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Malaysia
Drafts New Law To Govern Religious Schools
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| Malaysia
to issue a law governing religious schools
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Report
By Kazi Mahmood
JAKARTA,
Feb 3 (IslamOnline) - The Malaysian government is formulating a law
to prevent private religious schools, including madrassahs, from
being used as training grounds for religious extremism, the
Malaysian premier said Saturday.
Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad said many such schools were actually
fronts for certain people to train their cadres and were not
involved in imparting religious knowledge to their students.
The
Party Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS), the largest Muslim party in the
country after Mahathir’s United Malays National Organization
(UMNO), runs its own schools and feels threatened by the move.
Mahathir
said he knew a religious school where students took up to 14 years
to finish their studies supposedly in Islamic theology but in
reality, the time was used to train them in “violent”
activities.
He
said he could foresee some problems arising from the move because
religious matters came under the jurisdiction of the respective
state governments.
Malaysia
is keen to take steps to regulate religious schools after
madrassah’s in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan came under attack
for allegedly promoting extremism.
Pakistan’s
and India’s government has taken steps to regulate these
traditional religious schools. Afghanistan now controls most of
these schools since the ouster of the Taliban last year.
India
insisted after the September 11th attacks on Washington and New
York, that such schools must be kept under scrutiny and the U.S.
supported the idea.
The
PAS recently said it was worried the Malaysian authorities might be
looking towards its schools and would probably ban them. Its
Secretary General Nasharudin Mat Esa denied these schools were used
to promote either hatred or extremism.
He
said the Malaysian authorities were more afraid of the impact of the
schools on the younger generations and that the government had other
agenda’s in mind.
On
his part, Mahathir said there could be some resistance from certain
state governments because they would want to continue to have a full
say in the running of such schools so that their political future
would be more secure.
He
was referring to the states of Kelantan and Terengganu which are
under the control of the PAS.
However,
Mahathir said there could be a way around the problem because
matters on education were governed by the Federal Government.
The
Malaysian premier said if the authorities know the schools were used
to teach Malaysian children political ideology and they were trained
to topple the government through violence, “then we can take
action against them.”
Mahathir
was commenting on a report about a religious school in the state of
Johor which was closed down by the authorities and had 12 of its
teachers, including the principal, arrested for allegedly being
involved in the Malaysian Mujahidin Group (KMM).
Dr
Mahathir said the Government would also formulate an integrated
curriculum for religious schools in the country so that teachers
would not be able to deviate from the specified syllabus.
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