In September, Pakistan's Supreme Court will decide a constitutional petition that challenges the educational qualifications of 68 members of the National Parliament. If the petition is granted, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of religious parties, will suffer the most political damage by losing 65 seats in the Parliament.

This mass expulsion will hit the MMA's rank and file - including its top leaders such as Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani and Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Indeed, all who received degrees from religious institutions will be disqualified from the Parliament.

The threat of mass expulsion arises from a law, decreed by President General Pervez Musharraf for the 2002 Elections, which requires a baccalaureate degree as minimum qualification for contesting elections to the National Parliament (the BA law). At the heart of the issue, though, is a question whether the degrees received from religious institutions are equivalent to graduation.

In the first week of July, the MMA won a small battle when the Supreme Court restored the membership of Mufti Ibrar Sultan whom Peshawar's election tribunal had disqualified from the National Parliament on the ground that his degree, obtained from a religious institution, was not good enough to meet the requirements of the BA law.

This victory, though important, is more in the nature of a stay order that the Court usually grants to provide temporary relief until the case is fully heard and decided on merit. There is, of course, no guarantee that the Supreme Court will uphold the stay order when the Mufti case is fully heard in September.

The Mufti case will be heard along with the constitutional petition aimed at mass expulsion. Bear in mind that the petition for mass expulsion has been filed by a stalwart lawyer and not by any losing candidate or the government. The lawyer's petition will most likely be dismissed for lack of standing and related technical flaws.

The Mufti case, which the Supreme Court must hear on merit, nonetheless raises the same high political stakes as does the lawyer's petition. If Mufti is disqualified, other parliamentarians with similar educational qualifications will be unable to retain their seats in the Parliament.

In deciding the Mufti case, the Supreme Court faces a great challenge, for what is at stake is the concept of democracy. If Mufti wins, religious institutions will earn a new respectability as the guardians of Islamic democracy.

If Mufti loses, the democracy in Pakistan will take a giant step towards secularism, undermining the political power of religious parties. One could argue that the BA law - though unique and far from being universal - is a very good idea in the annals of democracy.

The great responsibility of lawmaking cannot be discharged unless the lawmakers have a good understanding of diverse social problems and possess reasonable knowledge of modernity so that the laws they make meet the needs of time.

Lawmakers, no matter how well-intentioned they are, will fail to build a progressive and competitive Pakistan if they lack modern education. On the basis of this argument, the Court may conclude that religious education is an insufficient substitute for a broader education available at colleges and universities.

The counter argument is more or less equally authentic, which goes as follows: lawmakers must preserve Pakistan's Islamic heritage that constitutes the nation's raison d'etre. Any pursuit of mere modernity - good material life - disconnected from Islamic tradition will be unacceptable to the peoples of Pakistan. If this assumption is valid, the argument proceeds, secular education as the exclusive educational requirement for membership in the Parliament cannot safeguard Islamic heritage.

The Parliament therefore needs religious scholars whose input into the legislative process will assure that the legal system neither moves away from Islamic roots, nor towards a form of secularism, prevailing in the West, under which the separation of state and religion breeds moral degradation and cynicism.

The Supreme Court will most certainly consider the impact of disqualification on the nature of democracy, asking whether the Parliament should be made completely secular.

More than that, practical reasons will also influence the Court's decision. Disqualification of 68 members of the Parliament will be no less than a political coup.

Any such mass expulsion will dismantle the MMA, which is unlikely to accept the decision as an Act of God. Even outsiders might reject the decision as a judicial ploy to weaken the opposition that the MMA has mounted against the ruling party.

In any event, political unrest is bound to follow. The worst case scenario will mimic the bloody chaos of Algeria, where the military government banned the Islamic Salvation Front from contesting elections that the Front was poised to win. Ever since, Algeria has been politically unstable and socially torn apart.

The Supreme Court, which has so far done an excellent job of promoting democracy in a pragmatic manner, will weigh the political consequences of disqualification en mass.

The legal and constitutional arguments will be formidable on both sides. It is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will interpret the BA law in any superficial manner, as did the Peshawar's election tribunal, to declare that the Sanad is not a BA degree.

The Court may rely upon the authority of the University Grants Commission, which in 1982 recognised that the Sanad Shahadatul Ilmiya fil Uloom ul Arabia wal Islamia (the degree evidencing Arabic and Islamic knowledge) granted by religious Madaris (schools) is equivalent to a MA degree - much more than the law requires.

Given the poor standards of education at some Pakistani colleges, it will be difficult for the Supreme Court to convince the world that the knowledge of Islamic history and jurisprudence earned from an authentic religious institution is not equivalent to a BA degree in Islamiyat obtained from an ordinary college.

The writer is the author of a recent book, A Theory of Universal Democracy (Kluwer, 2003).