In recent times, there has been intense global interest on and scrutiny of Islamic education. In reforming Islamic schools, what are the key actions initiated and are they contested or negotiated by and among Muslims? This edited collection brings together leading scholars to explore current reforms in Islamic schools. Drawing together international case studies, Reforms in Islamic Education critically discusses the reforms, considering the motivations for them, nature of them and perceptions and experiences of people affected by them. The contributors also explore the tensions, resistance, contestations and negotiations between Muslims and non-Muslims, and among Muslims, in relation to the reforms. Highlighting the need to understand and critique reforms in Islamic schools within broad historical, political and socio-cultural contexts, this book is a valuable resource for academics, policymakers and educators.

How can teachers introduce Islam to students when daily media headlines can prejudice students' perception of the subject? Should Islam be taught differently in secular universities than in colleges with a clear faith-based mission? What are strategies for discussing Islam and violence without perpetuating stereotypes? The contributors of Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, Islamophobia, and the Internet address these challenges head-on and consider approaches to Islamic studies pedagogy, Islamophobia and violence, and suggestions for how to structure courses. These approaches acknowledge the particular challenges faced when teaching a topic that students might initially fear or distrust. Speaking from their own experience, they include examples of collaborative teaching models, reading and media suggestions, and ideas for group assignments that encourage deeper engagement and broader thinking. The contributors also share personal struggles when confronted with students (including Muslim students) and parents who suspected the courses might have ulterior motives. In an age of stereotypes and misrepresentations of Islam, this book offers a range of means by which teachers can encourage students to thoughtfully engage with the topic of Islam.

"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The book is significant for those scholars who are attempting to understand Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, and also for those who want deep insights into Islamic education and its influence in any area of the Islamic world." - Raymond Scupin, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University, USA "Few books address the sensitive issue of Islamic education with empathy as well as critical distance as Joseph C. Liow’s Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand. He examines global networks of religious learning within a local Thai as well as regional Asian context by brilliantly revealing the intersections between religion, politics and modernity in an accessible and illuminating manner. Traditional educational institutions rarely receive such sensitive and balanced treatment. Liow's book is a tour de force and mandatory reading for policy-makers, academics and all of those interested in current affairs." - Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Religion, Associate Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISC), Duke University, USA "Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand is Joseph Chinyong Liow's critical attempt to map out the reflexive questioning, locations of authority, dynamics and contestations within the Muslim community over what constitutes Islamic knowledge and education. Through the optics of Islamic education in Southern Thailand, Liow manages to brilliantly portray the ways in which Muslim minority negotiate their lives in the local context of violence and the global context of crisis of modernity." - Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Senior Research Scholar, Thailand Research Fund, Author of The Life of this World: Negotiated Muslim Lives in Thai Society

I have written this book in an effort to explore how the history of Pakistan has resulted in the critical problems weighing down its education system. The book examines the questions: Why and how has a small elite class come to rule Pakistan? And how has their rule worsened the country’s problems? The focus will be to critically examine the elements of the Pakistani national curriculum and madrasas and their effects on Pakistani society. The book represents the fusion of my experiences in Pakistan with extensive literature analysis, interviews, and textbook analysis. This research began when I came to the United States in January 2015 through the SAR program. I wanted to know the answers to profoundly unsettling questions. How can a society be so intolerant that a scholar educated solely in Pakistan is disregarded and assassinated while many Western-educated scholars with traditional insular thoughts are not only appreciated but flourishing? I wanted to know why Pakistani elites have so much power and freedom while lower classes are profoundly oppressed. Elites who barely pay taxes have been in power for generations while those that pay taxes suffer from sky-high inflation. The influential religious leaders mostly belong to the elite class while their followers are mostly lower class. Ruling families and social classes mostly control appointed positions. Do those in power not have a responsibility to speak on issues of social justice rather than limiting themselves in claiming that theirs is the only true form of Islam? Why don’t they work to end the disparity of quality education between classes in Pakistan? Instead, many elites run their own lucrative elite Islamic schools. More importantly, why do the ulama (which literally means “those who possess knowledge [ilm], particularly of Islam”) maintain a tight hierarchical system in the madrasa (Islamic seminary) community that rarely allows poor intelligent students to attain leadership positions? Why are the ulama silent in the face of ruthless murder of and discrimination against Pakistani minorities? Book Review: "Pakistan Educational Reforms is a major study of education in Pakistan and its national and madrasa curriculum that fosters national and religious sectarian divisions, intolerance and conflicts. Dr. Amna Afreen documents the political, socio-economic and religious causes-limited government funding, widespread poverty and illiteracy and the poor training and performance of teachers- that have produced a failed educational system at urban and rural government and religious schools (madrasa) and offers a series of potential solutions and reforms." -- John L. Esposito, University Professor and Founding Director of The Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University.

The 1970s and 1980s were times of political and religious turmoil in Nigeria, characterized by governmental upheaval, and aggressive confrontations between the Sufi brotherhoods and the Izala movement. In Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria, Roman Loimeier explores the intermeshing of religion in the struggle for political influence and preservation of the interests of Nigerian Muslims. Loimeier's careful scholarship combines astute readings of the work of previous scholars--both published and unpublished--with archival material and the findings of his own fieldwork in Nigeria. His work fills a substantial gap in contemporary Nigerian studies. This book provides invaluable and essential reading for serious students of Nigerian politics and of Islamic movements in Africa.

This book discusses the educational system of madrasas in South Asia. It gives a balanced and contextual account on different facets of madrasa education from historical, anthropological, theological, political and religious studies perspectives.

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

In this book Ousman Kobo provides a fresh understanding of the indigenous origins of Islamic reforms sympathetic to "Wahhabi" ideas in two West African countries, Burkina Faso and Ghana, and connects these movements to Muslim's search for religious purity in modern contexts.

This book investigates the ways in which the war on terror has transformed the postcolonial state in Africa. Taking American intervention in Islamic education in Uganda as the entry point, the book demonstrates how state control over Islamic truth production and everyday Muslim life has increased. During the colonial period, the Muslims in Uganda were governed in two ways: partly as lesser citizens within the Christian-dominated civil sphere and partly as members of a distinct Muslim domain. In this domain, a local system of Islamic education developed with a degree of autonomy that reflected the limits of the colonial state in shaping the Muslim subject. In the subsequent postcolonial period, systems of patronage and clientalistic networks dominated, and Muslim leaders were co-opted by the state, but without much real interference in the day-to-day lives of ordinary Muslims. However, as part of the war on terror, the US State Department seeks to bring the mechanisms of Islamic truth production, especially the madrasa, under direct state control and civil society scrutiny. This book argues that the "Muslim domain as a separate entity is coming to an end as it is being absorbed into the civil sphere, unifying the state’s domination of society." The book also analyzes local Ugandan Muslim initiatives to modernise and contextualize their own education and religion and how these initiatives are shaped by and transcend the dominant power. A thorough exploration of US foreign policy and Islamic education, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Political Studies, African Studies and Religious Studies.

This book provides an understanding of pedagogy rooted in the developments of Islamic Education. It is the first book to explore this in the Madrasah context. The focus on Islamic pedagogy provides a way to explore knowledge, spirituality and education that is shaped by a universal approach to personalised learning.