Summary: Islamic seminaries (madrasas) in Pakistan are educational institutions equivalent to high schools and universities. They admit 14-16 year olds and impart a 7-9 year Islamic education with the intention of creating religious functionaries: mosque leaders (imams), congregational prayer leaders and sermon-givers (khateebs), juris-consults (muftis), etc. Since 9/11, multilateral agencies and the government have pushed for the inclusion of modern education in seminaries, particularly the sciences. The goal of these proposed reforms is to better integrate graduates into mainstream society and the global community, by enabling graduates to have broader career options (beyond serving as religious functionaries in society) and provide them with greater exposure to contemporary advances in the sciences.
This research project will compare a Pakistani seminary that adopted curricular reforms (integrating traditional seminary education with modern subjects including the sciences) with a seminary that continues to teach an unreformed curriculum (exclusively focused on traditional.
Islamic texts and subjects). Surveys and in-depth, semi-structured interviews of both institutions’ graduates will be used to answer these questions: Are there systematic differences in the life-choices, career-trajectories, theological positions and worldviews of graduates from the two institutions, particularly in relation to their attitude towards modern advances in the sciences? If so, in what ways are these differences related to their respective seminary’s curriculum? Research findings will be disseminated through newspaper editorials, conference presentations, and a journal article.
By providing empirical evidence on the potential impact of including modern sciences within Islamic seminary curriculum, the study will be valuable for policy-makers, academic scholars and lay Muslims invested in understanding or reforming the curricula and broader social role of Islamic seminaries. Moreover, such research will greatly benefit international as well as regional scholars interested in examining the role that modern science and knowledge play in relation to religion because of the project’s focus on the lived experiences and perspectives of seminary graduates in Pakistan.
