KUALA LUMPUR, January 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The Malaysian Prime Minister said Sunday, January 12, that the government will not ban religious schools, despite their anti-government teaching but will not give any grant or assistance to them.

The government could not support the school because they do not teach religion but have instead become political institutions, the Malaysian National News Agency (Bernama) quoted Mahathir Mohammad as saying.

"But if they want to carry on spoiling the future of the children, we cannot stop them. We are not going to ask them to spoil the future of the children who will go out hating everything," he told a press conference after performing the ground-breaking for the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (Utar) main campus, Bernama reported.

He was asked about the 74,000 students who are currently enrolled in the schools and who have been given till February 6 to go to national schools.

"If they (students) want to stay in religious schools, they can but we cannot support them. Because it's not religion that is being taught there," he added, Bernama reported.

The Government was worried that every child that went to these schools would become anti-government and this was not because of their own doing but due to the teaching there, Mohammad said.

He said the schools did not teach religion but taught students never to be grateful and to reject brotherhood among Muslims, the agency said, adding that he also said that the teachers are not qualified and that they just want to make money out of education.

Mohammad said there was no need for such schools now compared to the British times when the authorities never paid attention to Islamic religious education, the agency said.

Mohammad announced on Friday, October 24, that the government has stopped giving per capita grants to religious schools after some of the schools were found to be used for politics, Malaysian news agency, Bernama, reported.

The Malaysian government announced that it has frozen financial aids for more than 500 religious schools in Malaysia, accusing the schools’ authorities of breeding hatred of the government among the students.

The Prime Minister said the government took the decision to study the status of the schools to ensure they were genuinely teaching religion, said Bernama.

“At the moment, we have stopped assistance to all religious schools until we can distinguish which is religious school, (and) which is political school,” he told reporters after chairing the supreme council meeting for his ruling party United Malays National Organization (UMNO), at the time.

“UMNO members’ children who go to these schools have asked their fathers to bring down the picture of the firaun (Pharaoh) when they returned home.