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Yemen to Close More Religious Schools
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Bajamil
vowed to crack down hard on unauthorized religious schools.
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By
Abdel Salam Mohammad, IOL Correspondent
SANAA,
April 26, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – The Yemeni government has put
thousands of religious schools between a rock and a hard place by
demanding schools to either close doors or come under its full
supervision.
Education
Minister Abdel Salam Al-Joufi threatened to crack down hard on schools
found in violation of law, which puts the country’s education system
under government scrutiny.
“It
has been always the case for the government to encourage
non-governmental education and give licenses to more schools as long
as they abide by the ministry’s curricula,” he told
IslamOnline.net on Monday, April 25.
He
stressed that the ministry will not tolerate schools that breach such
a commitment.
The
minister declined to comment on a report by a government ad hoc
committee assigned to tally and evaluate religious and
non-governmental schools in the country.
The
committee, which swung into action on June 29, 2004 till March 13,
2005, found that anti-regime and –democracy
publications were found in some schools outside the state’s
supervision.
It
said that foreign students, including Americans, were enrolled at some
of these schools, including 150 in one school in the northern city of
Sada.
The
committee starkly warned that swift action must be taken against
potential ethnic tensions as some schools were strictly following
sects like Salifism, Sufism, Yazidi and Ismailites.
Yemeni
authorities have closed down over the past two months 1400
unauthorized schools for preaching violence, hatred for the west and
hardline ideas.
In
an address last week, Prime Minister Abdel Qadir Bajamal said there
were up to 330,000 students enrolled in unauthorized schools, vowing
to shut them.
Close
Scrutiny
A
number of lawmakers and politicians backed the idea of placing Islamic
schools under full government supervision but warned the government
against closing the schools.
“The
government should rather set up by bylaws for such schools, draft
syllabi and place them under its close scrutiny to prevent any
deviation,” MP Zaid Al-Shami told IOL.
Countering
religious education would backfire, cautioned Shami, a member of the
parliament’s Education Committee.
“For
centuries Yemenis have been sending their children to mosques and
katatib (religious schools) to learn the Noble Qur’an.”
The
legislator asked the government to honor its pledge and establish
Al-Azhar-like schools and institutes.
Abdel
Karim Al-Eriani, the secretary general of the ruling Popular Congress
party, also opposed closing down religious schools, but on the
condition that they do not preach aberrant ideas.
“Schools
that accuse Yemenis of being infidels and apostates should be shut
down immediately,” he said.
The
issue of religious schools has taken central stage since June 2004
against a backdrop of bloody clashes between security forces and
followers of rebel leader Hussein Badrudin Al-Houthi, who was
killed along with dozens of his supporters in September.
Yemeni
media reported that most of Houthi’s followers studied in such
religious schools.
In
2002, the government decided to oversee religious schools
administratively and financially and merge their budgets into the
ministry of education’s finances.
Yemeni
authorities had temporarily closed Al-Iman University in the wake of
the 9/11 attacks and asked its president Sheikh Abdel Majid Al-Zandani
to expel 500 foreign students in line with the counter-terror
policies.
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