Just carrying forward Zia's legacy. Not surprised.
Religion is the oldest tactic politicians use when they feel they're losing relevance.
Pakistan is an Islamic Republic if people do not feel that they are able to assimilate into it nor be loyal to it then they shouldn't be living in Pakistan.
It's really that simple.
Pakistan isn't North Korea, people are free to leave at any time and the state shouldn't tolerate those who can't assimilate into, have no knowledge of, navigate through and be respectful of our Islamic culture.
At this point, how many non Science subjects does a student learn for his doctory or engineering degree? I think half the credits are now probably from religious and social/history courses.
The same is true of most B.Sc's around the world.
For example here in Canada half the courses in a B.Sc are non-core subjects. You can take Religious Ethics, Hispanic civilization, Ancient Greek mythology, etc... courses to complete your Engineering or Accounting or Biology degree.
The purpose of these courses are to create well rounded students and good citizens.
It's an obligation for every citizen to understand the Islamic Ideology that Pakistan was built on, its soldiers and civilians died for and the obligation of every mother, father and the state to teach it to future generations.
How is the Quran relevant to anyone's degree in engineering?
More importantly how is teaching in English relevant?
The worlds top performing students on PISA tests come from countries that teach in their native language (ex. Hong Kong and China in Mandarin, South Korea in Korean, Japan in Japanese, etc...).
Even the significantly poorer Vietnam teaches their kids in Vietnamese and outperforms their American counterparts and many other Western counterparts.
Teaching in English at our universities not only restricts higher education to a select few elites but those students likely did not grasp core concepts and fundamental techniques in their younger years while wasting time translating material when they could have been focused on learning new material. Not to mention this has had a damaging effect of alienating them from the larger Pakistani community and culture.
Why do you think the British forced Indian, Pakistani and Bengali children who at the time were slaves of the British Raj to learn in English only? It was to weaken us, have us abandon our culture and brainwash our ancestors into being loyal to European colonization.
hate of the pseudo leftist wannabe-whitey elite against our religion.
There's nothing "pseudo" about them liberals are generally deranged morons.
These maniacal terrorists have been brainwashing our kids through a concentrated campaign of misinformation since the 30s.
It's unfortunate that government after government have tolerated their outright treason against our constitution and their hatred of our culture, our freedoms and values. They aren't loyal to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and have no right to claim our ethnicity, heritage and citizenship.
It's their deranged thinking that lead to the creation of liberal secular India and turned it into the worlds largest open air prison for their Muslims.
Personally I don't agree with this decision. The more you force religion onto people the more they run from it.
Instead what would have been better is that kids are taught Islamiat throughout their school life, why not include Quran translation as a subset of Islamiat.
I do agree with you there but by that logic we wouldn't force kids to go to school in the first place and just wind up with a population of idiots because they'd rather be playing.
There are certain things we're required to teach our kids to be loyal, upstanding citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and basic understanding of the Quran is probably the bare minimum.
However I completely agree with you, and many others on here, that this isn't required if all schools (private and public) have mandatory teaching of Islam all the way up to University which should be implemented.
I personally think comparative theology highlighting Islam's differences and superiority over other ideologies would have been better. I personally became religious, well I try to be, on my own through research and debating.