Madressah registration

This is refers to the news story, ‘Sindh cabinet approves draft bill for madressah registration’ (September 19). The project of registration was initiated during the last military regime – without any progress. However, registration is not the same as reformation. What madressahs need is to be qualitatively upgraded.

Qualitative upgrading implies the following: reformation of syllabi, improvement in the quality of teachers and methodology of instruction. These institutions must also be enabled to produce mathematicians, scientists and scholars of humanities. Above all, madressahs should be redesigned to provide marketable skills to the children of poverty-stricken families who send their sons to these institutions because they can neither feed nor educate them on their own money. All this ought to be coordinated with suitable industrialisation of the country to create jobs for the unemployed millions. This is in the interest of all, including religio-political leaders, and for the continued relevance of madressahs – because the role that they had in the 1980s is over forever .

Brig (r) Usman Shah

Rawalpindi