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Pakistan religious parties protest teaching pre-Islamic history

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Religious parties in the National Assembly were on Wednesday up in arms against teaching Pakistan’s pre-Islamic history in schools...

Members of the six-party Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal also staged a token protest walkout over the inclusion of chapters about Hinduism, Buddhism and ancient emperor Chandragupta Maurya in the history textbooks for classes VI to VIII after a heated discussion...

Five MMA members had raised the history textbook issue... [and claimed] that the inclusion of chapters they considered objectionable had caused a “grave concern amongst the public”...

[The] Minister of State for Education...accused the religious parties of seeking to keep students ignorant about glorious periods of the sub-continent’s history such as the Indus Valley or Gandhara civilisations....

“That may be your history, (but) ... our history (starts) from Makkah [Mecca] and Medina,” MMA member Farid Ahmad Piracha shouted as he led his alliance’s walkout...
Read entire article at Dawn (Karachi, Pakistan)