Malaysia’s Islamic schools face festering problems As Malaysia's ethnic Malays have increasingly turned to traditional Malay Islamic schools, known as pondoks or Tahfiz schools, the fact that they are largely unregulated is allowing problems to fester, including unsafe conditions, exposure to extremist teachings and especially child sexual abuse by ustazes, or teachers. Almost 1,000 new pondoks have opened over the past six years. However, there are no reliable figures on how many there are because many are not registered. They escape Federal Ministry of Education supervision because Islamic education is a responsibility of individual states. Registered and unregistered pondoks number into the thousands with an estimated ... Continue reading... http://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=20392
