This study analyses discourses of Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks for grades 9-12 in the context of developing students' national belonging vis-à-vis inclusive education and global interdependence. Drawing on teachers' interviews and students' focus groups and participatory tools, it also problematises teachers' classroom practices and…

Nations design their education systems to prepare youth for achieving national goals and objectives as perceived by that nation. The education system reflects nations' epistemological, ontological and axiological assumptions. Accordingly, the secular west has designed its educational intervention based on their assumptions and is diametrically…

Pakistan has been engaged in the project of madrassa reform since the early days of its nationhood. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, successive Pakistani governments have introduced a series of reforms aimed at regulating and reforming the madrassa sector, but the repeated failure of these efforts suggests the presence of some…

Pakistan has constantly been in the news since the September 9, 2001, attack in New York, USA, and its education system and curriculum have seen a lot of interest from academics, researchers, and civil society organizations, both locally and globally. These researchers explored many aspects such as the concept of Jihad and its connection with…

The aim of this study is to understand what specific religious values are being transmitted to children through online Shia religious communities during the pandemic. Twenty-seven mothers were sampled from three cities of Pakistan. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview guide and analysed using thematic content analysis. Eleven…

Islamic education is a central pivot of Pakistan's educational system; it is taught as a separate subject and purposefully included in many other subjects. The State uses Islam to manage public morality and national identity and there is a 'functionalisation' (Starrett, 1998) of religious education. A culturally lived tradition is transformed into…

This is the second part of my article published in "JoEED," Vol.4, Issue 2, on Iqbal's educational aims and objectives. In the first part the thrust was on the development of an individual self as a Muslim and the second part caters for Iqbal's recommendations on how this individual can be developed as an effective instrument for serving…

The Constitution of Pakistan (1973) and our various educational policies have given clear direction on aims of our education system, which should be based on Islamic principles. However, since independence, Pakistan is still unable to devise a system of education, the aims of which are derived from Qur'an and Sunnah as mandated by the…

Almost two centuries of British colonial rule in the Asian subcontinent came to an end in 1947 with the creation of a new state named Pakistan and an independent state of India. On 14 August 1947, the state of Pakistan was born primarily as a homeland for Muslims. The Pakistani constitution states that primary education should be free and…

Iqbal views the schooling as well as the Madrassah systems devoid of developing a dynamic Muslim required for the renaissance of Ummah. With this realization, many Islamic educationists in Pakistan have established. Islamic schools in Pakistan. The question is whether their models are dynamic enough to create such Muslims? This research probes…

This article focuses on the critical ideologies of the curriculum behind the religious education (Madrassa system) and modern education systems (public and private schools) in Pakistan. These systems use different types of curriculum and have faced many challenges in the past, particularly with regard to the curriculum itself. Both systems of…

This paper discusses the fundamental ideal and philosophy of education advocated by Ismail Raji al-Faruqi (1921-1986) in realizing the Islamization of knowledge (IOK) project. The concept and perspective of education projected by al-Faruqi was constructed on the worldview of tawhid that reflected the essence and intrinsic philosophy and paradigm…

The reported rise in radicalism among youth in Pakistan since 9/11/2001 has been attributed to religious education in "madrasas" and schools. However, education in Pakistan is only part of the historical and contemporary forces that contribute to the prevailing exclusivist religio-political discourse. Although most policy papers have…

Described as "terrorist factories", the South Asian madrasas have become the subject of great controversy since September 11, 2001. In Afghanistan, people commonly blame Pakistani madrasas for recruiting Afghan youth into militant groups. In response, the Afghan government has initiated a comprehensive reform of the Islamic education…

This paper problematises clean distinctions between secular and religious by tracing the history of modern higher education of Muslims in British colonial India. Grounded in the interpretive research tradition and with an empirical focus on the formative mid-nineteenth century, the article argues that relational notions between singular secularism…