Law to convert madrasas

AN INDIAN state ruled by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last Wednesday (30) passed a law abolishing state-run Islamic schools, saying they provided substandard education.

Opposition politicians criticised the move and said it reflected the government’s anti-Muslim attitude. More than 700 of the government-funded religious schools, known as madrasas, in northeastern Assam will be shut by April, the state’s education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.

“We need more doctors, police officers, bureaucrats, and teachers, from the minority Muslim community rather than imams for mosques,” said Sarma, a rising star in Modi’s BJP.

The government would convert them to regular schools as education provided in the madrasas could not prepare anyone for “the temporal world and its earthly concerns”, he said.

Opposition politicians said the move was an attack on Muslims. “The idea is to wipe out Muslims,” said Wajed Ali Choudhury, a lawmaker from the opposition Congress party.

Meanwhile, more than 100 retired senior civil servants and diplomats urged the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh to repeal a new law criminalising forced religious conversion of brides, seen as anti-Muslim.