This unique empirical study focuses on the different quality dimensions of the Madrasa education system in Kerala, southwestern India. Madrasa education is one of the largest networks of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the world. Despite originating several centuries ago in a vastly different social and cultural context, it continues to address the educational needs of a large section of the Muslim population in India. Although the Madrasa system has seen many significant developments over time, academia has not paid much attention to its functions, strengths and contributions. This study fills this lacuna, and is grounded in detailed empirical investigation based on ethnographic surveys and interviews with various stakeholders from the field comprising students, teachers, parents, management committees, Madrasa boards and educationists. It critically examines the existing Madrasa education system in terms of different quality dimensions, including curriculum planning and designing, curriculum transaction, assessment and evaluation, institutional management and infra structure. While appreciating the contributions of Madrasas in promoting education among the Muslim minority of India, the book also identifies their problems and suggests creative modalities. A timely contribution to a subject with great international appeal, it will be of great interest to policy planners, researchers, educators, students and scholars of formal and informal education, minority studies, political Islam, Middle East and Asian studies, sociology, history, and contemporary studies.

Why is there a need to rethink madrasah education? What is the positioning of Muslims in contemporary society, and how are they prepared? What is the role of the ulama in the reform process? This book explores these questions from the perspective of madrasah education and analyses curricular and pedagogic innovations in Islamic faith-based education in response to the changing place of Islam in a globalised world. It argues for the need for madrasahs to reconceptualise education for Muslim children. Specifically, it explores the problems and challenges that come with new knowledge, biotechnological advancement and societal transformation facing Muslims, and to identify the processes towards reformation that impinge on the philosophies (both Western and Islamic), religious traditions and spirituality, learning principles, curriculum, and pedagogy. This book offers glimpses into the reform process at work through contemporary examples in selected countries.

The prospects for peace in Afghanistan, dialogue between Washington and Tehran, the UN's bid to stabilise nuclear-armed Pakistan, understanding the largest Muslim minority in the world's largest democracy in India, or the largest Muslim population in the world in Indonesia all require some knowledge of the traditional religious sectors in these countries and of what connection traditional religious schooling has (or not) to their geopolitical situations.Moosa delves into the world of madrasa classrooms, scholars and texts, recounting the daily life and discipline of the inhabitants. He shows that madrasa are a living, changing entity, and the site of contestation between groups with varying agendas, goals and notions of modernity.Reading this unique and engaging introduction will provide readers with a clear grasp of the history, place and function of the madrasa in todays Muslim world (religious, cultural and political). It will also investigate the ambiguity underlying the charge that the madrasa is at heart a geopolitical institution.

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.

With reference to India.

After 9/11, madrasas have been linked to international terrorism. They are suspected to foster anti-western, traditionalist or even fundamentalist views and to train al-Qaeda fighters. This has led to misconceptions on madrasa-education in general and its role in South Asia in particular. Government policies to modernize and ‘pacify’ madrasas have been precipitous and mostly inadequate. This book discusses the educational system of madrasas in South Asia. It gives a contextual account of different facets of madrasa education from historical, anthropological, theological, political and religious studies perspectives. Some contributions offer recommendations on possible – and necessary – reforms of religious educational institutions. It also explores the roots of militancy and sectarianism in Pakistan, as well as its global context. Overall, the book tries to correct misperceptions on the role of madrasas, by providing a more balanced discussion, which denies neither the shortcomings of religious educational institutions in South Asia nor their important contributions to mass education.

Since the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, the public has grappled with the relationship between Islamic education and radical Islam. Media reports tend to paint madrasas--religious schools dedicated to Islamic learning--as medieval institutions opposed to all that is Western and as breeding grounds for terrorists. Others have claimed that without reforms, Islam and the West are doomed to a clash of civilizations. Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman bring together eleven internationally renowned scholars to examine the varieties of modern Muslim education and their implications for national and global politics. The contributors provide new insights into Muslim culture and politics in countries as different as Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. They demonstrate that Islamic education is neither timelessly traditional nor medieval, but rather complex, evolving, and diverse in its institutions and practices. They reveal that a struggle for hearts and minds in Muslim lands started long before the Western media discovered madrasas, and that Islamic schools remain on its front line. Schooling Islam is the most comprehensive work available in any language on madrasas and Islamic education.