Shah Mahmood Qureshi sees turbulent times ahead due to spat over seminaries bill

LAHORE: The Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi says that the discord over the bill seeking changes to the process of registration of seminaries may further escalate and serve as an additional factor for political instability in the country.

Mr Qureshi, who is incarcerated in Kot Lakhpat Jail, has expressed these concerns in an open letter titled “Registration of seminaries — a self-inflicted wound”, that has been shared with Dawn on Sunday.

In the letter, he says JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman is insisting on presidential assent to the bill recently passed by both house of the parliament, along with the 26th constitutional amendment.

However, he sajd, some government ministers, along with a couple of members of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) had started voicing their opposition to the controversial bill.

He states that a unanimous resolution was passed at the conference organised by one section of the ulema, asking the federal government to maintain the current system of Madressah registration.

He said Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui (of the MQM-P) at the conference had asserted that the rollback of the 2019 agreement was not acceptable to his party. “If that is the case, then the question arises, why did his party vote for the bill introduced by the government,” he commented and asked whether the ministry of law was unaware of the 2019 legislation, when it vetted and approved the proposal draft.

Mr Qureshi says President Asif Ali Zardari had sent the bill back to the parliament without according his assent to it, identifying some flaws in the piece of legislation. He says Maulana Fazl claimed to have spent five hours in convincing the leaderships of both the PPP and the PML-N at Jati Umra, in the presence of the law minister, and “succeeded” in evolving a consensus.

“Why were the flaws being pointed out at this stage, which were not tabled and discussed with the JUI-F when the amendment of a breakthrough legislation was made,” Mr Qureshi asked.

The former foreign minister wrote that over 18,000 seminaries had been registered since 2019. “One presumes that the registered seminaries are free of the four stigmas pointed out by Allama Jawad Naqvi,” he stated.

Mr Qureshi says that Maulana Fazal Rahim had rightly pointed out that there should be no politics over seminaries. He says the government should have been cognisant of this, when they reached an understanding with Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

“The nod of approval given by President Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to the Bill proposed by Maulana Fazalur Rehman and both Houses of the Parliament having voted for the Societies Registration (Amendment) Act 2024 has further complicated the situation,” he says.

Upset over the government’s backtracking, Mr Qureshi says Maulana Fazlur Rehman had threatened to announce a “plan of action” on Dec 17 (tomorrow).

He, however, says the fact remains that some three years were spent on consultations with the five established boards and an agreement was reached to place the seminaries under administrative control of the federal education department.

Pakistan’s desire to get out of the grey list of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) also played a significant role in reaching the agreement in 2019.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2024