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From Madrasa to University; the Challenges and Formats of Islamic Education

Dietrich Reetz

SAGE Publications Ltd

www.alhassanain.org/english

The SAGE Handbook of Islamic Studies

Edited by Akbar S. Ahmed and Tamara Sonn

Editorial arrangement © Akbar S. Ahmed and

Tamara Sonn 2010

Introduction © Lavra Thomas

Chapter 1 © John Obert Voll 2010

Chapter 2 © Bryan S. Turner 2010

Chapter 3 © Camilo Gomez-Rivas 2010

Chapter 4 © Qaiser Shahzad 2010

Chapter 5 © Lawrence Rosen 2010

Chapter 6 © S.M. Ghazanfar 2010

Chapter 7 © Dietrich Reetz 2010

Chapter 8 © Charles E. Butterworth 2010

Chapter 9 © Asma Afsaruddin 2010

Chapter 10 © Walter Denny 2010

Chapter 11 © Amineh Ahmed 2010

Chapter 12 © Haldun Gülalp 2010

Chapter 13 © Earle H. Waugh 2010

Chapter 14 © Ayatollah Seyed Mostafa

Mohaghegh Damad 2010

Chapter 15 © Seyyed Hossein Nasr 2010

Chapter 16 © Robert Sampson 2010

First published 2010

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

[PREFACE] 7

EDUCATION IN ISLAM 8

THE MADRASA SYSTEM 12

THE DEOBAND MADRASA AND ITS SCHOOL OF THOUGHT 14

THE INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITIES AND THE ‘ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE’ PROJECT 25

THE INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF ISLAMABAD 29

ISLAMIC EDUCATION – WHERE IS IT GOING? 38

NOTES 41

REFERENCES 43

[PREFACE]

The transmission of religious knowledge is an integral part of Islam. It derives from Islam being a revealed religion and pursuing missionary goals. Nevertheless, these are not the only functions religious education fulfills in Islam. This chapter will highlight its role in the transfer of knowledge, the spread of the faith, the formation of character and the mobilization of followers. First, an overview of the emergence of education in Islam will be given, explaining its system and major forms. Then, two contrasting networks of education, their concepts and institutions will be discussed. The first includes the relatively traditional Deobandi madrasas centering on the Darul Ulum of Deoband in North India. They have got branches not only all over South Asia, but also in Southeast Asia, South Africa, Britain and North America. The second is the rather modern group of International Islamic Universities (IIU). It has no explicit administrative or theological center, but the universities in Islamabad (Pakistan) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) play a key role. Although less numerous than the Deobandi schools, these modern Islamic universities have expanded significantly with units dotting sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North America. In many ways, these two networks demonstrate the challenges and changes affecting Islamic education today. It is assumed here that despite of their disparity of character, these two networks of Islamic schools have gone through similar phases of adaptation, albeit with varying degree of success. At the same time, their ideological commitment has hardly weakened.

EDUCATION IN ISLAM

The very act of the revelation where God conveyed the message of Islam, its doctrines and practices to the Prophet could also be seen as the first act of teaching the religion of Islam. The act of revelation in a way informed the whole process of transmission of religious knowledge in Islam. The Qur’an and its memorization have ever since played a key role in it. Before it became a scriptural religion, it was a religion of principles, concepts and practices which had to be communicated. The essence of any religion is to win over adherents and followers. They would become adepts only to the extent and at the time, they observe the established ritual and share the recognized doctrine. Winning over new followers presupposed the formation of a system of transfer of religious knowledge. To a large extent, Islamic education has therefore been synonymous with preaching. Converting the world to the ‘true’ religion was inseparable from educating others in the ways of Islam.

Following the same logic, Islamic educational institutions see themselves still fulfilling the primary task of spreading the ‘truth’ about Islam, of preaching. Every student and teacher is per se willing and obliged to see the acquired knowledge as a means to go out into the world and spread Islam.

A theological view of Islamic education would focus on the model character of the Prophet and his companions. The Prophet and his companions, and later his successors(khulafa’) as head of the Islamic state, would answer queries from followers and nonbelievers on Islamic doctrine and practice thereby providing a model for informal Islamic education (Hillenbrand, 2003).

A historical perspective would emphasize the steady emergence and consolidation of the Muslim community and of this first Islamic state led by Muhammad. With its evolution, Islamic education was geared to serving this very community. It was meant to shore up knowledge of religious traditions, ritual, dogma, and first of all of the Qur’an, among Muslims. It was soon understood that not all Muslims could be expected to have sufficient knowledge of the foundations of the religion. Another service to the community was to reproduce and train religious specialists and functionaries. While Islam did not develop a church, standing in for God or mediating his powers, over time a separate group of religious specialists came into being. The ‘ulama’, scholars of religion and law, emerged as a professional class widely supported by state patronage. They shaped and increasingly controlled religious knowledge and its application. Religious specialists were leading prayers(imam) , interpreting Islamic law(muftı) and administering justice(qad.ı) , memorizing and chanting the Qur’an(h.afiz., q ¯ari’) . The Law of Islam had been given by God, but it had to be interpreted and applied by men to the human condition. These specialists fulfilled religious duties, but they also worked in state offices. This applied to the Medinese Islamic state, but also to later Muslim Empires and their bureaucracies.1

A functional view will have to explore the professional parameters of religious education. The Muslim community was far from homogeneous. Dissent and divisions appeared, reflecting different political pulls and power interests. The various lands that were occupied by Islamic armies or the inhabitants of which had converted to Islam on their own contributed different cultural traditions, languages and interpretations. Islamic education became necessary to ensure the consistency of God’s message. This diversity of Islamic lands in turn created a range of educational standards and traditions in the name of Islam. They were guided by various sectarian divisions between Sunni and Shi’a Islam and the many minority sects. Education in Sunni Islam, for instance, reflected diverse geographical traditions ranging from ancient Iraq to the Arabian Peninsula, from Egypt to the Maghreb, from Moghul India to the Ottoman Empire (Makdisi, 1981; Berkey, 1992; Demir, 2005; Kaur, 1990).

Yet, Islamic education has never focused on texts, principles and concepts alone. Ritual knowledge, piety, morality and character pursued and embodied by Sufi saints and Shaykhs were highly valued goods that Islamic education was equally supposed to transfer, build and instill. With the emergence and spread of mystical orders, or Sufism, with its growing success in spreading the message of Islam, these values became even more important. The literal and the ritual strands in Islamic education have never been mutually exclusive, but rather interpenetrating. The Sufi hospices(kh¯anq¯ah) that sprang up around the world on the path of various orders imparted their own kind of informal education stressing piety and ritual where they also used texts. At the same time, these moral values were by no means absent from formal Islamic education that privileged the classical writings, although Sufism(tasawwuf) is taught selectively there according to the doctrine prevailing at the school (Lapidus, 1988).

A similar ambivalence marks the distinction between private forms of learning and collective teaching constituting another important perspective on Islamic education. Islamic teaching for a long time had followed the format of a private meeting between a knowledgeable person, a prayer leader or scholar, and students gathering in a circle at the local mosque after prayer. This pattern supposedly emulated the Prophet’s relationship with his Companions. Their replies to queries on normative behavior in Islam are said to have laid the foundation of specialized studies of the Qur’an and later of the Traditions(Hadith) . It found its major expression at the time in the scriptural compilation of the Qur’anic text and the Traditions attributed to the Prophet and his Companions.

Beginning with the Islamic state in Medina, the mosque as the joint prayer place was at the center of Islamic teaching. In many countries, religious scholars still instruct groups of students at the local mosque forming a circle(halqa) around the teacher. Collective and formal teaching emerged at a later stage. The first institutional Islamic schools, or madrasas, are reported from twelfth-century Iraq (Makdisi, 1981; Berkey, 1992; Hillenbrand, 2003; Demir, 2005). While private teaching is largely adopted by Sufi orders and related movements to the present day, it has also been and is still being used for literalist or formal education of the reformist variety(is.l¯ah.) .2

At the same time, Islam was not only a religion but also a politics and a form of social organization. It governed the community of adherents of Muhammad and the early Muhammadan state. Islamic education was therefore right from the beginning expected to produce results that would help in running the Islamic state of Medina. It was particularly legal functionaries of the imperial administrations of the various Islamic dynasties who went through Islamic education of one form or another. When competing interpretations of Islam emerged as with the Shi’a the politics of education also aimed at mobilizing followers and adherents for political action. The mobilization impact of education must also have been important in preparation for war and during conquest of non-Muslims and their territories. Clans and elites used madrasas to control territories and local society, to gain prestige and legitimacy (Chamberlain, 1994).

Thus, Islamic education has shown a strong diversity and historicity from its very inception. While most were agreed on the relevance of the Qur’an and the Sunna, the oral and written practice of the Prophet and his companions, all other aspects were a matter of interpretation, application, needs and resources, both material and cultural. Because many scholars argued that Islam was indivisible, they aspired to rule both the secular and the sacred realm. Yet the worldly knowledge provided had to conform to selective principles applied by religious scholars. Worldly knowledge incorporated into the religious curriculum was often dated and circumscribed by very limited topics: Geometry, Algebra, Philosophy of the ancient Greeks, some contemporary Arab history and literature.

In terms of institutions, Islamic education was equally marked by a great variety of forms. They extend from the preschool age right up to the university and postgraduate level. For the purpose of this overview, we leave out the preschool and elementary level and will focus on the secondary school and college/university level. When contemporary figures of Islamic schools are quoted, they are often inflated by the large number of those of the preschool and elementary level(maktab) . Many of them are small size, not more than study circles of the local Imam. As they form a vast share of the overall number of institutions in many Muslim countries, the picture can easily confuse the uninitiated.

The paper will limit itself to contemporary institutions of formal Islamic education. By this, we mean regular institutions set up for this purpose and conducting education in specialized buildings. These would be generally separate from the mosque. They would have a fixed curriculum and a regular group of teachers and paid staff. Students at larger schools would have access to special hostel accommodation.

The examples in this chapter are mainly drawn from the non-Arabic speaking world, from South and Southeast Asia, but also from South and East Africa. One reason for that is that contrary to public perception, those are the dominant Muslim majority areas. In South and Southeast Asia alone, there live at least 700 million Muslims, more than four times the number of Arabic-speaking followers of the faith. Another reason is the strong relevance of Islamic schools in these regions and their continuing impact on public and private education. Although Shi’ite Islam developed similar institutions and centers of religious learning, the emphasis here is on Sunni Islam adopted by the vast majority of Muslims in these regions.

The Deobandi institutions and the International Islamic Universities demonstrate how Islamic education adapts to changing circumstances and varying cultural, social and economic conditions.

THE MADRASA SYSTEM

Historically speaking, there appear to have been three distinct phases of the establishment and expansion of madrasas. The first phase included the organization, reproduction and transfer of knowledge in the service of dynastic Muslim empires such as the Safawids in Persia, the Moghuls in India and the Turkish Ottomans (Robinson, 2001).

The next phase was marked by the multiplication of Islamic schools in response to the penetration of Western education and colonial rule into the lands under Muslim governance. Particularly in colonial India where Muslims were in a minority, a ‘madrasa movement’ spread across the subcontinent since the middle of the nineteenth century to strengthen the religious foundations of the Muslim community which religious scholars felt were under threat by British rule, Western secularization and Christian missionary activity.

The third phase seems to have set in during the seventies of the twentieth century when Muslim scholars, politicians and militants started pursuing the politics of Islamic revival. In several Muslim countries, not only efforts but also resources multiplied to create new Islamic institutions. They aimed at reviving Islamic teaching in order to strengthen knowledge and practice of the religion (cf. Grandin and Gaborieau, 1997). Their expansion partly replaced the ascendance of nationalist and socialist thought that had marked Asia and Africa during decolonization as those could not deliver the desired results of development and political emancipation vis-à-vis the West. This was made painfully clear to Muslims in particular during the 7-day war in 1967 when Israel occupied Palestinian territories for a long time to come. Most Muslim activists held the West collectively responsible for Israeli actions in the region, which supposedly threatened also the historical centers of Islam nearby. This tension revived political antagonism between Islamists and the West, the foundations for which had been laid during the colonial era.

The madrasas tend to follow a particular sect or legal school. In South Asia, they differ by formal or informal affiliation with a head seminary standing for a certain doctrinal interpretation of Islam. As such, they form vast networks of Islamic schools stretching across the subcontinent and extending often to other countries and regions. They are bound together by graduates, teachers and Sufi Shaykhs moving within these networks. The focus of this chapter will be on the Deobandi madrasas following a reformist and purist interpretation of Islam. It is named after the location of its head seminary in the small town of Deoband in North India. In South Asia, this school of thought and its madrasas have faced strong competition from rival interpretations of Islam. The largest network among them follows the Barelwi interpretation of Islam named after the town of Bareilly located not far from Deoband. It was founded by Ahmad Raza Khan (1856–1921) who defended the popular practices of shrine and saint worship strongly denounced by the Deobandis (Sanyal, 1996). Their mutual relationship has often been marked by rivalry, bitter argument and occasionally tension.

However, in Islamic teaching, the Barelwis have moved closer to the Deobandis’ style and format of schooling over the years. While formal madrasas had been absent in the beginning, they have now been established by the Barelwis across the subcontinent and beyond. With some modifications, these schools largely follow the same traditional curriculum of the dars-e niz.¯am¯ı on which the Deobandis based themselves. Major differences pertain to the role of the Prophet and related rituals at these schools, such as singing poetry in praise of the Prophet(n¯at) or celebrating his birthday(mil¯ad-un-nabi) and the birthday of saints(urs) at their shrines. Although the size of their following in the subcontinent is roughly equal, it is the Deobandis who capture the media headlines and the limelight as Western and non-Muslim observers – often mistakenly – regard them as instigators of radical Islam. On political matters, the Barelwis have also come to share in the Deobandis’ positions. They fully supported Taliban rule in Afghanistan. They host their own, mostly local militias that are involved in sectarian conflict with Shi’as and Ahmadis, but also in Kashmir and Afghanistan (Rana, 2004: 354, 378ff). They thus share radical sectarian Sunni sentiments typical of the subcontinent. Another prominent example of a rival madrasa network that emerged from South Asia and is now criss-crossing the Muslim world relates to the Ahl-i Had¯ıth (AH; for Pakistan: ibid. 295ff). It professes no allegiance to any law school but in practical matters is rather close to Deobandi teaching. Occasionally some of its followers even attend Deobandi schools. In political matters, it is closely aligned with Saudi Arabia. On a larger scale, the Saudi-affiliated Islamic schools dotting the Muslim world constitute their own educational, ideological and cultural ‘universe’ often known by the additional attribute ‘Salafi’. The Shi’a institutions affiliated to Iran are yet another example of a globalized network. As compared to the Deobandis, internal cooperation may be more streamlined and formalized, particularly in financial matters, but also on political issues.

THE DEOBAND MADRASA AND ITS SCHOOL OF THOUGHT

The emergence of the madrasa in Deoband can be attributed to the second phase in response to the failed revolt against British rule in 1857/58. By the time of the arrival of the British, Muslim dynasties had ruled over South Asia for 600 years. Many Muslim princes and scholars had participated in the uprising. After that, Muslim groups and scholars came under pressure and were viewed with suspicion by the British while Western-style public administration and secular nationalist thought expanded. In this situation, the religious scholars decided to concentrate on the reconstruction of religious knowledge and revival of religiosity. The Islamic school – D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um Deoband – came into being in 1866 when it was founded on the model of a British college by Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi (1832–1879) and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1829–1905). This analogy pertained to the formal setting of curriculum, paid staff, a campus with teaching halls and hostels. As few formal madrasas existed at the time in South Asia, the Deoband approach was innovative and fairly radical. In theological matter, they adopted the traditional curriculum of Islamic teaching current in South Asia, the dars-e niz.¯am¯ı, drafted in the late seventeenth century–early eighteenth century. It was conceived by two scholars from Lucknow in North India, Mulla Qutb al-Din Sihalwi (d. 1691) and his son Mulla Nizam al-Din of Firangi Mahal (d. 1748) after whom it was named (Robinson, 2001: 211ff.). On political matters, they preferred to protest their loyalty towards the British. Religious scholars of Islam from most schools of thought at the time cautiously distanced themselves from violent jih¯ad, or Holy War. They issued fatw¯as raising high hurdles under which it would become legitimate to start Jihad to the extent where it became almost impossible.

Over the years, the Deobandschool and its followers went through different phases. Like in many Islamic schools, the foundations of the Darul Ulum Deoband were laid at a local mosque, the Chhatta Mosque, where teaching began under a tree. It first started as a maktab, the religious school for the primary level. Eventually more and more departments were added. Its major contribution to Islamic teaching in South Asia was the introduction of regular degree courses producing religious scholars – ‘ulam¯a’, sing.‘¯alim.

Until today the ‘¯alim course has remained at the heart of the Deoband teaching. It stretches over 8 years with regular classes. It consists of teaching the Qur’an and the Prophetic Traditions as well as related theological and ‘worldly’ subjects. Early on madrasas distinguished between revealed subjects going back to the ‘lawgiver’, i.e., God, and intellectual subjects that could be grasped with one’s intellect and senses, i.e., ‘worldly’ subjects (Hillenbrand, 2003). This distinction is maintained even today. It is variously called ‘ul¯um-i naql¯ıya or manq¯ul¯at for the revealed, and ‘ul¯um-i ‘aql¯ıya or ma‘q¯ul¯at for the ‘worldly’ sciences (Robinson, 2001: 211ff). Under the first category come all branches of knowledge which owe their existence to Islam, that is, the study of the Qur’an, its commentaries(tafs¯ır) , the Traditions(Hadith) and auxiliary theological sciences; the theology(kal¯am) of Islam; the interpretation of Islamic law(shar¯ı’a) by the law schools(fiqh) and the principles of law(us.¯ul al-fiqh) . As Arabic is seen as the language of Qur’an and therefore of divine provenance,its linguistic and literary studies are also treated here. The ‘worldly’ subjects encompass logic, philosophy, arithmetic, geometry, and traditional medicine(tibb) . They are largely restricted to classical Greek works.3

The learning is focused on classical texts, but even more on commentaries and super-commentaries on them, which make the study often arcane. Books and commentaries mostly have to be learned by heart. Debate only focuses on comprehension of the texts. Underlying issues are not raised or discussed. If the works are in Arabic, non-Arabic speakers have to prove they can read the text and understand it. Certificates(Sanad) are awarded on the basis of books mastered not failing to mention the line of authorized teachers through which the study of this work was passed down the generations.

The regular features of the ‘¯alim course make it a standard for reformist religious education in Deobandi interpretation allowing it to be reproduced in all schools following the same curriculum. This standardization of religious teaching has helped in fostering consistency in the Deobandi teaching and keeping the various institutions together. It equally reproduces a certain outlook and a rather conservative mentality, especially in social matters. Its worldview is primarily focused on religious teaching and marked by neglect of or indifference to contemporary worldly knowledge except on technical matters such as computers or subjects seen as auxiliary, as with English.

The grade ‘¯alim is already conferred after class seven of the course before the final year(daur¯a-i h.ad¯ıth) starts when the students return to the study of the Prophetic Traditions. After class eight, they become graduates – f¯ad. il. Then they can further specialize(takhassus.) in various directions taking additional courses up to 2 years in different departments of the school rewarded by the final degree of k¯amil. Participants in these specialization courses vary between two and three, to a maximum of around 20. Specialization is undertaken in the major theological disciplines such as Qur’anic exegesis(tafs¯ır) , the Traditions

(had¯ıth) and Theology(‘ul¯um) . Other departments offering specialization courses include:

• English language and literature

• Computer training

• The Shaykh al-Hind Academy, offering training in advanced theological research and religious journalism

• The ‘Defence of the Finality of the Prophethood of Muhammad’(Tah.affuz.-i Khatm-i Nabuwwat) training graduates in writing works and preaching against the sect of the Ah.mad¯ıya, but also in refuting the views of rival interpretations in Islam such as those of the Ahl-i H.ad¯ıth, the Bar¯elw¯ıs, the Jam¯a‘at-i Isl¯am¯ı, and of ‘unbelievers’, i.e., non-Muslims such as Christians and Hindus; this department operates in conjunction with the Preaching Department(Sho‘ba-i Tabl¯ıgh)

• Legal Consultation(Da¯ r al-Ifta¯ ’ ) offering training in writing legal decisions(fata¯ wa¯ , sin. fatwa¯ ) in reply to inquiries from the Muslim public

The fatw¯a-writing is an important feature of most of the larger Islamic schools in the Muslim world today. They regard it as an essential service to the community to guide it to observe what they regard the ‘correct’ and ‘true’ Islam. The D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um Deoband has four to five Muftis employed answering legal inquiries about the permissibility of actions and conduct under Islamic law. While Deoband concentrates on jurisprudence in the tradition of the Hanafi law school to which most South Asian Muslims adhere, they will also answer specific inquiries based on the other law schools for which they have specialized scholars. In 1423 AH, the Legal Department also trained 37 students. The Deobandschool stands out as an orthodox reference institution for Muslim India, but also for South Asia as a whole and beyond.

Many of the larger schools also keep branches for primary education and for teaching specialized religious skills. At the Deobandschool , the primary branch is called the Urdu Religious Curriculum(¯urd¯u d¯ıniy¯at) which loosely follows the government curriculum for classes 1–5, although the examinations are not verified by Government Boards.

There are also courses for Qur’an memorization and recitation awarding the degrees of hafiz.and q¯ar¯ı. Reading the Qur’an and writing are taught separately. In the year 1423 AH, there were 2,502 students attending the Arabic faculty, including the eight classes of the ‘¯alim course, and 717 students of the non-Arabic faculty, including the primary classes and the minor degree courses (see tables 7.1 and 7.2). A traditional medical college(J¯ami‘a T. ibb¯ıya) also belongs to the Deoband school.

Students and teachers form a community, which is meant to follow the ideals of early Islam. In particular, students are taken care of comprehensively. They receive a(small) stipend, food, clothing and books. Food items are sold at subsistence prices. Medical treatment is free. However, the level of care is very basic marked by the poverty of the region. Traditionally, the schools survive on donations in kind from the landholding families in the region, especially rice, pulses and meat. Donations in form of subscriptions and donations(‘a.t¯ıya, chanda) are

another main source of income where members of staff travel the countryside to collect these. In addition, the Islamic welfare tax(zak¯at) is used to pay for expenses. Many schools are established on donated lands and form part of religious endowments(waqf) .Where religious endowments are administered by the state, as partly in India and Pakistan, so-called Waqf Boards are constituted contributing to expenses of religious education (cf. Kaur, 1990). Some money comes from the hides traditionally donated to madrasas across South Asia on the Muslim holiday of the sacrifice, ‘I¯d al-Ad.h.¯a. Living conditions on the campus for students and teachers alike are simple, rather ascetic, but compared to the remote rural areas from where many students hail, almost urbane.

Inside the Deobandi schools, character formation, tarb¯ıyat, plays an important role. After emphasizing the study of the Qur’an, the tafs¯ır and the had¯ıth, the old founding constitution of the Deoband school, enumerating its essential goals(nas.b al-‘ain) , in para two of five stressed the objective ‘to teach the practice and morals of Islam and to inculcate in students the spirit of Islam’ (D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um D¯eoband, 1422: 4). This is also reflected in the description of the work of the department for hostel accommodation(d¯ar al-iq¯ama) in the Administrative Reports of the Deobandschool . The report mentions that the teacher in-charge sees to it that students are woken up in time for the early Morning Prayer and do not miss the late-night prayer. They look after the ‘religious, educational and moral upbringing’ of the students (Ad Rep 1423: 15). Students are also controlled how they spend their leisure time as cinema and fun fairs are out of limits and violators would be punished.4 This also applies in varying degree to the use of television, radio and newspapers which are generally not allowed on campus. Exceptions are possible if transistor radios, for instance, are strictly used for information-gathering only.5 Piety, humility and respect of elders are considered equally important. At times, the tendency of some madrasa teachers to restrain students physically, particularly in the younger age groups, is viewed very critically by society. There have also been cases of abuse discussed in the media.6

In the course of their evolution, the Deoband schools have formed a distinct culture of their own. It reflects the tendency of South Asian Islam for its various groups and interpretations to take on sectarian features. Members not only hold certain views and follow particular principles, but they also start marrying inside their groups, share common rituals and other cultural traits such as a preference for certain dress, music/poetry – or the rejection of it. By extension, there is a tendency of these groups to produce also distinct political loyalties. As explained in the following section, the Deobandis are represented by the conservative Associations of Religious Scholars(Jam¯ı’yat-e ‘Ulam¯a’) which in some countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh also act as political parties.

The school’s public stand is marked by a strong sectarian stand, defending its own interpretation of Islam as the only ‘correct’ and ‘true’ form of belief against dissenters within and outside Islam. Sunni radicalism as a public stand took hold during the 1920s and 1930s of the twentieth century (Reetz, 2006: 255ff). This sectarianism feeds into radical theological disputes and connects with militancy, if only by supplying the radical arguments for militant groups that seek to enforce their religious views on dissenters.

In terms of sectarian affiliation, the Deobandis should not be confused with Wahhabis, a term often used as an invective by their detractors amongst Muslims and in the West. While the Deobandis share with the Wahhabis a certain bent for a radical reinterpretation of Islam they still maintain many popular practices and follow selected Sufi traditions totally rejected by the Wahhabis.

At the same time, pietistic tendencies remain strong. The rigorous discipline enforced, the heavy teaching load and the orientation towards the Muslim community lead to the formation of mostly humble and obedient characters representing the traditional service mentality of the ‘ulam¯a class inherited from their role in the administration of the Muslim empires.

A major phase of expansion for all Islamic seminaries started in the late seventies. Political and cultural Islam took an upswing across the Muslim world successfully challenging and ultimately unseating nationalism and socialism as the major sources of political legitimacy, ideological mobilization and cultural identification. The school at Deoband went through its own phase of upheaval and expansion during that period. It celebrated its centenary on a grand scale on 21–23 March 1980, even though it was already its 124th anniversary. About 8,000 delegates, public luminaries, politicians and Deobandi graduates from across the world were reported to have participated. Scholars proposed far-reaching programs of improvement and infrastructural growth. The occasion was used to reunite a large number of graduates of Deoband from all over the world in a traditional turban-binding(dast¯arband¯ı) ceremony (Mukhtas.ir R¯ud¯ad, 1980). The wide public attention, which the school received in India and across the Muslim world, may have contributed to heightening the simmering tensions inside. Rival family factions vied for control. One was headed by Qari Muhammad Tayyib Qasimi (1897–1983), the grandson of the founder Nanautawi, the other led by Maulana Asad Madani (d. 2006), the son of Husayn Ahmad Madani. The Qasimi faction was defeated and forced out of the school along with its followers. They set up a new school on donated lands after which it is called D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um Waqf. Both sides concede that the split is of a personal nature and does not subtract from the common ideology and mission. The new school has already been able to attract about 1,500 students – half of the number of students of the old school. The schism is regarded by both as an anomaly. Efforts for reconciliation continue and may be hastened by the recent demise of Asad Madani.

The old school gained new strength after it passed through the crisis. It added new departments and expanded its teaching significantly. The number of students almost doubled between 1400 AH/1980 and 1424 AH/2003–04 from 1,822 to 3,504; the number of graduates rose from 406 to 774 per year. According to Deoband’s own data, until 2003 the school had produced 32,806 graduates since it came into existence. About 6 percent of its graduates hailed from other countries.7 Amongst the new departments added in the eighties were those which heightened the ideological profile of the school, such as the Shaykh al-Hind Academy (1982) and the ‘Finality of Prophethood’ Department (1986). Study circles and debating societies(talab¯a’ k¯e anjuman¯en.) train students in theological and political controversies and seek to sharpen the ideological and sectarian profile of the school. The students learn public articulation through wallpapers and speaking contests. The rapid growth of Islamic teaching led to expanded and more formalized networking. After several earlier attempts failed, an Old Boys Association(Tanz.¯ım-i Abn¯a’-i Qad¯ım) was finally established in 1991. When Islamic schools in India faced the pressure of Hindu nationalists to justify their existence the schools mobilized in defense of Islamic teaching and founded an association of Deobandi schools(R¯abi.ta Mad¯aris-i ‘Arab¯ıya – RMA) in 1994. Now for the first time Deobandi networking was coordinated by a regular institution endorsing the curriculum and courses of affiliated schools. This was a new significant development, branding the product of Deobandi teaching in the emerging and highly competitive private market of religious and worldly instruction. It also shifted attention to development concerns in a more pronounced way. The opening of the Computer and the English language departments in 1996 and 2002 respectively after long resistance demonstrated the changing character of the educational landscape and reflected the demands and expectations of the public at large.

The teaching of Islam at the Deobandi schools and other Sunni mad¯aris had also been modeled on the famous Egyptian Islamic university, Al-Azhar (cf. Eccel, 1984). This includes the curriculum, but also the personal ties that some teachers and students hold with this university. While Al-Azhar underwent significant changes in the 50s and 60s, primarily opening new faculties of modern and worldly sciences, the South Asian schools have so far resisted such opening. Yet, some Deobandi schools have started offering modern facilities where they teach secondary education based on government standards alongside the religious subjects. The Islamic schools still mostly attract the lower strata of society from a largely rural background. For those who see no other option of advancement, graduation from one of the major religious seminaries iskey to upward mobility, the only road out of the narrow confines of their village and its poverty.

In addition to religious teaching, Deobandi schools have pursued political and ideological concerns since long. Although most Deobandi schools and madrasas in general refrain from political activism, the headschool in Deoband has often taken a strong political stand, a tradition dating back to the colonial period. Its head teachers were involved in the famous ‘silk letter conspiracy’ in 1914–16 directed against British rule in India. They were making plans for an Islamic army to be drawn from different Muslim countries that would confront the British and other Western powers, seeking to chase them out of Muslim lands and remove them from the religious sites of Islam on the Arabian Peninsula, in particular. The Deobandschool also joined the secular nationalist movement against British rule led by the Indian Congress Party. Deobandi scholars also got involved in institutional body politics. The Association of Religious Scholars that was formed in 1919 as a coordination platform for religious concerns started participating in elections in the 1940s. After the partition of the subcontinent when the two states of India and Pakistan gained independence in 1947, the parameters of political engagement were radically redefined. The Pakistan branch transformed into the Party of Islamic Scholars, the Jam¯ı’yat-e ‘Ulam¯a’-e Isl¯am (JUI), which is still the strongest religious party there. The JUI formed the nucleus of the alliance of religious parties there, the MMA(Muttah.ida Majlis-e ‘Amal) that gained prominence in Pakistan’s politics after 2001. In India, the scholars’ association still bears the original name of JUH concentrating on cultural and social issues. Yet, the Deoband leaders still regard the school as a political asset. They take a strong public stand on issues that as they see it concern the Muslim community as a whole. Being a minority in India of 13 percent, Muslims and particularly its religious elite often feel beleaguered. The school has repeatedly provoked public controversies by its legal decisions(fatw¯as) and other statements of its elders. They concern Muslim Personal Law issues such as rulings on separation and maintenance, the role of women or the religious status of television and mass media. Here the school usually defends conservative interpretations of orthodox Islam. Deoband scholars were equally defensive about Taliban rule in Afghanistan and strongly opposed Western military intervention.8

These developments were mirrored in other Islamic countries. Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia played key roles in the Islamic revival of the late seventies and eighties. In Pakistan, the intervention of its Islamist military dictator Zia-ul-Haq led to the manifold growth of Islamic schools and their graduates as increasing amounts of donations, zakat and state money were channeled to them (Malik, 1996: 227ff). This expansion was helped by US interest in camouflaging its role in the Afghan civil war through overt and covert support to religious fighters(mujahid¯ın) who had graduated from Deobandi schools in the Pakistani border belt with Afghanistan. Trilateral cooperation between the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia poured substantial amounts of money into the Islamic sector in Pakistan’s border area (Rashid, 2002).

Complex social trends also fed into the Islamization process of education. An emerging Muslim middle class weary of Western domination and angry about the failures of local governance to deliver modern economic standards and democracy turned to religious values for identification and reassertion.

Over the years, the Deobandi school of thought has significantly expanded internationally. Through its network of international graduates, who established new Deobandi schools wherever they went, they have gained strong influence amongst Muslims in South Africa, of which most hail from the subcontinent, amongst the migrant communities in East Africa, Britain, North America, and increasingly South East Asia, with Malaysia, South Thailand and Indonesia as major destinations. Among them, the Muslim trading groups from the Indian state of Gujarat have played a special role. They appear to be on the back of many of the madrasa activities outside South Asia, and particularly in South Africa and Britain. Nevertheless, the Deobandi interpretation of Islam also appeals to indigenous Muslims in countries such as Malaysia, Afghanistan, post-Soviet Central Asia and China who do not hail from South Asia.

The impact of Deobandi teaching on Islamic learning in different countries is ambivalent. While it strengthens formal orthodoxy considerably, it partly adapts to local traditions also and allows for varying degrees of Sufi influences to continue.

The Deobandi schools, teacher and student networks operate like ‘reformist orders’ where clan structures and family loyalties play a large role. These may be as much connected to ethnic and regional origins such as those tied to Gujarat, as to Deobandi Shaykhs linked to the missionary movement of the Tabl¯ıgh¯ı Jam¯a’at (TJ) or prominent seminaries in India or Pakistan.

It was particularly the stunning growth of the Tabl¯ıgh¯ı movement which helped the rapid expansion of the Deobandis. The Tabl¯ıgh¯ıs represent a missionary movement which originated in India in 1926 and evolved in close interaction with the Deobandi school of thought there. Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya (1898–1982), the cofounder of the TJ and nephew of its founder Maulana Muhammad Ilyas (1885–1944), significantly contributed to the spread of the Tabl¯ıgh¯ı movement through his Sufi activities as Shaykh and the network of disciples he built around the world. The infrastructure of the Tabl¯ıgh¯ı movement revolves around local centers(Mar¯akaz) which would be either a Deobandi mosque or a madrasa. Where the TJ did not find suitable mosques or madrasas, its followers initiated the establishment of such schools and prayer places. The competing Barelwis would not allow Tabl¯ıgh¯ıs to base themselves in their mosques and schools. At times, they even forcefully evicted their groups. The Barelwis instead established their own rival preaching movement Da’wat-i Isl¯am¯ı in 1980 closely modeled on the Tabl¯ıgh¯ı Jam¯a’at. Today the major Deobandi schools in Britain and South Africa owe their existence to Tabl¯ıgh¯ı influences and the Zakariyya network. Cases in point are the D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um Dewsbury and the D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um Holcombe/Bury in the United Kingdom; the D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um Zakariyya, Lenasia and the D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um Azadville in South Africa. The Dewsbury school is today the European center of the Tabl¯ıgh¯ı Jam¯a’at, and so is the Lenasia school for South Africa. In South East Asia, it is also through the Tabl¯ıgh¯ı exchanges of travelling preachers that Deobandi teachings have reached Malaysia, Indonesia and South Thailand. Young graduates from the local system of traditional Islamic schools, the pondoks, find it difficult to enter the government schools for higher education. When going on preaching tours with the TJ to India and Pakistan, they feel tempted to stay on and join the mad¯aris there. On their return to Malaysia and Indonesia, they seek to introduce the formality of the Deobandi teaching system in the local context which is still marked by a high degree of informality in traditional religious schools. The TJ in Malaysia has now established a regular Deobandi school at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur churning out graduates who are planning to establish a whole network of formal Deobandi curriculum schools across the country at all local centers(mar¯akaz) of the TJ.

Though it is often said that the regular madrasa student cannot be tied to terrorist and militant activity, there are no clear boundaries with the militant sector. Some actors step out from one milieu and effortlessly move into the other, acting in turns as scholars, politicians, Sufi Shaykhs, and godfathers of militant groups. The TJ founder Zakariyya was known for his spiritual mentality and inspiration. The directory of his disciples lists scholars such as Maulana Yusuf Sahib Ludhianwi who was teaching Hadith at the J¯ami’a al-‘Ul¯um al-Isl¯am¯ıya in Binuri Town Karachi advancing to the position of rector (Mot¯al¯a, 1986: 636–640). He also headed the Pakistan chapter of the notorious World Organization for the Defense of the Finality of Prophethood, the ‘A¯ lam¯ı Majlis Tah.affuz.-e Khatm-e Nabuwwat (AMTKN). He was shot by militants in a sectarian tit-for-tat on 18 May 2000 (Dawn, 19 May 2000). His school had heavily promoted the sectarian militant organizations of the Sipah-e Sahaba-e Pakistan (SSP), and later the Jaish-e Muhammad (JM) led by Maulana Masood Azhar. Ludhianwi was reported to have pledged allegiance to Azhar for his intention to unite all jih¯ad¯ı factions in Kashmir and Afghanistan (Rana, 2004: 217). Another example was Maulana Abdul Hafiz Makki, also a disciple of Zakariyya. He was teaching Hadith at the Deobandi madrasa at Mecca, D¯ar al-‘Ul¯um S.aulat¯ıya. He defended the role of Sufi hospices, but was also involved in the AMTKN and regarded as a patron with the SSP.9 When militant groups started opening their own religious schools, further cross links were established between the two milieus, particularly in Pakistan. In the most detailed survey of religious schools of Pakistan yet, the Pakistan Journalist and social activist Amir Rana listed 38 big madrasas assumed to be close to the SSP (ibid.: 200–201). He named another10 schools with 1,500resident students for the Ahl-i H. ad¯ıth organization Jam¯a’at al-Da’wa (JD) serving as an umbrella for the now defunct militant group Lashkar-i Taiba (ibid.:325 ). These schools mostly followed the dars-e niz.¯am¯ı curriculum, albeit with a heavy dose of ideological indoctrination on militant jihad, anti-Western sentiments, and radical Sunni sectarianism. After the militant groups have successively been banned in Pakistan, their clientele now more than ever relies on their religious schools to refill the ranks of their members. It has to be stressed, however, that this development is primarily to be observed in Pakistan and even there it is a fringe phenomenon, accounting for 3–5 percent of all madrasas according to various estimates. To a smaller extent, this trend has made itself felt more recently also in Bangladesh (Singh, 2006).

Madrasa-type institutions still cater for the educational needs of a considerable part of the Muslim populace across the world. The percentage of people attending the secondary and college level will vary, but seems not to exceed 3 percent and would in few places locally peak at 5–20 percent of all school-going students. A rough and probably conservative estimate for South Asia puts the number of medium to higher-level madrasas at 15,000 each in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India with approximately 1.5 million or more students in each country.10 Efforts are undertaken to advance the process of their registration although many administrators and scholars resist coming under the control of government. A limited group of so-called government madrasas in mainly West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh has kept its traditional link with the state. They offer also secular education and they are recognized and often financed by government.11 The same holds true for Kerala where the universities of Calicut and Cannanore have affiliated a group of Arabic colleges some of the teachers of which are paid by the state. They follow a nonsectarian 5-year religious degree course of afd.al-ul-‘ulam¯a’ (= most excellent scholars) where they also teach English.12 In Rajasthan, the state government recognized 619 madrasas as schools in 1999 paying for the teaching of modern subjects such as Hindi, English, mathematics and science. With a range of 90 to 100 percent, they are reported to have achieved much better results than many government schools.13 The most famous among them is Madrasa Jamiatul Hidaya of Jaipur, billed as the ‘hi-tech madrasa’. Beside religious subjects the school teaches a great variety of diplomas and degrees in Computer Application, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engi neering, Accounts and Business Management, Communication, Refrigeration, Leather/Footwear Technology, Airconditioning and Offset Printing. Its modern courses are affiliated with the public Aligarh University.14 These schools continue the old tradition of madrasas working under state patronage which also the British continued. The most famous of their creations was the Madrasa Aliya of Calcutta set up in 1781 for training in oriental sciences and languages to help the colonial administration.

A growing number of religious schools are devoted to girls’ education.

According to a 1992 study of Indian religious schools, there were 35 girls’ madrasas against 502 institutions for boys and 3 j¯ami’a-type institutions for girls against 36 for boys among those participating in the survey (Qamaruddin, 1994: 89). Girls’ schools offer shortened versions of the same courses, where the ‘¯alim course would take 4–6 years instead of 8 and where also the ‘non-Arabic’ courses such as in Qur’anic recitation(h¯afiz.) would take less time. Additional emphasis would be placed on character building, on becoming a model Muslim house wife (Winkelmann, 2005). Some scholars see this development also as empowering women sowing the seeds of an ‘Islamic feminism’.15

The higher the coverage and standards of public education the lower seems to be the percentage of people attending madrasas of various persuasions. These schools are not homogeneous but differ substantially according to the interpretation of Islam they follow. More generally, we find a division into a more ‘traditional’ and a ‘reformist’ or ‘orthodox’ format. ‘Traditional’ would refer to local and popular institutions and methods of learning which had been common in that specific area earlier. Prominent examples would be many local schools of the Barelwi tradition in South Asia and many pondoks teaching the traditional ‘yellow books’ – the classics of Islamic thought in South East Asia. ‘Reformist’ would refer to a revised literalist curriculum that follows the traditions of al-Azhar, Deoband or the Saudis in line with the concept of is.l¯ah.that seeks to reform Muslim society to bring it into conformity with the Islamic ideal of the founder generations of Islam(as-salaf) . Among its components serious differences persist, both in interpretation and in ritualistic practice.

THE INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITIES AND THE ‘ISLAMIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE’ PROJECT

In contrast, the International Islamic Universities would represent a third variety of Islamic schools that could be called ‘modernist’. They would be modernist in a sense where they teach modern arts and sciences in a religious context. They would aim at creating conditions for students where ideally they would successfully compete with secular and Western students and still keep a much-regulated religious life-style. In addition, they would allow the students to acquire and apply religious knowledge. All this is meant as a service to the local and transnational Muslim community which is seen in need of uplift.

When these universities emerged their understanding of ‘modernization’ was rather different though. They gradually arose out of a project for the ‘Islamization of knowledge’ that did not recognize the validity of secular or Western knowledge per se. Its proponents saw the need for Muslims to close the perceived knowledge gap to the West by searching for a ‘third’ way into modernity, or an ‘Islamic middle path’ (Abaza, 2002, 144) . This road would lead along the path of reinterpretation of Western and secular knowledge in line with the theological tenets of Islam. Almost 30 years down the road, the various discursive and research projects venturing into the Islamization of social sciences and philosophy, but also of economics, and some technical sciences, have produced little results.

The project of the ‘Islamization of knowledge’ was more clearly articulated by the International Institutes of Islamic Thought (IIIT) forming the nucleus of the International Islamic University (IIU) movement and binding them together conceptually since 1980 (cf. Table 7.3). During this period, these institutions have passed through different phases which could be conditionally identified as (1) ideological, (2) political, and (3) developmental. When the major ones such as the IIUs and IIITs in Islamabad (1982), Kuala Lumpur (1982) and Herndon, Virginia, (1981) came into being the Islamist initiators were still driven by pro-Western sentiments of finding their own but largely compatible road to modernity. At the time, they pursued projects of cooperation with many departments of Islamic studies in Western universities. Sunni Islamists were the allies of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan and against Iran whom the West hoped to solely direct against communism and left-leaning populism. During this first phase, the Islamic Universities established themselves as an extension of the IIIT philosophy with an ideological orientation towards Islamism.

After the end of the cold war and the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, they entered a second, more political phase of ‘internationalism’. They witnessed rapid growth attracting students from many Muslim countries and minority communities. Their political ambitions and ideological concerns grew tremendously with wars raging in Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Students from these universities started organizing in support of the new jih¯ad causes. By the end of the nineties, but more so after 9/11, this trend ran out of steam and a third phase of development concerns set in. New students now expected to gain more from their studies than religious knowledge. They wanted a degree in worldly sciences which would guarantee them viable career options. The universities became tools to promote the formation of national elites that remained firmly embedded in Muslim culture. Foreign, mainly Middle Eastern and Saudi, funding was drying up and gradually replaced by national governments involved.

Yet, the ideological, political and developmental aspects have practically always coexisted, albeit with varying emphasis. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which had strongly promoted the idea of separate Islamic schools, had stressed the development aspect from the very beginning. The Islamic universities in Uganda and Niger in particular were created at the decision of the 1974 Lahore summit of the OIC (see Table 7.3). The seventh OIC Foreign Ministers meeting in Istanbul decreed in 1976:

53. The Conference, recognizing the need for the establishment of Arab Islamic schools all over the world to provide education for Muslim children whose parents might be working in foreign countries, decided to give moral and educational assistance to the Federation of International Arab Islamic Schools established recently in Saudi Arabia and to any other organizations that may be undertaking similar projects. It also called on Member States to consider the desirability of introducing Arabic as one of the compulsory languages in the curricula of their schools and other educational institutions. 16

The religious dimension of these schools developed with reference to the ‘Islamization of knowledge’ project in public interventions by scholars like Muhammad Naguib Syed al-Attas (b. 1931). In his lecture of 1976 and his later book of 1978 on Islam and Secularism he took the line that the (Western) secular sciences need to be Islamized in order for Muslims to regain their identity (al-Attas, 1976, 1998):

Hence those integral components whose historical and cultural effect in the West pertain to the dimensions of secularization, and which are not necessarily the monopoly of Western culture and civilization because they also play an important historical and cultural role in the impact of Islam in human history and culture, should simply be interpreted in their proper Islamic perspective as the integral components in the dimensions of islamization. (al-Attas 1998: 44)

From this perspective, Islamization was a continuation of Westernization, was enlightenment without distancing man from God.

While the argument continues today, the emphasis has shifted towards a more political connotation. Rashid Moten calls the ‘Islamization of knowledge … a process of developing or generating human knowledge in harmony with the revealed will of Allah’. He contends that ‘its aim is to critique, analyze and reformulate Western academic disciplines in such a manner that revelation is reinstated in man’s intellectual life and in fact becomes a basic source of knowledge’. It seeks ‘to provide to the Muslim ummah a vision as well as a methodology to confront the contemporary challenges and to reclaim Islam’s lost civilizational glory’ (Moten, 2004: 248).

While Islamic universities today see their Islamic teaching rather as a means of providing the moral values as bedrock to studies of secular sciences, the dissemination and teaching of Islam still plays a key role at these universities. All students, including those from nonreligious course programs, have to pass the University minimum course in Islamic studies during which they also need to learn Arabic. In addition, more importantly, the modern Islamic universities see themselves fulfilling the task of a missionary organization, of da’wa.17 Their da’wa is comparable to the reformist schools discussed earlier in that it follows the same literalist guidelines of Qur’anic and Hadith studies. On one level, they direct their da’wa at the modern national intelligentsia which normally would not attend the traditional and orthodox schools. On another lever, the universities also aim at bringing a more ‘upgraded’ and ‘sophisticated’ da’wa to the orthodox and traditional sectors. They organize qualification courses for madrasas and other traditionalinstitutions, study and defend the orthodox and traditional Islamic school system against secular and Western criticism; and serve as an access point for madrasa graduates to enter the mainstream educational system because of their mastery of Arabic. This ambiguity of purpose and the concomitant process of redefining Islamization can be clearly illustrated on the example of the International Islamic University in Islamabad (IIUI).

THE INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY OF ISLAMABAD

It was in the spirit of Islamization politics that the Islamic University was founded in Pakistan in 1980. As part of his Islamization policies, Pakistan’s President General Zia-ul-Haq gave the University its present charter as a (partly) extraterritorial International Islamic University in 1985. In the beginning, it received strong support from public and private donors in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. They not only paid for foreign teachers but also for scholarships of foreign students and the expansion of the university infrastructure (cf. Ac Rep, 1997–98: 39). This connection was aptly symbolized in the location of the IIUI on the grounds of the newly built grand Shah Abdul Aziz Mosque to which Saudi Arabia had heavily contributed. Islam-oriented education, research and outreach activities through the three faculties of Us.¯ul-ud-D¯ın, Shariah and Law, and Arabic; the Dawah and Shariah Academies; and the Institute of Islamic Research and Islamic Economics dominated its agenda until the mid-nineties. In the early years, graduates with Islam-oriented course profiles shaped its profile (see Table 7.4).

The Us.¯ul-ud-D¯ın Faculty in many ways still plays a key role in the University: ‘For fresh entrants it arranges the foundation courses and for other teaching and

research units it provides courses in fundamentals of Islam, without which no degree program is completed and no degree can be awarded’.18

Particularly the Dawah and Shariah Academies have been involved in extensive training and correspondence courses across the country. They organized training for foreign nationals visiting the IIUI and in collaboration with local Islamic institutions in countries such as South Africa, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. Imam courses of the Dawah Academy provide formal instruction in Islamic sciences regarding the Qur’an, Hadith, Fiqh, and Theology. International training courses are held for Islamic leaders and for ‘Neo-Muslims’, that is, converts. There are specialized Da’wa units for women, for Central Asia and China. The Shariah Academy gives lawyers and judicial officers of Pakistan and other countries an extensive grounding in Islamic law. At overseas workshops, participants discuss ways and means to Islamize the legal system of their respective country, to codify and implement Muslim Personal and Criminal Law. The Institute of Islamic Economics also works in this direction. Even though the structural Islamization is no longer on the political agenda of Pakistan’s rulers, these institutions continue efforts to deepen and broaden the Islamization of Pakistan’s bureaucracy and extend it to other Muslim countries and to Muslim minority communities, particularly in Asia and Africa.

Their efforts are also directed at ‘standardizing’ the Islamic institutions and players which may have an ambiguous effect. They create some form of ‘state Islam’ – a process set in motion by Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization policies.19 This ‘state Islam’ seeks to open up conservative Islamic players and institutions to ‘modern’ influences of a primarily technical nature making them receptive to ‘development’ concerns.20 It tends to favor literalist interpretations over popular customs. It also strengthens the rejection of secular notions seen as ‘unbelief’(kufr) worthy of resolute refutation. It equally sanctions sectarian rejection of religious minorities seen as heretical – such as the Ahmadiyya – and the Shi’a.

While the direction of this transfer of religious knowledge may point towards a reformist, literalist interpretation, it is noteworthy that within the parameters of the Sunni mainstream Islamic instruction at the IIUI is largely nonsectarian. In contrast to the madrasas, the various law schools(mad.hab) and the sectarian affiliations of Pakistan, such as Deobandi, Barelwi or Ahl-i H. ad¯ith, are not discriminated against. The Shari’ah courses teach legal opinion on the basis of all law schools. Organized student life reflects the heterogeneous political landscape of Pakistan. Beside Deobandi and Jam¯a’at-i Isl¯am¯ı organizations, Barelwiaffiliated groups and Ahl-i H. ad¯ith outlets are also represented.

In spite of distinct efforts for moderation and accommodation, the school does not escape radical currents, both theological and political. On the theological side, opinions are as strong here as within the Deobandi system with regard to the Ahmadiyya sect. Leaders of the university make it a point to lobby for its denunciation very much in line with the religious hardliners of the Khatm-e Nabuwwat movement mentioned in the preceding section. The president of the University, Justice (Retd) Khalilur Rahman, emphasized this in an interview with this author in October 2004. He presented a book with his judgment in a 1989 court case started by Ahmadi representatives against the Government of Punjab Province for prohibiting the centenary celebrations of the Ahmadiyya sect.21 In this case, he took the position that Ahmadis who want to be seen as Muslims – by reciting the Kalima – provoke the public and should be dealt with under section 295-C of Pakistan’s Criminal Code forming part of the so-called Blasphemy Laws and prescribing the death penalty.22 He argued that ‘a difficult situation is created by their own [i.e., the Ahmadis’] conduct of passing off as Muslims and use of Shaa’ir Islam or Kalima Tayyaba which are one of the fundamentals of Islam’.23

On the political side, students had been mobilized and partly also radicalized in the nineties in connection with the expanding international Islamist activities undertaken on Pakistan’s soil. The new political conflicts troubling the Umma found immediate reflection within the IIUI student body through the quickly growing groups of Chechen, Bosnian and Afghan students who attended in the early and mid-nineties. They organized their national student bodies on the compound taking active political positions. IIUI students took to the streets after the war on terrorism was declared on the Taliban in the aftermath of 9/11, 2001. Some of the student bodies operating on the campus openly defend militant jihad. They include the Deobandi student wing Jam¯ı’yat-e T. ulab¯a’-e Isl¯am-e Pakist¯an (JTIP)24 and the Ahl-i H. ad¯ith group Jam¯a’at-ud-Da’wa. The student representative of the latter kept on his desk an AH publication on Prophetic Traditions justifying suicide attacks which on request he gifted to this author.25

Over time, the emphasis of the University has gradually shifted. The 1987 University Statutes had already provided for the establishment of other faculties such as Dawah and Communication, Applied Sciences, Social Sciences, Education, Medicine and Health Sciences, Engineering and Technology, or Management Sciences.26 The opening of new faculties was endorsed in the 25 years Academic Plan 1991–2015 adopted in 1992.27 The IIUI started new ‘non-Islamic’ faculties with offering Management Sciences on a self-financed basis in 1996.28 From the Institute of Languages, English language and literature were elevated to a separate faculty during the same period. The two ‘modern’ faculties of Social Sciences and Applied Sciences were set up in 2000 and 2003 respectively reflecting the desire to meet the demands of increasing educational competition in a globalizing environment. After 9/11 international pressure on Islamic institutions and particularly private Islamic donors mounted and private Islamic resources for the University started drying up, most clearly felt in the lack of scholarships. The IIUI for all practical purposes and in terms of its running budget has now become a public national institution of Pakistan. Against this background it is particularly surprising how much of its Islamic, and one might say, partly Islamist outreach activity has been preserved (as discussed earlier) and is therefore financed by the Pakistan government. From this perspective, the IIUI continues to be a clear example of state-financed daw’a, similar to the IIU in Malaysia.

Nominally the aims and objective of the Islamabad University still reflect the ‘Islamization of knowledge’ project:

• To provide for all-around and harmonious development of individuals and society

• To reconstruct human thought in all its forms on the foundations of Islam

• To develop Islamic character and personality among the students, teachers and the supporting staff in the University • To encourage and promote education, training and research in Islamic Learning, social, natural, applied and communication sciences, and other branches of knowledge • To take practical steps for ideological, moral, intellectual, economic and technological developments ideas and principles in accordance with the norms of Islam and to take necessary steps for developing practical solutions of contemporary problems.29

But while the University still seeks to reconstruct human thought on the foundations of Islam, it is development which has moved to the forefront. The IIUI competes in the rapidly growing private educational market with other highly sophisticated players, such as the Agha Khan University in Karachi and the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Therefore, the skills obtained in the ‘non-Islamic’ degree courses need to withstand scrutiny by potential employers. At the same time they offer the graduates the chance to participate in the development of the community ‘in accordance with the norms of Islam’ (see the preceding section). Characteristic of this relatively recent trend at the IIUI is the Faculty of Management Sciences and its introductory statement by its dean Prof. Ijaz Gilani:

The programs at (the) faculty of Management Sciences, International Islamic University are geared to meet the needs of the rapidly changing market requirements.

We educate our students for the new century characterized by rapid and constant change, the unpredictability of human affairs and transformation of the work place. We equip our students with modern knowledge along with Islamic education and values to play an active role in a world, which has become a global village. Our single most emphasis is on preparing men and women for leadership roles in their respective fields.

…

Our Programs contain the best of the Western business thought, skills and fundamentals with ethical, moral and universal values and training of our faith – Islam, as well as the corporate ethics of Pakistan. We take pride in being Muslims and Pakistani.30

Prof. Gilani himself is a prime example of the new international ambitions of Pakistan’s elite. He was a cofounder of Pakistan Gallup in1980 which introduced public polls to the country that the traditional elite has at times found difficult to stomach as they document unregulated public opinion.31

The university went on a decided expansion and modernization course in line with this development. A new campus gradually comes into being providing modern facilities for teaching, administration and for the hostels. The enrollment of students has significantly grown. It increased five times between 1988–89 and 2002–03, according to the university’s own figures. The share of foreigners on the other hand has visibly fallen from 42 percent in 1988–89 to 14.39 percent in 2001–02 and 11.93 percent in 2003–04.32 At the same time, the share of female students dramatically increased threefold from 656 in 1998–99 to 1926 in 2002–03, with their share in overall student numbers rising from 20.72 percent to 34.67 percent during the same period.33

According to the 25-year master plan adopted in 1992, the university intends to raise the number of students from the current more than 10,000 to around

30,000.34 However, after 2001, resources have become scarce and its realization is delayed with many projects threatened (Ac Rep 2003–04: 38–39). Some rescue may come from the collection of fees which contrary to the school’s earlier tradition are playing an ever-greater role in its revenues.35 While the new ‘non-Islamic’ faculties are supposed to be self-financed, they have the highest number of fresh enrolments. More than 50 percent of students studied at the Faculty of Management Sciences in 2003–03 (see Table 7.7). The largest number of scholarships is paid out to the Islamic faculties underlying the class differentiation between the religious and the nonreligious degree courses (cf. Ac Rep 1997–98: 43–47).

The degree program is continuously being expanded. During 2003–04, the following programs were to be added: MPhil program for women, Postgraduate Diploma (PGD) in Environmental Law, PGD in Information Technology Law, PGD in International Trade Law, LLM Corporate Law, LLM International Law,PhD Education, PhD in Political Science and International Relations, MEd. General and Computer Education, and PGD in International Relations.

In addition, 14 degrees on the technological side were to be started (Ac Rep 2003–04: 17–18). They show a clear emphasis on modern, globalization and technology-oriented subjects. The large number of postgraduate programs is geared towards updating the skills of Pakistan’s civil and military bureaucracy.

On a scale roughly comparable to the Deobandi schools, the Islamic Universities in Pakistan and Malaysia have brought into being a distinct culture of their own. Student life and teaching practices are marked by the blanket observance of religious rituals where all the five prayer sessions are observed, also off campus and including the students from the ‘modern’ faculties; where gender segregation is implemented in teaching, hostel accommodation and social life at the campus; and where the wearing of the hij¯ab for girls becomes a regular feature. Yet the university increasingly becomes an instrument for the emancipation of Islamistminded girls and women with more than one-third of the student body of the IIUI being female already (see the foregoing section). Morality and Islamic values are regular issues in organized student activities and the official educational program. The IIU Islamabad conducts regular annual tarb¯ıyat¯ı camps for Islamic character building. They had been organized and financed by the Saudi Iqrafoundation which, however, after 9/11 seems to gradually withdraw from the university (cf. Ac Rep 1997–98; 2002–03; 2003–04).

Not only student politics representing the various Muslim groups and parties of Pakistan, but also national associations of foreign students, such as those of Afghanistan, Indonesia etc. are working in the direction of Islamic character building. The annual Cultural Week is an important event where foreign student associations on the campus present their ‘cultures, traditions and customs’ (Ac Rep 1997–98: 46). It is an occasion to strengthen the internationalist Islamic outlook of the student community. At the same time, student life inside the hostels seems to be rather relaxed and marked by many features of modern student life common in universities. Control is more formal and little effective. Students can have their own computer and private internet connection in the room if they pay for a phone subscription. There is, however, a battle over common room television which various religious student bodies try to control.36

The university also produces distinct patterns of networking both inside each country and across national boundaries. From own observation supported by the opinion of several analysts, it is assumed that many university stalwarts in Islamabad sympathize with the ideology of the modernist Islamist party Jam¯a’at-i Isl¯am¯ı (JI) founded by Maulana Syed Abu’l Ala Maududi (1903–79) in 1941.37 For instance, the ideologue of the party, Khurshid Ahmad, plays a key role in the religious lecture series of its Dawah Academy.38

ISLAMIC EDUCATION – WHERE IS IT GOING?

The traditional and modern Islamic schools currently undergo enormous change. However, none of them seems to have lost their standing in Muslim society. If anything, their influence has grown and strengthened. The crisis of public education in many Muslim countries has contributed to this as much as the desire of Muslim society to partake in national and global development on a more even scale. Many sections of Muslim society are looking for development in consonance with their cultural and religious values. Political and ideological opposition of Islamists to the West in general and the secular national state in particular has turned the Islamist milieu into a counterculture which remains attractive to many young people. Nevertheless, the traditional as well as the modern schools increasingly face the pressure of the educational market. They are forced to provide more educational value to students who turn into customers. They have to compete with secular private and public schools surging ahead in the race for globalization. The Deobandi and the IIU networks symbolize two different trajectories in this race. They produce alternate globalities with national and global players.

Regarding Islamic education, both pursue missionary objectives. They see it as their task to contribute to the strengthening and expansion of Islam in their own ways. They want to enhance knowledge of doctrine and the ‘correct’ practices of Islam, as they interpret them.

While the Deobandi network is more focused on religious knowledge per se the IIU network is more geared towards serving the Muslim community which is seen in need of uplift and emancipation towards the West and non-Muslim communities. Thus, the strengthening of religious knowledge feeds directly into ideological, political and social mobilization. The various interpenetrating and interplaying public roles of Islam are strengthened giving Islamism a much wider take and currency.

In this, the two networks serve different social and political sections of the Muslim public which, however, are still intermingling. The Deobandi network caters largely to the rural and urban underclass with political affiliation to the orthodox parties and groups of religious scholars, such as the JUI in Pakistan and the JU in South Africa. The IIU is much closer to the Muslim middle class and the modernizing sections of the Muslim Brothers of originally Egyptian provenance, with affinity to parties such as the Jam¯a‘at-i Isl¯am¯ı in Pakistan and the Parti Islam Semalaysia (PAS) in Malaysia.

At the same time, clear shifts appear to take place in these educational networks. Their ideological and political profile seemed to sharpen in the eighties and early nineties driven by the wars in Afghanistan, in Palestine and Iraq. Since the nineties development concerns seem to penetrate the schools on a much wider scale, driving curricular reform, a revision of financing models and debate about the place of their graduates in society and the economy. Since the late nineties and early 2000s, especially after 9/11, political polarization has increased surrounding their mode of operation. Particularly the traditional schools, but also the Islamic universities face increasing pressures of regulation and financial control to which they react not only with defiance, but also by expanding and strengthening their services and infrastructure. The bureaucracies of many Muslim states show a strong orthodox inclination looking favorably at religious schools, and also at the modern Islamic universities. They see to it that public money, either through government taxes or the central collection of the Muslim welfare tax, zakat continues to flow towards them. In addition, the Muslim public at large is still donating comparatively large amounts of private money to support religious schools.

While the Islamic universities seem to shift their focus to modern non-Islamic subjects, religious education remains important. The quest for giving the students of rather diversefaculties a ‘grounding’ in Islam and an umbrella religious education leads towards a modernizing standardization of religious knowledge there. It brings out – with regard to different Islamic practices and beliefs – a more ‘unitarian’ and less sectarian approach. In contrast, the traditional religious schools of the Deobandi network still thrive on perpetuating sectarian identities which increase ideological and political polarization directed against dissenters in Islam and also against non-Muslims. Yet, the modernity of the Islamic universities seems to be superficial in many ways. Certain sectarian issues, such as the penchant for hunting down the Ahmadi followers, are equally deep-rooted there. This can partly be explained by the employment of many madrasa graduates in the departments of Islamic studies(us.¯ul-ud-d¯ın) and the Islamic Research Institute there (cf. Ac Rep 2001–02: 19). In this way, these departments serve as connecting hinges between these two types of schools. From the perspective of the scholars employed there, they provide a platform for reintegration of traditional and modern knowledge, an issue which has been the concern of many Muslim activists and religious scholars for a long time.

While the two networks cater to different segments of society, mobilizing Muslims and fashioning their responses they will continue to play an important role in society also by setting the tone for political and ideological debates. Their graduates fill the ranks of community leaders where they give politics and development a strong, but diverse Islamic color. Yet, they probably meet the educational needs of a small segment of society only, the maximum share of which seems to be 15–20 percent. This raises the question if they have exhausted their potential of growth and whether or not they need to adapt more radically to a changing environment. Any further expansion may force them to ‘upgrade’ to the Western-oriented mainstream, in terms of curriculum and technical basis. This would and does raise concerns amongst its proponents about a dilution of values which many educators and traditional scholars strongly resist. Such dynamics could ultimately confine them to a sectoral phenomenon.

The internal and mutual integration of Islamic educational networks will progress, and so will probably their international networking. The results of this process are likely to remain ambiguous. While certain dogmatic issues such as sectarian concerns and enmity towards dissenting interpretations become more internationalized, the diversity within these networks may also be growing. The approach of Deobandi madrasas in various regions shows some differentiation on matters of ideological rigidity and social background. In addition, the approach of Islamic universities is not the same in every country. The Islamic universities in Indonesia, for instance, so far refuse to join the persecution of Ahmadis, preferring instead dialogue and debate. The nature of the political environment also seems to influence their orientation. In countries where the democratic culture is stronger such as in India, Indonesia and South Africa, diversity is more easily upheld, reducing sectarian, dogmatic and militant pressures.

The main issue confronting both the Deobandi madrasa network and the International Islamic Universities is their relevance for the Muslim community. If they succeed in meeting its expectations they may continue to thrive. Yet, the outcome of this process is far from certain, as the adaptation of these schools to changing needs has only begun.

NOTES

1. For the Moghul Empire in India see Saiyid Naqi Husain Jafri, A modernist view of madrasa education in late Mughal India, in Hartung and Reifeld, 2006: 39ff.

2. The term Islamic reformism here follows the concept of is.l¯a.h as expounded by Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) and Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935).

3. For a detailed review of the Dars-e Niz.¯am¯ı in its original form, and as implemented in the schools of the Firangh¯ı Ma.hall group, see Malik, 1997: 522–541.

4. My interviews in 2004 – DR.

5. This observation from my field research tallies with the description of life at the major Deobandi madrasa J¯ami‘a Ashraf¯ıya in Lahore, Pakistan. Hussain, Fayyaz, An ethnographic study of Jamia Ashrafia. (MSc Anthropology Thesis) Islamabad: Qaid-e-Azam University, Department of Anthropology, 1994, 28–29.

6. Massoud Ansari, ‘Holy Terror,’ in Newsline, July 2003, at http://www.newsline.com.pk/ NewsJuly2003/newsbeat6july.htm, accessed 26 March 2006; Dominic Casciani, ‘Warning on Muslim schools “abuse”,’ in BBC News, 22 March 2006, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/ 4831184.stm, accessed on 25 March 2006; Paul Anderson, ‘Madrassas hit by sex abuse claims,’ ibid, 10 December 2004, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4084951.stm, accessed at 25 March 2006. In 2003, the UNHCR Committee for the Rights of the Child in its concluding remarks on Pakistan ‘was very concerned about reports of violence and sexual abuse within madrasas’; at http://sim.law.uu.nl/SIM/CaseLaw/UNCom.nsf/fe005fcb50d8277cc12569d5003e4aaa/d4fa83589b6d588241256db7003fb2d2?OpenDocument, accessed 30 March 2006.

7. Da¯ r al-‘Ulu¯m 2001: 55; 1424 AH/2003 Data provided by the Department of Education (Daftar-i Ta‘lı¯ma¯ t), Da¯ r al-‘Ulu¯m, Deoband, during the field research of the author in February and March, 2004.

8. Yoginder Sikand documented several controversies: ‘Deoband’s war on Television, Fury over a Fatwa,’ ISIM-Review,Spring 2006, at http://www.isim.nl/files/Review_17/Review_17-48.pdf, accessed 30 March 2009; ‘Fury Over A Fatwa: Muslims Contest Deobandi Mufti’s Opinion on Imrana Rape Case,’ SikhSpectrum.com (Quarterly), August 2005, at http://www.sikhspectrum.com/082005/imrana_fatwa.htm, accessed 30 March 2009.

9. See various news items on the anti-Ahmadi website http://irshad.org accessed 30 September 2009 quoting Makki as the President of the AMTKN; B. Raman, ‘New Crop of Afghan Returnees,’ South Asia Analysis Group, Paper No. 402, 30 January 2002, http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers5/paper402.html, accessed 7 October 2009.

10. For India, cf. Sachar Committee, Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India: A Report. Delhi: Government of India 2006, at http://minorityaffairs.gov.in/ newsite/sachar/sachar_comm.pdf, accessed 30-09-09, and for Pakistan, Andrabi, T., J. Das, A. I. Khwaja and T. Zajonc, ‘Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data,’ in Comparative Education Review Vol. 50 (2006), No. 3, 446–477.

11. According to one report, 7,500 out of 10,500 madrasas in Bangladesh are funded by government, and in West Bengal correspondingly 507 out of 1,350. Tapash Ganguly, Twin advantage: Bangladesh and Pakistan join hands to spread terror in the northeast. In: The Week, 5 January 2003, at http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/archives/archives2003/kashmir20030105e.html, accessed 03 Mar 2006.

12. Yoginder Sikand, ‘Madrasas and Arabic Colleges in Contemporary Kerala,’ in: The Milli Gazette, Vol. 22, No. 8, August 2004.

13. ‘Madrasas outshine schools,’ in: The Milli Gazette, Vol. 2, No. 13, 1 – 15 Jul 2001, at http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/01072001/19.htm, accessed 30 September 2009.

14. Firoz Bakht Ahmed, ‘Madrasa Jamiatul Hidaya of Jaipur.’ In The Milli Gazette, Vol. 3, No. 14, 16 – 31 Jul 02, at http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/15072002/1507200258.htm, accessed 15 March 2006.

15. Margot Badran, ‘Islamic feminism means justice to women’ (interview), in The Milli Gazette, 16–31 Jan 2004, Delhi, at http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/2004/16-31Jan04-Print-Edition/

1631200425.htm , accessed 3 March 2006; see also Badran, 2001.

16. http://www.oic-oci.org/english/conf/fm/All%20Download/Frm.07.htm, accessed 20 February 2006.

17. An interesting example of this dimension of Islamic Universities is provided by a meeting held by Saudi Arabian authorities for the graduates of Saudi Arabian Universities in Africa in Kano (Nigeria) on 24–26 December 2001 stating as the four goals of the meeting: ‘1. Rejuvenation of the relationship between the Saudi Universities and its graduates from Africa. 2. Understanding the effect of the graduates of the universities from Africa in spreading knowledge and invitation to Al-Islam. 3. Clarification of the current state of teaching and preaching of Islam in Africa. 4. To understand the results and benefits of the hard work of the Custodian of the two Holy Mosques in serving the African states in matters of teaching, preaching Islam and services to humanity’. http://www.iu.edu.sa/english/forumnigeria.htm, accessed 20 February 2006 (no longer available).

18. http://www.iiu.edu.pk/usuluddin/introduction.htm, accessed 23 February 2006 (superseded by new presentation).

19. These goals were formulated by the Pakistan’s National Education Policy of 1979 of which the International Islamic University seems to be a direct result. Cf. Nayyar, 1998; Pakistan Ministry of Education, National Education Policy and Implementation Programme, Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 1979.

20. Cf. also Malik, 1996, 16, 167, who speaks of ‘integrationist Islam’ instead of ‘state Islam’.

21. Justice Khalil-ur-Rehman, Qadianiat in the eyes of law: Claim to Prophethood of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Qadiani. Lahore: Khalid Book Depot 2002.

22. Ibid.: 36.

23. Ibid.

24. See their pamphlet collected by me in interview with JTI campus representative on 19 October 2004: Jam¯ı’yat-e T.ulab¯a’-e Isl¯am-e Pakist¯an, Inqil¯ab aor us k¯e taq¯ad.¯e, 15 pp., n.d.

25. Prof. Hafiz Abdur Rahman Makki, T¯ar¯ıkh-e Isl¯am K¯e Fid¯a’i Dast¯e, Lahore: D¯ar al-Andalus, 2003, collected in interview with JD campus representative on 23 October 2004.

26. Ac Rep 1988–89: 5.

27. Ditto 1991–92: 16.

28. Ditto 1995–96: 34.

29. http://www.iiu.edu.pk/aboutiiu/aims_obj.asp, accessed 21 February 2006 (superseded by new presentation).

30. http://www.iiu.edu.pk/fms/fms.htm, accessed 21 February 2006 (superseded by new presentation).

31. http://www.gallup.com.pk, accessed 21 February 2006.

32. Ac Rep 2004–05: 19; 1988–89: 5ff.

33. Ac Rep 2002–03: 24.

34. According to information provided by Ehsan Haqqani, editor of the IIUI newsletter, by email of 6 March 2006 – DR.

35. Cf. the revision of the fee schedule in 1996 (Ac Rep 1995–96: 39) and the new fee schedule of the faculties in Ac Rep 2000–01: 26–27. While the classic Islamic faculties also charge fees they are substantially lower and often reduced or cancelled on the application of students.

36. Interviews at Islamic Universities in Islamabad in 2004 and Kuala Lumpur in 2005 – DR.

37. H. Nayyar contends that ‘the Islamic University has, over time, acquired a reputation for nurturing this movement’, i.e. the JI (Nayyar, 1998: 238).

38. Interviews in October 2004 in Islamabad. The Dawah Academy also republished two of Khurshid Ahmad’s books (Family Life in Islam; Islam, Basic Principles and Characteristics) and one by Maulana Maududi (Towards Understanding the Qur’an).

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