New Islamic Schools: Tradition, Modernity, and Class in Urban Pakistan

Studies on Islamic schooling, particularly in Pakistan, largely focus on orthodox religious seminaries (madrasas) and presuppose that all types of religious schooling create the same religious subjectivity that is fundamentally extremist, anti-modern and anti-secular. In this groundbreaking narrative, Riaz attempts to cover this gap in ethnographic literature on Islamic education by presenting the first participant-observation based account of the new private Islamic schools that are fast becoming popular among middle and upper class urbanites. The schools combine modern secular education with traditional madrasa education. Through observations across pre-primary and Grades 1-10 subject classes, and interviews with Islamic school entrepreneurs, administrators, teachers, students and their parents associated with these schools - each catering to a different urban class - the author elucidates how the pedagogies, curriculum and the aspirations of the producers and patrons of knowledge in these schools modernize Islamic tradition to create diverse religious, secular, and class subjectivities in the students.