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No more Jihad against India

No more Jihad against India

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.
 


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