Author:
Publication: Afternoon Despatch
& Courier
Date: March 25, 2004
URL: http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=news&xfile=March2004_news_standard1029
Pak to purge textbooks of anti-India
sentiments
Pakistan is planning to purge schoolbooks
of material fuelling religious hatred and anti-Indian sentiments in an
attempt to make its controversial educational system more secular, writes
Zahid Hussain in The Times of London.
Certain Koranic verses relating
to jihad are also being expunged after President Pervez Musharraf vowed
to eliminate Islamic extremism and improve relations with India.
Zubaida Jalal, Pakistan's education
minister, said the measure was important as the government strove to normalise
relations with India. "Islam does not teach hatred against other nations
and religions," she told parliament.
Hardline mullahs have vowed to resist
the plan. Qazi Hussein Ahmed, a leader of the Islamic Alliance, has demanded
that students "shield Islam from the Western secular onslaught".
A report published by the Sustainable
Development Policy Institute, an independent Pakistani think-tank, said
the state syllabus fed hatred against other religions and had turned schools
into centres of Islamic fundamentalism. The syllabus was designed in the
1980s by the military regime of General Zia ul-Haq as part of its Islamisation
programme.