Islamabad, Pakistan – After quelling protests from the opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the government of Pakistan is facing a new challenge – a possible unrest led by Fazal-ur-Rehman, the leader of the religious Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUIF) party.
Rehman, a veteran politician and part of the ruling coalition that ruled Pakistan from April 2022 to August 2023, is urging the government to approve a bill introduced in October to streamline the registration process to change religious conferences.
In October, the legislation was approved along with the 26th controversial amendment – transferred by the government, and for which they are their support was needed of JUIF legislators – which will provide parliament with insight into judicial positions.
However, when the bill reached it for final approval, President Asif Ali Zardari raised “technical objections” and sent it back to parliament for further consideration. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government has since indicated that they too have concerns about the bill – raising a deadlock.
Rehman has since engaged in dialogue with government officials, including Sharif, arguing that the current law governing religious congregations undermines their autonomy.
Last week, he warned that reversing promises made to his party could further destabilize Pakistan's already volatile political landscape.
“We want to create a feeling of trust. It is the government's responsibility to improve the situation, but it seems to be pushing people to terrorism and protest,” Rehman said in Peshawar.
So what does the current law say, and what would the new bill do? What concerns have Zardari and others raised? And what's next, for the bill and for Pakistan's broken policy?
How have conferences been managed historically?
The debate over the registration of religious seminaries, also known as madrassas, has been going on for a long time controversial in Pakistan.
Historically, conferences have been registered under the Societies Registration Act since the colonial period of 1860 at the district level. This decentralized system left the government with little control over seminary curricula, activities or funding.
In particular, state or federal education officials had no oversight of conferences, which dealt only with local bureaucrats.
Over time, concerns grew about the lack of effective monitoring of the curriculum, finances or operations of these schools.
Why did stricter regulation begin?
The tipping point was the 9/11 attack and the declaration of a “war on terror” by the United States. Pakistan, under army chief General Pervez Musharraf, was trying to reform conferences.
Many of the men who joined armed groups such as al-Qaeda, or those who founded Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) were established as former students in seminaries in Pakistan, which led to the government declared the proposed reforms “necessary”. for national security.
Following the deadly attack by the TTP on the Army Public School, a military-run school, in December 2014 in Peshawar, the Pakistani government introduced the National Action Plan, a comprehensive document that sought to, among other recommendations, monitor religious registration. seminar.
Between 2018 and 2022, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental money laundering watchdog set up by the G7 in 1989, placed Pakistan on the “grey list” of countries that did not fully comply with its rules. Countries on the gray list risk losing critical foreign investment.
One of the demands of the FATF before removing Pakistan's name from the list was that the government would bring religious conferences under its control, to ensure the transparency of the financial activities.
In 2019, under the PTI government of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, seminaries were reclassified as educational institutions and placed under the Ministry of Education.
This led to the creation of the Director General of Religious Education (DGRE), currently headed by Ghulam Qamar, a retired two-star general who is also a counter-terrorism expert.
The DGRE mandated annual examinations and expanded seminary curricula to include subjects such as mathematics and science.
Since its inception, more than 18,000 seminars and two million students have been registered.
However, many conferences, including those affiliated with JUIF, refused to join the system and continued to operate under the Societies Registration Act.
What is in the legislation that the JUIF is proposing?
The JUIF's amendment to the Societies Registration Act transfers conference registration duties back to district deputy commissioners, removing guidance from the Ministry of Education.
The bill also proposes that conferences with multiple campuses be allowed to register as a single organization, a move that the JUIF argues will reduce government interference and protect the autonomy of these institutions.
What are the government's complaints?
Minister of Religious Affairs, Chaudhry Salik Hussain, has defended the government against approving the JUIF bill.
Hussain, in a statement issued by the Ministry of Religious Affairs last week, said the government wants matters related to education to remain under the control of the Ministry of Education, including the registration of -speech.
Al Jazeera reached out to Hussain, as well as Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, to seek comments on the controversy, and why legislators from the ruling parties had supported the bill in parliament with a majority in the first place if they had doubts. None have responded.
However, at a recent conference in Islamabad earlier this week, government officials and religious leaders expressed concerns about the changes proposed by the JUIF. Information Minister Tarar said there were “legal problems” in the bill – without spelling them out – and asked for further consultations.
Federal Education Minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui also said that withdrawing the existing registration mechanism was out of the question, stressing that such a move would not serve the good of country
“Congress reforms have also been a major issue in terms of national security,” he said.
What does this mean for Pakistani politics?
The Sharif government may no longer urgently need JUIF's political support after the 26th amendment. But his failure to deliver on his promise to a party he helped pass a controversial constitutional amendment – which former Prime Minister Imran Khan's PTI argues will undermine the independence of the judiciary – raises questions about the credibility of the government.
“It would be better if the government resolves this issue without creating more mess,” Shahzad Iqbal, a political analyst and news anchor based in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera.
But that won't be easy. The government, Iqbal said, appeared to be under “pressure from other quarters”, over the bill.
In July, Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, head of Pakistan's military media team, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), had reference at a press conference that more than half of the country's religious conferences were unregistered and their information, including where their funding came from, was unknown.
This, according to Lahore-based analyst Majid Nizami, is why the ongoing debate about religious conferences and their control may eventually come down – “directly or indirectly ” – to what Pakistan's powerful military establishment wants.
“The DGRE is headed by a former major general with a long history of counter-terrorism experience,” Nizami told Al Jazeera. “When and if the military establishment gives any permission, only the political parties would be involved.” It's not a political concern; it's a military concern.”
