- Teaching the Holy Quran at Universities
The Punjab government has decided to make the teaching of the Holy Quran, with Urdu translation, mandatory for all University students as a separate subject that they will have to pass to graduate. This will be in addition to Islamiat and Pakistan Studies that are already compulsory courses and students need to secure a passing grade in both to graduate as well. The state is of course free to decide what it deems necessary to be taught at every level of education on the basis of what it has set out to achieve in terms of morals, ideas and understandings that should be uniform across the young population of the country. As it is, students have to contend with studying two subjects, Pak Studies and Islamiat at University after having read them at the secondary level, with no discernable difference between the syllabi at either level. This is a repetitive exercise that only eats into the time that students could and should be giving to core subjects that contribute the most towards the degree that they are pursuing, whatever that may be.
But there is another dimension to this decision. It opens up room for debate over what else can be part of University teaching that would contribute to the development of students from a moral standpoint. Perhaps down the line, an argument is presented that in addition to the Quran, Hadith studies should also be included. That such an alteration to the curriculum has not been made by previous governments despite the idea being floated many times does not mean that they were less religious than the current one; rather they realized what it would entail. It seems that the Punjab government under the PTI is attempting to gain some political advantage from this move as it primarily panders to the religious right vote bank. The relevant stakeholders involved in this decision should review it. But if there is no possibility of reconsidering, at the very least, the studying of the Holy Quran should be made a component of the Islamiat syllabus rather than a new separate subject altogether.
