Female Madrasas in Pakistan
Female Madrasas in Pakistan

Author: Faiza Muhammad Din

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2023-06-20

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 180207435X

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This study sets out to explain and understand the worldview of students at Female madrasas (FeM) in Pakistan. Beginning as an indigenous informal institute for female education at home, FeM has evolved to country-wide formal theological seminaries that award women graduate degrees in Islamic studies. Since the 1970s, state intervention and social engagement have influenced not only the structure of FeMs but their locations. Attendance is from all socio-economic strata of society. A recent development, especially in urban centers, is the teaching of the state curriculum to enable young students to access mainstream education. Public opinion is divided about the role of FeMs in society. Some believe that FeMs confine women into the domestic realm; others view FeMs as a move forward into modernity, as they educate the least educated sectors of society. The author uses the lens of language and gender to explore why such divergent views exist about FeMs. Specifically, language and vocabulary has served as a powerful factor for restricting women to their traditional roles. Madrasas have a profound effect on Pakistani society at large, as they respond to the immediate socio-political and economic needs of the community. In the last two decades many books were produced about male madrasas in Pakistan. However, one focusing on women's madrasas exclusively was needed, because currently the number of female students enrolled in madrasas is higher than the male students. This unique book is rooted in the authors experience of studying at an FeM. She entered a madrasa with a yearning to be closer to God, to know the book revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, and to learn what he said and did. A constant throughout her studies was the recognition that acquiring knowledge is one of the highest acts of righteousness according to the Prophet Muhammad.

Female Islamic Education Movements
Female Islamic Education Movements

Author: Masooda Bano

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-08-31

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1107188830

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This book challenges the assumptions of creative agency and the role of Islamic education movements for women across the wider Muslim world.

The Rational Believer
The Rational Believer

Author: Masooda Bano

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-04-10

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0801463866

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Islamic schools, or madrasas, have been accused of radicalizing Muslims and participating, either actively or passively, in terrorist networks since the events of 9/11. In Pakistan, the 2007 siege by government forces of Islamabad's Red Mosque and its madrasa complex, whose imam and students staged an armed resistance against the state for its support of the "war on terror," reinforced concerns about madrasas' role in regional and global jihad. By 2006 madrasas registered with Pakistan's five regulatory boards for religious schools enrolled over one million male and 200,000 female students. In The Rational Believer, Masooda Bano draws on rich interview, ethnographic, and survey data, as well as fieldwork conducted in madrasas throughout the country to explore the network of Pakistani madrasas. She maps the choices and decisions confronted by students, teachers, parents, and clerics and explains why available choices make participation in jihad appear at times a viable course of action. Bano works shows that beliefs are rational and that religious believers look to maximize utility in ways not captured by classical rational choice. She applies analytical tools from the New Institutional Economics to explain apparent contradictions in the madrasa system-for example, how thousands of young Pakistani women now demand the national adoption of traditional sharia law, despite its highly restrictive limits on female agency, and do so from their location in Islamic schools for girls that were founded only a generation ago.

The Madrasa in Asia
The Madrasa in Asia

Author: Farish A. Noor

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 9053567100

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Summary: "Since the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the traditional Islamic schools known as the madrasa have frequently been portrayed as hotbeds of terrorism. For much longer, the madrasa has been considered by some as a backward and petrified impediment to social progress. However, for an important segment of the poor Muslim populations of Asia, madrasas constitute the only accessible form of education. This volume presents an overview of the madrasas in countries such as China, Indonesia, Malayisia, India and Pakistan."--Publisher description.

Female Islamic Education Movements
Female Islamic Education Movements

Author: Masooda Bano

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-08-31

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1108101313

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Since the 1970s, movements aimed at giving Muslim women access to the serious study of Islamic texts have emerged across the world. In this book, Masooda Bano argues that the creative spirit that marked the rise and consolidation of Islam, whereby Islam inspired serious intellectual engagement to create optimal societal institutions, can be found within these education movements. Drawing on rich ethnographic material from Pakistan, northern Nigeria and Syria, Bano questions the restricted notion of agency associated with these movements, exploring the educational networks which have attracted educated, professional and culturally progressive Muslim women to textual study, thus helping to reverse the most damaging legacy of colonial rule in Muslim societies: the isolation of modern and Islamic knowledge. With its comparative approach, this will appeal to those studying and researching the role of women across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the wider Muslim world.

The Moral Economy of the Madrasa
The Moral Economy of the Madrasa

Author: Keiko Sakurai

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2011-03-07

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1136894012

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The revival of madrasas in the 1980s coincided with the rise of political Islam and soon became associated with the "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West. This volume examines the rapid expansion of madrasas across Asia and the Middle East and analyses their role in society within their local, national and global context. Based on anthropological investigations in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Iran, and Pakistan, the chapters take a new approach to the issue, examining the recent phenomenon of women in madrasas; Hui Muslims in China; relations between the Iran’s Shia seminary after the 1979-Islamic revolution and Shia in Pakistan and Afghanistan; and South Asian madrasas. Emphasis is placed on the increased presence of women in these institutions, and the reciprocal interactions between secular and religious schools in those countries. Taking into account social, political and demographic changes within the region, the authors show how madrasas have been successful in responding to the educational demand of the people and how they have been modernized their style to cope with a changing environment. A timely contribution to a subject with great international appeal, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international politics, political Islam, Middle East and Asian studies and anthropology.

What Is a Madrasa?
What Is a Madrasa?

Author: Ebrahim Moosa

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2015-04-06

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1469620146

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Taking us inside the world of the madrasa--the most common type of school for religious instruction in the Islamic world--Ebrahim Moosa provides an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand orthodox Islam in global affairs. Focusing on postsecondary-level religious institutions in the Indo-Pakistan heartlands, Moosa explains how a madrasa can simultaneously be a place of learning revered by many and an institution feared by many others, especially in a post-9/11 world. Drawing on his own years as a madrasa student in India, Moosa describes in fascinating detail the daily routine for teachers and students today. He shows how classical theological, legal, and Qur'anic texts are taught, and he illuminates the history of ideas and politics behind the madrasa system. Addressing the contemporary political scene in a clear-eyed manner, Moosa introduces us to madrasa leaders who hold diverse and conflicting perspectives on the place of religion in society. Some admit that they face intractable problems and challenges, including militancy; others, Moosa says, hide their heads in the sand and fail to address the crucial issues of the day. Offering practical suggestions to both madrasa leaders and U.S. policymakers for reform and understanding, Moosa demonstrates how madrasas today still embody the highest aspirations and deeply felt needs of traditional Muslims.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood
Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Author: Hem Borker

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0199092060

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This in-depth ethnography looks at the everyday lives of Muslim students in a girls’ madrasa in India. Highlighting the ambiguities between the students’ espousal of madrasa norms and everyday practice, Borker illustrates how young Muslim girls tactically invoke the virtues of safety, modesty, and piety learnt in the madrasa to reconfigure normative social expectations around marriage, education, and employment. Amongst the few ethnographies on girls’ madrasas in India, this volume focuses on unfolding of young women’s lives as they journey from their home to madrasa and beyond, and thereby problematizes the idealized and coherent notions of piety presented by anthropological literature on female participation in Islamic piety projects. The author uses ethnographic portraits to introduce us to an array of students, many of whom find their aspirational horizon expanded as a result of the madrasa experience. Such stories challenge the dominant media’s representations of madrasas as outmoded religious institutions. Further, the author illustrates how the processes of learning–unlearning and alternate visions of the future emerge as an unanticipated consequence of young women’s engagement with madrasa education.

Religion, Religious Organisations and Development
Religion, Religious Organisations and Development

Author: Carole Rakodi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-04

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1134912544

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This collection adds to a burgeoning literature concerned with the roles played by religions in development. The authors do not assume that religion and religious organisations can be ‘used’ to achieve development objectives, or that religiously inspired development work is more holistic, transformative and authentic. Instead, they subject such assumptions to critical and (as far as possible) objective scrutiny, focusing on how adherents of several religious traditions and a variety of organisations affiliated with different religions perceive the idea of development and attempt to contribute to its objectives. Geographically, chapters in the volume encompass Africa, South Asia and the Asia-Pacific. Four of the papers have an international focus: providing a preliminary framework for analysing the role of religion in development, considering the roles played by faith-inspired organisations in two regions (the Asia Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa) and analysing transnational Muslim NGOs. The individual case studies focus on nine countries (India, Kenya, Pakistan, Nigeria, Tanzania, Sudan, Malawi, Sri Lanka, South Africa), consider four religions (Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism), and can be grouped under four themes: they consider religion, wellbeing and inequality; the roles of religious NGOs in development; whether and how religious organisations influence, respond to or resist social change; and whether religious service providers reach the poor. Finally, practice notes show how three religious development organisations try to put their principles into practice. This book was published as a special double issue of Development in Practice.