First and the most obvious point is how can such an exclusionary question be selected in the first place and made mandatory for all the test takers? If this insidious attempt to side track the religious minority and even the women was not enough, the formulator(s) of the question even provided the so-called hints which to me was a reflection of their sheer bad taste. The selection of questions is a painstaking process involving hundreds of people. The fact that one of our teachers came up with this question for the English language exam and the question was selected at the final stage bodes ill for our education system. Are we to finally accept that our education system is staffed and run by incompetent and ignorant souls? Or is it a deliberate attempt either to exclude and alienate the religious minority (including the women, I must say, because how on earth would they know what happens at the Eidgah other than speculate?) from the mainstream or to coerce them into submitting to the dominant religious culture?

Second, judging from newspaper reports the question along with the add-ons (disregarding the controversy) only seems fit for a fifth-grader. A high school public exam that is supposed to test the aptitude of the English language should not be asking the test takers to discuss what their mothers/sisters did on a particular feast day or the 'feast' that was arranged on the day. Besides the controversial nature of the question I think it is equally important that we seriously and critically examine the standard of the education itself that every year churns out people with mere degrees and without any real education. It is not without reason that the current education system in the country is extremely poor by any standard.

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This letter is in response to Ms Christina Gomez's letter on June 03. I totally agree with her on the issue of a compulsory question at HSC on Eid-ul-Fitr.

It made me out-aged when I learnt about this. I don't know what made the people (responsible for this) do such a silly and insensitive conduct. Is it complete apathy towards the sentiments of minorities? Or a planned miss-deed to tarnish Islamic values. No where in the Quran and the authentic Hadith sources of Prophet (sm) was said to ignore or curtail the rights of minorities, rather in many places, protection of the rights of minorities was stressed upon with utter importance. In many instances in the history, many Muslim rulers remarkably stood out among their contemporaries in regard to protecting the rights of minorities.

The government should investigate this matter quickly and take adequate measures against the persons responsible for this, so that no similar incident will occur in the future.

Zafar Hadi, California, USA