A convention organised on Wednesday by the Ittehad Tanzeematul Madaris-e-Deeniya Pakistan (ITMDP), a confederacy of five education boards, said they would never succumb to government pressure to expel their foreign students and would continue to resist the authorities. The convention was also attended by the top leaders of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), who hinted at a possible joint agitation with the ITMDP against the government. “We have been resisting the government’s intentions to expel international students in our seminaries and will never succumb to the government’s pressure in the future,” Qari Hanif Jalandhari, a central ITMDP leader, said at a press conference at the Binori Town mosque after the convention.He said the convention condemned the removal of the mode of Namaz from the Islamiyat textbooks. The authorities scrapped it on the pretext of sectarian strife in the Northern Areas, which was not the real reason, he maintained. “In fact, the government changed the Islamiyat curriculum at the behest of its Western masters,” said Dr Sarfaraz Naeemi, secretary general of the ITMDP.