Afghanistan Times
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As the standard of education across the country has been under questions, President Ashraf Ghani asked Education Ministry officials to submit a report on the sate of education within two weeks. What Ghani did is a step in right direction. Until education quality is improved, we couldn’t make development in real sense.
What truly matters is not only making people read and write rather enable them to have visionary ideas, leadership qualities, and standing in front of the tides to turn their face and take this country out of the crises should be the aim of our education.
When people talk on education, they forget about it that mosques and madrassas also make part of our education system. For long madrassas education has gone unnoticed and unaddressed but Ghani’s nominee for Minister of Hajj and Religious Affairs Faiz Mohammad Osmain pointed at a much important matter regulating and formalizing mosques and madrassas. When he went to the Parliament to bag vote of confidence, he talked on regulating mosques and madrassas. Surprisingly, this important issue has been ignored for long time whereas after Osmani has pointed it out, the government should do something about it. Should mosques and madrassas be regulated and Afghanistan’s stability will take a new positive turnaround. Setting guidelines and regulations for mosques to follow will bring about positive results where madrassas administrators would be accountable. There wouldn’t be any sermons that come under hate speech. Since people associated with mosques and madrassas enjoy unparalleled power, which is why their power and influence should be used for betterment of the nation instead of being used for creating chaos and divisions. As Afghanistan is a war-wracked country, therefore a heavy responsibility falls on the shoulders of religious leaders. The impact of alienation of madrassas students has not been noticed yet therefore there is need of scholarly research on it. Osmani said 90 percent of all mosques have no official record. It means the government is totally incognizant of the fact that who funds the mosques and madrassas and how much religious leaders hold sway over Afghan citizens particularly in rural areas. If there is a proper mechanism to utilize the sway of all heads of all mosques, it will have far reaching results on security front as well bridging the gaps between the government and the general public. Depoliticizing of the seminaries is the need of the hour. By depoliticizing it shouldn’t be meant that all religious leaders shouldn’t motivate general public to support government rather it should be meant that they shouldn’t take the affairs of the state in their own hands and try to beguile general public into believing that the current government is not the representative of the people of the land because such motivations are behind the ongoing militancy that has already taken a heavy toll on the nation. At the same time, we should be less worry about different sects living in the country that what school of thought they adhere to, but yes we should worry about electing people. They should be serious, thoughtful, equipped with visionary traits and above all with good character. As the central message of the religion is love, compassion, forgiveness, humanity, and emancipation of human being, then why it should be used against all these values. Then why someone should be allowed to use religious slogans for infusing militant ideology? Isn’t against the true face of our peace-loving religion?
