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| India-Pakistan |
| Religious Schools Upset In Pakistan |
| 2002-07-06 |
| Islamic clerics, representing thousands of religious schools in Pakistan, threatened Saturday to launch nationwide demonstrations to protest new laws that would regulate their finances, the enrollment of overseas students and prevent the teaching of Islamic extremism. If you can't have Saudi financing, enroll gun-totin' foreigners, and preach the glory of jihad to boys from the age of six so they're ready to explode by the time they're 15 or 16, why have madrassahs? After attending a meeting with top government officials to discuss the new rules, the heads of religious schools gave the government two weeks to withdraw the new regulations or face the protests. They feel very confident of their power in Pashtunistan... In a statement issued after the meeting, Ittehad-e-Tanzeemat, an alliance of organizations representing most of some 8,000 religious schools, said it would organize street demonstrations if the new regulations were not abandoned. "We neither give training in militancy to anyone nor collect donations in the name of Jihad (holy war)," the statement said. "Our sole aim is to prepare Islamic scholars." Yet they refused to identify the sources of their funding, a key demand by the government. This is a key fight for Perv, and it's one he's got to win. The mullahs and maulvis and other Learned Elders of Islam see it the same way, as the spark to set off the civil war that will tear Pashtunistan away from Pakland — if they can't manage to take over the entirety of Pakistan. The Emirate of Pashtunistan will be another Taliban-style regime, trying to export its foulness in all directions. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |