Cairo: Egyptian authorities have started a campaign on unlicensed Islamic schools after reports that these are used to indoctrinate children with radical ideas, the Ministry of Religious Affairs has said.
The drive is aimed at revising the legal status of the schools set up to teach Islam’s holy book, the Quran, to children and ensure they are not manipulated for promoting radicalism, according to the ministry.
These schools are usually annexed to mosques or privately run in mostly Muslim Egypt that has seen a spate of deadly attacks by militant Islamists in recent years.
“The Ministry of Waqf [Religious Affairs] is coordinating with the Ministry of Social Solidarity to legalise the schools affiliated to non-governmental organisations, which meet requirements for opening centres to teach Quran memorisation,” Waqf Minister Ali Jumaa said in press remarks.
The Ministry of Social Solidarity is in charge of overseeing NGOs in Egypt.
Licensing Quran schools requires that their teachers memorise the holy book and master rules of its recitation, Jumaa explained.
“The teacher should have no links to any radical group so that he would not exploit or spread extremist ideas that harm the nation,” the official added.
Non-compliant schools face closure.
An estimated 2,400 Quran schools are under the state supervision in Egypt.
There are no clear figures about the number of such privately operated schools.
Revising the legal status of these schools is part of a relentless campaign launched by Egyptian authorities to tighten control on religious sites since the army’s 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohammad Mursi following mass protests against his divisive rule.
The government has since brought thousands of mosques across the country under its grip, denying Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood and allied groups a major forum to influence devout Muslims.
In recent months, authorities have also confiscated hundreds of books from mosques as part of a clampdown targeting writings by the now-outlawed Brotherhood.
Thousands of followers of the 88-year-old Islamist group have been detained and given heavy-handed sentences since Mursi’s overthrow.
