Re: MMA against teaching pre-islamic history
Lets see, the PPP backbone in the NWFP broke with Sherpao's lotaism, but I still believe its going to be the ANP, or maybe a joint PPP/ANP Government, who knows... Maybe the ANP might not get a large majority because they want to carry out the name change, but still, the ANP is pretty sensible and liberal.
Re: MMA against teaching pre-islamic history
Of course that stuff is useful. First of all, agricultural practices in Pakistan are not all high tech yet. A lot of their techniques are pretty old-fashioned.
Secondly, when you have issues like earthquake disasters, etc - its a good idea to study some history to find out what people in the area have done in the past to deal with natural disasters. The way many villagers live today is not all that different from some centuries ago.
So many inventions and ideas have been inspired by modelling on some old practice/idea. You need to study history for that. Muslims are not the only people in this world that have contributed to advances in society.
Now no one is sayign that you shouldn't have a solid background in muslim history, for muslim students (non-muslim students can opt out). But honestly, how many Pakistani muslims do you know have a good understanding of Islamic history? I was once told by an aunt that Khadija (R) never talked to a man or appeared in physical presence in the same room as a man except the Prophet. That's the Islamic history they're taught.
I don't expect MMA's version to be much different.