An interesting scene developed in the National Assembly the other day when some Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) MNAs repeatedly raised the question why their recommendations had not been accepted by the Ministry of Education.
Further, Farid Piracha and Hafiz Hussain Ahmed of the MMA on a point of order wanted the ministry to reply whether the concept of Jihad and Quranic verses were being removed from the educational curriculum. Federal Education Minister Mrs Zobeda Jalal then revealed to the House that the MMA had proposed separate Islamiat text books for Sunni and Shia students, which she had rejected outright.
The whole House erupted in desk-thumping acclamation (with the noticeable silence of the MMA legislators), when the minister said: "How can I as a mother teach this divide to my minor kids who is Sunni and who is Shia..."
She went on to remind the House that the country was already facing a crisis-like situation with a Muslim killing a fellow Muslim in the name of Islam.
She argued that Islam not only teaches respect for the human rights of Muslims and non-Muslims, but also presses for implementation of its injunctions thereof. Citing Quranic verses, the minister said there was no room for extremism and killing of innocent human beings just because they followed any other school of thought or religion.
She also refuted the suggestion that the concept of Jihad or Quranic verses were being deleted from the education curriculum.
The minister did concede, however, that in social studies and Urdu subjects, there were chapters through which hatred was spread.
It is amazing and disappointing, too, how misplaced is the general view of the concreteness of our Ulema in parliament.
On the basis of their ideas, one might be tempted into forgetting that the country has just suffered some of its most terrible sectarian incidents on Ashura in Quetta and Rawalpindi.
The danger from fanatics of a sectarian hue cannot be said to have subsided. Not so long ago, over a period of about two years, targeted killings of Shia doctors in Karachi led to an emigration wave of such professionals who felt unsafe in their own homeland. Whose loss was that except of this country?
One might also be beguiled by the Ulema of the MMA into forgetting that more urgent matters require the attention of parliament and the government than spurious charges about deletion from the curriculum of certain concepts or Quranic quotations requiring a higher level of understanding.
The people are groaning under economic hardship, unemployment and other deficits in terms of public services. Yet all this does not cause even a furrow on the brows of our worthy MMA legislators.
Zobeda Jalal's spirited defence of true Islamic principles and rejection of the sectarian proposal of the MMA deserves appreciation.
For too long, at least since General Ziaul Haq's day, the country has been held hostage to the obscurantists' penchant for divisiveness and friction where no cause exists.
The dangerous implications and actual effects of their narrow views and literalist interpretation of our faith have caused the country to land in a quagmire from which rescue is attempted at best rhetorically by General Musharraf's regime.
Take for example the admission by the worthy minister that certain chapters on certain subjects spread hatred in young and impressionable minds, forever distorting their view of Islam and turning out sectarian-minded citizens.
Whose interest can possibly be served by dividing the Muslims of Pakistan between sects and denominations?
It is this sectarian tendency of our Maulvis that has brought the country much grief in its chequered history since independence.
It is high time enlightened and educated Muslims took the bull by the horns and banished such ideas where they belong: the dust heap.
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