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Crackdown on madrassas

Nirupama Subramanian

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will expel all foreign students in madrassas who do not have a no-objection certificate from their Governments, the Interior Ministry has said. There are 700 foreign students in Pakistan, Mr. Syed Kamal Shah told a press conference on Tuesday. Of these, 350 did not have no-objection certificates and face "repatriation." He said the Government had made it mandatory for foreign students wishing to enrol in seminaries in Pakistan to get NoCs from their Governments. President Pervez Musharraf had announced after last year's London bombings, in which one of the alleged bombers was reported to have spent time in a seminary in Pakistan, that all foreign students in religious schools had to leave the country. The Government estimated the number of such students was 1,400. Half had already left Pakistan, Mr. Shah said. The Government's announcement came as the coalition of six religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, criticised the "ban on visas" for students who wanted to come to Pakistan. MMA leaders told journalists that Pakistan was "an ideological Islamic state" and preventing foreign students from getting a religious education here was "wrong." They said all foreign students should be allowed to enrol in madrassas if they had valid visas.

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