Reshaping religious institutions: studying the impact of state involvement and regional conflict on Pakistan's Madrassahs.

• Author: Khan, Tabinda
• Position: Book review

Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan's Madrassahs

Saleem H. Ali

(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2009), 350 pages.

In recent years, madrassahs or Islamic seminaries in Pakistan have come under intense scrutiny for potential links to terrorism and violence. Saleem Ali's Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan's Madrassahs is a timely contribution to a controversial debate. The author challenges what he calls "propagandist negative accounts" that regard madrassahs as "incubators of violent extremism," as well as "naively positive accounts" which defend madrassahs as a vital part of the Islamic tradition but ignore their relationship to violence. Instead, he calls for exploring a middle ground between criticism and naivete; for appreciating that madrassahs are an essential part of the fabric of Muslim societies while also facing the reality that in places such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir, external interference in these institutions by state and non-state actors alike has changed their traditional operational style and function and has indeed involved some of them in violence.

The main task of the book is to test the causal relationship between madrassah education and violence through the use of multi-method field research and a comparison of two case studies: Ahmedpur East in Southern Punjab, a low-income rural area, and Islamabad, a high-income urban area. The former case is particularly notable because Ahmedpur is considered a hotbed of several (now banned) Islamist militant groups including the Sunni Jaish-e-Mohammad, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP), Harkat-ul-Ansar and the Shia Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan. Using GIS mapping, the author identifies associations between the demographic characteristics of areas, such as household income and literacy, and the density of madrassahs. He then ties these observations to data on sectarian violence obtained from law enforcement and intelligence agencies to uncover links between madrassahs and violence.

While the research design raises hopes that the book will provide a social scientific account of the links between madrassah education and violence, however, Islam and Education does not live up to its promised goal. First, the empirical data in the book is lopsided: the data on demographic characteristics and sectarian violence in Ahmedpur is detailed and informative whereas the data for Islamabad is merely gleaned from a content analysis of newspapers...