Islamist Teaching Standards Defiled
There it is, local Pakistani Taliban consider it their duty to destroy the potential for education for girls attending schools. For that matter, boys too attending schools based on Western-inspired education systems. Defiling young minds by teaching them to read and write; teaching mathematics and geography and history and science. Rather than relentlessly exposing them to the singular and stultifying study of the Koran and the history of Islam.None other than an Islamist cleric with links to Pakistan's Taliban, Maulana Fazlullah has so ruled, that it is just and proper, under Islam and sharia law, that girls not be exposed to educational opportunities, lest it stimulate an unrest within their bosoms leading them astray from their Muslim heritage as practised in the northwestern Swat valley.
These dedicated upholders of the honour and obligations toward Islam have thus far dispatched no fewer than 168 schools to oblivion. Representing their response to Pakistan's security forces' operation to battle the region's insurgents, since 2007. There are over 600 state-operated schools, along with 400 private schools in the area, and they are all ripe for destruction.
The response from Pakistan's Broadcasting and Information Minister is that the government is not prepared to tolerate violence against women. "We will continue our fight against terrorism", she has announced. The burning of Swat's schools, according to the Taliban, is a response to Pakistan's military operations against them; should the government persevere in battling fanaticism, the fanatics respond.
A total of fifty thousand students are expected to be affected by this ongoing threat. It's a compelling threat; to kill any girls who attempt to attend classes, and to bomb any schools which enroll girls. Tens of thousands of students are thus left without options for their education, and by extension, their futures.
Other than to accept what tradition and custom designates for them; a silent background prop for men who will marry them, ensure they are well covered in top-to-toe garments at all times in public, that they not venture out without male escort, that they never seek employment outside their homes, that they focus all their attention and activity upon husband and children.
Children, needless to say, with mothers who are uneducated are themselves unlikely to aspire to much in the way of a worldly education. Destiny is narrowly prescribed; a medieval trap of enslavement to Islam for the women and the children of the area. Because of these dire threats schools will simply remain closed.
As far as the school authorities are concerned, they have little choice. "The government has assured us it will provide security but it is a question of the lives of the students and we cannot take a risk."
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, January 18, 2009
<< Home