ISLAMABAD: The Wafa-qul Madaris Arabia Pakistan has launched a campaign “to safeguard the sanctity and freedom of seminaries”.

Speaking at a meeting of religious scholars and heads and students of seminaries here on Wednesday, the organisation’s General Secretary Maulana Muhammad Hanif Jalandhri said the movement was aimed at protecting the institutions because the government had started allowing raids against them.

“The protection and sanctity of seminaries is part of our faith. The sacrilege of seminaries and discrimination against ulema will be resisted,” he said.

He said the government had launched a “crackdown” on seminaries on the pretext that the demand for the action had come from the army.

He appealed to the army chief to take notice of the situation.

Maulana Jalandhri alleged that the “crackdown” against seminaries was part of an international conspiracy against Islam and demanded that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif explain his recent statement about making Pakistan a liberal state.

He said any move to amend the Constitution to alter its Islamic “identity” would not be allowed.

On the occasion, the clerics said they would stand by the armed forces for defending the country’s boundaries. They also requested the army to stand by them to safeguard the country’s ideological identity.

They said the seminaries were neither ‘no-go areas’ nor they had anything to do with terrorism.

The issues of registration and submission of data forms have been agreed between the government and religious scholars and there is no need for unnecessary interference in seminaries’ affairs, they said.

Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2015