational institutions? What do madrassas manufacture for it to make sense to regulate them through the Ministry of Industries?

As of today, we do not even have a canonical figure for the number of madrassas and students in them across the country – only widely varying estimates. Some registered with offices in districts long ago, some 18,000 registered with the DGRE since it was set up in 2019, and many others are not registered at all. The state has limited insights into these numbers, sources of funding, and activities of the ones that are registered.

In addition, depending on sectarian affiliations, twice in the last two decades, many people running madrassas had sympathies for the wrong side – Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 2000s and the TTP in the 2010s. That makes the answer to the question of whether madrassas should be required to register an unambiguous ‘yes’.

This is a country in which the rules, when they are applied to ordinary people, are stifling. For example, a few months ago a registered tax-filer sought to withdraw Rs1 million (approximately $3,600 – not nothing but not a lot either) of savings from salaries from their own bank account for a major expense. The bank asked them multiple invasive questions before allowing them to access their funds from a documented source of income. This is the lot of ordinary persons under the Licence Raj we live under. Meanwhile, decades later there is still a debate about whether madrassas should be registered, not to speak of their disclosure of sources of funding.

The registration requirements in the new amendment are still very relaxed. If a madrassa has multiple campuses, only one is required to register. The amendment also states that madrassas “… shall, subject to their resources, offer basic contemporary subjects in their curriculum according to a phased program”. I could not think of a weaker phrased requirement if I tried. This light-touch regulation is a far cry from how private schools are dealt with, where reasons to squeeze a school exist in abundance. What have madrassas done to deserve this coddling?

This amendment was passed by parliament so hurriedly that the process forewent to seek input from affected ministries which were unaware of its passage until after the fact and it hit a brick wall in the President’s office. The President’s objection to signing the bill into law was that madrassah education, like school education, healthcare, and other sectors, are constitutionally provincial subjects.

Anyone who has been even a casual newspaper reader for the last few years knows that public and private school education (and more recently higher education too) falls under the purview of provinces. I cannot believe that none of the public representatives who voted for the amendment were aware that they were legislating on something they had no right to. Fun fact: the Ministry of Industries was also devolved to the provinces and yet the JUI-F and allies wish to submit themselves to it.

If both subjects – education and industries – have been devolved to provinces and you follow this thought to its conclusion, madrassas should be registering with the relevant (education) departments in provinces. However, provinces seem least interested in getting involved in this issue.

Aside from all of the above, listening to various people representing individual madrassas and their associations (those happy to register with the DGRE and those on the JUI-F’s side), what struck me most was how leaders of both camps invoked claims of their ‘autonomy’. I am not aware of any provisions in the law or the constitution that guarantees madrassas any kind of autonomy and letting this argument slide unchallenged is a dangerous, slippery slope. Universities are autonomous to a certain degree but madrassas, which sit somewhere alongside private schools, can only be considered as autonomous as private schools or other enterprises.

In my opinion, this issue is not as murky or complicated as the JUI-F, other madrassas, and the government are making it to be. For madrassas, it is about maintaining control over an obedient force of foot soldiers and keeping money trails obscure. Others, like many others in Pakistan, do not want the sources of their funding exposed. They also do not want to register with a central authority that has power over their registration and that can be leveraged for arm twisting when needed.

For the power wielders, represented by the DGRE/MoFEPT, it is about getting back their toy and regaining control over madrassas, historically used for its agenda at various times. The stated goals are sensical – register and map all madrassas, audit funding sources, and ensure no entity in the country can operate as a parallel state. However, this needs to be accomplished by robust legal means, ones that will not be challenged and reversed a few months later.

The writer (she/her) has a PhD in Education.