Book Review: C. Christine Fair, The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008, 145 pp., US$14.95 pbk)
| Author | Farah Jan |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/03058298110400011222 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews 223
identification of possible solutions to some of the problems raised by the authors. These
drawbacks have been dealt with somewhat by the Editors’ strong Introduction and
Conclusion, which both draw together the common themes and link the chapters to form
a cohesive whole. By identifying and problematising issues of scale in the formation of
environmental knowledge, the contributors have laid the ground for further consider-
ation of the way in which global governance is formulated.
Dr Thomas O’Brien
Dr Thomas O’Brien is a Visitor at the School of International and Political Studies,
Deakin University, Australia.
C. Christine Fair, The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan (Washington
DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008, 145 pp., US$14.95 pbk).
Prior to the events of 9/11, the Western world was stubbornly insular to the study of
madrassahs, or Islamic educational institutes, and their influence on terrorism. The land-
mark events of 9/11 galvanised the Western attitude against this insularity, and interest
was stirred in the pursuit of greater understanding of the mindset of a terrorist as well as
tracing their roots to the religious education provided in madrassahs. The common alle-
gation was that madrassahs were ‘incubators of militants in Pakistan and responsible for
creating communities of support for militancy in the region’ (p. 1). Since then the percep-
tion of a madrassah in the West (particularly in the United States) is tantamount to
Tolkien’s portrayal of Mordor, churning out Uruk Hai and Orcs by the thousands. It is at
this juncture of misconstructions that Fair’s book, The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy
and Religious Education in Pakistan, functions as an indispensible vade mecum in
understanding Pakistani madrassahs and their connection with militancy.
Fair’s research draws on her fieldwork, as well as the works of countless others (i.e.
Andarabi, PIHS, Alan Krueger and Claude Berrebi), to substantiate her argument that
‘madrassahs are not the cradles of militancy as generally perceived, nevertheless in com-
parison to public and private schools they do produce students who are significantly less
tolerant and more inclined to violent means of resolving disputes’ (p. 94). Fair uses
extensive primary data, comprising her own interviews with teachers, students and other
madrassah members in addition to numerous surveys and opinion polls, as the basis of
her argument. The author aims to address multiple aspects of Pakistani madrassahs such
as: their share in the educational sector, the socio-economic background of madrassah
students and, most importantly, the connection between such institutions and militancy,
and Islamabad’s sincerity in reforming the madrassah system.
The first two chapters provide elaborate insights into both the mainstream and reli-
gious educational systems of Pakistan. Using the data provided by the Pakistan Integrated
Household Survey (PIHS), Fair contrasts the enrolment figures of madrassahs to con-
ventional public and private schools. These figures are astounding, as it shows that ‘0.9
percent of all full time students’ are enrolled in madrassahs in contrast with ‘73 percent
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