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SCHOLARS OF FAITH

South Asian Muslim Women and

the Embodiment of Religious

Knowledge

USHA SANYAL

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First Edition published in 2020

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ISBN-13 (print edition): 978-0-19-012080-1

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Printed in …

my mother, Vina Sanyal,

in loving memory

and to

all the Muslim girls and women

who are the subjects of this book

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix

List of Figures and Tables xiii

Introduction 1

Part I: Iman, Ahkam, Adab

1. Muslim Girls’ Education in North India in the

Twentieth Century and Beyond 53

2. Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar

Pradesh, India 96

3. Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 130

4. Attachment to School: The Madrasa and the Islamic

Public School for Girls Compared 168

5. Life after the Madrasa 209

Part II: Iman, Ahkam, Da‘wa

6. Al-Huda International: Muslim Women Empower

themselves through Online Study of the Qur’an 237

7. Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 267

viii Contents

8. Al-Huda Onsite and Online: Teacher–Learners and

Students in North America 301

9. Student Narratives: Personal Transformations and

Reorientations 339

Conclusion: Why Now? 355

Glossary 368

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project has been many years in the making. It began modestly

when, in 2009, I ﬁ rst heard of Al-Huda online classes and decided

to register as a student. I was not teaching at the time, had a high

schooler and a middle schooler at home, and relished the idea of

reading and studying the Qur’an with knowledgeable teachers. Thus

began my four-year association as a student with Al-Huda. Many years

later, in 2015, I published a paper about my ‘virtual ethnography’, a

modiﬁ ed version of which appears as Chapter 6 in this volume.

The project grew thanks in large part to the encouragement

of Sandria Freitag and David Gilmartin of North Carolina State

University, USA. At their invitation, I attended a monthly South Asia

colloquium in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina from 2010

to 2017. Simultaneously, my receipt of an American Institute of Indian

Studies (AIIS) Senior Short-Term Research Fellowship in 2012–13

gave my project its current comparative character. My warm thanks to

Sandy and David for their intellectual inspiration and support, to the

many participants of the colloquia for feedback on individual papers

and chapters, and to the AIIS for the grant that allowed me to begin

ﬁ eldwork at the madrasa in Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, in

2012. Since then I have made return visits to the madrasa once a year

for short periods of a week or a few days each time. These have given

me a longitudinal picture of its growth and expansion over time, and

deepened my relationships with the director, his core network of

administrators, and a small number of teachers.

x Acknowledgements

In India, I must thank the students, administrators, and teach-

ers of the madrasa for their willingness to talk to me and allow me

to ask probing questions. Without their cooperation, the research

for the ﬁ rst part of this book would not have been possible. I have

protected the teachers’ and students’ identities by using pseudonyms.

My thanks as well to late Dr Sartaj Razvi and his family, especially

Aiman, of Bareilly and Delhi, who helped me in innumerable ways

throughout this research. Dr Sartaj and his wife ﬁ rst hosted me in

Bareilly in the 1980s when I was researching the history of the Ahl-i

Sunnat/Barelwi movement for my PhD. Years later, they hosted me

on numerous occasions in connection with the current project. It was

thanks to Dr Sartaj, furthermore, that I was able to visit Jami‘at al-

Salehat, the Jama‘at-i Islami girls’ madrasa in Rampur, in 2013. Sadly,

Dr Sartaj passed away on 31 March 2019, just as this book was going

to press.

In Delhi, I have also received invaluable help from Sumbul Farah,

who completed her PhD thesis while I was working on this book, and

in 2014 collaborated with me on the research which forms the basis

for Chapter 5. She and I have published our ﬁ ndings in Modern Asian

Studies (2019). I also owe a great debt to my friend and mentor, Roma

Chatterji of the Delhi School of Economics, for her advice on new

ways of thinking about the issues raised by the study. It was her idea

that I do the ‘classroom ethnography’ that forms part of Chapter 4. In

Delhi, I must thank Rajib and Kummi Sen, who provided me with a

home away from home during my annual visits there. In Bengaluru, I

thank my hosts Madhulika and Anil Malpani for their warm hospital-

ity and generosity in 2013. In the US, Rupa Bose has helped me with

my website and given me invaluable hands-on advice of a practical

kind from one who is a published science-ﬁ ction writer and a poet.

I thank Al-Huda International for their permission to do the virtual

ethnography that constitutes the second part of this work. I was in

periodic touch with Ms Taimiyyah Zubair, who coordinates much of

the teaching at the Al-Huda Institute in Mississauga, Canada. She

and I met one-on-one on two occasions (in 2012 and 2014), and I sat

in on a few of her and other Al-Huda teachers’ classes at Mississauga.

It was her taped lectures on ‘word for word’ translation and analysis

that online students like myself listened to during the four years of

the course we took. I regard her, thus, as my teacher. As she is one

Acknowledgements xi

of Dr Farhat Hashmi’s daughters, her willingness to speak with me

and read draft chapters that I sent her in the interests of complete

transparency, have been invaluable. In addition, I learned much from

Ms Shazia Nawaz of the Testing Center outside Dallas, Texas, during

a visit there in 2014. Two onsite visits to Bengaluru, India, in 2012 and

2013, gave me a better sense of the variety and vibrancy of Al-Huda

classes which are run by former Al-Huda students, using Dr Hashmi’s

taped lectures as a centrepiece. Finally, I thank fellow students of the

class I was in, especially Fauzia Qureshi, who answered a lengthy

questionnaire and was willing to answer other questions at all times.

I have presented diﬀ erent parts of this work at the South Asia

Conference in Madison, the Association of Asian Studies Conference

in Seattle, as well as in smaller conferences in Philadelphia, Paris,

Princeton, Toronto, and elsewhere. The feedback from participants

of these conferences has been of immense help to me, especially as I

have been an ‘independent’ scholar for many years. I am also grateful

to my colleague Paige Rawson at Wingate University, North Carolina,

USA, for intellectually stimulating conversations and help with femi-

nist theory. Most of all, I would like to thank those who read parts of the

manuscript at various points along the way: Sumbul Farah, Sandria

Freitag, David Gilmartin, Barbara Metcalf, Ramya Sreenivasan,

Lauren Steele, Sylvia Vatuk, and Pnina Werbner. Muhammad Qasim

Zaman read the ﬁ nal draft in its entirety with great attention to detail.

My heartfelt thanks to him for his generosity of time and for making

suggestions which guided me in my revisions of the manuscript. I am

also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript who

responded to OUP, New Delhi’s request for peer reviews. I have tried

to the best of my ability to respond to their suggestions. My sincere

thanks to the editorial team at Oxford University Press, who edited

the manuscript with scrupulous attention to detail and raised ques-

tions which have made for a much better book.

At home, I have to thank my dear friends Suzanne, Nelly, Jane,

Lucie, and Helen for moral support and questions about my project at

our weekly ‘salons’ at Suzanne and Guy’s house, where we drink hot

tea, eat cookies, and talk about books read, ﬁ lms and art shows seen

or not to be missed, and everything cultural, particularly if it relates to

the French. Thank you, Elizabeth, for many years of friendship and an

unﬂ agging interest in my work. My friend Tamara Dossin has taken

xii Acknowledgements

keen interest in it as well for many years, asking always ‘What have

you learned?’––a question not only about what I had learned from

my ethnographic subjects but more importantly perhaps, about the

imprint my work with them had left on me personally. I empathize

greatly with the subjects of both my ethnographies. After working

with them and trying to understand their aspirations for the past

several years, it could not be otherwise. It is my hope that this book

will help ‘translate’ their worlds into an idiom that scholars and the

interested readers will ﬁ nd meaningful.

Finally, a big thank you to my wonderful husband, Gautam Bose,

and our sons Girish and Arun for joyous and noisy conversations

around the dinner table whenever the occasion has allowed. I hope

they will read the book and better understand what kept me returning

to India year after year while Girish and Arun were in middle and

high school, and then college.

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures

1.1 Female Literacy in UP versus Rest of India 62

1.2 Male Literacy in UP versus Rest of India 63

1.3 Girls’ Hostel Built around an Open Square,

Jami‘at al-Salehat 66

1.4 New Classroom Building, Jami‘at al-Salehat 66

1.5 Kindergarten Students, Jami‘at al-Salehat 67

2.1 Shahjahanpur District Map 101

2.2 Abbreviated Genealogical Tree of Ahmad Raza Khan

and His Descendants 106

3.1 Inside of the Madrasa (Old Location), Showing

Classrooms Leading Oﬀ a Courtyard and Stairs

(June 2012) 131

3.2 Students in One of the Classrooms of the Old Building,

Reviewing their Lessons for Exams 134

3.3 Students Listening to a Senior Student Relate a Hadith

during Morning Assembly 136

4.1 Madrasa Students Performing Morning Exercises 176

4.2 Day Students Park Their Bicycles in the School

Courtyard during School Hours 190

xiv Figures and Tables

4.3 Computer Lab at the Islamic Public School 195

8.1 Entrance to Al-Huda Institute, Mississauga, Canada 322

8.2 Classroom in Al-Huda Institute, Mississauga, Canada 323

Tables

Jami‘at al-Salehat, Rampur (June 2013) 81

Jami‘at al-Salehat, Rampur 85

Madrasatul Niswan, Delhi (2003) 87

List of Classes and Subjects Taught at Jami‘a Nur

al-Shari‘at (June 2012) 163

Al-Huda Online Courses, 2011–13 335

INTRODUCTION

Whether identiﬁ ed as ‘orthodox,’ ‘orthoprax,’ or ‘scripturalist,’ the

tradition of the ‘ulama’ [Islamic religious scholars] has always been

characterized by reliance on the ‘the two sources’ of [Qur’anic] scrip-

ture and sunnah…

What is crucial here is the fundamental presupposition that truth

does not reside in documents, however authentic, ancient, or well-pre-

served, but in authentic human beings and their personal connections

with one another. Documents alone, without a line of persons possessed

of both knowledge and righteousness to teach and convey them across

the years, are useless as instruments of authoritative transmission.

—William A. Graham, ‘Traditionalism in Islam’ pp. 504, 507

This is a book about new institutions of religious learning that cater

to South Asian Muslim girls and women, institutions that have

arisen all across South Asian cities and towns, and in the South

Asian diaspora, starting in the second half of the twentieth century,

and accelerating in the 1990s and thereafter. I examine two institu-

tions in particular, belonging to diﬀ erent schools of thought, and

diﬀ ering from one another in terms of social class, geography, and

access to technology. The comparative focus of my study necessarily

broadens the questions that we must ask regarding the increased

1 William A. Graham, ‘Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation’.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1993), 23: 495–522.

2 Scholars of Faith

access of Muslim girls and women to education and the purposes

to which they seek to put their education. Why are South Asian

Muslim girls and women seeking opportunities to acquire religious

learning today, and what do they wish to accomplish with their

newfound knowledge? What is the social impact of women’s greater

access to education in South Asia; what societal changes does this

exemplify and portend? How important are intra-Muslim debates

about interpretive diﬀ erences among South Asian Sunni Muslims,

and what impact—if any—do these internal divisions have on rela-

tions between Muslims and the wider non-Muslim society in South

Asia, particularly Hindus in India, and in the Western diaspora?

South Asian Muslims today are heirs to the twentieth-century

history of nationalist struggle for freedom from British colonial rule,

which led to Independence in 1947, but also the trauma of Partition

on both sides of the subcontinent, with the provinces of Punjab and

Bengal being divided between the new nation states of India and

Pakistan. Muslims, who had numbered about 25 per cent of the British

Indian population prior to 1947, were now a mere 13 per cent of the

Indian population, whereas West and East Pakistan were two wings

of a Muslim-majority nation with a small non-Muslim population. In

1971, a further act of partition took place when, after a brutal war, the

two wings separated into Pakistan (to India’s west) and Bangladesh

(to India’s east). Since then, the national contexts of each of these

three countries have set the stage for very diﬀ erent life experiences for

their respective Muslim populations.

As many scholars have noted, Muslim religious movements or

organizations that began in the British colonial period have had

distinct histories in India and Pakistan. Thus, to take the example

of the most prominent ‘ulama-led Sunni Muslim movement in

colonial India, that centred on the Dar al-‘Ulum in Deoband, Uttar

Pradesh (UP), Metcalf’s work shows that during the colonial period,

the activities of Deobandi ‘ulama followed a dual track. On the one

hand, they were scholars, teachers, and Suﬁ s who were religious and

cultural leaders of the Muslim community; on the other, they were

Indian nationalists who formed the Jam‘iyat al-‘Ulama-i Hind party

of ‘ulama, allied with the Indian National Congress in the anti-British

struggle for Independence. Some, notably Mawlana Husayn Ahmad

Introduction 3

Madani (d. 1957), engaged in an array of anti-British activities, which

earned him a prison sentence and exile.

2 Since Independence and

Partition, however, the Deobandi ‘ulama in India (like other Indian

‘ulama) have focused far more on ‘cultural preservation’ than on poli-

tics, particularly since the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in state

and national elections. 3 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, who has written

extensively on the twentieth-century Deobandi (and other) ‘ulama in

South Asia, shows us a diﬀ erent history: while there have been a num-

ber of scholars and thinkers of high intellectual calibre in Pakistan, as

evidenced especially by their Hadith commentaries, Deobandis have

also been at the forefront of political activity and national protest in

that country. These activities include the anti-Ahmadi agitation in the

1970s, anti-Soviet warfare in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the rise of the

Taliban, and more recently, anti-Shi‘i activities. As Zaman notes, the

radicalization of particular Pakistani madrasas ‘is inconceivable in a

context other than that provided by the Pakistani state’, although this

has not meant that the state and diﬀ erent groups of ‘ulama have seen

eye to eye on major national political issues.

2 Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); on Mawlana Husayn Ahmad

Madani, see, among others, Barbara D. Metcalf, Husain Ahmad Madani:

The Jihad for Islam and India’s Freedom (London: Oneworld, 2009); and

Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of

Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 32–4, and passim.

Zaman also examines the views of Deobandi ‘ulama such as Mawlana Zafar

Ahmad ‘Uthmani, who argued against Madani’s position. Zaman, The Ulama

in Contemporary Islam , pp. 42–7.

3 Barbara Metcalf, ‘Madrasas and Minorities in Secular India’, in Robert

W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, eds, Schooling Islam: The Culture

and Politics of Modern Muslim Education (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 2007), p. 92.

4 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Tradition and Authority in Deobandi

Madrasas of South Asia’, in Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim

Zaman, eds, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim

Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 74. Also see

Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam ; and Muhammad Qasim Zaman,

Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

4 Scholars of Faith

Similarly, we see the close connection between religious movements

and political context in the case of the Jama‘at-i Islami, a very diﬀ erent

kind of religious organization founded in the early 1940s by Mawlana

Mawdudi. 5 Characterizing the Jama‘at-i Islami as an Islamist organiza-

tion, Irfan Ahmad’s research on the Jama‘at-i Islami madrasa Jamia‘tul

Falah in Azamgarh district, east UP, reveals the degree to which the

politics of this institution diﬀ ers from that of the Jama‘at-i Islami in

Pakistan, where Mawdudi moved after Partition.

6 Ahmad writes:

Whereas in the past the Jamaat called secularism and democracy haram

[ forbidden], it now ﬁ ghts to safeguard these principles. Western-style

Muslim colleges were previously considered ‘slaughterhouse[s],’ but now

the Jamaat seeks their minority status. Having its schools aﬃ liated with the

government earlier had been seen as an approval of taghut (idolatory), but

now it has no qualms about getting that aﬃ liation. Similarly, whereas ear-

lier it had disregarded other religions, now it accepts them. . . .The pursuit

of an Islamic state has also ceased to be central on the Jamaat’s agenda.

The complexities of this history are not what concern me here. Rather,

I wish to make the point that the Deobandis and Jama‘at-i Islami in

Pakistan and India (to cite two examples out of many) have had very

diﬀ erent relationships with the state and, hence, diﬀ erent public roles

in their respective societies. This becomes clear in the course of my

examination of the two case studies discussed in this book, as the ﬁ rst

is located in a small town in west UP, India, while the second began

in Islamabad, Pakistan, in the 1990s, and now has branches in North

America which oﬀ er both onsite and online classes for women. I have

focused on its online classes, headquartered in Canada.

This work argues that Islamic religious education today, in the

early twenty-ﬁ rst century—particularly that for women—is thor-

oughly modern. This is a loaded term. What do we mean by a ‘modern

Islamic education’? Robert Hefner gives us three important criteria:

the functionalization of Islamic education, its internal dynamics, and

5 For the early history of this movement, see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The

Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama‘at-i Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1994).

6 Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of

Jamaat-e-Islami (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010).

7 Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India , p. 8.

Introduction 5

debate about who has the authority to be purveyors of shari‘a inter-

pretation among Muslims today. Do the ‘ulama have the authority to

interpret the shari‘a in the contemporary world, as they have had over

the centuries, or do they now have to share this authority with ‘new

Islamic intellectuals’? 8 Each of these questions has a direct bearing on

the present study.

The concepts of the ‘objectiﬁ cation’ and ‘functionalization’ of Islamic

education were coined by Gregory Starrett with reference to state-sup-

ported mass education in Egypt.

9 The objectiﬁ cation of Islam refers to

the ‘growing consciousness on the part of Muslims that Islam is a coher-

ent system of practices and beliefs, rather than merely an unexamined

and unexaminable way of life. This is a pervasive process throughout

the Muslim world.’ 10 By ‘functionalization’, he refers to ‘processes of

translation in which intellectual objects from one discourse come to

serve the strategic or utilitarian ends of another discourse. This transla-

tion not only places intellectual objects in new ﬁ elds of signiﬁ cance, but

radically shifts the meaning of their initial context.’

The concept of ‘objectiﬁ cation’, or the idea that ‘Islam’ is a ‘religion’

that can and should be taught as a coherent system, has been a taken-

for-granted assumption in state-sponsored secular mass education

in postcolonial states since the twentieth century, having been part

and parcel of British colonial policy in India and elsewhere. Both the

madrasa and the online classes reﬂ ect this modern idea, although they

are private initiatives rather than state institutions. Francis Robinson

refers to it as the ‘rationalization of religious belief and practice’, and

identiﬁ es it as one of the several outcomes of Islamic reform move-

ments in South Asia since the eighteenth century.

12 As for the concept

8 Robert Hefner, ‘Introduction: The Culture, Politics, and Future of

Muslim Education’, in Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman,

eds, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 32–4.

9 Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious

Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

10 Starrett, Putting Islam to Work , p. 9.

11 Starrett, Putting Islam to Work .

12 Francis Robinson, ‘Islamic Reform and Modernities in South Asia’,

in Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, eds, Islamic Reform in South Asia

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 40.

6 Scholars of Faith

of ‘functionalization’, I see this clearly at work in Al-Huda. Chapter 8,

which explores Farhat Hashmi’s use of language, shows how the pro-

cess of functionalization unfolds in her discourse. A notable example

is in her discussions of science and scientiﬁ c knowledge, which she

believes are implicitly hinted at in speciﬁ c verses in the Qur’an.

The internal dynamics of the two institutions take us to the local

contexts in which they arose and are currently functioning. Here, the

Muslim concept of ‘being in the moderate middle’ is helpful. As Neal

Robinson points out, ‘at the numerical centre’ (in verse 143) of the

second chapter of the Qur’an—the longest of all 114 chapters—is a

reference to the Muslims as a ‘middle nation’ ( ummatan wasatan ). 13

For Muslims there could of course be no greater source of authority

than the Qur’an, and thus it is no surprise that many Muslim groups

claim the coveted ‘middle’ ground for themselves, while denying it to

others around them. The Sunni denomination to which the madrasa

explored in this book belongs is that of the Barelwis (more formally

known as the Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama‘at [people of the prophetic way

and the community]). The madrasa’s director sees his denomination

as being between two undesirable extremes: those who belittle the

Prophet Muhammad on the one hand (the reference being to other

South Asian denominations whom the Barelwis generically label as

‘Wahhabi’) and those who revere him to excess (here the reference is

to the Shi‘a). Madrasa students at a girls’ madrasa in Delhi, according

to Borker, position themselves as being in a diﬀ erent kind of ‘middle’:

between women who, like their mothers, are uneducated ( jahil ,

unparh ) and modern, secular schoolgirls who do not observe the rules

of female seclusion ( pardah ). 14 They regard themselves as embodying

the ideal between these two extremes. Al-Huda International, which

has been oﬀ ering both onsite and online Qur’an classes for women

in Pakistan and internationally since the early 1990s, likewise thinks

of itself as being in the middle, in this case self-identifying with the

13 Neal Robinson, Discovering the Qur’an: A Contemporary Approach to a

Veiled Text (2nd edn, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003),

p. 201.

14 Hem Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 192. Borker points out, though, that

while the madrasa students criticized the ‘modern, secular’ students, they

also envied them and wished to be like them.

Introduction 7

ﬁ rst of the three groups referred to in verses 2–20 in Chapter 2 of

the Qur’an. This group is described as ‘the godfearing’, those who

perform the prayer and fulﬁ l the other duties required of them by

God. The second group, in contrast, consists of non-believers, while

the third—the worst—is made up of people who claim to be Muslim,

but are in fact secretly engaged in undermining them. This provides

the framework for Al-Huda’s self-deﬁ nition and its deﬁ nition of its

‘Others’—both Muslim and non-Muslim. Al-Huda has much to say

about Muslims who consider other humans worthy of worship, a not-

so-veiled reference to Muslims such as the Barelwis, who are both

‘ulama and Suﬁ s. Al-Huda, whose aﬃ liation is with the Ahl-i Hadith,

frowns upon Suﬁ sm.

This discussion leads directly to Hefner’s third criterion of moder-

nity in Islamic religious education, namely, the fracturing of religious

authority. As many scholars have pointed out, Muslims in South Asia

are internally divided along denominational lines, and the religious

institutions they create reﬂ ect these divisions as well.

15 Metcalf notes

that this is less marked in south India than in the north, and that

Kerala Muslims have worked in close coordination with the state to

oﬀ er Arabic not only in madrasas but in state high schools as well.

However, throughout South Asia, it is not just relations with the state

that are subject to negotiation and debate, but also the rise of what

Hefner refers to as ‘new Islamic intellectuals’.

The founders of Al-Huda International, a husband-and-wife

team from Pakistan who obtained their PhDs in Islamic Studies

from Glasgow University in the 1990s, and who teach Qur’an and

Hadith classes at Al-Huda, are a case in point. A prominent Deobandi

scholar in Pakistan, Mawlana Taqi ‘Uthmani, speciﬁ cally asked on

what authority Dr Farhat Hashmi, the leading voice of Al-Huda, could

engage in exegesis of the Qur’an, given that she is not the product of

a madrasa education but has a degree from a Western university.

15 See, for example, Metcalf, ‘Madrasas and Minorities in Secular India’,

and Zaman, ‘Tradition and Authority in Deobandi Madrasas of South Asia’.

16 Metcalf, ‘Madrasas and Minorities in Secular India’, p. 98. On madrasa

education in Kerala, also see Yoginder Sikand, Bastions of the Believers:

Madrasas and Islamic Education in India (Delhi: Penguin, 2005).

17 Faiza Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority: A Movement for

Women’s Islamic Education, Moral Reform and Innovative Traditionalism’

(PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, 2010), p. 203.

8 Scholars of Faith

Ironically, Mawlana Taqi ‘Uthmani himself has BA ‘degrees in arts and

in law from the University of Karachi and a master’s in Arabic from

the University of the Punjab in Lahore’, and is a prominent ﬁ gure in

Pakistan, having ‘served as a judge on the Shari‘at Appellate Bench of

the Supreme Court’ for two decades, from 1982 to 2002. He has also

published in English the book Introduction to Islamic Finance , thereby

addressing not just an ‘ulama audience but a wider, Western-educated

one as well. 18 Zaman explains that he exempliﬁ es a new phenomenon

in Pakistani education, namely, the creation of new opportunities for

the ‘ulama to seek academic degrees in the university system after

having received a madrasa education. This was made possible by

government reforms in the early 1980s which recognized madrasa

degrees as ‘the equivalent of university degrees’, provided the madra-

sas oﬀ ered some subjects taught in the ‘general curriculum’.

19 Even

so, the fact that Dr Farhat Hashmi is a Western-educated intellectual

(whose earlier education took place in Punjab University in Pakistan),

and a woman who is prominent on the national and international

stage, has caused considerable dismay among the Pakistani ‘ulama,

particularly the Deobandis.

These currents of change in modern Muslim education are taking

place throughout the world. Contrary to the modernization theory in

the 1960s, which had assumed that the ‘ulama were becoming irrel-

evant in the twentieth-century Muslim world because of the growing

power of the secular state, scholars see a more complex reality today.

Thus, Zeghal writes that al-Azhar in contemporary Egypt, ‘far from

being [an] anachronistic institution marginalized by the development

of a modern educational system … has been transformed into a hybrid

space where multiple kinds (from the scientiﬁ c to the theological) and

levels (from simple memorization and rituals to ideological and politi-

cal [aspects]) of knowledge and interpretation coexist.’

20 Its student

18 Zaman, ‘Tradition and Authority in Deobandi Madrasas of South Asia’,

pp. 80–1.

19 Zaman, ‘Tradition and Authority in Deobandi Madrasas of South Asia’,

p. 78.

20 Malika Zeghal, ‘The “Recentering” of Religious Knowledge and

Discourse: The Case of al-Azhar in Twentieth-Century Egypt’, in Robert W.

Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman, eds, Schooling Islam: The Culture and

Politics of Modern Muslim Education , p. 109. Zeghal also brieﬂ y discusses the

Introduction 9

population has been continuously growing, as demand constantly

outpaces supply: in the early twenty-ﬁ rst century, it had 1.3 million

students at all stages of study, located in diﬀ erent institutions aﬃ li-

ated with al-Azhar throughout Egypt.

Moreover, the ‘ulama are stepping outside their traditional roles

in a variety of ways, and communicating with new audiences. Zeghal

explores the heterogeneity of the views of al-Azhar’s ‘ulama despite

the pressure exerted by the state to voice opinions it favours and sup-

press those it dislikes. In 2003, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French interior

minister at the time, came to al-Azhar in order to obtain a fatwa from

Shaykh Tantawi, the Grand Imam, on the headscarf controversy roil-

ing France. 22 While the fatwa pleased Sarkozy (Shaykh Tantawi said

it was France’s right to pass whatever laws it considered ﬁ t, though

a headscarf ban would force Muslim women in France to commit a

sin), it caused a furore in Egypt, with some ‘ulama calling for Shaykh

Tantawi to resign. 23 As this debate shows, the role of the Egyptian

‘ulama has grown in some respects while being constrained in others.

Starrett goes further, arguing that ‘[a]s intellectual technologies and

political institutions from the West have penetrated the Islamic world,

they have helped to create new ways of conceiving of, practicing,

and passing on the Islamic tradition’.

24 This has the direct eﬀ ect of

‘creat[ing] competitors possessing the tools of opposition’.

25 Charles

Hirschkind’s work on the popular practice of listening to Qur’anic

recitation in Egypt illustrates how cassette recordings of the Qur’an

Egyptian state’s deﬁ nition of al-Azhar’s role in defending the tradition of the

‘middle way’ ( wasat ), far from ‘extremist interpretations’. See Zeghal, ‘The

“Recentering” of Religious Knowledge and Discourse’, p. 109. As Zeghal’s

article was published in 2007, the 1.3 million ﬁ gure pertains to the ﬁ rst few

years of the twenty-ﬁ rst century.

21 Zeghal, ‘The “Recentering” of Religious Knowledge and Discourse’, p.

110.

22 On this, see Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2007).

23 Zeghal, ‘The “Recentering” of Religious Knowledge and Discourse’, pp.

122–8.

24 Starrett, Putting Islam to Work , pp. 17–18.

25 Starrett, Putting Islam to Work , p. 11.

10 Scholars of Faith

played in Egyptian taxicabs and homes have contributed towards the

creation of an ‘Islamic counterpublic’ which interprets the Qur’anic

text in everyday contexts and applies its meanings to people’s lives.

Genesis of this Study

This book emerged from my growing curiosity about the lives of

Barelwi women, who were absent from my previous work on the his-

tory of the Barelwi or Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama‘at movement.

27 What

was distinctive about the lives of Barelwi women; what set them apart

from other South Asian Muslim women? How did the belief system

that had been articulated by leaders such as Mawlana Ahmad Raza

Khan Barelwi (1856–1921) in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth

centuries, and subsequently dubbed the ‘Barelwi’ school of thought,

manifest itself in the lives of women who belonged to families that

adhered to this school?

As I am a historian rather than an anthropologist by training, I began

with a historical lens, looking for twentieth-century Barelwi texts for

women. The earliest texts I found belonged to the genre of ‘advice lit-

erature’, well-known among Deobandis on account of Mawlana Ashraf

‘Ali Thanawi’s (d. 1943) Bihishti Zewar or ‘Heavenly Ornaments’. 28

Not surprisingly, given the history of competition and rivalry that has

marked the Barelwi–Deobandi relationship, the two Barelwi books

have similar titles, though with a slight twist: one of the Barelwi texts

is called Sunni Bihishti Zewar (‘Sunni Heavenly Ornaments’) while

the other is called Jannati Zewar , which also translates as ‘Heavenly

Ornaments’. The implication of the ﬁ rst title is hard to miss, namely,

that this—rather than the earlier and much better known Deobandi

work—is the deﬁ nitive guide for Sunni Muslim women.

26 Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and

Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

27 Usha Sanyal, Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Ahmad Riza

Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1870–1920 (new edn, Delhi: Yoda Press,

2010).

28 Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s

Bihishti Zewar, a Partial Translation with Commentary (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1990).

Introduction 11

Both texts are relatively recent, having been written in the 1970s.

This was surprising, considering the book by Mawlana Thanawi dates

back to the early twentieth century.

29 Further probing revealed that the

earliest guide for Barelwi women was not a separate book but a larger,

multivolume work by Mawlana Amjad ‘Ali A‘zami (1878–1948) called

Bahar-i Shari‘at (‘Garden of Shari‘a’), written over a 20-year period

until the early 1940s, which served as an encyclopaedia for guidance

on matters of everyday importance for both men and women. That a

separate book for women was not deemed necessary until the 1970s

was an interesting ﬁ nding in itself, speaking to the emergence of

women’s issues as a matter of greater concern over time.

From here, I began to ask myself whether these books were actu-

ally used by Barelwi women today, or whether they read other books

instead? This led me on a search for Barelwi women’s madrasas, a

relatively recent phenomenon in the late twentieth century among

all South Asian Muslims, not just Barelwis. My ﬁ eldwork in a UP

madrasa, described in the ﬁ rst part of this book, revealed that both

books are indeed studied and their lessons are sought to be applied

in the everyday lives of its students. What transformative impact does

such study have on students’ lives? Is the madrasa an agent for change,

and if so, in what ways? In what ways are students’ lives diﬀ erent as

a result of their having studied at the madrasa? I grappled with these

and other questions in the course of my ﬁ eldwork and asked students,

teachers, and administrators to share their views with me.

Indeed, these questions connect the ﬁ eldwork at the Barelwi

madrasa with my second case study, namely, the Al-Huda online

classes examined in the second part of this book. In December 2009,

I signed on as an online student in response to an email announce-

ment by Al-Huda of the launch of a new part-time class that would

teach students the Qur’an in Arabic. The course took four years to

complete. Although on the face of it, the two case studies are so dif-

ferent that (like apples and oranges) one wonders what purpose may

29 Metcalf, Perfecting Women , p. 1.

30 On these texts, see Usha Sanyal, ‘Changing Concepts of the Person in

Two Ahl-i Sunnat/Barelwi Texts for Women: The Sunni Bihishti Zewar and the

Jannati Zewar ’, in Usha Sanyal, David Gilmartin, and Sandria B. Freitag, eds,

Muslim Voices: Community and the Self in South Asia (Delhi: Yoda Press, 2013).

12 Scholars of Faith

usefully be served by examining them side-by-side, the comparison

brings into sharp relief the innovative ways in which the technologies

of our times—whether it be the printed book or the computer-based

remote classroom—are harnessed to the social goals of diﬀ erent

actors. In both cases, the goal is to promote an orthoprax lifestyle

among Muslim women by means of textual study. While the Al-Huda

students focus on intensive study of the Qur’an in the original Arabic,

as well as related subjects such as Hadith (prophetic traditions) and

ﬁ qh (jurisprudence), the students at the Barelwi girls’ madrasa focus

on an array of religious texts selected from the traditional dars-i nizami

syllabus followed by South Asian madrasas of all Sunni schools of

thought. But the purpose is the same: to transform lives in the here

and now by applying the teachings of the texts to their everyday lives.

What lessons Al-Huda and Barelwi students take from these texts are

of course diﬀ erent, given their diﬀ erent theological positions on a

range of issues. But what unites the two endeavours is nonetheless of

key importance as well: both foster in their students a new way of see-

ing themselves and their relationship to the world around them, or to

use Appadurai’s felicitous phrase, they create a cultural and gendered

‘capacity to aspire’. 31 In each case, students are held responsible for

their own religious and social comportment, accountable to immedi-

ate authority ﬁ gures certainly, but ultimately to none other than God.

The transformative power of this simple idea is considerable—and

ultimately very modern in that it centres on individual action, volun-

tarily undertaken, to change internal states of mind and consequently

outward behaviour as well. Individual action, the school authorities

and Al-Huda believe, leads in turn to change at the community and

societal level.

This said, I am cognizant of—and couch my analysis in relation

to—the very diﬀ erent contexts in which the two case studies are

situated, in terms of the women’s class and economic status in the

31 Arjun Appadurai, ‘The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of

Recognition’, in Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, eds, Culture and Public

Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 59–84. Hem Borker

has used Appadurai’s concept of the capacity to aspire to great eﬀ ect in her

work on women’s education. See Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic

Womanhood .

Introduction 13

larger society; their access or lack of access to urban infrastructure

and amenities such as adequate electricity and the basic necessities of

everyday life; and importantly, to English-medium schools, as such an

education opens doors to social status and employment in adulthood.

The overall political context of the case studies is diﬀ erent as well,

given that the Barelwi study is located in Shahjahanpur, a small town

in west UP, India, while the Al-Huda one is located in cyberspace,

with people signing in from all over the world and contributing to

the virtual ‘classroom’ experience. Students and teachers from places

as far apart as Sri Lanka, India, the United Arab Emirates (UAE),

the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States (US) all came

together for four hours twice a week, and once more at the end of the

week in small groups to review the week’s lessons.

Consequently, the book has a transnational dimension which I hope

will contribute to the literature on Islam and modernity, globalization,

and new cyberpublics. As ﬁ rst-generation or second-generation South

Asian Muslim immigrants, the women I came to know at Al-Huda

were middle-class, college-educated, and in many cases married with

children and/or employed full time. They were bilingual in English

and a South Asian language, usually but not always Urdu. For none of

them was Arabic their mother tongue. A few had a history of multiple

migrations, having lived in the West or the Gulf, or Saudi Arabia, and

then returned to India for good. By visiting some Al-Huda onsite loca-

tions—Mississauga (Canada), Texas (US), and Bengaluru (India)—I

was able to meet several students and teachers face-to-face and learn

some of their stories, which are the subject of Chapters 8 and 9.

Although I do not explore issues related to religious extremism

in the international arena (as I noted earlier, all my subjects position

themselves in the ‘moderate middle’), in 2015 Al-Huda was shaken by

an attack on US soil. In the wake of the shooting in San Bernardino,

California on 2 December 2015, investigators learned that Tashfeen

Malik, 29, the woman who, as part of a husband-and-wife team,

had shot and killed 14 people and injured 22 at the Inland Regional

Center, had once been an Al-Huda student when she lived in Multan,

Pakistan. Although she did not complete the full course, leaving after

her marriage to Syed Farook, an American-born Muslim, she had

studied there from 17 April 2013 until 3 May 2014. She had reportedly

been an intelligent and engaged student who participated actively in

14 Scholars of Faith

class, and introduced three or four of her friends to the course as well.

After the attack, The Star , a Canadian newspaper, reported that on

8 December the Al-Huda Institute in Mississauga, outside Toronto,

Canada, had closed for the day so as to protect its students from

media attention in the wake of the shootings. The Star also reported

that in 2014, 4 girls, aged between 15 and 18 and all of Somali origin,

who had allegedly studied at the Al-Huda Institute, had left for Syria

in order to join ISIS but had been ‘intercepted by Turkish authorities

and sent home after their parents discovered their plans and alerted

authorities’. 32 The Al-Huda Institute, however, disclaimed any knowl-

edge of these students, and was quick to disassociate itself from any

ties to terrorism, saying that terrorism is against Islamic teachings

and that it would do all it could to cooperate with authorities.

By the time these events occurred, I had completed the online Qur’an

course at Al-Huda and was beginning to write. It was a shock to know

that one of the perpetrators of the attack had been even tangentially

associated with Al-Huda. Deniz Kandiyoti,

33 in her review of an article

I wrote at the time, pointed out that Al-Huda has a lot in common with

other pietistic movements—including non-Muslim ones—that centre

on the cultivation of the virtuous self, and that preaching violence is

not a part of their teachings (this was the point of my article).

34 To

her point that Al-Huda in many respects resembles pietistic move-

ments from other faith traditions, the Israeli scholar Tamar El-Or

describes an event that bears echoes of what I have related earlier in

32 The facts of the case were reported, among other places, in the New York

Times . See http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/12/07/world/asia/ap-

california-shootings-pakistan-connection.html; accessed on 21 January 2016.

For the article in The Star , see http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/12/08/

mississauga-islamic-school-closes-citing-safety-concerns.html; accessed on

21 January 2016.

33 I thank Deniz Kandiyoti for her feedback on a short article I wrote after

this attack, in December 2015. (The article is unpublished.) She raised a num-

ber of questions about Al-Huda’s political views in a personal communication.

34 However, Kandiyoti thought Al-Huda’s understanding of dar al-harb / dar

al-islam and what constitutes jahiliya in today’s world would be worth explor-

ing, in order to understand Al-Huda’s stance vis-à-vis the writings of Sayyid

Qutb, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1930s. I examine

Al-Huda’s intellectual history in Chapter 7.

Introduction 15

the chapter. 35  In 1995, she had completed her ﬁ eldwork at Bar-Ilan

University, a Jewish seminary outside Tel Aviv, Israel, and had just

begun a one-year writing fellowship in the US when she learned that a

student from the seminary she had so exhaustively researched had shot

and killed the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.

36 She agonized

about the tragedy for a long time, turning it over in her mind to under-

stand what had happened and why and how she had not seen it coming.

In my case, the events of 2015 did not concern anyone known to me

or to the teachers and students I had met. This said, it bears noting that

Al-Huda has an Ahl-i Hadith and Salaﬁ perspective and while it in no way

encourages or condones violence, students taking Al-Huda courses may

choose to interpret what they learn in radical ways. Many listen to the

taped speeches of well-known mainstream Muslim preachers, scholars,

and teachers such as Hamza Yusuf, founder of the Zaytuna Academy,

who is very popular in North America, but also to others such as Zakir

Naik, the controversial Indian preacher whom the Indian government

would like to have extradited from Malaysia.

37 In the context of my online

relationship with students and teachers, it was impossible for me to know

my fellow students as whole persons or to know their social relationships

outside the virtual classroom. The ‘franchise’ organizational structure

characteristic of Al-Huda—discussed in Chapter 6—also impedes mean-

ingful analysis of this event. I can and do, however, explore Al-Huda’s

own intellectual perspective by looking at the writings and speeches of

Farhat Hashmi and her husband, Idrees Zubair, and their implications

for social and/or political action. This is the subject of Chapter 7.

Major Themes

The Embodiment of Ethical Ideals in Everyday Life

One of the most important themes in this study is the exploration

of how ethical ideals animate and are manifested in the everyday

35 Tamar El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More: Literacy and Identity among

Young Orthodox Women in Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,

2002). I am grateful to Pnina Werbner for bringing this work to my attention.

36 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , pp. 73–86.

37 See https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/05/india-arrest-

preacher-zakir-naik-170521055023564.html; accessed on 6 October 2019.

16 Scholars of Faith

behaviour of the students. Interest in how ‘ordinary people’ make

sense of their lives in everyday contexts has surged in a number of

academic ﬁ elds of study. Cultural studies scholars study cultural phe-

nomena (or ‘texts’, though this term is not conﬁ ned to the study of

a written text; it could just as well be a shopping mall or a cultural

practice such as watching television)

38 —in the past or the present—

because they are interested in understanding the ways in which those

who use (or practice) the phenomenon make sense of it. To quote

John Storey: ‘Cultural studies has always been more concerned with

the meanings of cultural texts; that is, their “social” meanings, how

they are appropriated and used in practice: meaning as ascription,

rather than inscription.’ 39

The focus on meaning making by the subjects under study fol-

lows from an assumption by the cultural theorist that the people in

question have agency—that is, that they are ‘mostly aware of what

they are actively doing when they consume’.

40 However, this agency

is exercised within the constraints of social structure, that is, the mul-

tiple dimensions of social life across time and place, such as laws,

socio-religious sanctions, and social institutions including class and

economic relations, and so on. Thus, the way any given people ‘read’

or use a social text is necessarily informed by the social context in

which they are historically located. It is the cultural studies scholar’s

task to balance agency and structure in his or her analysis.

The madrasa students whose daily lives I explore in this book

and the Al-Huda online students of the Qur’an who were my virtual

classmates for four years (2009–2013) were engaged in a highly pur-

poseful endeavour, namely, to bring about personal change through

38 John Storey, Cultural Consumption and Everyday Life (London: Arnold,

1999), pp. 126–7.

39 Storey, Cultural Consumption and Everyday Life , p. 163.

40 Storey, Cultural Consumption and Everyday Life . The term ‘consume’

is being used in a broad sense to include not just physical consumption of

goods, but also symbolic goods, including language, myth, or ritual, for exam-

ple. See Storey, Cultural Consumption and Everyday Life , pp. 42–4, on symbolic

goods. For Talal Asad’s critique of the cultural studies approach to agency, see

Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford:

Stanford University Press, 2007), p. 79 and Chapter 2 more generally.

Introduction 17

religious study. Al-Huda students are constantly exhorted to subject

their daily thoughts and actions to self-scrutiny, to lift the ‘ordinary’

out of its taken-for-granted invisibility and think about it consciously,

then decide whether to pursue the action or refrain from doing it

based on whether or not it accords with Qur’anic teachings and the

example ( sunna ) of the Prophet Muhammad. This kind of deconstruc-

tion of the ‘everyday’ is what will lead, Al-Huda believes, to personal

transformation—and indeed, as I hope to show, it has been remark-

ably successful in achieving its goal in the lives of those students and

teachers I came to know. Given the primacy of shaping the new self

around the teachings of the Qur’an and the Prophet, as interpreted

by Al-Huda, the newly constructed self is not free of constraints; to

the contrary, not only does the student observe the prescribed prayer

schedules every day, but mundane daily activities, sleep schedules,

and relationships with extended family, one’s spouse, children, and

even neighbours acquire a well-deﬁ ned pattern and follow a set of

guidelines regardless of where in the world the Al-Huda student lives

or what her personal circumstances may be. One might say that the

process of change consists of making the ‘ordinariness’ of everyday

life ‘extraordinary’ within the bounds of well-deﬁ ned parameters,

personal and/or social.

Not surprisingly, given the Muslim students’ ﬁ rmly held eschato-

logical belief in an eternal afterlife after death and God’s judgment

based on how they conducted themselves during their lifetimes, time

assumes a new dimension as they get deeper into their studies. Indeed,

time management is the subject of focused discussions at Al-Huda and

is implicit as well in other aspects of daily interactions in the classroom.

After they have been in the course for some time, students no longer

need to be reminded that in light of the short time ( ajalin musamma , or

‘a speciﬁ ed period of time’, as the Qur’an says) given to each one and

the suddenness with which they could be struck down without warn-

ing, their most important goal in life should be to prepare for death and

the life of the hereafter. Once students have internalized this message,

it is their biggest incentive for seeking to bring about personal trans-

formation in the here and now, each person looking critically at herself

rather than over her shoulder at her neighbour.

As noted, the goal of personal transformation, voluntarily under-

taken, unites both the case studies in this book. The madrasa students

18 Scholars of Faith

and Qur’an students I observed made it clear that they wanted to study

and acquire Islamic knowledge, that they were deeply motivated to

do so, and that they held themselves to a high moral standard. The

madrasa students’ desire for knowledge and their concomitant will-

ingness to subject themselves to the ethical and practical discipline

that follows stood in stark contrast to the attitude of students in an

adjoining English-language secular school, as I discuss in Chapter 4.

There is a vibrant academic debate today that centres on Saba

Mahmood’s important work, Politics of Piety (2005), between critics

who believe Mahmood overemphasizes the role of piety and those who

see in her work an alternative perspective on expressions of female

agency in an Islamic idiom.

41 Voicing the former view, Hem Borker’s

recent work on a girls’ madrasa in Delhi argues that contemporary

scholarship on Muslim women’s religious education falls into one of

two traps. Scholars either maintain that such education reproduces

existing cultural norms and the marginalization of Muslim women,

or they believe that it empowers Muslim women by opening up new

opportunities for them to travel, earn community recognition, and

have a sense of psychological self-fulﬁ lment. Against these two posi-

tions, Borker argues that her study shows a more nuanced, complex

negotiation characterized by conﬂ ict, contradiction, and ambivalence.

Borker’s position is situated within a larger debate in the anthropol-

ogy of Islam regarding the role of piety in Muslim communities as

a whole, as some scholars have critiqued Mahmood on the grounds

that she failed to take into account the everyday, fragmented lives of

her subjects outside the context of the mosque movement.

42 Citing

instances of madrasa girls at play or some who went on to univer-

sity and came in hindsight to see their own madrasa educations as

unduly restrictive, Borker believes we should pay more attention to

41 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist

Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Among many oth-

ers, see Nadia Fadil and Mayanthi Fernando, ‘Rediscovering the “Everyday”

Muslim: Notes on an Anthropological Divide’, HAU: Journey of Ethnographic

Theory (2015), 5(2): 59–88.

42 For a recent summary of this debate in the anthropology of Islam, see

David Kloos and Daan Beekers, eds, ‘Introduction’, Straying from the Straight

Path: How Senses of Failure Invigorate Lived Religion (New York: Berghahn,

2018).

Introduction 19

‘the ambiguities inherent in the everyday practices’ of female madrasa

students. 43

My response to Borker and others who have engaged in this debate

is that the Islamic tradition, being inherently discursive, in no way

forecloses ambiguity and nuance or the possibility of multiple inter-

pretations of Islamic texual authority. Muslims throughout their his-

tory have argued and debated with one another about the meaning

of diﬀ erent aspects of the Islamic tradition, and have interpreted its

ﬁ ner points in multiple ways. Indeed, it is the modern reiﬁ cation (or

objectiﬁ cation, to use Starrett’s term) of ‘Islam’—by academic schol-

ars and Muslims alike, though coming from diﬀ erent subject posi-

tions—which would have us believe that ‘Islam’ is a ‘thing’ with a ﬁ xed

essence. Thus, madrasa girls who seek to become more pious in their

daily lives do not cease to play games, enjoy Bollywood-inﬂ ected poetry

(in the form of praise poems about the Prophet [ na‘t ]), sometimes go

on outings that have nothing to do with ‘Islam’, or occasionally (as

in my case study) question madrasa authorities’ decisions or those of

parents or family elders.

Relatedly, Kloos argues that although ‘processes of ethical forma-

tion are essentially contingent, fragmented, personal, future-oriented,

and intersubjectively constituted’, this does not mean that Muslims

are ‘locked in or struck by a condition of insoluble moral tensions and

unattainable futures’. Rather, they use personal failure as a means

of ‘progressive eﬀ ort, rocky and unpredictable’, toward ‘pursuits of

pious perfection’. The key is to recognize that the process of individ-

ual (and social) change is a dialectic, in which ‘the struggles inherent

in everyday life contribute in productive ways to processes of ethical

formation’. 44

A second response to the critique of inconsistency comes from

transnational feminist theory, which Attiya Ahmad employs to great

eﬀ ect in her recent work Everyday Conversions . Ahmad argues that the

theory of transnational feminism pushes us to consider ‘the complex

43 Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood, p. 196, and

passim.

44 David Kloos, Becoming Better Muslims: Religious Authority & Ethical

Improvement in Aceh, Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018),

p. 12.

20 Scholars of Faith

ways in which discursive traditions—both hegemonic and forms des-

ignated and diﬀ erentiated as “other”—have developed through pro-

cesses of colonial modernity and are the products of entangled rather

than distinctive historical trajectories’.

45 In the case of South Asian

migrant women to Kuwait converting to Islam, the process of change

‘was neither unidirectional nor linear, but cyclical and recursive …

[their] conversion to Islam was marked by emergent relationships

and aﬃ nities, ones that did not supersede or subsume their exist-

ing familial and ethnonational belongings, but developed alongside

them, in tandem, and reconﬁ gured them.’ 46 The processual nature of

personal change within the context of the everyday lives of her sub-

jects and their past histories, as well as her taking seriously the South

Asian gendered expectation that women are ‘naram’ (malleable and

adaptive), which was important to her subjects, lead Ahmad to see

that the process of conversion was ‘characterized by changes as well

as continuities and uncertainties’. What it means to be pious can thus

take diﬀ erent forms for diﬀ erent people, or even for the same person

within the course of her lifetime.

The students at the girls’ madrasa in Shahjahanpur were in their

teens: usually starting at the age of 12 or 13, the student is 18 or 19

when she completes her studies. Her most important familial rela-

tions are with parents and siblings. In Chapter 5, I explore the impact

of the girls’ madrasa education on family relations, based on ﬁ eldwork

carried out by Sumbul Farah who conducted a number of interviews

with former students to complement my observations within the

madrasa. 48 As the madrasa was founded in 2003, the number of stu-

dents who had graduated and married and had children was still small

at the time of ﬁ eldwork. Some indications of the kinds of changes

that had already taken place in terms of the students’ relations with

45 Attiya Ahmad, Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South

Asian Migrant Workers in Kuwait (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), p. 9.

On ‘entangled’ histories, see Margrit Pernau, Ashraf into Middle Classes: Muslims

in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013).

46 Ahmad, Everyday Conversions , pp. 20–1.

47 For a recent contribution to this debate, see Kloos, Becoming Better

Muslims .

48 Usha Sanyal and Sumbul Farah, ‘Discipline and Nurture: Living in a Girls’

Madrasa, Living in Community’, Modern Asian Studies (2019), 53(2): 411–50.

Introduction 21

their spouses and in-laws are, however, available to us through Farah’s

work, and are discussed in this book.

The Al-Huda students who took the online Qur’an class I was

part of were in a diﬀ erent stage of life from the madrasa students

at Shahjahanpur. Most of them were college-educated and all were

English-speaking (the class I took was conducted in English). Some

were professional women. Several were married and had young chil-

dren. A small handful were older women with grown children. These

students’ primary familial ties were therefore with their spouses and

children. I explore how their educational experience changed their

relations with members of their families in Chapter 9.

As noted earlier, the Al-Huda students were located in a variety of

countries, from Sri Lanka and India to Canada, the US, Great Britain,

and the UAE. These students’ lives were shaped by global travel in a

way that was absent in the lives of the madrasa students. In fact, the

life of Al-Huda founder Farhat Hashmi may be seen as a modern-day

rihla narrative (travelling for the sake of religious knowledge): from

Pakistan she and her husband went to Scotland to pursue their PhDs

in the 1980s, and in the 1990s they relocated to Canada, from where

Hashmi launched an international educational eﬀ ort that today spans

several continents. While the students at the Barelwi girls’ madrasa I

studied do not have such international exposure, some of the teachers

and administrators at the school—and those aﬃ liated with the larger

complex of schools of which it is a part—have travelled abroad, either

to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca ( hajj or umra ) or to visit family

members living in Europe or North America. Even those who can-

not travel for lack of ﬁ nancial means, have access to newspapers, the

radio, television, cell phones, and the Internet. Although such access

is far from uniform, the Barelwi madrasa students I studied do not

live in geographical or cultural isolation. Apart from the fact that they

are constantly travelling between home and school, sometimes over

hundreds of miles, their lives are shaped by the wider cultural and

political forces around them in multiple ways.

Everyday Islamic Discourse

What persuades a young girl in a semi-rural part of north India to

become more religiously observant? What makes the task of waking

22 Scholars of Faith

up at 5 a.m. to perform the early morning ( fajr ) prayer desirable? Why

do some students undertake a voluntary fast in the middle of sum-

mer? What moral arguments do Al-Huda online teachers make to

persuade students they cannot even see to wash or bathe before class,

wear clean clothes, be in a quiet place, and sit at their computers,

headphones at the ready, every class day? Or to take their exams when

required, within the speciﬁ ed time limit, without consulting their

notes or Qur’ans?

To understand how teachers and students engaged in personal

transformation in the everyday contexts of the madrasa and the vir-

tual classroom, I listened to lessons and conversations in classrooms

(both real and virtual), sat in on conversations between teachers and

students in the madrasa staﬀ room or playground during annual visits

from 2012 to 2018, listened to students recite na‘t poetry in praise of

the Prophet and deliver speeches before fellow students, shared meals

with teachers and madrasa administrators, and engaged in one-on-one

personal conversation with whoever was free to talk between classes

or daily chores and during their free time. Similarly, I met with some

Al-Huda teachers and students in Mississauga, Canada; in Dallas,

Texas; and in Bengaluru, India, during short visits over the course

of 2012–14. And using the technology of virtual learning on which

Al-Huda online classes depend, I conversed with a group of classmates

via Skype, PalTalk, and email from 2010 to 2013, occasionally following

individual students on Facebook, where they posted and shared infor-

mation about homework assignments for voluntary, extra classes not

part of the course itself. Al-Huda also encourages students to listen to

taped lectures by Farhat Hashmi and the teachers who taught individ-

ual courses, which I did periodically. Excerpts from these conversations

constitute a vital primary source in this study. These voices are, indeed,

at the heart of the book. Without them, there would be no book.

The study of discourse, both oral and written, is particularly fruit-

ful in an examination of Islamic religious education. Like much else

that is foundational in Islamic culture, the Islamic discursive tradi-

tion is grounded in the oral nature of the Qur’anic revelation as well

as the Hadith literature. As Walter Ong has noted, oral communica-

tion requires that there be an interlocutor and an audience in order

to engage in verbal debate and repartee, which in Islamic tradition

occurred within the parameters of diﬀ erent specialized disciplines

Introduction 23

(philosophy, rhetoric, theology, jurisprudence, and the like).

49 Talal

Asad looks at practice and discourse together, for it is through the

daily practice of ritual, the sacralization of every aspect of daily life,

reading aloud and memorizing sacred texts, and by engaging in reli-

gious and mundane day-to-day dialogue that students begin to partici-

pate in the transformative process and thereby develop the motivation

to shape their lives around a new ideal.

50 Elsewhere Asad describes

the relationship between teacher and student as an ‘ inner binding ’, 51

an interactive learning process in which students or those subject to

the authority of another willingly and actively subject themselves to a

process of self-fashioning and self-transformation.

Likewise, Asad deﬁ nes the term ‘tradition’ as discourses ‘that seek

to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a

given practice that, precisely because it is established, has a history’,

thereby connecting past, present, and future, and pointing yet again

to the importance of practice, including debates among Muslims

about correct practice, in determining what constitutes Islamic tradi-

tion. The arguments about individual practices are thus as important

as the practices themselves:

‘Argument and conﬂ ict over the form and signiﬁ cance of practices are

therefore a natural part of any Islamic tradition … the process of trying to

win someone over for the willing performance of a traditional practice, as

distinct from trying to demolish an opponent’s intellectual position, is a

necessary part of Islamic discursive traditions[,] as of others.’ 53

49 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word

(London: Routledge, 1982).

50 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in

Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993),

especially Chapters 1 and 4.

51 David Scott and Charles Hirschkind, eds, Powers of the Secular Modern:

Talal Asad and His Interlocutors (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), p.

212. Emphasis in the original.

52 Talal Asad ‘The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam’, Qui Parle (spring/

summer 2009), 17(2): 20. (This is a reprint of the original 1986 article.)

53 Asad, ‘The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam’, pp. 22–3. Emphasis in the

original. See also William R. Roﬀ , ‘Whence Cometh the Law? Dog Saliva in

Kelantan, 1937’, in Studies on Islam and Society in Southeast Asia (Singapore:

National University of Singapore, 2009).

24 Scholars of Faith

When we look at discourse in this way, we are less likely to hasten

to label something in facile terms that oversimplify messy realities on

the ground. Terms such as ‘Suﬁ ’ and ‘Wahhabi’, for instance, which

Western (and other) academic studies often present as opposed bina-

ries, turn out to be less useful than they at ﬁ rst appear. I will return to

this point later in the chapter.

Performing Identity

As interest in the everyday has grown, scholars have also asked

how identities are performed in everyday contexts. Sumbul Farah,

an anthropologist, argues that Barelwi identity and ethics—or

‘Barelwiyat’—must be publicly ‘performed’ in a variety of ways in

order for a person to be seen by others to be a Barelwi Muslim: ‘To “be”

a Barelwi, it is necessary to owe allegiance to a particular worldview

in a way that one’s faith is inscribed onto one’s self, both within and

without. An ineluctable relationship is thus forged between “doing”

and “being,” wherein aﬃ rmation and denunciation both emerge [as]

incumbent upon those who claim to be Barelwi.’

54 ‘Performance’ in

this case embraces not just the outward manifestations of Barelwi reli-

gious identity, which distinguish a Barelwi from a Deobandi (as, for

example, in the position of one’s hands during the ﬁ ve daily prayers

or the periodic visitation to saints’ shrines), but also, intriguingly, the

etiquette ( adab ) of house construction:

Houses are constructed keeping in mind the direction of the Ka‘aba.

Toilets in the house are constructed in such a manner that one neither

faces the Ka‘aba, nor has one’s back toward it, while relieving oneself. …

Beds are always laid in a manner that one never sleeps with one’s feet in

the direction of the Ka‘aba. In fact, even if there is a photograph of the

Ka‘aba in a room, one must not stretch one’s feet in its direction. The

image ‘becomes’ the object and the same order of reverence is required to

be shown towards it. 55

As Farah goes on to argue, adab is a ‘ﬂ uid category, and any attempt

to pin it down must necessarily delimit its scope and deﬁ ne its

54 Sumbul Farah, ‘Aqeeda, Adab and Aitraaz: Modalities of “Being”

Barelwi’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (2012), 46(3): 259–81.

55 Farah, ‘Aqeeda, Adab and Aitraaz’, p. 268.

Introduction 25

range’. 56 This gives rise to ambiguity and anxiety on the part of the

individual to demonstrate adab in a clear and unequivocal manner

through his or her personal behaviour. Likewise, adab is also dem-

onstrated by denouncing the lack thereof in others around one: ‘it

becomes a moral duty for everyone to not just follow the tenets of Islam

the way they are believed to be followed by Barelwis, but to ensure that

everyone around them does the same’. This moral censure takes place

at three levels, namely, ‘the silent’ (in one’s heart), ‘the vocal’ (verbal

censure), and ﬁ nally, ‘the physical’ (preventing an act of wrongdoing

by physical means). These three levels correspond, Farah writes, to

the three ways in which Barelwi identity is performed, that is, through

etiquette (adab), action ( amal ), and censure ( aitiraz ). 57 Farah makes

clear that the ways in which Barelwis sacralize the everyday in myriad

contexts is distinctive to them, and that this is what constitutes

‘Barelwiyat’. 58 Likewise, the Barelwi students at the madrasa I studied

also perform their identity in a number of distinctive ways. These

include the prayers they recite every day in their morning assembly,

their hand gestures when the name of the Prophet Muhammad is

mentioned, and their weekly recitation of poetry (na‘t) in praise of the

Prophet on Thursday nights, among other things.

Al-Huda students also ‘perform’ their identities, though the ways

in which they do so are diﬀ erent. In keeping with the Ahl-i Hadith

perspective which informs their religious identity (see Chapter 7),

they eschew the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday or the obser-

vance of saints’ death anniversaries. The most admired skill, and

thus the highest kind of ‘performance’, is that of Qur’an recitation

( tajwid ). Students hone their skills through hours of listening to

renowned reciters—indeed, the importance of ‘listening carefully’

56 Farah, ‘Aqeeda, Adab and Aitraaz’, p. 269.

57 Farah, ‘Aqeeda, Adab and Aitraaz’, pp. 278–9.

58 Farah cites an interesting example of how ‘Barelwiyat’ is ‘performed’

in everyday life by relating how a woman visiting the graves of the women in

Ahmad Raza Khan’s family tried to prevent her slippers from being stolen or

lost by shoving them under the carpet at the threshold just outside the sacred

precincts and sitting on them. However, another woman noticed this and

berated her for the act, accusing her of lack of respect ( be-adabi ) by placing the

slippers so close to the shrines. Farah, ‘Aqeeda, Adab and Aitraaz’, pp. 275–6.

26 Scholars of Faith

with single-minded attention is much emphasized (Hirschkind calls

this an ‘ethical listening’, ‘a listening that is a doing’).

59 But as with

students of the Qur’an in other parts of the world, listening must be

accompanied by recitation out loud following accepted vocalization

techniques. Recitation practice is thus the other side of the coin—

students spend several hours a week listening to and practicing each

lesson in their own homes, and in the presence of fellow students

and teachers. However, in light of Qur’anic injunctions against the

seductions of the voice (for example, Sura al-Isra’ Q 17:64), widely

interpreted as Satan’s attempts to lead the believer astray, even when

women have achieved proﬁ ciency in the art of Qur’an recitation and

are able to do so in the presence of others, they do so in private or

semi-private, rather than public, settings.

Another mode of performance is that of verbal tafsir or expounding

on the meaning of a word or phrase in the Qur’an. Al-Huda students

and teachers exhibit considerable conﬁ dence in speaking in group set-

tings—ﬁ rst among fellow students and teachers whom they know well,

then, for those who go on to leadership roles as Al-Huda volunteers and

oﬃ ce bearers, in larger all-female groups. This conﬁ dence is bolstered

by the ability to quote ﬂ uidly in Arabic from verses of the Qur’an and

Hadith, a skill acquired through years of diligent study. Students are

taught that they should not fear peer pressure or negative comments

by those around them, as God alone is the ultimate judge, not other

people. Some women go on to assume great responsibility, involving

periodic travel to diﬀ erent Al-Huda centres for da‘wa (dissemination

of the Qur’anic message) or to encourage struggling centres and help

them in practical ways.

Just as important as the ability to recite the Qur’an well, however,

is the ‘performance’ of identity at the level of the everyday, which is

something all Al-Huda students do in diﬀ erent ways all the time.

59 Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape , p. 34.

60 However, this is not the case in all Muslim societies around the world. In

Indonesia, for instance, female Qur’an reciters recite and compete in public—

indeed, in national and international—Qur’an recitation contests, as described

by Anne K. Rasmussen in Women, the Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Music in

Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). The diﬀ erence may

have to do with the fact that most South Asian Sunni Muslims belong to the

Hanaﬁ legal school, while Indonesian Sunni Muslims are Shaﬁ ‘is.

Introduction 27

Here, I am thinking of the admonition to students, for example, not

to neglect their early morning (fajr) and late afternoon ( ‘asr ) prayers

in particular. These two prayers are singled out over and above the

others because it is hard to wake up in time to perform the dawn

prayer—one’s instinct is to roll over and go back to sleep—and the

afternoon prayer occurs at the end of the workday when the demands

of the family and of rush hour traﬃ c tend to crowd out the need to

withdraw quietly for the few moments required to perform the prayer.

In order to overcome these obstacles, the Al-Huda student has to plan

her day so that she ﬁ nds herself in an appropriate physical location at

the required time, which illustrates the importance of time manage-

ment, noted earlier. The importance of performing the prayer at the

designated time, in fact, is constantly reiterated, alongside the mes-

sage to women to reduce the time they spend cooking elaborate meals

and the attention they devote to ‘frivolous’ matters such as shopping

or entertaining.

Apples and Oranges? Su s and Wahhabis?

It is time to say something about the terms ‘Barelwi’ and ‘Wahhabi’,

terms often used to refer to the two groups of people in the case studies

in this book. What do these terms mean, to the practitioners them-

selves and to us? What terms do they use to describe their group aﬃ li-

ations? What, in their view, do these issues of nomenclature represent

and stand for, and in what way do their theological positions diﬀ er from

one another? How do we, as academics and outsiders, categorize the

people we study, and are the categories we use misleading or helpful?

These questions are particularly worthy of attention when speaking of

Muslim subjects, as a number of value-laden terms have gained cur-

rency in our early-twenty-ﬁ rst century Islamophobic climate, both in

the West and in South Asia.

To take the term ‘Barelwi’ ﬁ rst, it is widely used in South Asia for

the Sunni Muslims who embrace the late-nineteenth-century reli-

gious scholar Ahmad Raza Khan Barelwi’s interpretation of Islamic

tradition. It originates in the fact that he belonged to the city of

Bareilly in the state of UP, India; such designations, known as nisba

(Ar., connection, relationship), are commonly added to a person’s

ﬁ rst name as a means of identiﬁ cation, together with others which

28 Scholars of Faith

could include the father’s name, Suﬁ aﬃ liation, or a nickname.

However, the term ‘Barelwi’ when used to refer to the group under

study has a pejorative implication, namely, that the followers of

this school of thought ( maslak ) are local to a particular place rather

than part of the wider Muslim world, and that their belief system is

therefore deviant, not in keeping with Sunni beliefs.

62 The self-des-

ignation of the movement, by contrast, is Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama‘at,

literally ‘people of the prophetic way and the [wider] community’, a

classic Arabic term that Muslims in many parts of the Islamic world

have used in the past and continue to use today, to describe them-

selves. It states unequivocally that the movement is Sunni Muslim.

Indeed, one may read into this the claim that Muslims who do not

agree with their beliefs are logically, therefore, outside the Sunni

mainstream. The two terms, and their implicit claims, are thus mir-

ror opposites of one another. (In practice, because the term ‘Barelwi’

is short and immediately calls to mind the South Asian Ahl-i Sunnat

wa Jama‘at, even its own practitioners use it, and I am therefore

using it in this book.)

The Barelwi claim that they represent the original Sunni Muslim

followers of the Prophet rests on their related claim that because of

their ‘love of the Prophet’ ( ‘ishq-i rasul ), they model themselves on

him and follow his ‘way’ or sunna in all its particulars. Of course,

this ‘way’, known to Muslims worldwide through the Qur’an and the

record of the Prophet’s words and deeds (Hadith), guides the every-

day behaviour of all practicing Muslims, not just that of the Barelwis.

However, diﬀ erences of interpretation of these founding texts have

arisen throughout Muslim history. Since the Prophet is reported to

have said that, in the future Muslims would fall away from the path he

61 On Muslim naming and naming patterns as a source of history, see,

among others, William R. Roﬀ , ‘Onomastics, and Taxonomies of Belonging

in the Malay Muslim World’, in Studies on Islam and Society in Southeast Asia

(Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2009).

62 On this issue of terminology, see, among others, Usha Sanyal, ‘Ahmad

Riza Khan Barelwi’, in Kate Fleet, Gudrun Kramer, Denis Matringe, John

Nawas, and Everett Rowson, eds, Encyclopaedia of Islam Three (EI3), 2007–1

(Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 71–5; Usha Sanyal, ‘Barelwis’, in Gudrun Kramer,

Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson, eds, Encyclopaedia of Islam

Three (EI3), 2011–1 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 94–9.

Introduction 29

had charted out and would split into 72 groups, only 1 of which would

be on the correct path, these interpretive diﬀ erences assume great

urgency for Muslims. Being on the wrong path could lead one to be

consigned to hell ( jahannam ) rather than heaven ( jannat ), a prospect

that all believers wish fervently to avoid.

Speciﬁ cally, Barelwi prophetology holds that the Prophet

Muhammad, being made of God’s primordial light, had no shadow,

and that God so loved him that He gifted ( ‘ata ) him knowledge of the

unseen ( ‘ilm-i ghayb) , which included, but was not limited to, the ﬁ ve

things mentioned in Q 31:34 (Arberry trans.): ‘God knows the hour,

and he sends the rain. He knows what is in the womb. No one knows

what he will gain tomorrow, and no one knows where he will die.’

Ahmad Raza Khan argued that this verse had been abrogated by two

later ones (Q 3:179, 72:26–7) which refer to God reserving for Himself

knowledge of the unseen, ‘except a messenger whom He has chosen’

(Q 72:27). This messenger, Ahmad Raza believed, was none other

than the Prophet Muhammad, God’s beloved. A third controversial

aspect of Barelwi prophetology is the argument made by Ahmad Raza

in numerous rulings (fatwas), that the Prophet intercedes on behalf of

the believer at all times, not just on Judgment Day. Furthermore, he

is alive and sentient in his grave, and has the ability to be spiritually,

and perhaps physically, present wherever and whenever he wishes.

The Prophet’s birth anniversary ( milad al-nabi ) is an especially potent

occasion when his presence is felt to be close, celebrated with meet-

ings in which the circumstances surrounding the birth are recalled

( zikr-i wiladat ). The distinctive Barelwi practice of standing up ( qiyam )

during the sermon when his birth is mentioned springs from the

belief that his spirit is present at the time.

64 For Barelwis, such beliefs

about the Prophet’s power of intercession underlie the institution of

Suﬁ discipleship, as it links the believer spiritually with the Prophet

through a series of human intermediaries, namely, the founders of

63 I have used Arberry’s translation throughout this book, as it is linguis-

tically closer to the Qur’anic Arabic than many other contemporary transla-

tions. See Robinson, Discovering the Qur’an , pp. 4, 288–90.

64 Ahmad Raza Khan, Iqamat al-qiyama a‘la tawhin al-qiyama li-nabi

(Performing [the Ritual of] Standing Up Despite the Calumny of those Who

Refuse to Stand for the Prophet) (Karachi: Barkati Publishers, 1986).

30 Scholars of Faith

diﬀ erent Suﬁ orders ( tariqa s) and the transmitters of their teachings

( murshid , pir ) over time and place.

Clearly, the beliefs outlined very brieﬂ y here belong to a cluster of

ideas we would recognize as being ‘Suﬁ ’, which is how the Barelwis

are characterized. But what does this mean in the lives of the people at

the madrasa I describe in this book? How do they live these ideas out

in practice? And what of the term ‘reformist’, which I use to describe

the madrasa? How can an institution which holds to the beliefs I

touched on earlier be described as reformist? Are the two not polar

opposites, wholly incompatible with one another? Scholars have used

terms such as ‘enchanted’, ‘customary’, and ‘counter reformist’,

65 to

describe such a worldview, as the term ‘reformist’ is usually associ-

ated with those who have taken more rationalist positions on the

Prophet (seeing him in less superhuman terms), intercession (deny-

ing or minimizing the role of human intermediaries before God), and

calendrical celebrations (minimizing the importance of, and fanfare

surrounding, occasions such as the Prophet’s birth anniversary or the

death anniversary of Suﬁ masters).

My characterization of the madrasa as reformist is in part related

to my position that we take seriously the self-description of the sub-

jects we are describing. In this case, the nineteenth-century Muslims

who described themselves as Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama‘at were in their

view engaged in reform ( tajdid ), and saw Ahmad Raza Khan as the

reformer ( mujaddid ) of the fourteenth Islamic ( hijri ) century, tasked

with reminding South Asian Muslims of the prophetic message and

way (sunna) and urging them to live their lives in conformity with

the shari‘a in anticipation of Judgment Day. Since then, the descen-

dants of Ahmad Raza, the custodians of his legacy and memory, have

come to constitute a spiritual elite in Bareilly who engage in what

many see as a corruption of his message of reform—or, in the words

of one of my informants, ‘reducing Suﬁ sm [ tasawwuf ] to a bazaar’.

Now they in turn are undertaking their own eﬀ orts of renewal and

reform. As William Roﬀ wrote in a diﬀ erent context, this dialectic

or tension caused by a lack of ﬁ t or noncongruence between Islamic

ideal and reality has obtained in all Islamic societies ‘from the ﬁ rst

65 Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian

Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Introduction 31

generation in Arabia to the Indonesia or Morocco—or for that mat-

ter the Arabia—of the present’ and ‘acts as a dynamic force within

Islamic cultures … constantly engaged in translating synchronic

tension … into diachronic “oscillation” (social, cultural, political, or

ideational change) in one direction or another’.

66 This point is similar

to that made by Kloos earlier, namely, that individual Muslims build

on past failures to become ‘better Muslims’.

Thus, if we take our subjects of study at their word, seeing them as

acting within their own ontological structured universe of meaning

in pursuit of their chosen personal, social, and institutional goals—

rather than to assume ‘that what the natives say is part of an innocent

pathology’, and that ‘only the trained observer–analyst can have the

diagnostic key’ to understanding what they are really about 67 —we

can avoid getting caught up in limiting binaries and dichotomies.

There need be no contradiction, then, in being Suﬁ and reformist,

as indeed the history of Suﬁ sm itself shows us.

68 The speciﬁ c forms

this reformist impulse takes in the girls’ madrasa, and how they are

articulated in the discourse that accompanies the everyday process of

learning and living in accordance with lessons learned, are spelled out

in the chapters that follow.

There is a second argument, rooted in South Asian history, in

favour of characterizing the Barelwis as ‘reformist’. As Nizami shows

in his study of Suﬁ reformist movements in South Asia, the philo-

sophical debate between adherents of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s (d. 1240) concept

of wahdat al-wujud (unity of Being) and Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi’s

(d. 1624) concept of wahdat al-shuhud (unity of perception) led to a

66 William R. Roﬀ , ‘Islam Obscured? Some Reﬂ ections on Studies

on Islam and Society in Southeast Asia’, in Studies on Islam and Society in

Southeast Asia (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2009), pp. 4–5.

67 William R. Roﬀ , ‘Islamic Movements: One or Many?’, in Studies

on Islam and Society in Southeast Asia (Singapore: National University of

Singapore, 2009), p. 54.

68 A similar point is made by Pnina Werbner in her study of the transre-

gional cult of Zinda Pir. See Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology

of a Global Suﬁ Cult (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). Also

see Pnina Werbner, ‘Reform Suﬁ sm in South Asia’, in Filippo Osella and

Caroline Osella, eds, Islamic Reform in South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2013).

32 Scholars of Faith

reformist movement within Suﬁ sm during the eighteenth and nine-

teenth centuries. Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi being a Naqshbandi, the

reformist impetus was led by the Naqshbandi order. The famous

eighteenth-century Delhi Hadith scholar Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762)

and his descendants at the Madrasa Rahimiya in Delhi brought about

a synthesis between the two positions.

69 During the eighteenth cen-

tury, the Rohilkhand region—including Bareilly, Rampur, and smaller

towns in the region—came under the inﬂ uence of another branch of

the Naqshbandi order, that of the Mazhari Naqshbandis.

In the early nineteenth century, the Tariqa-i Muhammadiya, led by

Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (d. 1830), attracted adherents of other Suﬁ orders

as well, and by touring towns and the countryside in the Upper Doab

in the decade or so preceding the jihad on the frontier, Sayyid Ahmad

created a popular reformist movement with local roots. A key ﬁ gure

who supported the ideas of the reformist Tariqa-i Muhammadiya was

the Chishti Suﬁ Shaykh Haji Imdadullah (d. 1899). Although a child

during Sayyid Ahmad’s tour in the Upper Doab, he took ‘honorary

initiation ( bai‘at-i-tabarruk )’ from Sayyid Ahmad, 71 and later became

the Suﬁ preceptor to the ‘ulama who founded the Dar al-‘Ulum at

Deoband in 1867. Although Haji Imdadullah moved permanently

to Mecca after the 1857 uprising, he maintained close relationships

with his disciples—many of them ‘ulama and reformist Suﬁ s of the

Chishti Sabri order—and also ﬁ rmly tied the Dar al-‘Ulum to the

reformist message of Sayyid Ahmad and the Tariqa-i Muhammadiya.

These networks help explain the close ties between Shah Wali Allah’s

reformist teachings, reformist currents in the Chishti Sabri order, and

the ﬁ rst generation of scholars of the Deobandi movement.

The seeds of the Barelwi movement were also sown at this time,

in opposition to the ideas of Muhammad Isma‘il’s reformist tract,

Taqwiyat al - Iman (Strengthening the Faith). In the 1870s, Ahmad

Raza’s father Naqi ‘Ali Khan (d. 1880) participated in debates on

imtina’-i nazir ([theoretical] impossibility of an exact equivalent [to the

69 Moin Ahmad Nizami, Reform and Renewal in South Asian Islam: The

Chishti–Sabris in 18th

– 19th Century North India (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 2017).

70 Nizami, Reform and Renewal in South Asian Islam , p. 178.

71 Nizami, Reform and Renewal in South Asian Islam , p. 184.

Introduction 33

Prophet]), an issue that arose out of Muhammad Isma‘il’s claim in

Taqwiyat al-Iman that God’s omnipotence was limitless (for example,

Q 2:117) and God therefore had the ability, should He so wish, to

create another prophet like Muhammad.

72 However, although the

Barelwis rejected Sayyid Ahmad and his Tariqa-i Muhammadiya as

well as the works of Muhammad Isma‘il, they saw themselves as

followers of Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (d. 1824), son of Shah Wali Allah. In

fact, they regarded Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz as the ‘renewer’ ( mujaddid ) of

the thirteenth Hijri century and Ahmad Raza Khan as that of the

fourteenth. 73 Thus, despite their diﬀ erences with the leaders of the

Tariqa-i Muhammadiya, the Barelwis considered their intellectual lin-

eage as ﬂ owing from the same late-eighteenth-century Wali Allahi tra-

dition as the Deobandis. This shared history is seldom recognized by

scholars of the Deobandi and other late-nineteenth-century reformist

movements.

Turning to my second case study, that of the Al-Huda students of

the Qur’an, we encounter a diﬀ erent problem, namely, the use of the

term ‘Wahhabi’ to describe the movement, which in South Asia has

had negative connotations going back to colonial times. The history of

the eighteenth-century Arabian Wahhabi movement—whose practi-

tioners called themselves Unitarians ( muwahhidun )—is well known. 74

The Indian Ahl-i Hadith, the intellectual and spiritual lineage of

Al-Huda founders Farhat Hashmi and Idrees Zubair, is inspired by

many of the same sources as the Wahhabis, including among others,

the writings of the Syrian Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328).

However, as Haykel points out, the Wahhabis follow a ‘restrictive

interpretation’ of the Hanbali school of law while the Ahl-i Hadith

follow no school at all, which is a major diﬀ erence between them.

Moreover, the Ahl-i Hadith denied having any aﬃ liation with the

Wahhabis of (now Saudi) Arabia. The ideas they espoused included

a strong emphasis on studying the foundational texts of the Qur’an

72 For details, see Sanyal, Devotional Islam , p. 55.

73 Sanyal, Devotional Islam , p. 229.

74 See the excellent study by Natana J. DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From

Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

75 Bernard Haykel, Revival and Reform in Islam: The Legacy of Muhammad

al-Shawkani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 14.

34 Scholars of Faith

and the prophetic traditions (Hadith) directly in Arabic; rejection of

the authority of the four Sunni law schools; exercising independent

juristic reasoning on religious issues by following the opinion of

chosen scholars, regardless of their aﬃ liation; and rejection of the

authority of Suﬁ masters and the practice of visiting their graves. They

regarded the Prophet as a human who did not enjoy knowledge of

future events and was prone to error, though they believed him to be

sinless ( ma‘sum ) and assured of heaven. Unlike the Barelwis, they

did not believe that he or any other venerated ancestor had the power

of intercession from beyond the grave, though the Prophet will have

such power on Judgment Day.

As Preckel indicates, the intellectual genealogy of the Ahl-i

Hadith includes: Indian roots in the ideas of Shah Wali Allah and his

sons; the Tariqa-i Muhammadiya led by Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi and

Muhammad Isma‘il Dehlawi, author of Taqwiyat al-Iman and Sirat

al-Mustaqim (The Straight Path); and inspiration from the Yemeni

scholar Muhammad b. ‘Ali al-Shawkani (1760–1834) and the Indian

scholars who embraced his ideas (among whom were some Tariqa-i

Muhammadiya followers), particularly his opposition to taqlid (adher-

ence to one of the four Sunni schools of law).

While the ideas brieﬂ y enumerated earlier correspond to what

scholars of Islam would characterize as ‘reformist’, Riexinger compli-

cates the picture by referring us also to other aspects of Ahl-i Hadith

belief which are more akin to what scholars refer to as modes of

‘enchantment’. Among the examples he gives are twentieth-century

Ahl-i Hadith theological debates in India regarding the Qur’anic

exegesis of verses referring to God sitting on ( istawa ) His throne

(for example, Q 7:54), which many Ahl-i Hadith scholars interpreted

76 Claudia Preckel, ‘Ahl-i Hadith’, in Gudrun Kramer, Denis Matringe,

John Nawas, and Everett Rowson, eds, Encyclopaedia of Islam Three (EI3),

2007–3 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 92–7. However, as Reixinger points out,

many Ahl-i Hadith scholars have forged strong links with the Saudi regime

since the 1920s, particularly after 1947. (Many of the books Al-Huda uses

in its classes are published in Saudi Arabia.) See Martin Reixinger, ‘How

Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity? A Study of the Ahl-i Hadis in Late

Nineteenth/Early Twentieth Century South Asia’, in Gwilym Beckerlegge, ed.,

Colonialism, Modernity, and Religious Identities (New Delhi: Oxford University

Press, 2008), p. 156.

Introduction 35

literally, and more generally on Ahl-i Hadith acceptance of miracles

and attitudes towards science.

77 My observations of Al-Huda classes

conﬁ rm that they accept the occurrence of miracles, for to deny them

would be tantamount to diminishing God’s power;

78 with regard to

science Al-Huda teaches that where a contradiction appears to exist

between the Qur’an and the ﬁ ndings of modern-day science, the for-

mer must be favoured over the latter, as the Qur’an anticipated the

ﬁ ndings of science by over a thousand years. And if the Qur’an seems

to make statements that contradict known scientiﬁ c ﬁ ndings, the error

is in Muslims for not interpreting the Qur’an correctly.

79 In addition,

I agree with Reixinger that the reliance on Hadith leads the Ahl-i

Hadith—and Al-Huda speciﬁ cally—in the direction of ‘enchanted’

rather than ‘reformist’ readings of scriptural texts. Such seems to

be the basis for the permissability of engaging in the popular heal-

ing practice of ruqyah (Qur’anic healing) or dam (literally, ‘breath’),

whereby a person recites the Qur’an and blows on water, which may

then be drunk to cure an ailment.

80 Al-Huda also places great reliance

on supplicatory prayers ( du‘a ), there being diﬀ erent ones for diﬀ erent

occasions, such as particular times of the day, or when visiting the

sick, when faced with diﬃ culty or misfortune, when a person dies,

and so on. Al-Huda teaches students that God will reward the regu-

lar recitation of these du‘as with successful outcomes, provided the

student meets the requisite conditions.

81 Such ‘fervent belief’, one

scholar writes, ‘border[s] on the superstitious’.

82 Even if one does not

concur with this characterization, given that the student is enjoined

to have the right intention and not to imagine that she has any power

77 See Reixinger, ‘How Favourable is Puritan Islam to Modernity?, pp.

147–65, especially pp. 154–5.

78 The title of one of the books on the Al-Huda student reading list is

indicative of the belief in miracles. It is Saﬁ ur-Rahman Mubarakpuri, When

the Moon Split: A Biography of Prophet Muhammad (Riyadh: Darussalam,

1998).

79 Farhat Hashmi, Lesson 1.01b (2005); Lesson 1.04e–f (2005).

80 Response by Farhat Hashmi to a student question, October 2013.

81 One of the books assigned for student reading is Abu Ammaar Yaasir

Qadhi, Du‘a, the Weapon of the Believer: A Treatise on the Status and Etiquette of

Du‘a in Islam (n.p.: Al-Hidaya, n.d.).

82 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. 148.

36 Scholars of Faith

over the outcome, which can only rest with God, the fact remains that

the emphasis on memorizing and reciting du‘as, and the acceptance

of miracles and of Qur’anic healing practices point to the reality that,

to quote Roﬀ , ‘[o]ne cannot, in the interests of however desirable a

patterned understanding, avoid the burden of complexity’.

In their self-presentation to students, the leaders of Al-Huda

eschew the use of particular maslak identities, even that of the Ahl-i

Hadith. They wish to be identiﬁ ed quite simply as Muslims.

84 They

teach that the ﬁ rst source of Qur’anic interpretation is the Qur’an

itself, the second being the prophetic traditions. Recourse to other

authorities must take third place, after these primary sources, which

must therefore be studied and understood by the individual Muslim,

whether man or woman. This is a major diﬀ erence from the Barelwis,

whose interpretations are based on the principle of taqlid , following

the teachings of one of the Sunni schools of law ( madhhab ; in South

Asia the dominant school is the Hanaﬁ , and secondarily the Shaﬁ ‘i in

Kerala, southwest India).

To return, then, to how we should categorize Al-Huda, I am

guided by Al-Huda teachers who highlight to students the dual tasks

of studying, understanding, and memorizing the Qur’an in the

original Arabic on the one hand, and that of sharing this knowledge

with fellow Muslims and the wider public on the other. The ﬁ rst goal

is to acquire Qur’anic knowledge in order to live by the knowledge

so gained, and also to be able to identify and know the meaning

of Qur’anic verses discussed by preachers during Friday noon-time

sermons, so that one is in a position to independently judge whether

the preacher’s message should be embraced and accepted or rejected,

and if so, on what grounds. Knowledge of the original Arabic Qur’an

is clearly the key here. The second task, Al-Huda teaches, is to take

this message to others (to do da‘wa ), whether they be Muslims or

non-Muslims (though in practice it emphasizes the former over the

latter), both by embodying what it means to be Muslim (to be a ‘liv-

ing tabligh [call]’, or a ‘walking Qur’an’, to quote Hashmi) and by

means of verbal persuasion. This task is so important that Al-Huda

83 Roﬀ , ‘Islam Obscured?’, p. 21.

84 For this insight, I thank Sandria Freitag with whom I have had many

discussions about issues I have wrestled with in this study.

Introduction 37

presents it as a duty incumbent on those who have acquired the

requisite knowledge. Failure to fulﬁ l this duty is tantamount to self-

ishness at best and to a sin at worst. Based on these two aspects of

Al-Huda, I would characterize it as a da‘wa or proselytization move-

ment, 85 a feature that allows for comparison across religious lines.

Given the diasporic context of the online classes, this framework

is a valuable means of situating Al-Huda as a religious and educa-

tional institution for Muslim women within the North American

landscape of socio-religious movements more broadly.

The Shared Moral Universe of the Barelwis and Al-Huda:

Iman , Ahkam , Adab , and Da‘wa

As shown earlier, in many respects my two ethnographies are poles

apart. Not only are the worldviews of Barelwi and Al-Huda students

diﬀ erent, so are their structural positions in terms of social class,

rural–urban diﬀ erences, or the local versus global contexts in which

they live. They are also critical of each other’s perspectives on Islam,

even though they do not know of one another speciﬁ cally. Although

a Barelwi student would not be able to identify the term ‘Al-Huda’

nor, perhaps, the diasporic Al-Huda student the term ‘Barelwi’,

they would recognize one another through certain ideas associated

with them. Thus, from the perspective of Barelwi men and women,

the Al-Huda organization and its objectives are ‘Wahhabi’, which

to Barelwis implies arrogance, ignorance of history, and a lack of

proper respect for the Prophet Muhammad. Such a person should

be avoided at all costs lest one be led astray by his or her seeming

erudition; indeed, he or she is worse than a non-believer, for the latter

makes no attempt to pretend to be a Muslim, while the Wahhabi is

the enemy within, the one that one cannot see, like the Hypocrites

85 On the debate about whether Al-Huda is a movement or not, see

Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’.

86 Al-Huda instructors do not name any South Asian Muslim religious

groups by name when disputing their ideas. They speak in general terms, as

in ‘Some misguided Muslims believe…’. One of my fellow students told me

she had found an online reference to ‘A‘la Hazrat’, a term which Barelwis

use for Ahmad Raza Khan. She was not familiar with either the term or the

Muslims he represented.

38 Scholars of Faith

of the Prophet’s time who professed to be Muslim but were secretly

trying to undermine the Prophet’s mission. Likewise, when Al-Huda

members speak about people like the Barelwis, they refer to them

as ignorant at best and deviant ‘associationists’ ( mushrikin ) at worst,

people who elevate other human beings to superhuman status and

even claim that the Prophet was not an ordinary mortal. Have these

people not read the Qur’an, they ask, don’t they know how many

verses in it unequivocally forbid one to associate partners with God,

and the number of times the Prophet said he was but a warner of the

punishment on the Day of Judgment?

Yet the two groups share a considerable moral vocabulary rooted

in belief in core Islamic principles and ideals. They adhere not only

to the so-called ‘pillars’ of Islamic monotheism, accepting the Prophet

Muhammad as the last prophet and engaging as required in ritual prac-

tices on a daily and periodic basis, but more importantly, they share

an eschatological vision of Judgment Day, followed by eternal bliss or

damnation in the hereafter ( akhirat ) depending on their actions in this

life. They both believe that the soul ( nafs ) is constantly prone to selﬁ sh-

ness and wickedness, falling prey to the wiles of Satan who is always

trying to trip people up so they will end up in hellﬁ re. In order to prevail

against Satan, the individual must constantly engage in supplication

(du‘a) to God and good works in the present worldly life ( dunya ), includ-

ing giving to others, fulﬁ lling one’s obligations to God and one’s fel-

low human beings, and living a simple life without too many material

attachments or even excessive attachment to one’s family. This must

be done in the context of heterosexual marriage and raising children,

taking care of one’s family, and recognizing that other people in society

have claims or rights ( huquq ) over oneself, rather than in a context of

celibacy and the renunciation of family ties. This is, both groups would

say, a middle path—a concept greatly valorized in the Qur’an, as I noted

earlier—between celibacy (or as Muslims might say, the ‘monkishness’

of Christian priests) and licentiousness. Ideally, the latter is pre-empted

by the fact that sexuality outside marriage is forbidden (haram) for both

men and women. Within the family, men, being the breadwinners,

have greater authority in decision making than women. Supererogatory

and extra prayers, both groups believe, are a source of inner strength

and hope, as God in His inﬁ nite mercy might overlook human weak-

ness and sinfulness if one repents sincerely of one’s sins.

Introduction 39

In order to help one walk on this path, both Barelwis and Al-Huda

followers look to strong moral leaders to provide guidance. Whether

the leader is a Suﬁ pir, a teacher at a madrasa, or a layperson, strong

moral leaders provide the glue that brings communities together

in worship, study, and mutual service. Among both Barelwis and

Al-Huda followers, the leader is recognized as one who is sincere,

pious, and has a simple lifestyle with few personal needs. These moral

attributes must shine through, such that there can be no question

of duplicity or cheating—of saying one thing but doing another. In

terms of practical, organizational skills, the leader should speak from

the heart, but also be a forceful speaker, an eﬀ ective communicator

with those around him or her, and have the ability to raise funds for

the organization. In addition, I hope to show that the leader performs

the all-important task of cultural ‘translation’, that is, of making rel-

evant to his or her followers the principles that revered religious texts

embody, so that they speak to the person and urge him or her to act

accordingly. In Starrett’s terms, the leader must make possible the

‘objectiﬁ cation’ and ‘functionalization’ of Islamic education.

For this to happen, knowledge—by which is meant knowledge of

din , religious knowledge—and the search for it must be acquired,

internalized, and aﬀ ectively ‘performed’ by all who engage in this

journey. Or to put it another way, it must be embodied, ‘carried’ by

the person, 87 visible to the self and others in terms of daily prac-

tices and demeanour, in one’s character or akhlaq . Knowledge of the

Qur’an—including the ability to recite verses and whole chapters

from memory by mastering the rules of recitation ( tajwid )—and of

the sunna , or ‘way’ of the Prophet, through the Hadith literature, the

Prophet’s biography ( sira ), jurisprudential (ﬁ qh) rulings on speciﬁ c

aspects of religious practice such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, the

study of Arabic grammar, and so on—become the building blocks

for the person one becomes. How this knowledge is acquired, to

what purpose, and how students apply what they have learned to

their personal lives and circumstances are questions I address in

this book.

87 See, for example, Anna M. Gade, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning,

Emotion, and the Recited Qur’an in Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii

Press, 2004), p. 268.

40 Scholars of Faith

The Context of Precarity

My two case studies share another characteristic, namely, their con-

temporary sociopolitical context, which, following Judith Butler and

particularly Attiya Ahmad, I will call ‘precarity’. In Precarious Life ,

Butler explores how people make moral claims on us. Analysing

Levinas, she asks how the face—our own and that of others (including

a nonhuman one)—is framed, represented, and interpreted:

To respond to the face, to understand its meaning, means to be awake

to what is precarious in another life or, rather, the precariousness of life

itself. … This is what makes the face belong to the sphere of ethics. Levinas

writes, ‘the face of the other in its precariousness and defenselessness, is

for me at once the temptation to kill and the call to peace, the ‘You shall

not kill!’ 88

Butler probes this paradox in multiple ways, including how the

Western media manipulate images of the human face and deliber-

ately withhold images of violent death in modern-day conﬂ icts around

the world, as a result of which the viewer is distanced from the human

suﬀ ering involved and is indiﬀ erent to it. At other times the media

hone in on a particular face, thereby humanizing it and drawing it

close to us. Butler shows how in 2003 and thereafter, the US media

used images of the war in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East both

to glorify the US war eﬀ ort and to dehumanize the Muslim Other.

This dehumanization of the Muslim Other has become widespread

in the US, especially since 11 September 2001, and is experienced as

a constant sense of low-level hostility or menace in Muslims’ every-

day lives, as even a cursory glance at media reports from around the

country shows. 89 Anti-Muslim sentiment is also pervasive in other

88 Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (New

York: Verso, 2006), p. 134. I am grateful to Paige Rawson of the Religion

Department at Wingate University, North Carolina, for this reference.

89 See, for example, https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/

tempe/2018/03/14/facebook-live-video-2-women-take-items-slur-muslims-

mosque-tempe/422724002/; accessed on 11 February 2019, about the theft

of ﬂ yers from an Arizona mosque so that the mosque congregation would

be unable to propagate Islam in the local community. My thanks to Tonya

Stevenson for this story.

Introduction 41

parts of the world, fanned in many cases by tacit government support

for vigilante attacks and hate crimes.

Another way in which ‘precarity’ has been explored is Attiya

Ahmad’s study of South Asian migrant workers in Kuwait since the

early 2000s. Ahmad’s ethnography focuses on domestic space as the

locus of personal change and transformation, both among house-

hold workers and separately, among middle- and upper-middle-class

Muslim women. 90 Among both sets of women, precarity looms large.

For domestic workers, it does so both when they migrate to Kuwait

and settle into their employers’ households and later, when they

return home to South Asia. Most of the women and their families

see their initial migration as a necessary but temporary response to

economic pressures at home (though for many workers the migration

lasts decades, throughout which period they are denied citizenship

status and beneﬁ ts by the Kuwaiti state). The return home is equally

traumatic for those who are able or forced by circumstance to return.

Over time, relationships with family members begin to be mediated

by economic considerations—the women’s earnings being used to

pay for family members’ educations, marriages, medical expenses,

and so on—while at the same time aﬀ ective ties are weakened.

A diﬀ erent set of dislocations was in play among middle-class

women such as Auntie Noor, who started a women’s study circle

( halaqa ) at her home some 20 years after migrating to Kuwait in the

early 1970s. Her transformation was the result of her personal experi-

ences centred on her family, which cumulatively engendered a sense

of anxiety:

In discussing her shift from ‘ dawat to dars ’ and ‘parties to prayers,’ Auntie

Noor often lingered on a particular subset of moments. Whether it was

the day her eldest son started going to an international English-medium

school, the summers she stayed in Kuwait because of her husband’s work,

a nasty disagreement with a cloth seller in Karachi who dismissively

called her ‘sheikha,’ or watching alone from the corner of the room as

90 Attiya Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space: Foreign

Resident Muslim Women’s Halaqa in the Arabian Peninsula’, in Filippo

Osella and Caroline Osella, eds, Islamic Reform in South Asia (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2013).

91 Ahmad, Everyday Conversions , pp. 89–91.

42 Scholars of Faith

her husband and their friends debated Pakistani politics, these moments

underscored feelings of baﬄ ement and loneliness she associated with her

overall diasporic condition,… New forms of Islamic learning provided her

with a framework of action in the face of her shifting, liminal diasporic

situation. 92

Ahmad emphasizes that we must not think of transformation (and

conversion to Islam in the case of some of her subjects in Kuwait)

as ‘an eventful moment’, but rather as a ‘gradual reworking of their

lives embedded in the everyday where the outcomes are not clear at

the outset’. 93 Elsewhere she writes, ‘[w]e need to shift from a linear

understanding of transformation—with two points at the outset, and

a precipitating factor or set of factors leading to shift from one point

to the other—to a more decentered and ﬂ uid concept of transforma-

tion, one that accounts for the reconﬁ guration of what are always a

dynamic and shifting constellation of factors’.

94 Ahmad’s highlight-

ing of the personal anxieties and insecurities of her subjects, which

she characterizes as precarity, helped me conceptualize my case stud-

ies in a new way and better understand the underlying logic of the

current surge in Muslim women’s religious education in South Asia

and beyond. 95

Precarity in the Indian case study is not hard to comprehend in

view of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rise to national power in 2014,

and to state power in several Indian states, including UP, before that.

Borker refers frequently to the anxiety and insecurity of the Muslim

parents of young girls, as in the following:

[T]he rising communalization of social space … feeds the heightened

sense of insecurity amongst Muslims, leading to greater reliance on com-

munity networks for everyday services ranging from housing, education

to employment. Schooling emerges as a crucial site where one of the most

tangible everyday manifestations of this is the increasing need to provide

92 Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space’, pp. 430–1.

93 Ahmad, Everyday Conversions , p. 19.

94 Ahmad, Everyday Conversions , p. 32.

95 Although Appadurai’s data in ‘The Capacity to Aspire’ are drawn from

a very diﬀ erent segment of Indian society, namely, slum dwellers in Mumbai,

his theoretical insights on the capacity to aspire are also grounded in situa-

tions of deep precarity.

Introduction 43

dini talim [religious education] to girls in institutional settings like madra-

sas. Previously, the privilege of training as alims was largely conﬁ ned to

men…. Women were always entitled to religious education but this learn-

ing was limited to the boundaries of the family and the home. 96

Borker’s study is a valuable addition to the woefully inadequate schol-

arship thus far on girls’ madrasas in South Asia, especially her atten-

tion to the larger sociopolitical context of contemporary India and to

Government of India’s attempts to ‘reform’ madrasa education.

Looking at the present political context more broadly, Barelwi

sources reﬂ ect these anxieties in contemporary writings as well.

Commenting on the 2016 ouster of a Muslim legislator in the

Maharashtra assembly for his refusal to chant the slogan ‘Bharat

mata ki jai’ (Hail to mother India), which the Hindu right-wing Sangh

Parivar had made a litmus test of political loyalty for Indian Muslims,

Salim Barelwi argues that the connection between loyalty to India, the

nation, and the slogan is a ‘manufactured’ one. Muslims do not need

to chant the slogan in order to prove their loyalty to the nation, he

writes. The history of Indian Muslim sacriﬁ ce in the Independence

struggle against the British and before bears ample evidence of their

love for India:

If saying ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’ is the only measure of love for country, desire

to serve the country, and faithfulness to the country, then tell us: Was Tipu

Sultan, who never chanted this slogan, a lover of the country or a betrayer?

Mr. Subhash Chandra Bose never chanted this slogan. So then, was he too

a betrayer of the country? Chandra Shekhar Azad … Ashfaq Allah Khan,

‘Allama Fazl-i Haqq Khayrabadi … Mr. Abul Kalam Azad, the Ali brothers,

Gandhiji, and who knows how many other martyrs in the war of inde-

pendence like them who gave their lives and wealth and honor and rank

and reputation, who sacriﬁ ced everything, [but] about whom one does not

96 Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood , p. 81.

97 Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood , Chapter 9

(Coda: Policy Reﬂ ections).

98 On the Hindu political right and its use of mass media, see Arvind

Rajagopal, Politics after Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of

the Public in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); on the

economic, social, and political marginalization of Muslims in Indian cities,

see Laurent Gayer and Christophe Jaﬀ relot, eds, Muslims in Indian Cities:

Trajectories of Marginalisation (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 2012).

44 Scholars of Faith

ﬁ nd it said anywhere that they chanted the slogan ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’. …

Why then are they remembered in Indian history as martyrs in the war

of independence? Why do you not remove their names from the list of

martyrs in the war of independence and enter them in a list of betrayers

of the country? 99

This writer eloquently expresses the context of precarity in which

Indian Muslims ﬁ nd themselves forced to defend their loyalty to India

at a time when some politicians are raising the cry for their ‘return

home’ ( ghar wapsi ) to the fold of Hinduism.

100

Organization of the Chapters

This book is divided into two parts which have similar titles: Iman,

Ahkam, Adab and Iman, Ahkam, Da‘wa , respectively. While each

part deals with a diﬀ erent case study, the similarity in the parts’ titles

underscores my argument that both institutions share an Islamic

vocabulary and worldview that have much in common, outward

diﬀ erences notwithstanding. The terms iman and ahkam came up

frequently in my conversations with teachers and students in both

venues. Iman refers to belief in God, expressed at the most basic level

by the shahada or testament of faith in the oneness of God and the

prophethood of Muhammad. Muslims believe Muhammad was God’s

last prophet who brought God’s revelation, the Qur’an, a restatement

of earlier revelations, to humankind for the ﬁ nal time. Ahkam signi-

ﬁ es to Muslims the outward duties of prayer, giving alms, performing

the pilgrimage to Mecca, and fulﬁ lling the other basic requirements

of the faith. While these terms may be expanded in scope, they are not

99 For a detailed and illuminating history of India as a Mother Goddess,

see Sumathi Ramaswamy, The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India

(Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). Mufti Muhammad Salim Barelwi,

‘Bharat Mata ki Jai Bolne ka Qaziyya Ashuddhi Tahrik ki ek Nai Shakal’,

Mahnama A‘la Hazrat (June 2016), p. 23. For more on the controversy, see, for

example, www.indianexpress.com, 3 March 2016. The English translations of

this Urdu article are mine.

100 On the ghar wapsi movement, see, for example, https://www.outloo-

kindia.com/website/story/ghar-wapsi-the-legal-way/293637; accessed on 10

October 2018.

Introduction 45

the subject of signiﬁ cant interpretive diﬀ erence. I use them here as a

common denominator for these and other Sunni Muslims across the

interpretive spectrum.

I chose the term ‘adab’ for the ﬁ rst case study because in my view it

encapsulates what the madrasa is trying to achieve. Adab is a classical

term that has much resonance in Islamic culture, from literature ( belles

lettres ) to music to politics and government.

101 Although often trans-

lated as ‘etiquette’ in English, it carries a complex range of meanings

that go much deeper. In explaining the role of adab in the writings of

al-Ghazzali (d. 1111 CE) and Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), Lapidus coins the

phrase ‘Sunni–suﬁ Islam’. Al-Ghazzali put the ‘devotional and mysti-

cal … aspects of faith at the center of the process by which religious

salvation may be achieved’.

102 The ‘integration of deeds, virtues, and

knowledge was the crux of a Muslim life … knowledge of the heart is

more than just information. It is conviction that evokes a desire to put

knowledge into action.’ 103 Ibn Khaldun, although not a Suﬁ , explained

the soul’s quest for spiritual perfection by means of the term ‘ malaka ’,

which is close to what we call, following Marcel Mauss and Pierre

Bourdieu, habitus:

‘For Ibn Khaldun any skilled activity, craft, or profession … acquired as

a result of instruction, practice, and repetition, form[s] a habit. A habit,

“ malaka ” in Arabic, is more than just a learned semiautomatic activity.…

It bears the meaning of the Latin, habitus —an acquired faculty, rooted in

the soul.’ 104 Adab is the inculcation of this habitus in the individual in a

dialectical process whereby the ‘inner quality is developed as a result of

outer practice which makes the practice a perfect expression of the soul

of the actor’. 105

101 The essays in Barbara D. Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority:

The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkely: University of California

Press, 1984), cover the full spectrum of applications of this important concept

in South Asian Islamic culture.

102 See Ira M. Lapidus, ‘Knowledge, Virtue, and Action: The Classical

Muslim Conception of Adab and the Nature of Religious Fulﬁ llment in Islam’,

in Barbara D. Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in

South Asian Islam (Berekely: University of California Press, 1984), p. 46.

103 Lapidus, ‘Knowledge, Virtue, and Action’, p. 50.

104 Lapidus, ‘Knowledge, Virtue, and Action’, p. 53.

105 Lapidus, ‘Knowledge, Virtue, and Action’, p. 54.

46 Scholars of Faith

In part 2, in contrast, I use the term da‘wa to characterize Al-Huda

for reasons noted earlier. Da‘wa (also referred to as tabligh, from

balagha , discourse) in Arabic means ‘call’ or ‘invitation’. The Qur’an

asks Muslims to ‘call people to the way of the Lord’ (Q 16:125) and to

‘command right and forbid wrong’ (Q 3:104). Today’s da‘wa move-

ments are no longer conﬁ ned to preachers’ sermons during weekly

Friday prayers, but have become a popular phenomenon with wide

reach through the use of the Internet and other media sources.

Scholarship on these new forms of media-based discourse shows

how inﬂ uential they have become since the second half of the twenti-

eth century with the general public, and the role they have played in

fragmenting the authority of the ‘ulama around the world.

106 These

developments are clearly part of the context for the emergence and

growth of Al-Huda as a movement since 1994.

Starting with the madrasa study, Chapter 1 lays out the histori-

cal background of Muslim women’s education in British India and

post-Independence India, including statistical data on educational

history in UP, and the Sachar Committee Report. The chapter then

explores girls’ madrasa education in north India speciﬁ cally, with

focus on a Rampur madrasa for girls, of Jama‘at-i Islami aﬃ liation,

and compares this madrasa with the Tablighi madrasa for girls

studied by Winkelmann. 107 The chapter ends with an Appendix that

lays out the syllabi of the two madrasas examined in the chapter, in

order to highlight their ideological diﬀ erences. This shows us how

much the second madrasa has in common with the Barelwi madrasa

portrayed in this book, despite diﬀ erences in their denominational

(maslaki) identities.

Chapter 2 introduces the ﬁ rst of my two case studies. It discusses

the location and history of Shahjahanpur (and Farrukhabad district) in

west UP, and the personal history of Sayyid Sahib, the founder of the

106 The scholarly literature on da‘wa in the twentieth century is exten-

sive. For a good overview, see Julian Millie, ‘Da‘wa, Modern Practices’, in Kate

Fleet, Gudrun Kramer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson,

eds, The Encyclopaedia of Islam Three (EI3), 2017–1 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp.

50–4.

107 Mareike Jule Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a

Girls’ Madrasa in India (Amsterdam: ISIM Press, 2005).

Introduction 47

madrasa. Employing Winkelmann’s concept of ‘core families’, it lays

out the web of connections, both familial and Suﬁ -based, between the

leading male administrators of the madrasa. Since the Suﬁ connec-

tions go back to Ahmad Raza Khan’s younger son, Mustafa Raza Khan

(d. 1981), the chapter also discusses the contemporary genealogical

history and politics of Ahmad Raza Khan’s descendants, in what is a

very polarized and politicized environment in Bareilly today. I employ

the concept of adab to understand the overall ethos of the madrasa

as well as generational and gendered relationships, and the tension

between diﬀ erent sources of authority such as age versus knowledge.

In Chapter 3, I enter the classroom with the teachers and students.

The chapter presents an ‘ethnography’ of two diﬀ erent classes, one a

Qur’an class and the other a class of Qur’anic exegesis for advanced

students. We also hear discussions about the importance of taharat ,

or ritual purity. We see how students and teachers interact, and how

adab guides their relationship. The chapter shows how teachers skill-

fully present the material in a way that students ﬁ nd meaningful. It

also discusses the role of memorization and peer learning in madrasa

education. An appendix with the madrasa syllabus at the end of the

chapter allows me to highlight the commonalities between ‘tradition-

alist’ Barelwis and Deobandis/Tablighis.

Chapter 4 looks at students’ emotional attachment to the madrasa,

comparing them with the students of a secular Barelwi school that

initially operated in a diﬀ erent part of the same premises. Student

engagement in the madrasa is demonstrated through key ritual

moments: morning (fajr) prayer and morning assembly (du‘a), and

the student-led weekly (Thursday night) anjuman , a programme of

Qur’an recitation, praise poems in honour of the Prophet (na‘t), and

speeches ( taqrir ). The level of student and teacher engagement in

the secular Barelwi school is markedly lower. The reasons for this

include: students’ lack of interest in the subjects taught; a lax disci-

plinary environment; and a lack of subjective connection between the

lives of the students and the academic curriculum. On the other hand,

they appreciate the school for oﬀ ering them religious instruction,

although not required to do so by the state.

Chapter 5 examines the lives of six madrasa students who gradu-

ated from Jami‘a Nur. This chapter was written collaboratively with

Sumbul Farah, an anthropologist, who interviewed the students

48 Scholars of Faith

extensively. The overall conclusion of the chapter (a modiﬁ ed ver-

sion of which appeared as an article in Modern Asian Studies ) 108 is

that the madrasa succeeds in its mission of inculcating lifelong piety

in its students because of the continuity between school and home.

The madrasa becomes a new locus of aﬀ ective ties for students, as

it seeks to inculcate values congruent with those of the home and

community at large. The chapter reﬂ ects on the mapping of religious

self-formation onto South Asian norms of feminine behaviour (the

concept of being naram, or soft and malleable), and addresses broader

issues of madrasa education for Muslim girls in India.

Part 2 of the volume starts, in Chapter 6, by taking the reader into

the online classroom of the Al-Huda Qur’an class in which I was a

student from 2009 to 2013. Against the backdrop of Pakistani poli-

tics in the 1990s when Al-Huda International was founded by Farhat

Hashmi and Idrees Zubair, it shows how online classes are organized

and run at its North American site in Mississauga, Canada. What is

distinctive about Al-Huda? What prompts adult women to sign up for

its demanding course of study? I argue that online students’ mastery

of Arabic and intensive study of Islamic history and theology simul-

taneously gives them voice and a sense of empowerment, thereby

challenging both traditional Islamic authority structures and Western

representations of Muslim women.

Chapter 7 explores Farhat Hashmi and Idrees Zubair’s intellectual

background. Zubair was raised in a family with Ahl-i Hadith aﬃ liations,

while Hashmi’s father had ties with the Jama‘at-i Islami. Hashmi grad-

ually became an Ahl-i Hadith follower as well. What distinguishes the

Ahl-i Hadith from other South Asian Sunni maslaks? I trace its history

from the nineteenth century to the present. Following the educational

trajectories of Farhat Hashmi and Idrees Zubair, I look closely at their

PhD research in Glasgow, Scotland on aspects of Hadith transmission,

as students of Islamic Studies in the early 1990s. Hashmi’s research has

not been available to the public and is therefore of particular interest.

What was the impact of Hashmi and Zubair’s intellectual formation

on Al-Huda as a social and religious organization, how does Hashmi

incorporate secular scientiﬁ c ﬁ ndings into her classes, and what can

one infer from the above about Al-Huda’s politics?

108 Sanyal and Farah, ‘Discipline and Nurture’.

Introduction 49

In Chapter 8, I ask how, concretely, social change occurs at the

level of the everyday among a geographically dispersed set of Muslim

women studying the Qur’an. I try to answer the question by closely

analysing Al-Huda’s messages for women in terms of family and

community relationships through examination of Farhat Hashmi’s

use of language over an extended period (the mid-1990s to 2005).

Seeing Hashmi as a leader who engages in ‘cultural translation’, I try

to understand how she makes the seventh-century Qur’anic context

relevant to the lives of twenty-ﬁ rst-century South Asian women in the

diaspora. The chapter then examines onsite classes in Mississauga,

Toronto, and online classes through the lens of other teachers—

referring to them as teacher–learners, to highlight their continuing

engagement in Islamic learning—especially Taimiyyah Zubair, and

the work of Shazia Nawaz at the Testing Center in Hurst, Texas, with-

out which the online classes would not be possible.

Chapter 9 turns to the students of Al-Huda classes, both onsite and

online. Most of who spoke with me were young adults, some married

with children, some college students, and some professional women.

Whether living in North America, Europe, or South Asia, they were

drawn to deepening their engagement with the Qur’an on account of

lifecycle changes such as the birth of children and the desire to give

them a religious education, or social isolation resulting from fam-

ily migration, or simply out of curiosity. They all reported deriving

strength from their deepening engagement with the Qur’an. Bilingual

in English and a South Asian language, they were educated middle-

class women discovering the Qur’an through Al-Huda classes. All had

chosen to live a more orthoprax lifestyle in accordance with what they

learned in Al-Huda classes. But in order to succeed, I argue, they had

to get their families’ support. They had to do da‘wa. In this chapter, I

examine their life stories in light of the concepts of ‘precarity’ and gen-

dered Islamophobia as articulated by Attiya Ahmad and Jasmin Zine,

respectively. 109

109 Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space; Ahmad, Everyday

Conversions ; Jasmin Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools: Unravelling the Politics of

Faith, Gender, Knowledge, and Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,

2008).

50 Scholars of Faith

The book concludes by asking ‘Why Now?’ How do we make sense

of the contemporary surge in Muslim women’s religious education

across South Asia and elsewhere in the world? To start, we must

recognize that the growth of Muslim women’s education is part of

a wider phenomenon that crosses religious boundaries. This is not

an exclusively Muslim phenomenon. Beyond that, I situate the eth-

nographies presented here in their national contexts, both Indian

and Pakistani, to illustrate the growing trend of South Asian Muslim

women’s religious education across all social classes. The compara-

tive focus of this book, I argue, encourages us to discard unhelpful

binaries such as ‘Suﬁ ’ and ‘Wahhabi’, and to think of the eﬀ orts of

Muslims across diﬀ erent ideological and class categories as shared,

albeit diﬀ erent, responses to the precarious conditions of modernity.

Note on Transcription and the Use of Diacritics

I have transcribed Arabic and Urdu words using the letter ‘y’ rather

than ‘i’ in words such as ‘Husayn.’ I have opted to transcribe some

words, such as Hadith, using Arabic rather than Urdu pronunciation.

Likewise, when using the possessive ‘of’, as in ‘Ahl-i Sunnat’, I use

‘-i’ rather than the South Asian ‘-e’. Words such as Ashraﬁ ya have

been spelled with a single ‘y’ rather than the more usual ‘yy’, with

occasional exceptions such as Taymiyya. Proper names are spelled

in the manner chosen by the person whose name it is. Thus, I use

‘Raza’ rather than ‘Riza’ for members of Ahmad Raza’s family, as that

is their preferred pronunciation. However, many people use ‘Rizvi’

rather than ‘Razvi’ when using the adjectival form of this name. I

follow their usage.

I have indicated only two diacritics throughout, namely, the hamza,

as in Qur’an, and the ayn, as in ‘ulama. In the interests of simplicity,

no other diacritics have been used.

Arabic and Urdu words are italicized on ﬁ rst occurrence and

romanized thereafter.

P A R T I

Iman, Ahkam, Adab

MUSLIM GIRLS’ EDUCATION IN

NORTH INDIA IN THE TWENTIETH

CENTURY AND BEYOND

The ‘informal syllabus,’ namely, the ‘subtle and … all-pervading impact

of adab’ which manifests itself in ‘rules regarding discipline, body con-

trol, and behavioural expectations,’ is more important than the formal

syllabus.

—Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , p. 75

A remarkable transformation has been underway in Indian Muslim

women’s education over the past few decades. Muslim girls have been

attending religious seminaries ( madrasa s) in increasing numbers

since the 1990s, so much so, in fact, that according to one source, ‘by

2000 … girls outnumbered boys in the pupil bodies in most madrasahs’

in the west UP district of Bijnor.

1 Sociologists Patricia Jeﬀ ery, Roger

Jeﬀ ery, and Craig Jeﬀ rey suggest that in part this may be explained by

the fact that Muslim parents don’t see madrasa education as a route

to employment for their sons, as all teaching in madrasas is done in

Urdu, which is a disadvantage in the job market in India compared to

1 Patricia Jeﬀ ery, Roger Jeﬀ ery, and Craig Jeﬀ rey, ‘Islamization,

Gentriﬁ cation and Domestication: “A Girls’ Islamic Course” and Rural

Muslims in Western Uttar Pradesh’, Modern Asian Studies (2004), 38(1): 1–53.

The quote appears on p. 2.

Scholars of Faith. Usha Sanyal, Oxford University Press (2020).

54 Scholars of Faith

Hindi and, even more so, to English.

2 Hence, if Muslim boys attend

a madrasa at all they do so for a few years when they are young, then

transfer to a secular state school, in the hope that this will lead to

a secure government job. Research by Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon

conﬁ rms that Indian parents sometimes choose English-medium

education for their sons, and Urdu-medium for their daughters,

because of the better income-earning potential of the former.

However, this still leaves unanswered the question: Why now? If

local leaders are taking the initiative in UP and other parts of India,

as part of a process of Islamization in small towns and villages, as

Jeﬀ ery, Jeﬀ ery, and Jeﬀ rey suggest, why now, when girls’ education

has lagged so far behind that of boys (Muslim and non-Muslim) for

decades? Why do we hear that girls are more motivated than boys?

What persuades parents to let their daughters travel long distances

to attend a girls’ madrasa, especially when fear of social disapproval

by neighbours and kin held them back in the past? How and why are

these decisions made? Are there any discernible patterns in parents’

educational choices for their daughters and issues around social class

and class mobility? And can this help us understand theories of self

that relate to gender diﬀ erences among these families in particular

and within the Muslim population more generally?

Before we can begin to answer these questions, though, we need to

start by examining the history of Muslim women’s education in South

Asia in the colonial and postcolonial twentieth-century context. This

in turn raises larger questions about Muslim literacy vis-à-vis that

of other communities, and the socioeconomic conditions in which

South Asian Muslims ﬁ nd themselves today.

Let me begin with a little history.

2 Jeﬀ ery, Jeﬀ ery, and Jeﬀ rey. ‘Islamization, Gentriﬁ cation and

Domestication: “A Girls’ Islamic Course” and Rural Muslims in Western Uttar

Pradesh’. See also, Anne Vaughier-Chatterjee, ‘Plural Society and Schooling:

Urdu-medium Schools in Delhi’, in Radhika Chopra and Patricia Jeﬀ ery, eds,

in collaboration with Helmut Reifeld, Educational Regimes in Contemporary

India (New Delhi: Sage, 2005), p. 110.

3 Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon, Muslim Girls’ Education: A Comparison

of Five Indian Cities (Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2005), p. 98. The data in this

case refer to Hyderabad.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 55

The Growth of Muslim Girls’ Education in the

Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Much has been written about boys’ madrasas in South Asia, both in

the media and by scholars. There are some excellent ethnographies

of boys’ madrasas in India.

4 While much of the media attention

has focused on the madrasas’ real and alleged links with terrorism,

scholars have also given careful attention to the need for curricular

and other reform. 5 Indeed, this is a subject of urgent debate among

the ‘ulama themselves. Mawlana Waris Mazhari, a graduate of Dar

al-‘Ulum Deoband, has written eloquently about the need to drop cer-

tain texts on theology and jurisprudence from the syllabus because

they address issues that are no longer relevant, urging that madrasas

instead spend more time teaching students history, Qur’anic exege-

sis, and English. He also wants madrasas to address current issues in

jurisprudence that arise in the context of globalization, and include

technical vocational training, so that students can be self-supporting

when they graduate. He acknowledges the diﬃ culties in undertaking

extensive reform, but argues that they are not insurmountable and

the need of the day is urgent.

6 Ebrahim Moosa, formerly a student

4 On the Barelwis, see Nita Kumar, Lessons from Schools: The History of

Education in Banaras (Delhi: Sage, 2000), Chapter 5; Arshad Alam, Inside a

Madrasa: Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India (Delhi: Routledge,

2011). On the Jama‘at-i Islami, see Irfan Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy

in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami (Ranikhet: Permanent Black,

2010). The semi-autobiographical account by Ebrahim Moosa is a most wel-

come addition to the literature. See Ebrahim Moosa, What Is a Madrasa?

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).

5 The literature on South Asian madrasas and their alleged links to terror-

ism, as well as broader issues, is vast. I will mention just a handful of academic

studies: Jessica Stern, ‘Pakistan’s Jihad Culture’, Foreign Aﬀ airs (November/

December 2000); Yoginder Sikand, Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and

Islamic Education in India (Delhi: Penguin, 2005); Jamal Malik, ed., Madrasas

in South Asia: Teaching Terror? (London: Routledge, 2008); Masooda Bano,

The Rational Believer: Choices and Decisions in the Madrasas of Pakistan (Ithaca:

Cornell University Press, 2012).

6 See especially, Waris Mazhari, ‘Reforming Madrasa Curriculum’,

in Akhtarul Wasey, ed., Madrasas in India: Trying to Be Relevant , (Delhi:

56 Scholars of Faith

of Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband and Nadwat al-‘Ulama in Lucknow, and

currently a university professor in the United States (US), believes

the dars-i nizami curriculum is not designed for undergraduate stu-

dents. 7 However, this debate need not detain us here.

The literature on girls’ madrasas is much more limited, for the

good reason that girls’ madrasas are far fewer in number and have a

relatively recent history. Throughout much of the twentieth century,

to the extent that South Asian Muslim girls were educated, they were

educated at home. As Gail Minault shows in Secluded Scholars , there

was much ‘opposition to having pardah-observing girls leaving their

homes to go to school’.

8 Before any eﬀ orts were made to start schools

for Muslim women, male reformers such as Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali

Thanawi (1864–1943) of Thana Bhawan, west UP; Sayyid Mumtaz ‘Ali

(1860–1935), journalist from Lahore; Rashidul Khairi (1868–1936),

proliﬁ c writer of women’s novels and journals in Delhi and Lahore;

and others, concentrated their eﬀ orts on creating ‘a suitable litera-

ture’ 9 for women studying at home.

Global Media Publications, 2005); and Waris Mazhari, ‘Hindustani Madaris

Islamiya: Nisab o Nizam-e Ta‘lim, Imkanat o Masa’il, Ek Ja’iza’ (PhD disserta-

tion, Jami‘a Millia Islamiya, New Delhi, 2012).

7 Ebrahim Moosa’s own experience was that the ‘gems and value of the

Nizami curriculum’ only became evident to him after he had studied ‘a

great deal of history, modern philosophy, debates in religious studies, com-

plex debates in modern theology, Islamic law, and moral philosophy—in

short, when [he] was a graduate and postdoctoral student’. Moosa, What Is a

Madrasa? p. 137.

8 Gail Minault, Secluded Scholars: Women’s Education and Muslim Social

Reform in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 177.

The following section on the history of women’s literature and schools in the

colonial period is based on my reading of Minault. Also see, Ruby Lal, Coming

of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), especially Chapter 3.

9 This is the title of Chapter 2 of Minault’s Secluded Scholars . Rashidul

Khairi was of Ahl-i Hadith background, as pointed out by Reixinger. See

Martin Reixinger, ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity? A Study of

the Ahl-i Hadis in Late Nineteenth/Early Twentieth Century South Asia’, in

Gwilym Beckerlegge, ed., Colonialism, Modernity and Religious Movements in

South Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 157.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 57

This literature took many forms. It included religious advice litera-

ture, a genre best represented by Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti

Zewar (Heavenly Ornaments); 10 didactic novels like Deputy Nazir

Ahmad’s (1830–1912) famous Mir’at al-‘Arus (The Bride’s Mirror) and

Khwaja Altaf Husain Hali’s (1837–1914) Majalis al-Nisa (Assemblies of

Women); 11 and women’s magazines or home journals in Urdu. Among

the latter, one of the most long lived was the monthly ‘Ismat (Modesty,

Honour), launched by Rashidul Khairi and his wife in 1908 in Delhi.

After Partition in 1947, ‘Ismat ’s headquarters were transferred to Karachi,

from where it continues to be published to this day.

12 Although writings

by women were rare at this time, a notable exception was a textbook dat-

ing to 1882 by Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal, entitled Tahzib al-Niswan

wa Tarbiyat al-Insan (The Cultivation of Women and the Instruction of

Humanity). It contained chapters on ‘women’s and children’s illnesses,

pregnancy and childbirth, the education and socialization of children,

prayer, fasting, pardah, marriage, divorce, death, and mourning, as well

as household management, decorating, cooking, and sewing’.

What was the motivation behind these reformers promoting

women’s zenana education? Minault argues, as Metcalf has as well,

10 On this, see Barbara D. Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali

Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar, a Partial Translation with Commentary (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1990).

11 See, among others, C.M. Naim, ‘Prize-Winning Adab: A Study of Five

Urdu Books Written in Response to the Allahabad Government Gazette

Notiﬁ cation’, in Barbara Daly Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The

Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1984), and Minault, Secluded Scholars .

12 For a detailed treatment of Rashidul Khairi, the monthly magazine

‘Ismat , and the history of Muslim women’s magazines in the early twentieth

century, see Minault, Secluded Scholars , Chapter 3 and passim.

13 Minault, Secluded Scholars , p. 101. On Begam Sultan Jahan of Bhopal,

see Barbara Daly Metcalf, ‘Islam and Power in Colonial India: The Making

and Unmaking of a Muslim Princess’, American Historical Review (February

2011), 116(1): 1–30. Also see Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Muslim Women, Reform

and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal (Abingdon:

Routledge, 2007).

14 See, for example, Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India:

Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).

58 Scholars of Faith

that in the wake of the Revolt of 1857 and the reality of loss of political

power to the British, Muslim reformers, especially the religious class

or ‘ulama, sought ways to strengthen their communities from within

by ensuring stricter adherence to religious precepts at the individual

and community levels. They tried to adapt to the loss of old sources

of court patronage by founding religious seminaries and engaging in

educational reform, using new models provided by British schools and

actively publishing religious literature in Urdu and vernacular lan-

guages. In addition, men from service families wanted to take advan-

tage of new opportunities created by the proliferation of the printing

press, government employment, and opportunities for employment

at regional Muslim courts such as Hyderabad. Recognizing that social

reform necessarily had to start within the family, many advocated

women’s education so that women could be better wives and moth-

ers. The ‘ulama’s criticisms focused on what they considered wasteful

social customs not sanctioned by the shari‘a (Islamic law), such as

ostentatious spending at weddings, and practices such as child mar-

riage or the widespread Indian Muslim disapproval of widow remar-

riage. 15 Other reformers such as Sayyid Mumtaz ‘Ali went further,

advocating a woman’s consent to marriage, recognition of a woman’s

right to divorce ( khul’ ), changes in the practice of mahr (a woman’s

marriage portion), reducing the restrictions of pardah, and facilitating

women’s movement outside the home.

16 While individual reformers

diﬀ ered in terms of speciﬁ c measures, they assumed that men must

be the leaders of women’s educational reform. Direct leadership roles

by women were not contemplated until well into the twentieth century.

As Minault points out, the values promoted by the reformers

were those of sharif culture, a term that underwent a subtle shift in

meaning in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. While

previously sharafat had been based on high birth, now it was based

primarily on behaviour:

In Urdu writings of the late nineteenth century, sharif, ‘noble’ in the sense

of birthright to position or wealth, gave way to ‘noble’ in the sense of good

15 These were among the major arguments made by Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali

Thanawi. See, for example, Minault, Secluded Scholars , pp. 66–72; Metcalf,

Perfecting Women , Chapter 2.

16 Minault, Secluded Scholars , pp. 72–95.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 59

character: honourable, upright, cultured, and respectable… In this period,

increasingly, to belong to the ashraf was to be from the respectable mid-

dle or upper-middle classes. A sharif gentleman was pious without being

wasteful, educated without being pedantic, and restrained in his expres-

sion of emotion. 17

For these ideals to be realized, women had to play an active part in the

home. They too had to embody these ideals, and be able to transmit

them to their children.

Gradually, support for women’s schools grew, though the possible

breakdown of the norms of pardah society was constantly on people’s

minds, leading to considerable opposition. Among the pioneers of

schools for girls were the remarkable husband-and-wife team, Shaikh

and Begam Abdullah of Aligarh, who despite considerable opposi-

tion from sections of the ‘Aligarh establishment’, opened the Aligarh

Zenana Madrasa (Aligarh Girls’ School) in 1906 with funding from

Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal and Justice Badruddin Tyabji and

members of his family in Bombay, as well as the promise of a UP

government grant once it had opened.

19 With about 50 students in the

ﬁ rst year, opposition to the school quickly abated in light of the stu-

dents’ enthusiasm, the school’s enforcement of pardah rules, and the

quality of education imparted. The school grew, and by 1909 moved

to a larger house.

A number of issues continued to divide the Muslim community,

however, both here and in other parts of the country (Punjab and

Bengal, among others) where girls’ schools were established. Among

17 Minault, Secluded Scholars , pp. 4–5.

18 For an excellent recent addition to the literature, being a study of women

in the Tablighi Jama‘at movement, see Darakhshan Khan, ‘Fashioning the

Pious Self: Middle Class Religiosity in Colonial India’ (PhD dissertation,

University of Pennsylvania, 2016).

19 Minault, Secluded Scholars , pp. 234–9. As is well known, Sayyid Ahmad

Khan had opposed sending girls to school, though he had no objection to

their being educated at home. Other sections of Aligarh’s Muslim educated

elite also opposed girls’ education on various grounds. See Minault, Secluded

Scholars , pp. 30–1. On Sayyid Ahmad Khan, see David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First

Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1978), a classic study that has been reprinted many times.

60 Scholars of Faith

them was the kind of curriculum to be followed: should it be the same

as that in boys’ schools or diﬀ erent? This question continues to be

debated to the present day, with some favouring essentially the same

syllabus as that of boys on the grounds that the Qur’an advocates that

all Muslims seek knowledge, which implies equality between girls

and boys, while others argue that girls should be taught subjects such

as cooking and sewing in keeping with their ‘future roles as wives and

mothers’. 20 As Minault points out, in practice most schools opted for

a combination of the two. Another problem had to do with the girls’

exposure to public view as they travelled to and from school. As the

case of Rokeya Sakhavat Husain’s school in Calcutta (now Kolkata),

started in 1911, shows, transportation issues were a big concern for

parents. 21 The solution, the Abdullahs decided (but apparently not

Rokeya), was to open a boarding school, which they did to great fan-

fare and with success in 1914.

Among the girls’ schools described by Minault, a few were madra-

sas. A notable example was the Madrasat al-Banat in Jalandhar, Punjab,

founded by Abdul Haq Abbas, of Ahl-i Hadith aﬃ liation, in 1926.

He had spent most of his life promoting reformist and educational

causes, though not for girls until somewhat late in life. As Minault

notes, Jalandhar was home to the Arya Samaj, which had founded a

successful girls’ school in the late-nineteenth century, and therefore it

made sense for there to be a Muslim girls’ school to counter its inﬂ u-

ence—together with that of Christian missionaries, who were also

active in the educational ﬁ eld in Jalandhar. 22 Abdul Haq Abbas also

founded a women’s journal, Muslima , that reported on the activities

of the madrasa. He relied on private donations and charged no fees.

Among his donors, most of whom were local, were a few prominent

ﬁ gures from Punjab. In addition, given his Ahl-i Hadith aﬃ liation,

he also enjoyed some ﬁ nancial support from the ruler of Bhopal. This

20 Minault, Secluded Scholars , pp. 215–16.

21 Minault, Secluded Scholars , pp. 258–9. Also see, Lal, Coming of Age in

Nineteenth-Century India , pp.189–91.

22 Reixinger refers to the dominance of the Arya Samaj and Christian

missionaries in Jalandhar as a ‘duopoly’. Hence there were two major kinds

of private schools, not one. See Reixinger, ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam

to Modernity?’, p. 158.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 61

madrasa was in continuous operation until Partition, when Abdul Haq

Abbas migrated to Pakistan, starting afresh in Lahore.

As this brief survey of girls’ education in the colonial period, start-

ing in the late 1800s and leading up to Partition, indicates, eﬀ orts

to educate Muslim girls were only gradually seen as being central to

the rejuvenation of the Muslim community, having had to overcome

heavy obstacles in terms of public sentiment, ﬁ nancial resources, and

the lack of availability of female teachers. Where they succeeded, they

did so because of the determination of a few remarkable individuals,

often with the support of family members. In fact, the commitment of

not only the wives of founders such as Shaikh Abdullah but also their

daughters, daughters-in-law, and further generations of women in the

family, is a notable characteristic of many of the earliest girls’ schools.

It is also characteristic of the Barelwi girls’ madrasa that is the subject

of the next few chapters.

A Brief History of Girls’ Literacy in Uttar Pradesh

Literacy rates in this most populous state in India, for both boys and

girls, have been growing steadily—as in most other parts of the coun-

try—throughout the twentieth century, and into the present. The pic-

ture at the beginning of the twentieth century was absymal. In 1901,

according to the Imperial Gazetteer of India of 1907, female literacy in

the west UP district of Shahjahanpur was close to zero, while male

literacy was at a dismal 2.6 per cent (Figure 1.1).

In 1911, the situation was hardly any better: the census reported

male literacy rates at 4 per cent and female literacy rates at 0.4 per

cent, while the all-India male literacy rate was 6.1 per cent.

24 Jumping

forward 60 years, the rates were still low even in 1971—24 per cent

for males and only 8.3 per cent for females, according to the Gazetteer

of India for UP. 25 Thirty years later, however, the literacy rates, while

23 Minault, Secluded Scholars , pp. 250–5.

24 The female all-India rate is not reported for 1911. See E.A.H. Blunt,

Census of India , 1911, p. 269.

25 Kailash Narain Pande, state editor, Gazetteer of India , Uttar Pradesh,

District Shahjahanpur (Allahabad: Government of Uttar Pradesh, 1988), pp.

227–37.

62 Scholars of Faith

still low, had grown considerably. According to the 2001 census, the

female literacy rate in UP as a whole was at 43 per cent of the popula-

tion aged 7 and above, while the rate for men was 70 per cent. (This

was lower than the all-India rate, which was 53.7 per cent for women

and 75.3 per cent for men.) In 2011, the UP ﬁ gures were: 59.3 per cent

for women and 79.2 per cent for men. (Again, the all-India rate was

higher: women, 65.5 per cent and men 82.1 per cent.) (Figure1.2).

Despite these encouraging numbers, however, Muslims in India

suﬀ er from a number of handicaps in education, as in other aspects

of socioeconomic life. This was recognized as early as the late-nine-

teenth century by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898), who worked

actively to promote Western education among the Muslim elite, both

by founding the Anglo-Muhammadan Oriental College (which later

became Aligarh Muslim University), and by encouraging the transla-

tion of European scientiﬁ c works into Urdu.

U.P (Female)

10%

1911 2001

Year

2011

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Figure 1.1 Female Literacy in UP versus Rest of India

26 See Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation . As Peter Hardy points out, Sayyid

Ahmad Khan and other nineteenth-century upper-class Muslims argued that

acquisition of Western education by Indian Muslims was not only not opposed

to Islam ‘but was actually Islamic’. Their success in communicating their

ideas to Muslims of the lower classes, Hardy argues, lay in the fact that they

framed their case ‘in an Islamic religious idiom’. See Peter Hardy, The Muslims

of British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 94.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 63

After Independence in 1947, eﬀ orts to improve Muslim education

occurred in a context shaped in signiﬁ cant ways by the aﬃ rmative

action policies of the Central government to overcome the disabilities of

untouchability. The Muslims’ position vis-à-vis upper-caste Hindus was

probably made worse by the migration of the Muslim elite to Pakistan,

where, as muhajir s, they have constituted a distinct group of their own

ever since. Meanwhile in India, in the 1990s the situation changed

again with the beginning of economic liberalization. In some states,

as in UP, this period saw a diminution of state funding for education

and a concomitant rise in private educational institutions. This is the

current context in which the newer initiatives have been taking place.

With regard to education more speciﬁ cally, the Sachar Committee

Report noted in 2006 that Muslims suﬀ er from a number of socioeco-

nomic handicaps and that their overall position is similar to that of

the Dalits (or untouchables, as they were previously known). These

conclusions have been borne out by subsequent research.

U.P (Male)

10%

1911 2001

Year

2011

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

Figure 1.2 Male Literacy in UP versus Rest of India

27 See Jeﬀ ery, Jeﬀ ery, and Jeﬀ rey, ‘Islamization, Gentriﬁ cation and

Domestication’, p. 34.

28 See, among many others, Rakesh Basant and Abusaleh Shariﬀ , eds,

Handbook of Muslims in India: Empirical and Policy Perspectives (New Delhi:

64 Scholars of Faith

Two Contemporary Girls’ Madrasas: Jami‘at al-Salehat

and Madrasatul Niswan

In order to place Jami‘a Nur,

29 the Barelwi madrasa in Shahjahanpur,

in context, I want to brieﬂ y discuss two contemporary madrasas aﬃ li-

ated with groups other than the Barelwis. At the present time, each

of the ﬁ ve major Sunni schools of thought in South Asia,

30 namely,

Ahl-i Hadith (also spelled Ahl-e Hadis; see Chapter 6 for a discussion

of their perspective), Jama‘at-i Islami, Nadwat al-‘Ulama, Deobandi/

Tablighi Jama‘at, and Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama‘at or Barelwi, has a ﬂ ag-

ship girls’ madrasa in India. The foremost Ahl-i Hadith madrasa for

girls is Jami‘a Aisha in Malegaon, Maharashtra; the most important

Jama‘at-i Islami madrasa for girls is Jami‘at al-Salehat, Rampur, west

UP; that of the Nadwat al-‘Ulama is Kulliyat al-Zahra in Mau, east UP;

that of the Deobandis is Jami‘at al-Salehat in Malegaon, Maharashtra;

and the largest Barelwi madrasa for girls is Madrasa Shams al-‘Ulum

(Niswan) in Ghosi, in east UP.

32 My overview here throws light on

diﬀ erences in these madrasas’ approach to girls’ education as seen

through an examination of their syllabi and student magazines. At

the end of this chapter are two appendices which list the syllabi of

Oxford University Press, 2014); also see Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon,

Educating Muslim Girls: A Comparison of Five Indian Cities (Delhi: Women

Unlimited, 2005).

29 This is a pseudonym, being used to protect the identity of the madrasa.

30 I am omitting mention of the Ahmadiya movement, as most South

Asian Sunni Muslims regard them as being outside the pale. And of course

the Shi‘a are worthy of mention, but I have no information on Shi‘a girls’

madrasas in India. On madrasa education among the Shi‘a in the nine-

teenth and twentieth centuries, see Justin Jones, Shi‘a Islam in Colonial India:

Religion, Community and Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2012), Chapter 1.

31 See Mareike Jule Winkelmann, ‘ From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a

Girls’ Madrasa (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), p. 33.

32 My information on the madrasas other than the Deobandi one is

based on Chapter 4 of a thesis by Mumtas Begam, A.L., ‘Muslim Women

in Malabar: Study in Social and Cultural Change’ (Department of History

thesis, University of Calicut, 2006). Available at shodhganga.inﬂ ibnet.ac.in/

bitstream/10603/15747/8/08_chapter%204.pdf; accessed on 6 August 2015.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 65

the two madrasas I have chosen to discuss, namely, Jami‘at al-Salehat

in Rampur, UP, and Madrasatul Niswan in Delhi. The reasons for

choosing them rather than others are that I was able to visit the for-

mer personally, tour the campus, and collect published information

on it; as for the latter, it is the subject of an excellent ethnography by

Marieke Winkelmann. Hem Borker’s recent (2018) book on Jamiatul

Mominat, a madrasa for Tablighi Jama‘at girls in southeast Delhi, is a

welcome recent addition to the sparse literature on girls’ madrasas in

India, complementing Winkelmann’s in important ways.

Jami‘at al-Salehat in Rampur, UP, is one of the oldest girls’ madra-

sas in India today. It is located on a major city street, Shaukat Ali

Road, not far from the Rampur train station. Its campus is large

and impressive, with two three-story hostel buildings separated by

a lawn from a newer building housing classrooms, dining rooms, a

sick room with about a dozen beds, a well-stocked library containing

approximately 16,000 books, conference rooms, and administrative

oﬃ ces (Figure 1.3 and 1.4).

34 Founded in 1956 for younger girls, it

was initially simply called ‘Bachchiyon ka madrasa’ (madrasa for little

girls), but in 1972 it was upgraded to the status of Jami‘a, that is, an

institution for higher Islamic learning (Figure 1.5).

35 In 2013, it had

approximately 2,200 students from all over the country, about half of

whom were boarders. Boarders cannot be younger than 10 at the time

of admission.

Jami‘at al-Salehat is a Jam‘at-i Islami madrasa.

36 The full course

of study lasts 15 years, starting when students are in kindergarten.

33 Hem Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018).

34 This brief account is based partly on personal observations of the

madrasa during a visit on 7 November 2013. I was given a tour of the prem-

ises by the vice principal, Hamida. I thank late Dr Sartaj Razvi for facilitating

this visit.

35 Jamea-tus-Salehat, Prospectus 2013–2014 (Qawa’id o Dhawabit) , p. 2.

36 On the Jama‘at-i Islami movement, see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The

Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama‘at-i Islami of Pakistan (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1994). On women in the Jama‘at-i Islami, see

Irfan Ahmad, ‘Cracks in the “Mightiest Fortress”: Jamaat-e-Islami’s Changing

Discourse on Women’, Modern Asian Studies (2008), 42(2/3): 549–75. Ahmad

observes in note 19 of his book (p. 559) that ‘Rampur [was] the second

66 Scholars of Faith

Figure 1.3 Girls’ Hostel Built around an Open Square, Jami‘at al-Salehat

Source : Author.

Figure 1.4 New Classroom Building, Jami‘at al-Salehat

Source : Author

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 67

These young students are Rampur residents, not boarders. The kin-

dergarten and primary level lasts six years. Students get a basic Islamic

education about monotheism ( tawhid ) and the pillars of Islam, the

life of the Prophet ( sira ), the Qur’an, supplications ( du‘a ), and good

character ( adab o akhlaq ). 37 The remaining nine years of education are

divided into junior (three years), ‘Alima (four years), and Fazila (two

years). ‘Alima is considered equivalent to senior secondary or high

school level, and Fazila to degree level, that is, a BA. The prospectus

explains its educational goals as follows:

The Jami‘at us-Salehat, Rampur, is an important center of higher Islamic

learning for the education of Muslim girls. Here, students are taught

headquarters of the Jamaat after Malihabad’. That might account for the girls’

madrasa Jami‘at al-Salehat being in Rampur.

37 As-Sahwah, Annual College Magazine, 2011–2012 , published by Literary

Circle, Jamea-tus-Salehat, Rampur, pp. 41–3.

Figure 1.5 Kindergarten Students, Jami‘at al-Salehat

Source : Author.

68 Scholars of Faith

Qur’anic exegesis ( tafsir ), hadith, sirat , jurisprudence ( ﬁ qh ), principles of

jurisprudence, Arabic language and literature, rules of recitation ( qawa‘id ),

writing and rhetoric ( insha o balaghat ), Islamic history, and so on, at the

same high level as is done in countless madrasas for boys through the

length and breadth of this country. While the Jami‘at us-Salehat’s singu-

lar characteristic is its focus on the religious and Arabic sciences, given

the needs of the present time other contemporary subjects have also been

incorporated into its syllabus, as well as matters relating to housekeep-

ing and sewing, embroidery, and the like, as these are both necessary and

inescapable ( na-guzir ) skills for women. 38

Winkelmann classiﬁ es madrasas in India into three categories on

the basis of their curriculum. These are: Urdu-medium schools ‘with

some Islamic content’, which are strictly speaking, not madrasas at

all; madrasas which follow some version of the dars-i nizami syllabus;

and ‘dual type’ madrasas which teach the standard religious subjects as

well as ‘non-Islamic subjects …such as mathematics, English, Hindi,

and computer skills’. 39 According to Winkelmann’s informants,

madrasa education for girls in India received a big impetus as a result

of a 1975 conference in Jeddah on the Islamization of education. In the

aftermath of that conference, Mawlana Mukarram al-Nadwi founded

the Muhammadiya Education Society in Mumbai: ‘those associated

with the Muhammadiya Education Society advocated the integration

of Islamic and non-Islamic subjects in the madrasa curriculum. In

addition to introducing “dual” curricula in madrasas, a second idea

that found enthusiastic following was promoting madrasa education

for girls.’ 40 These claims are supported by Mumtas Begum’s study

that surveys a number of girls’ madrasas throughout India. It ﬁ nds

that the Kulliya Aisha Madrasa in Malegaon, Maharashtra, run by the

Jami‘a Muhammadiya Education Society of Mumbai, combines mod-

ern education (following the Maharashtra government’s guidelines)

with the teaching of Arabic and Islamic studies.

38 Prospectus, 2012–2013 , p. 1.

39 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 12–13.

40 Winkelmann, ‘ From Behind the Curtain’ , p. 33.

41 Mumtas Begam, ‘Muslim Women in Malabar’, p. 194. However,

Mumtas Begam writes that the conference was convened in Mecca by King

Abdul Aziz University, not in Jeddah. Further, she also seems to credit

Mukhtar Ahmad Nadwi with the creation of the dual curriculum, rather than

Mukarram Nadwi.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 69

Using this yardstick, the Jami‘at al-Salehat belongs to the third

category, namely, a dual-type madrasa. The syllabus of the Jami‘at

al-Salehat has a number of interesting features not found in the

madrasa studied by Winkelmann or the Barelwi madrasa with which

I am familiar. First, it promotes knowledge of Arabic at an early age.

The ‘Alima (secondary) and Fazila (undergraduate) syllabi list a num-

ber of classes on Arabic grammar, literature, and language. Moreover,

the books prescribed are a combination of classical texts found in the

dars-i nizami syllabus of madrasas of all denominations, for boys

or girls, and newer works by authors such as the well-known Nadwi

scholar Mawlana Sayyid Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi (d. 1999), who was

widely respected in the Arab world as well as South Asia.

42 Students

develop an impressive level of Arabic reading, writing, and possibly

spoken proﬁ ciency. The annual college magazine, As-Sahwah , con-

tains a number of student essays in Arabic (as well as Urdu, Hindi,

and English).

On the other side of the ledger, reﬂ ecting ‘modern education’ at the

‘Alima level are classes in civics, in which students study the Indian

constitution in Urdu, as well as English, using NCERT (National

Council of Educational Research and Training) student readers for

classes X, XI, and the intermediate level (see Appendix 1).

43 The fact

that students study the Indian constitution at the madrasa is remark-

able. I have not observed this being part of the curriculum of the

Barelwi madrasa Jami‘a Nur; nor does Winkelmann indicate that it

forms part of the curriculum of the Tablighi Jama‘at girls’ madrasa she

studied. Its inclusion at the Jami‘at al-Salehat seems to corroborate

Irfan Ahmad’s conclusions that the Jama‘at-i Islami in India has been

moving away from its exclusivist roots, as enunciated by Mawlana

Mawdudi, towards a more inclusive and secular Indian identity.

42 On Mawlana Sayyid Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi, see Jan-Peter Hartung,

‘The Nadwat al-ulama: Chief Patron of Madrasa Education in India and a

Turntable to the Arab World’, in Jan-Peter Hartung and Helmut Reifeld, eds,

Islamic Education, Diversity, and National Identity (Delhi: Sage, 2006).

43 Irfan Ahmad notes that the adoption of NCERT textbooks by the

Jama‘at-i Islami’s Green School in Aligarh was welcomed by parents as part

of a move away from ideology and towards pragmatism because it gave grad-

uates of the school access to admission to Aligarh Muslim University. The

Aligarh Muslim University recognized the Green School’s certiﬁ cate in 1975.

See Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India , pp. 91–3 and passim.

70 Scholars of Faith

At the Fazila level, students also study the psychology of educa-

tion. This feature of the curriculum may be unique to the Jami‘at

al-Salehat, or may be found in select Indian madrasas.

44 Its purpose

is clearly to produce more eﬀ ective teachers, as teaching is the most

popular profession sought by female madrasa graduates. Students

were also encouraged—or perhaps required—to study and read on

their own, using the extensive resources of the library, including

newspapers. The syllabus also lists a number of books by Mawlana

Mawdudi and other scholars of Jama‘at-i Islami aﬃ liation for general

study, not included in the regular class syllabus. It is also noteworthy

that an anthology of Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s essays is taught at the

Fazila level. This once again corroborates Ahmad’s argument that the

Indian Jama‘at-i Islami has embraced a more open-minded ideology

than did Mawlana Mawdudi.

According to the vice principal of the madrasa, after the students

graduate they go on to study further. They have four preferences.

Listed in descending order of importance, these are: Aligarh (BA

or MA level); Jami‘a Millia, Delhi; Hamdard University, Delhi; and

Lucknow College, UP. She said that the graduates occupy leadership

positions in other institutions of learning after they ﬁ nish their stud-

ies at the Jami‘at al-Salehat. Many have become teachers at Jami‘at

al-Bana‘at in Azamgarh. Over time, students had set up aﬃ liated

schools in their places of origin. Hence, fewer students at the Rampur

madrasa now came from geographically distant places than before.

Some students had also gone to the Middle East after marriage and

started teaching there. 45

Clearly, the Jami‘at al-Salehat’s high academic expectations and

impressive student achievement are associated with middle-class

status and aspirations. The ﬁ nancial cost to the madrasa in provid-

ing good healthcare, attending to the students’ nutritional needs and

housing, and providing the onsite facilities of the library, conference

rooms, sick room, year-round electricity, and hot and cold water, and

so on is reﬂ ected in the relatively high student fees it charges. The

prospectus lays out the charges for each year of the kindergarten,

44 According to Mumtas Begum, it is a ‘unique course in Jami‘a tus

Salihaat’. Mumtas Begum, ‘Muslim Women in Malabar’, note 182, p. 235.

45 From my ﬁ eld notes, 7 November 2013.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 71

primary, ‘Alima, and Fazila courses. The average fees, all inclusive,

ranged between INR 5,640 and INR 6,240 for a three-month period in

2013–14. 46 Annualized, the fees thus ranged between approximately

INR 25,000 and INR 30,000 per student. In addition, students had to

buy books or related academic materials, as well as personal items.

This was clearly an expensive madrasa education by South Asian stan-

dards, unaﬀ ordable for many parents.

The Madrasatul Niswan in Nizamuddin, New Delhi, is a very dif-

ferent institution. 47 Both its size and location indicate its relatively

humble lower to lower-middle-class base. The student body num-

bered about 200, many of them from outside Delhi, at the time of

Winkelmann’s ﬁ eldwork. It is located deep inside Basti Nizamuddin,

far from the main road. Winkelmann describes how for two years,

before the construction of a new path leading to the madrasa, she

would walk along the narrow lanes leading to the Nizamuddin shrine

and its surrounding ﬂ ower stalls, small restaurants, and butcher

shops, through a residential area and adjacent garbage dump, to get

to the madrasa. 48 The madrasa is aﬃ liated with the Tablighi Jama‘at,

an oﬀ shoot of the Deobandi movement.

49 Winkelmann describes in

some detail how students initially tried very hard to convert her to

Islam (seeing in her a good opportunity to practice tabligh , or ‘convey-

ing the [Islamic] message’). The post–9/11 context in which she was

working was also signiﬁ cant, as prior to this she had faced a great deal

of reluctance by diﬀ erent madrasas in Hyderabad and Delhi to give

her access. Winkelmann’s ﬁ eldwork experience was thus closely inter-

twined with the historical context of post-9/11 India. But she slowly

overcame the obstacles in her path, relating to the administration and

46 Prospectus, 2013–2014 , pp. 10–11.

47 This is a pseudonym given to the madrasa by Winkelmann. See

Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , note 13, p. 19.

48 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 13–14. As she puts it, the

madrasa itself was in a sense ‘veiled’, hidden from public view (Winkelmann,

‘From Behind the Curtain , p. 82).

49 Like the Madrasatul Niswan, the madrasa studied by Borker also identi-

ﬁ es as Tablighi Jama‘at. It is located in a diﬀ erent part of New Delhi from the

one where Winkelmann did her ﬁ eldwork. However, Borker does not explore

in any detail the signiﬁ cance of the denominational identity of the madrasa

she studied.

72 Scholars of Faith

students, in part through her own personal journey of marriage and

motherhood. 50

Winkelmann’s concept of ‘core families’ is a helpful starting point

for understanding the connections between diﬀ erent members of

the administration. There were three families that made the major

decisions regarding day-to-day administration and curriculum devel-

opment. These families were connected to one another through

marriage, a common origin in Barabanki district outside Lucknow,

attendance at the same group of madrasas in Delhi and elsewhere,

and most importantly perhaps, aﬃ liation and active involvement in

the Tablighi Jama‘at. 51 The three principal administrators, namely,

the founder, manager, and principal, were all related. The founder’s

daughter, who was the principal, was married to the manager. In addi-

tion, some of the teachers were also part of this family nexus. Several

of them also shared the same accommodation, living in a small house

not far from the madrasa. In caste terms, the core families were low-

caste Ansaris. 52

As Winkelmann explains, the founder and manager travelled fre-

quently ‘in the path of God’ ( ﬁ sabil Allah , a Qur’anic phrase) in connec-

tion with Tablighi work, thereby also raising funds for the madrasa and

recruiting students and teachers through word of mouth. Importantly,

they were aﬃ liated with a small group of madrasas that constituted

a shared network: they had both been educated or were presently

teaching at the Kashful Ulum Madrasa for boys, a Tablighi madrasa,

in Nizamuddin’s Tablighi Markaz (Tablighi Centre), while many of

the teachers had previously taught at either the Jami‘a Noorul Islam

50 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , Chapter 3, especially pp.

43–4 and passim. See also the comments by Arshad Alam, Inside a Madrasa:

Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India (Delhi: Routledge, 2011);

and Sumbul Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local Level Islam: A Case Study

of Barelwi Khanqahs’ (PhD dissertation, University of Delhi, May 2016), for

their insights on the diﬃ culties faced by Muslim researchers working on

Muslim issues in this time frame and in general.

51 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 51–2 and passim.

52 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 46–7. For the classic study

on the Ansaris, whose traditional profession was weaving, see Nita Kumar,

The Artisans of Banaras: Popular Culture and Identity, 1880–1986 (reprint,

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 73

in Lucknow, UP, or the Jami‘at al-Salehat in Malegaon, Maharashtra.

They were thus part of a wider geographical network of schools.

The Madrasatul Niswan’s Tablighi connections—and beyond

them, those with the Nadwat al-‘Ulama in Lucknow—manifested

themselves in a number of ways, though most especially perhaps

in the madrasa’s syllabus. Winkelmann emphasizes the importance

of one book in particular, namely, the Faza’il-i ‘Amal (Virtues of

[Everyday] Deeds), which students were required to read and study

every day. The basic teaching of this Tablighi manual is that one’s

daily actions are a means of gaining merit in the hereafter and there-

fore one should cultivate the virtues that will lead to heaven rather

than hell. Among other things, idleness and frivolous or extravagant

excess are strongly discouraged, while behaviour associated with a

deeply pious, restrained way of life is encouraged. The book thereby

promotes the sanctiﬁ cation of everyday life.

54 In addition, students

also had daily lessons in Islamic upbringing (elsewhere classiﬁ ed as

adab), in which a variety of books were used, many of them by the

Nadwi scholar Sayyid Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi. One of them, the Qirat

al-Rashida , uses exemplary stories from the early history of Islam to

teach students how to engage in everyday acts such as eating and

drinking, dressing appropriately, and so on.

55 The Deobandi work

Bihishti Zewar , by Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi, which is listed in

the syllabus for the ﬁ rst year of the ‘Alima course under the category

of jurisprudence ( ﬁ qh ), conveys similar lessons in daily comportment

while also teaching practical skills like letter writing.

An important insight of Winkelmann’s ethnography is the fact that

in practice the madrasa departed in several ways from the printed

syllabus that was made available to parents and students at the begin-

ning of the school year.

56 Thus, many books in the ﬁ eld of Islamic

law were studied selectively, limited to ‘questions related to marriage,

divorce, child custody, and inheritance’, subjects deemed important

for an educated Muslim woman to know. As Winkelmann puts it, the

53 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 51–2.

54 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 54–5 and passim.

55 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’` , pp. 70–1.

56 See Appendix 2 at the end of this chapter for the Madrasatul Niswan’s

syllabus.

74 Scholars of Faith

madrasa emphasized practical virtues ( faza’il ) rather than theoretical

legal issues ( masa’il ). Even though the men in charge claimed that the

curriculum was ‘the same as the dars-e-nizami taught in madrasas

for boys’, in fact it was ‘substantially diﬀ erent, and … in practice often

diﬀ ers from the oﬃ cial curriculum’. 57 For example, the two volumes

of Qirat al-Rashida , mentioned earlier, were not listed in the syllabus.

However, in other respects the syllabus reﬂ ected the reality on the

ground, as a contrary ﬁ nding seems to be that the study of Hadith

(prophetic traditions) was emphasized, particularly in the ﬁ fth and

ﬁ nal year. Study of the Qur’an began in the ﬁ rst year and continued

throughout, with the addition of related subjects such as exegesis.

In addition to the formal syllabus, Winkelmann points to the

importance of what she calls the ‘informal syllabus’, namely, the

‘subtle and … all-pervading impact of adab’ which manifests itself in

‘rules regarding discipline, body control, and behavioural expecta-

tions’. 58 She illustrates her meaning by giving the example of twin

girls, about six years old, who were rather shabbily dressed when they

ﬁ rst came to the madrasa, had an unkempt appearance, and carried

their Qur’an in a plain cloth cover, but whose appearance, demeanour,

sense of conﬁ dence, and pride in the way they carried their Qur’an, all

seemed to improve and grow after they had been at the madrasa for a

short time. As she writes, the girls had quickly imbibed not only their

formal lessons, but also the ‘moral undertone’ of the madrasa. The

case of the young sweeper girl is even more illuminating, as it shows

the potential for upward social mobility implicit in the cultivation of

personal modesty; appropriate modes of dress, particularly veiling

(pardah); and attempts to acquire religious learning. Not only did the

sweeper girl’s personal behaviour change over time, but the teachers

began to show her increased respect.

In the concluding chapters of ‘From Behind the Curtain ’,

Winkelmann oﬀ ers some theoretical insights into the wider signiﬁ -

cance of her work. Following Foucault, she notes that being residen-

tial, the madrasa was a ‘total institution’ which was both removed

from and enmeshed in its physical environment near the Nizamuddin

57 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , p. 69.

58 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , p. 75.

59 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 76–7.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 75

shrine. While on the one hand, students imbibed the rather austere

adab at the heart of its ‘civilizing mission’, consciously distancing

themselves from the noise and periodic wedding-like atmosphere of

the neighbouring Nizamuddin shrine, on the other hand they inter-

acted with the world around them at a number of levels: through the

daily Hadith classes, taught by a male teacher to ﬁ fth-year students at

a neighbouring house, for which they had to don their burqas; weekly

lessons in machine knitting at the neighbouring Inayat Khan shrine

( dargah ) attended by some of the teachers; free Hindi-medium after-

noon classes at the prestigious Delhi Public School not too far away,

attended by the Principal’s daughters; knowledge of and exposure

to Hindu festivals such as Diwali; and despite formal disapproval,

knowledge of public culture, Hindi ﬁ lms, and the like. In these and

other ways, the madrasa students were very much enmeshed in the

geographical and cultural context of the school.

Returning to the madrasa’s ‘civilizing mission’, clearly one of the

central mechanisms by which it was absorbed was by disciplining

the body. There were many examples of this throughout the day.

The following image is familiar to those who have observed madrasa

students: ‘the teachers’ control over the students’ bodies showed

whenever they began to recite a text during class, as without any fur-

ther ado the students ceased their activities, adjusted their posture,

ﬁ dgeted with the scarves covering their heads, and started moving

their upper bodies along with the rhythm of the teachers’ voice’.

As Winkelmann notes, discipline of the body was particularly neces-

sary given that space was tight at the Madrasatul Niswan, as students

ate, slept, and studied in the same physical space at diﬀ erent times

of the day. The teachers’ and senior students’ authority ensured the

students’ smooth transition from one activity to the next.

60 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 48–9, 72, 85. Borker devotes

considerable analytical attention to the many ways in which the madrasa stu-

dents, she observed, were connected with the outside world, especially those

who went on to study at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi. See Borker,

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood , particularly Chapter 7 and

Conclusion.

61 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , p. 80.

62 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 82–3.

76 Scholars of Faith

If discipline is central to the madrasa’s purpose, it is the girls’ ‘will-

ingness to be taught’, to use Saba Mahmood’s apt phrase, that allows

that purpose to be realized.

63 As Winkelmann notes, the students’ very

‘docility’ and acquiescence to authority should therefore be seen as a

form of agency. Likewise, the pardah-observing woman moving about

in public space is also actively ‘participating’ in the public sphere,

even though such participation is not her primary purpose. Some

scholars would say that they constitute a ‘subaltern counterpublic’,

that is, ‘a parallel discursive arena where members of subordinated

social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses to formulate

oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and needs’.

Some Thoughts on the Curriculum of Girls’ Madrasas

This chapter has looked at a number of diﬀ erent kinds of education

for Muslim girls in South Asia over the course of the twentieth cen-

tury, beginning with home schooling at the start of the period to the

tentative move towards institutional forms of learning in the 1920s

and 1930s, to madrasa education for girls today. Let me conclude

with a few observations about the syllabi of girls’ madrasas. First, the

syllabi of two very diﬀ erent girls’ madrasas, as indicated later in the

chapter, show that the textbooks chosen for inclusion are at one level

the same and at another level diﬀ erent, depending on the denomi-

nation ( maslak ) of the madrasa. The similarity in the overall syllabi

derives from the fact that girls’ madrasas are modelled on those for

boys, and therefore follow in large part the dars-i nizami syllabus that

dates back to the eighteenth century. The major subject areas of the

dars-i nizami are: primarily, the Qur’an and sciences associated with

Qur’anic study (recitation, exegesis, principles of exegesis), prophetic

traditions (Hadith), Islamic law and its principles (ﬁ qh and usul-i

63 Saba Mahmood, ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent:

Some Reﬂ ections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival’, Cultural Anthropology

(2001), 16(2): 202–36.

64 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , p. 100, quoting Nancy Fraser,

‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually

Existing Democracy’, in Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere

(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992).

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 77

ﬁ qh ), Arabic grammar and literature; and secondarily, Persian, Urdu,

rhetoric, logic, and philosophy. In addition, English, maths, and com-

puter science have become standard modern additions at a number of

South Asian madrasas, as doing so allows them to gain Government

of India recognition of their degrees and facilitates the transition of

some madrasa students into the educational mainstream.

The diﬀ erences are also notable, as may be seen by compar-

ing the books used in the Jami‘at al-Salehat and those used in the

Madrasatul Niswan—and in the next chapter, those in the Jami‘a Nur

al-Shari‘at—because of their diﬀ erent maslak identities. Thus, to cite

the most obvious diﬀ erences, the Jami‘at al-Salehat wants its students

to be well-versed in the writings of Mawlana Abul A‘la Mawdudi, the

founder of the Jama‘at-i Islami, while the Madrasatul Niswan teaches

the Faza’il-i ‘Amal , a Tablighi text, and to a more limited extent the

Bihishti Zewar , an important Deobandi book meant primarily for

women, though also read by men. When we look at the syllabus of the

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at in the following chapter, we will see that they

use the Sunni Bihishti Zewar and the Jannati Zewar , which are Barelwi

texts for women. Likewise, the Urdu translations of the Qur’an used

by the diﬀ erent madrasas are also diﬀ erent, and are indicative of the

ideological positioning of the authors.

It should also be noted, however, that there is some overlap

between the diﬀ erent groups. Thus, in the cases examined here, both

the Jami‘at al-Salehat and the Madrasatul Niswan use books written

by Mawlana Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi. This would indicate that the

Jami‘at al-Salehat and by extension the Jama‘at-i Islami feel they share

common ground with the Nadwa, despite diﬀ erences on particular

issues such as the acceptance ( taqlid ) or nonacceptance of rulings by

the Hanaﬁ school. 65 Likewise, the omission by the Jami‘at al-Salehat

of the Deobandi work Bihishti Zewar is indicative of the Jama‘at-i

Islami’s perceived ideological distance from the Deobandi school of

thought. The fact that the Madrasatul Niswan, with its Tablighi ties,

would use the Bihishti Zewar comes as no surprise, as the Tablighi

Jama‘at has close ties with Deoband. However, its use of Mawlana

65 On this, see Hartung, ‘The Nadwat al-ulama’. Moosa notes that

Mawlana Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi was a ‘onetime colleague of Mawdudi (with

whom he later had diﬀ erences)’. Moosa, What Is a Madrasa? , p. 27.

78 Scholars of Faith

Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi’s Qirat al-Rashida is not self-evident, as the two

groups take somewhat distinct stances on some issues.

66 Similarly, as

I noted earlier, the inclusion of an anthology of Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s

essays in the Jami‘at al-Salehat syllabus is remarkable, and points to

a rapprochement between the Indian Jama‘at and the secular Aligarh

Muslim University founded by Sayyid Ahmad Khan in the nineteenth

century.

A second point that emerges is that the syllabus at the Madrasatul

Niswan, as Winkelmann notes, is deﬁ nitely diﬀ erent from that of

boys’ madrasas. She shows how this is so by listing the books of a

representative sample of the dars-i nizami syllabus in an appendix to

her book. In general, the girls’ syllabus is shorter by a year than the

boys’ syllabus and where the same texts are taught, the girls study

diﬀ erent sections of those texts, those which are thought to be of rel-

evance to them as future wives and mothers. Furthermore, as one of

Winkelmann’s informants noted, there was no mufti course for girls

anywhere in India at the time she did her ﬁ eldwork, as women are not

allowed to issue fatwas. Thus the religious authority of women can

never be public, as is that of men. However, there are signs of change.

A madrasa in Hyderabad, Jamiat-ul-Mominath, reported on its web-

site in 2019 that 70 girls had received a mufti’s certiﬁ cate and were

‘spreading din’ ( isha‘at-i din ) not only in India but abroad as well.

These observations on the syllabus are borne out by my own

research on the Barelwi girls’ madrasa that I explore in the follow-

ing chapters. The feminization of the syllabus, to my mind, makes

sense in view of the purpose of girls’ madrasa education, which is

not employment-oriented so much as it is to ensure the educational

and religious uplift of the Muslim community as a whole. Unlike

Winkelmann, however, I believe that there never was a standard

dars-i nizami syllabus even for boys, as each of the Sunni Muslim

groups—Deobandi, Barelwi, Nadwi, and others—have changed it to

suit their perspectives since they began to establish madrasas of their

66 See Metcalf, Islamic Revival , Chapter 5, on the Nadwa and its diﬀ er-

ences with Deoband.

67 Jamiat-ul-Mominath website: http://www.jamiatulmominath.com;

accessed on 6 March 2019. My thanks to Raisur Rahman of Wake Forest

University for bringing this to my attention.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 79

own. Thus, the founders of the Dar al-‘Ulum madrasa in the 1860s

changed the original Farangi Mahall emphasis on ‘rational’ sciences

to one on Hadith and ﬁ qh. 68 Likewise, other ‘ulama have changed

the weight given to diﬀ erent subjects and the assigned texts for these

subjects as well.

Borker’s work on Madrasa Jamiatul Mominat, a Tablighi Jama‘at

madrasa near Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi, largely conﬁ rms

Winkelmann’s ﬁ ndings—and mine in this study. However, there

are two features in Borker’s ethnography which are notably absent

in Winkelmann’s work and mine. The ﬁ rst of these is her docu-

mentation of student performances through skits at the madrasa

during Republic Day (26 January) celebrations, seeking to show the

relevance of pardah in the aftermath of the gang rape of a young

woman on a bus in Delhi in December 2012. A powerful counterar-

gument to this madrasa’s understanding of the stereotype of pardah

as a signiﬁ er of backwardness is the discourse that connects the

practice of pardah with contemporary issues around the safety risks

to women in urban spaces in India, demonstrating the value and

relevance of pardah. 69

The second is Borker’s chapter on madrasa girls who choose to

go on to university by enrolling in Jamia Millia Islamia. This chap-

ter is valuable for its insights into students’ and students’ parents’

perception of university education as a very diﬀ erent kind of space,

one which parents in particular approach with considerable unease.

Borker’s ethnography illustrates the sharp contrast students draw

between their experience of studying in a madrasa versus a university,

and cautions us against assuming a single trajectory for Muslim girls

with a madrasa education. A few female madrasa students aspire for

a university education and the expanded horizons that it promises,

as Borker shows. Her exploration of the diﬃ culties these students

encountered at a number of levels—with parents, faculty, and male

students—and their stoic and patient endurance of bullying in the

classroom by male students, some of whom were former madrasa stu-

dents themselves, illustrates the strength of girls’ madrasa education

68 See Metcalf, Islamic Revival , Chapter 3.

69 Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood , especially pp.

181–5.

80 Scholars of Faith

in equipping them for the challenges they might face when stepping

outside the protected spaces of the home and the madrasa.

For most female madrasa students and teachers in small towns

like Shahjahanpur, UP, however, a university education is beyond

their parents’ ﬁ nancial means, especially if they lack family connec-

tions in the big city. As Borker’s study well illuminates, the world of

the madrasa is linked with the home. The university is perceived as

an alien space and is therefore not the choice of most madrasa girls

or their parents.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 81

APPENDIX 1

Jami‘at al-Salehat, Rampur (June 2013)

List of classes and subjects taught at the ‘Alima level

‘Ula (1st year) Saniya (2nd

yeayear)

Salisa (3rd year) Rabia (4th year)

Fiqh

Al-Fiqh

al-Muyassir

(select chapters)

Qur’an

Parts 29–30

Qur’an

Parts 26–8

Qur’an

Suras al-Anbiya,

Hajj, Mu‘minin,

Nur, Furqan

Arabic Language

1. Al-Qir‘at

al-Rashida, Part

2 by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul

Hasan ‘Ali

Nadwi

2. Qasas

al-Nabiyin, for

children, 1 and 2

Fiqh

1. Al-Fiqh

al-Muyassir

(select chapters)

2. Manthurat by

Mawlana Muhd.

Rab‘i Hasani

Nadwi

Hadith

Riyaz al-Salihayn

by Imam Nuri

Hadith

Mishkat

al-Masabih

Translation and

Composition

Muallim al-Insha,

Part 1, pp. 26–76

Arabic Language

1. Al-Qir‘at

al-Rashida, Part

3 by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul

Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi

2. Qasas

al-Nabiyin, Part

3 by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul

Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi

Fiqh

1. Mukhtasar

Quduri

2. Siraji ﬁ

al-Mirath

Fiqh

1. Sharh

al-Waqayah,

vol. 32. Siraji ﬁ

al-Mirath

82 Scholars of Faith

Arabic Grammar

1. Kitab al-Nahw,

1st half

2. Kitab al-Sarf,

1st half

Arabic Grammar

1. Kitab al-Sarf,

2nd half

2. Kitab al-Nahw,

2nd half

Arabic Language

and Literature

1. Hidaya

al-Nahw

(complete)

2. Mukhtarat

min Adab

al-‘Arab, Part

1, by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul

Hasan ‘Ali

Nadwi

3. Kalila wa

Dimna (select

chapters)

Principles of

Jurisprudence/

Usul al-Fiqh

‘Ilm Usul

al-Fiqh by ‘Abd

al-Wahhab

al-Khilaf

History of Islam

Tarikh-i Islam1st

half by Akbar

Shah Khan

Najibabadi,

Chapters 1 and 2

Translation and

Composition

Muallim

al-Insha, pp.

77–end of book

Arabic Literature

1. Al-Miqtatafat

min Diwan

al-Himasat, Part

1, published

by Jami‘at

al-Salehat,

Rampur

Arabic Literature

1. Mukhtarat min

Adab al-Arab,

Part 1, by

Mawlana Sayyid

Abul Hasan ‘Ali

Nadwi

2. Kalila wa

Dimna (select

chapters)

Urdu

Nawae Urdu,

NCERT, 1st half

History of Islam

Tarikh-i Islam1st

half by Akbar

Shah Khan

Najibabadi,

Chapters 1 and 2

Translation and

Composition

1. Muallim

al-Insha, Part 2,

1st part

2. Al-Balaghat

al-Wazihat

Arabic Literature

1. Al-Miqtatafat

min Diwan

al-Himasat, Part

3, published

by Jami‘at

al-Salehat,

Rampur

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 83

Home Science

‘Ilm-i Umur

Khanadari by

Musarrat Zabani,

1st half

Urdu

Nawae Urdu,

NCERT, 2nd half

History of Islam

Tarikh-i Islam,

Part 3 by Akbar

Shah Khan

Najibabadi

Arabic Literature

Qatar al-Nida

wa bil al-Sada

by Ibn Hisham,

2nd half

Civics

Jamhuria-i Hind

ka Dastur-i ‘Amal

by Hashim

Qidwai

Home Science

‘Ilm-i Umur

Khanadari

by Musarrat

Zabani, 2nd half

Other

Adabi Namune

by Educational

Book House,

AligarhBacchon

ki Tarbiyat by

Musarrat Zamani

Translation and

Composition

1. Muallim

al-Insha, Part 2,

2nd part

2. Al-Balaghat

al-Wazihat

Civics

Jamhuria-i Hind

ka Dastur-i ‘Amal

by Hashim

Qidwai

Civics

Jamhuria-i Hind

ka Dastur-i ‘Amal

by Hashim

Qidwai

History of Islam

Tarikh-i Islam,

Part 3 by Akbar

Shah Khan

Najibabadi

Other:

Adabi Namune

by Educational

Book House,

Aligarh

Bacchon ki

Tarbiyat by

Musarrat Zamani

Civics/political

science (Mubadi

Siyasat by

Hashim Qidwai)

Islami Siyasat

by Mawlana

Gawhar Rahman

84 Scholars of Faith

For Gener For

General Study

(muta‘ala-i

‘amm):

For General

Study

(muta‘ala-i

‘amm):

For General

Study

(muta‘ala-i

‘amm):

For General

Study

(muta‘ala-i

‘amm):

Rahmat-i A‘lam

by ‘Allama

Sayyid Sulayman

Nadwi

Khutbat, Part

1, Mawlana

Sayyid Abul A‘la

Mawdudi

Khutbat, Part

2, Mawlana

Sayyid Abul A‘la

Mawdudi

Khutbat, Parts 4

and 5, Mawlana

Sayyid Abul A‘la

Mawdudi

Khadija al-Kubra

by Ma’il

Khairabadi

Sirat-i Fatima by

Talib al-Hashmi

Hayat-i Tayyiba

by Mawlana

Muhd. ‘Abd

al-Hayy

Adab-i Zindagi by

Mawlana Muhd.

Yusuf Islahi

Khushgawar

Ta‘luqat by

Mawlana Muhd.

‘Abd al-Hayy

Azwaj Mutaharat

by Firozana

Ahsan

Hazrat A’isha by

Ma’il Khairabadi

Islam ka

Nizam-i Hayat

by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul A‘la

Mawdudi

Salamati

ka Rasta by

Mawlana Sayyid

Abul A‘la

Mawdudi

Dai A‘zam by

Mawlana Muhd.

Yusuf Islahi

Muslim Khawatin

se Islam ke

Matalebat

by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul A‘la

Mawdudi

Pardah, by

Mawlana Sayyid

Abul A‘la

Mawdudi

Guldasta-i

Hadith by

Mawlana Muhd.

Yusuf Islahi

Shama‘e Haram

by Mawlana

Muhd. Yusuf

Islahi

Husn Ma‘ashirat

by Mawlana

Muhd. Yusuf

Islahi

Haqiqat-i

Shari‘at by

Aiman Ahsan

Islahi

Khawatin by

Sayyid Akhtar

Yusuﬁ

Islam apse kya

chahta hai? by

Mawlana Sayyid

Hamid ‘Ali

Yuvak Bharati

Standard XI

Yuvak Bharati

Standard XII

English Reader

Standard IX

(third language)

English Reader

Standard X

A New Style of

General English

for Standard IX

A New Style of

General English

for Standard X

A New Style of

General English

for Standard X

A New Style of

General English

for Intermediate

Source : Prospectus 2013–2014 , pp. 14–16.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India 85

Jami‘at al-Salehat, Rampur

Fazila Course (2 years)

1st year 2nd year

Qur’an: Suras An‘am, Araf, Anfal,

Tawba, Nur, Ahzab

Qur’an: Suras Fatiha, Baqara, Al-i

Imran, Nisa‘, Mai’da

Hadith: Sunan Abu Da’ud, Sunan

Nisa‘i, Sunan Ibn-i Maja

Hadith: Sahih Bukhari, Sahih

Muslim, Sunan Tirmidhi

Fiqh: Bidayat al-Mujtahid, vol. 1 Fiqh: Bidayat al-Mujtahid, vol. 2

Principles of Fiqh: Usul al-Shashi,

1st half

Principles of Fiqh: Usul al-Shashi,

2nd half

Arabic Literature: 1. Mukhtarat min

Adab al-‘Arab, Part 3 by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi

2: Nusus Adabiyat

3. Muntakhabat min She‘r al-‘Arab,

Part 1, published by Jami‘at

al-Salehat, Rampur

4. Tarikh al-Adab al-‘Arabi (Jahili

period) by Mawlana Muhd. Wazeh

Rashid Nadwi

Arabic Literature: 1. Mukhtarat min

Adab al-‘Arab, Part 2, by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul Hasan ‘Ali Nadwi

2. Muntakhabat min She‘r al-‘Arab,

Part 1, published by Jami‘at

al-Salehat, Rampur

3. Tarikh al-Adab al-‘Arabi (Islamic

period), by Mawlana Muhd. Rabi‘

Hasani Nadwi

Education: 1. Ta‘limi Nafsiyat

ke Nae Zwie (New Dimensions

of Educational Psychology) by

Masarrat Zamani, Dr Ibn Farid

2. Fann Ta‘lim o Tarbiyat, by Afzal

Husain Khan

Education: 1. Ta‘limi Nafsiyat

ke Nae Zwie (New Dimensions

of Educational Psychology) by

Masarrat Zamani, Dr Ibn Farid

2. Fann Ta‘lim o Tarbiyat, by Afzal

Husain Khan

Logic: al-Mantiq, 3rd (tisra) by

Mawlana Muhd. ‘Abdallah Gangohi

Logic: al-Mantiq, 3rd (tisra) by

Mawlana Muhd. ‘Abdallah Gangohi

Urdu Literature: Musaddas-i Hali Urdu Literature: Intikhab Mazamin

Sir Sayyid

For General Study (muta‘ala-i

‘amm):

For General Study (muta‘ala-i

‘amm):

Huquq al-Zawjain by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul A‘la Mawdudi

Qur’an ki Char Bunyadi Istilahen by

Mawlana Sayyid Abul A‘la Mawdudi

Awrat Islami Ma‘ashire Men by

Mawlana Sayyid Jalal al-Din Umri

Da‘wat-i Din awr uska Tariqa-i Kar

by Mawlana Aiman Ahsan Islahi

Shahadat-i Haqq by Mawlana Sayyid

Abul A‘la Mawdudi

Jazira-i Arab by Mawlana Muhd.

Rabi‘ Hasani Nadwi

86 Scholars of Faith

Muhsin al-Insaniyat by Na‘im

Siddiqqi

Qur’ani Ta‘limat by Mawlana Muhd.

Yusuf Islahi

Haqiqat-i Tawhid by Aiman Ahsan

Islahi

New Light General English for

Intermediate

Fariza Iqamat-i Din by Mawlana

Sadr al-Din Islahi

Flamingo

New Light General English for

Intermediate

Vistas Supplementary Reader

Flamingo

Vistas Supplementary Reader

Source : Prospectus 2013–2014 , pp. 14–16.

APPENDIX 2

Madrasatul Niswan, Delhi (2003)

List of Classes and Subjects Taught

‘Idadiya

(Primary, Arabic

Class)

Ibtida’iya (Primary,

pre-Senior

Secondary School)

‘Ula (1st yr) Saniya (2nd yr) Salisa (3rd yr) Rabia (4th yr) Khamsa

(5th yr)

Qur’an

1. Memorization

of Suras al-Qaria

to al-Nas

2. Tajwid and

Qir‘at, entire

Qur’an

3. Rahmani

Arabic Qa’ida

Qur’an

Tajwid and Qir‘at:

1. Memorization

of tajwid from

Mu‘in al-Tajwid

along with its

basic grammar2.

Memorization of

Suras al--Fil to

al-Nas

Qur’an

Taught with

tajwid and

basic grammar.

Suras al-Zoha

to al-Adiyat

memorized

Qur’an

1. Tashil

al-Tajwid, by

Qari Muhd.

Siddiq Bandwi

2. al-Tamrin

bil-Tajwid wal

Hadar

Exegesis/Qur’an

Tarjuma

al-Qur’an, Parts

16–30, with

commentary

and exercise of

Sarf and Nawh

Tajwid/Qir‘at

Teacher chooses

chapters from

select suras

Exegesis of the

Qur’an/Tafsir

Ma‘arif al-Qur’an

‘Aqida

Du‘a-i Mathura

memorized

from Masnun

Du‘aen,

by Muhd.

‘Ashiq Ilahi

Bulandshahri

‘Aqida

Du‘a-i Mathura

memorized from

Masnun Du‘aen, by

Muhd. ‘Ashiq Ilahi

Bulandshahri

‘Aqida

Du‘a-i Mathura

memorized

from Masnun

Du‘aen,

by Muhd.

‘Ashiq Ilahi

Bulandshahri

Exegesis of

Qur’an/

Tafsir

Tarjumat

al-Qur’an, and

commentary,

Parts 1–15

‘Aqida

Al-‘Aqida

al-Hasana

Tafsir/Exegesis

Jalalayn, Parts

1–2

Hadith

1. Sahih Bukhari

2. Sahih Muslim

3. Sunan al-Nasa’i

4. Sunan Abi

Daud

5. Al-Jame‘al-

Tirmidhi

6. Sunan Abi

Majah

7. Sharh Mani‘

al-Asar lil-Tahawi

8. Al-Muwatta,

Imam Malik

9. Al-Muwatta,

Imam Muhd.

10. Al-Shama’il

lil-Tirmidhi

Tarbiyat/Islamic

Upbringing

1. Memorization

of the

fundamentals of

prayer (namaz),

its conditions,

bathing,

ablution, and

other Islamic

fundamentals

2. Stitching,

cooking, and

so on.

Tarbiyat/Islamic

Upbringing

1. Ladkiyon ka

Islamic Course,

Parts 1–4 by

Shaykh Maqbul

al-Rahman Bijnori

2. Dini Ta‘lim ka

Risala

3. Stitching,

cooking, and so on.

Tarbiyat/Islamic

Upbringing

Khawatin aur

din ki khidmat

by Mawlana

Sayyid Abul

Hasan ‘Ali

NadwiStitching,

cooking, and

so on.

‘Aqida

Taqwiyat

al-Iman, by

Shah Isma‘il

Dehlawi

Hadith

1. Mishkat

al-Masabih,

select chapters

2. Hayat

al-Sahaba, Part

Usul al-Tafsir/

Principles of

Exegesis

Al-Fauz al-Kabir

ﬁ Usul al-Tafsir

History

Tarikh Da‘wat

o A‘zimat, for

study

Arabic

Miftah

al-Qur’an, Parts

1 and 2

Fiqh

1. Bihishti Samar,

Parts 1–2

2. Ta‘limul Islam,

by Mufti Muhd.

Kifayaullah Dehlawi

Fiqh

Bihishti Zewar

by Mawlana

Ashraf ‘Ali

Thanawi

Hadith

Tahzib al-Akhlaq

Usul al-Fiqh

Nur al-Anwar

‘Aqida

1. Risala

al-Tawhid

2. ‘Aqida

al-Tahawia

Summary

of ‘Aqida

al-Tahawia

Urdu

1. Rahmani

Urdu Qa’ida

2. Urdu Zaban,

Parts 1–2 by

Muhd. Isma‘il

Merathi

3. Reading,

writing,

dictation, and

letter writing

History

Tarikh al-Islam,

Part 3 by Mufti

Muhd. Miyan

Dihlawi

Usul al-Fiqh

Mabad-i Usul

al-Fiqh by

Mawlana Sayyid

Abul Hasan ‘Ali

Nadwi

Fiqh

1. Nur al-Izah

2. Quduri, Kitab

al-Boyu

Arabic

Literature

1. Qisas

al-Nabiyin, Part

42. Mansurat

Hadith

Mishkat

al-Masabih,

select chapters

English

Al-Qalam

Islamic Primer

Arabic

1. Rahmani Qa’ida

Arabic

2. Miftah al-Qalam,

Parts 1–3

History of Islam

Tarikh al-Islam

Usul al-Fiqh

1. Tashil al-Usul

2. Usul al-Shashi

Insha

1. ‘Arbi ka

Muallim, Part4

2. Al-Tamrin ala

al-Takallum

Usul al-Hadith

Muqaddama

Tanqih al-Lamat

by ‘Abd al-Haqq

Muhaddith

Dihlawi

3. Arabic Sifwat

al-Masadir:

memorization of

names of days,

months, and years

in Arabic

4. Minhaj

al-‘Arabiya, Part 1

bil-Lughat

al-‘Arabiya

Maths

1. Memorization

of Urdu tables

2. Multiplication

Urdu

1. Rahmani Urdu

Qa’ida

2. Urdu Zaban,

Parts 3–5, by

Muhd. Isma‘il

Merathi

3. Reading, writing,

dictation, and letter

writing

Sira

Tarikh Habib

Allah

Balagha/

Rhetoric

Tashil

al-Balagha

Tarbiyat

Stitching,

embroidery,

cooking

Fiqh

Hidaya,

Awwalayn

Home Science

Respect for

teachers, regard

for books,

classroom, and

discipline

English

Book selected

by teacher in

accordance with

student ability

Arabic

Literature

1. Muﬁ d

al-Talibin

2. Minhaj

al-‘Arabiya, Parts

2 and 3

3. Qisas

al-Nabiyin, Parts

2 and 3

4. Al-Tamrin

al-Takallum

bil-Lughat

al-‘Arabiya

5. Sifwat

al-Masadir,

memorization

6. Miftah

al-Qur’an, Parts

3 and 4

Arabic

Literature

1. Lisan

al-Qur’an;

juzan Mukhtar

al-Muallimin

wal Muallimat

2. Miftah

al-Qur’an, Part 5

3. Qisas

al-Nabiyin,

Part 3

Tajwid/Qir‘at

Revision of

Tashil al-Tajwid

along with

Tajwid and

Hadar

Mirath

1. Tashil

al-Fara’idh

ﬁ l-Mirath

2. Seraji

Mukhtarat,

Part 1

Maths

Book selected

by teacher in

accordance with

student ability

Arabic Essay

1. Translation

and Essay

writing

2. ‘Arbi ka

Muallim, Parts 1

and 2

3. Muallim

al-Insha, Part 1

Insha

1. ‘Arbi ka

Muallim, Part 3

2. Al-Tamrin

a‘la Takallum

bil-Lughat

al-‘Arabiya

3. Muallim

al-Insha, Part 2

History of Islam

Select chapters

Tarbiyat/

Upbringing

Stitching,

embroidery,

cooking

Home Science

Respect for

teachers, regard for

books, classroom,

and discipline

Arabic

Grammar

‘Ilm al-Sarf

al-Awwal, by

Mushtaq Ahmad

Jarthawli

Tamrin al-Sarf

for study and

exercise

Tarbiyat/Islamic

Upbringing

Stitching,

cooking, and

so on.

Sira

Sirat al-Nabi, by

‘Allama Shibli

Nu‘mani, Parts

3–4

History

Select chapters

Urdu

Dini Ta‘lim ka

Risala, Parts

I–XI by Muhd.

Miyan Dihlawi

History of Islam

Tarikh al-Islam

wa Sirat

al-Nabawiya

Arabic

Grammar

‘Ilm al-Sigha by

Shaykh Muhd.

Raﬁ ‘Usmani

Nahw: Al-Nahw

al-Wazeha, Parts

1–3

Sira

Sirat al-Nabi by

‘Allama Shibli

Nu‘mani; select

chapters

English

Book selected

by teacher in

accordance with

student ability

Sira

Sirat al-Nabi, by

Shibli Nu‘mani,

Parts 1–2

Rhetoric/

Balagha

1. Durus

al-Balagha

3. Al-Balagha

al-Wazeha

Arabic

Grammar

Al-Nahw

al-Wazeha,

Parts 1–3

Maths

Book selected

by teacher in

accordance with

student ability

Arabic

Grammar

Kitab al-Sarf by

‘Abdur Rahman

Amritsari

English

Book selected

by teacher in

accordance with

student ability

English

Chapter

selected by

teacher from

prescribed book

Nahw: Tashil

Hidayat

al-Nahw

English

Book selected

by teacher in

accordance with

student ability

Note : Faza’il-i ‘Amal is prescribed for the entire duration of the course (Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , p. 146).

Source : Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 140–9.



JAMI‘A NUR ALSHARI‘AT, A

BARELWI GIRLS’ MADRASA IN

UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA

A Muslim has to follow the shari‘a, the ﬁ rst step of which is to o er

prayer ( namaz ) regularly. If you don’t take the ﬁ rst step, how can you

climb the ladder?

—Sayyid Sahib, December 

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at and Its Founder

Located in the small, west Uttar Pradesh (UP) town of Shahjahanpur,

the madrasa Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, as I am calling it (this is not its

real name), in October  had about  girls in the boarding

school, in addition to a handful of girls who studied there during the

day but returned home at the end of classes. Two distinctive features

of the madrasa are: its denominational a liation and its rural, largely

working-class background. In denominational terms, the founder

and students self-identify as Barelwi Sunni Muslims. Also noteworthy

is the fact that most of the students of this madrasa come from either

rural families in west UP and neighbouring Indian states or from

small towns such as Shahjahanpur, with a small number coming

from larger cities. In many cases, the girls’ parents have not studied

beyond primary school. However, as I discuss in this book, they have

invested heavily in the education of their children, both boys and girls.

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

The madrasa was founded in  by Sayyid Ehsan Miyan, a ec-

tionately addressed as Abba Huzur (respected father) by the madrasa

students. Sta and teachers called him Sayyid Sahib.

 Sayyid Sahib

is a tall bespectacled man with a wiry frame, energetic manner, and

excellent posture. He wears a long white tunic ( kurta ) with loose white

pants ( pyjama ), and on his head is a white turban. His manner is

direct, informal, and open, with a touch of humour, and his language

is simple, even colloquial. He speaks with verve, emphasizing his

words with a gleeful slap on the thigh and a glint in his eye when he

makes a point that seems but logical and self-evident to him.

In response to my questions, he gave me the following informa-

tion about himself:

Sayyid Sahib (SS): I was born in Qasba Saurikh [in the south-western cor-

ner of] district Kannauj, around . I grew up in the village of Kabirpur.

My father died when I was a year and a half old, and I was one of ﬁ ve

children.

I came from a wealthy family with business interests. But because I

rejected the life of a businessman, I live simply.

I studied in Pilibhit upto the th or th standard and stayed in my vil-

lage until I was . Then I came to Bareilly to study at [Madrasa] Manzar-i

Islam. I was there for just two years. Then I went to teach in Pilibhit,

in Qasba Nuriya. The name of the madrasa was Dar al-Shamsiya. It had

about – resident students, all boys. I was a teacher and overall man-

ager of this school for ﬁ fteen years.

In , I opened a school for boys. Even back then, I planned to open

a girls’ school one day. I opened this madrasa in 

 in response to

popular demand. All the Sunni girls in this community were attending

Deobandi schools because there was no alternative, and when they gradu-

ated they thought like Deobandis. When I opened the madrasa in ,

 There is a vast literature on the role of Sayyids in South Asian Islam.

See, among others, Imtiaz Ahmad, ‘Is there Caste among Muslims in India?’,

Eastern Anthropologist (), (): –; Arthur F. Buehler, ‘Trends of

Ashraﬁ zation in India’, in Morimoto Kazuo, ed., Sayyids and Sharifs in Muslim

Societies: The Living Links to the Prophet (Abingdon: Routledge, ); and

Sachiyo Komaki, ‘The Name of the Gift: Sacred Exchange, Social Practice and

Sayyad Category in North India’, Talasaki City University Economics (),

(): –.

 The madrasa began in  but was formally inaugurated in .

 Scholars of Faith

many parents withdrew their girls from Deobandi schools, and they ﬁ lled

up the madrasa quickly.

Usha Sanyal (US): Who had asked you to do it? The ‘ulama or the people?

SS: You know the ‘ulama. They don’t like me. It was the ordinary people.

With the ‘ulama, it’s all about desire for fame, wealth, and power. Although

I get along with them, I don’t have close relations with them.

As a Sayyid, I’m not allowed to take zakat money. So, I used to spend a

lot of time travelling to raise money for the madrasas. People give [dona-

tions] when they see you, but if they don’t see you, they don’t give. I am

talking of poor people who give small donations. Rich people, and gov-

ernment and public o cials, are willing to give, but they want to take a

commission.

Although Sayyid Sahib distanced himself from the Barelwi ‘ulama in

the above conversation, his own background and occupation—teach-

ing Hadith, Qur’anic exegesis, and Suﬁ sm ( tasawwuf ) in his boys’

madrasa—was very much that of an Islamic scholar ( ‘alim ). Rather

than excluding himself from the category, he was drawing a line

between certain Barelwi ‘ulama with whom he had di erences, and

himself. In his characteristically understated way, he was indicating

to me where he stood in the intra-Barelwi politics centred on Bareilly

city, not far from Shahjahanpur.

Sayyid Sahib’s other distancing move in the earlier conversation,

less surprisingly, was an inter-denominational ( maslaki ) one indicat-

ing his di erences with the Deobandis. It is, therefore, particularly

noteworthy that a Deobandi scholar writing a history of the ‘ulama of

Shahjahanpur, writes about Sayyid Sahib in the following terms:

He is a man of great intelligence and integrity. The mawlana has a pen-

etrating intellect, is to the point, is attentive to ritual purity, kind, of good

character, a follower of the sunna, and conciliatory in every respect. In the

ﬁ eld of knowledge, his e orts and service are most praiseworthy. He has

made the spread of knowledge his goal and purpose, and has already done

a lot in this ﬁ eld. He established a madrasa in Qasba Nuriya, in district

Pilibhit, another one in Faridpur, district Bareilly, and built an impressive

two-storey building in [Shahjahanpur] for a boys’ madrasa. But his thirst

for knowledge was not satisﬁ ed. After a few years he laid the foundation

for a girls’ madrasa, which today is operating with great success. 

 Shah Mahmud ‘Ali Khan, Sar-zamin-i Shahjahanpur ke ‘Ulama-i Fuhul,

Huﬀ az, o Qura‘ (Shahjahanpur: n.p., ), pp. – (my translation).

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

A little further, Shah Mahmud ‘Ali Khan says:

Ehsan Miyan has never made the Prophet’s pulpit ( minbar ) a wrestling

arena ( akhara ). Rather, he has always protected its honour ( ihtiram ). He

has neither asked for a predetermined fee for delivering a speech, nor

made it [the speech] an instrument with which to speak against people of

other denominations (maslak). The purpose of his life is religious knowl-

edge, the advancement of tawhid and the sunna , and the rebuttal of rep-

rehensible innovation ( bid‘a ). … Despite the maslak - related di erences

( tazadd ) between us, I have never felt that I was talking to an ‘alim of an

opposing ( mukhalif ) maslak . Because of his love of the truth, misguided

( be-rah ) people of his own maslak don’t like him. And how could they,

when Sayyid Sahib is neither given to cursing his opponents nor to writing

fatwas against them? … Indeed, he is a man of Allah. 

This is a remarkable tribute to a Barelwi scholar by a Deobandi one.

The last few sentences refer to the fact that Sayyid Ehsan Miyan has

been criticized by the descendants of Mawlana Ahmad Raza Khan. I

will explore these internal politics later in this chapter.

Sayyid Sahib was also pragmatic in his approach to politics,

favouring the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Suresh Khanna in

Shahjahanpur, for example, over the Congress Party’s Muslim one,

Azam Khan, in the  elections because the former had responded

positively when Sayyid Sahib and other local muslims had approached

him on speciﬁ c issues in the past. I learned that Sayyid Sahib had

gone out of his way to help women whose families were unable or

unwilling to provide for them, by employing them as wardens in the

madrasa. Although he was not involved in the day-to-day manage-

ment of the girls’ madrasa, his leadership was key in terms of setting

the tone and ensuring that the school operated on an even keel, with

teachers and managers being on good terms with one another and

knowing that they could turn to him for advice at any time via cell

phone.

In the course of time, I came to learn something of importance

both of the geographical connection of the school management with

the districts of Kannauj and Farrukhabad, and of Suﬁ networks in

Sayyid Sahib’s fund-raising and school-building e orts. Both sets of

relationships were signalled by kinship terms: familial terms referring

 Khan, Sar-zamin-i Shahjahanpur ke ‘Ulama-i Fuhul, Huﬀ az, o Qura‘ , p.

.

 Scholars of Faith

to relationships through marriage or biological descent in the ﬁ rst

case, and Suﬁ terms referring to the spiritual brotherhood formed by

common allegiance to a Suﬁ master in the second.

The Kannauj–Farrukhabad Connection:

The Core Families

Farrukhabad district is located to the south of Shajahanpur, and south

of that is Kannauj district (before  it was part of Farrukhabad

district). The river Ganges crosses it in the northeast, and smaller

tributaries (the rivers Kali and Ishan) cross the district itself. This

geography makes communications between north and south di -

cult, as the railroad connecting Shahjahanpur with Hardoi (and on to

Lucknow) in the east skims the eastern edge of the district. There is

no train line linking the north of the district with the south because

of the many river crossings. When Sayyid Sahib goes home to Qasba

Saurikh in western Kannauj, he has to make his way by other means,

as the rivers have no railway bridges. This was explained to me by

Abu Ji, another person of great authority at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at.

Abu Ji’s village of Azizalpur (about -miles south of Farrukhabad

city in Farrukhabad district) was just across the northern border of

the district of Kannauj. It took him  hours by bus to travel between

Shahjahanpur and his village, a distance of about  miles.

The land in the district of Farrukhabad, like the Gangetic plains

(Doab) of west UP more broadly, is ﬂ at and well-watered, and there-

fore alluvial and productive. Potatoes were an important crop, with

two harvests, Abu Ji told me. Abu Ji had a son-in-law who owned a

cold storage building used for storing potatoes. Farmers harvested

their potatoes in February–March and brought them in for cold stor-

age. Each farmer’s sacks of potatoes were counted and labelled; in July

the farmers would return to take their potatoes for sale in the market.

By September–October the storage units would be empty or nearly

so. This was the time for cleaning and maintenance, after which the

electricity would be turned o for the winter. The storage unit owner’s

proﬁ t depended on the size of the crop that year, for a full crop meant

the unit would be ﬁ lled to capacity. 

 Personal conversation with Abu Ji, October . The District Gazetteer

for Shahjahanpur District, , noted that in the s irrigation through

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

Abu Ji means ‘father’ in Urdu. His real name was Riaz Ahmad,

but no one referred to him as such. He was a tall, thin, bespectacled

man in his late ﬁ fties with a ﬂ owing white beard and a straight

back. He was seen at all hours of day and night in his white tunic

(kurta) and blue checked sarong ( lungi ), keeping a watchful eye on

tube wells and private pumps was introduced in the district, allowing for

extension of agriculture and a second crop ( do-fasli ). This was, in the words

of the gazetteer, a ‘turning point in the ﬁ eld of agriculture’. The main food

crops grown in the s were paddy, wheat, sugar cane, pulses, and potatoes.

Kailash Narain Pande, Gazetteer of India, Uttar Pradesh, District Shahjahanpur

(Lucknow: Department of District Gazetteers, ), pp. –.

Sehramau

Mohanpur

Deukali

Banda

Nahil

Khutar

Baragaon

Sindhauli

Banthra Shahwaznagar

Shahganj

Rosa

Chandapur

Allahganj

Mirzapur

Rafiabad

Khandhar

Kundaria

Madnapur

Jaitipur

Miranpur

Katra

Nigohi

Khudaganj

Jalalabad

Tihar

Pawayan

KHERI

PILIBHIT

BAREILLY

BUDAUN

FARRUKHABAD

HARDOI

SHAHJAHANPUR

o B il yT are l

T tapuro Si

National Highway

Major Road

Railway

District Boundary

River

District HQ

Other Town

Major Town

Legend

SHAHJAHANPUR

Figure 2.1 Shahjahanpur District Map

 Scholars of Faith

students, teachers, and all those who crossed the threshold of the

madrasa premises. Although to me he seemed an intrinsic part of

the madrasa—so central was his role in its day-to-day operations—in

fact he had only worked there for six years. He loved to travel, and had

had an interesting but hard life, travelling widely in India as a truck

driver and tour bus driver, and later working at a bakery in Mumbai.

He had returned to west UP to help take care of his aged parents.

Ever since he began working at the madrasa six years ago at Sayyid

Sahib’s request, he had ﬁ lled a key administrative role, taking care of

sta ng issues and account keeping. On a day-to-day basis, his voice

could be heard calling out students’ names early in the morning when

their parents called them by cell phone, and he was also seen selling

student supplies and small bits of candy to students who came to him

through the day and during their free time in the late evening, money

in hand. More importantly, he knew when students or sta were sick

and decided what action to take, oversaw the distribution of food to

students at dinner time, and slept at the madrasa premises at night to

ensure the students’ safety and security. In short, he played a central

role in the day-to-day running of the madrasa.

Abu Ji’s relationship with Sayyid Sahib went back many years: it

was in part a familial one, as one of his daughters was married to a

nephew of Sayyid Sahib, Talib, who worked on the madrasa website,

among other things. (Being ‘father’ or ‘Abu Ji’ to Talib, the term came

to be adopted by everyone at the madrasa, students included.) This

relationship by marriage involved two men of high social standing,

Sayyid Sahib being a sayyid (descendant of the Prophet Muhammad),

and Abu Ji a pathan. (The other dimension of their relationship was

their discipleship to the same Suﬁ master, discussed in the next

section.)

These relationships were reﬂ ected in the strong bonds of trust

between Sayyid Sahib and Abu Ji, and in practical ways too. Thus,

just down the street from Sayyid Sahib’s simple two-room house in a

neighbourhood on the outskirts of Shahjahanpur (where brand new

buildings for the girls’ madrasa were under construction in  and

), lived Talib with his family. And a short distance away from

their houses was the boys’ madrasa, which had about  residential

students. Both Sayyid Sahib and his eldest son taught there. This

part of town—more like a small village on the outskirts of the town

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

itself—was surrounded by green ﬁ elds and, unlike the dense con-

struction around the original girls’ madrasa in the city, had plenty of

open space. For this reason, the daily baking of bread (rotis) for the

hundreds of students, both boys and girls, took place in two large

earthen clay ovens in a lean-to outside the boys’ madrasa. (Before the

girls were moved to the new premises in , all the other cooking

for the girls took place at the girls’ madrasa in the city.) The girls’ rotis

were taken by minivan from here to the neighbourhood in the city

where the girls’ madrasa was located, a drive of about  minutes.

Occasionally there would be a crisis, as when the cook in the girls’

madrasa did not come and all the food had to be cooked in the boys’

madrasa and transported by minivan to feed the girls. Whenever Abu

Ji needed to come here, if he had time he would pay his daughter and

grandchildren a quick visit and have a cup of tea before returning to

the city.  In , the situation became a lot simpler, as both the girls’

and boys’ madrasas were now located within a stone’s throw distance

of one another, and the cooking for both was therefore done in the

same kitchen.

There were two other men in the girls’ madrasa who had a Kannauj

connection. Particularly interesting was Hazrat, whose real name was

Mawlana Muhammad Husayn. Unlike Abu Ji, though, he was Sayyid

Sahib’s disciple ( murid ), not his spiritual ‘brother’. Hazrat taught

jurisprudence ( ﬁ qh ), Hadith, and Qur’anic exegesis ( tafsir ) to the

advanced students in the girls’ madrasa, and also fulﬁ lled important

administrative functions like paying teachers’ salaries. He was treated

by the girls as mahram (a male family member forbidden to a woman

in marriage). Students wore full face veils ( niqab ) when attending his

classes, but sat around the room with him without a partition (unlike

the case with another male teacher who taught Qur’an recitation).

The teachers’ interaction with him outside the classroom was respect-

ful but familial, in that they conversed with him without formality.

He and his family—wife and ﬁ ve small children—occupied a room

 Abu Ji also had a granddaughter in the girls’ madrasa, an -year-old girl

(in October ) called Jannat whom he had raised himself after the tragic

death of her mother (one of Abu Ji’s daughters) when she was a year old. But

when I went to visit in December , she was no longer there, having gone

to live with her father, older siblings, and other relatives.

 Scholars of Faith

on one side of the school building, where they had their own bathing

facilities and a small courtyard. Before , when the girls’ madrasa

moved to the new location, Hazrat’s living quarters were separated

from the main section by high walls and a door that Abu Ji locked at

night from the girls’ side, e ectively locking them out of the school

until the next morning. Even after the girls’ madrasa moved, Hazrat

continued to live at the old location. He would come to the madrasa

every morning and leave at the end of the school day.

Lastly, there was Phupha, Sayyid Sahib’s brother-in-law ( bahnoi ,

sister’s husband), who supervised the kitchen and the preparation of

meals, and in his spare time helped Abu Ji manage the ﬂ ow of visi-

tors at the front reception counter. He was a genial, friendly presence,

loved by all. On special occasions when the teachers wanted to cook

something in the sta room, they would give him some cash and ask

him to buy them vegetables and meat, a small personal service he

performed for them that had nothing to do with their o cial duties.

Together, these men and their families constituted what I call, follow-

ing Winkelmann,  the ‘core families’ of the Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at.

The Leadership’s Spiritual Network through

Mustafa Raza Khan

Sayyid Sahib was a Suﬁ master to many of the men, and to some young

students and older women in his social network and the madrasa.

Thus, Hazrat was Sayyid Sahib’s disciple (murid). In other cases, his

relationship to them was that of a ‘Suﬁ brother’ ( pir bhai ). Thus, Abu

Ji and Sayyid Sahib were related spiritually by virtue of their disciple-

ship to the same Suﬁ master, Mawlana Mustafa Raza Khan (d. ),

the younger son of Mawlana Ahmad Raza Khan (–) whom

Barelwis always respectfully refer to as A‘la Hazrat (‘[his] high pres-

ence’). In this section I will explore the nature of the Suﬁ dimension

of the madrasa’s identity, as it sheds greater light on the internal splits

between di erent branches of the Barelwi leadership, hinted at in

Sayyid Sahib’s comments to me, as well as the connections between

di erent madrasa administrators.

 Mareike Jule Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a Girls’

Madrasa in India (Amsterdam: ISIM Press, ), especially pp. –.

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

As noted, Sayyid Sahib’s Suﬁ pir was Mustafa Raza Khan, known

as ‘Mufti-i A‘zam-i Hind’. Mustafa Raza’s tomb is in Bareilly, and

his descendants have built a Suﬁ centre in the area, near Ahmad

Raza’s much larger mausoleum. His pir was the true kind, Sayyid

Sahib said, one who was spiritually pure and didn’t seek fame and

glory. Implicitly he was contrasting Mawlana Mustafa Raza Khan

with other descendants of Ahmad Raza Khan. While never criticizing

them directly, he often expressed his frustration with the state of the

Muslim community, saying that the Muslims were their own worst

enemies. Blaming the Barelwis speciﬁ cally for many practices which

amounted to ‘the dunya (world) entering the din (religion), instead

of the din coming into the dunya ’,  he laid the responsibility on the

Barelwi ‘ulama, who had made a ‘business’ out of their religion. On

one occasion, he said:

A Muslim has to follow the shari‘a, the ﬁ rst step of which is to o er prayer

( namaz ) regularly. If you don’t take the ﬁ rst step, how can you climb the

ladder? Likewise, Suﬁ sm ( piri-muridi ) also has to be conducted within

those limits. But they have made it into a business. They have become

egotistic and self-important just because they are descendants of Ahmad

Raza Khan. They make you wait hours on end in their waiting rooms

before they see you, then they want you to bow to them. I am not willing

to do all that.

Comments such as these came up periodically in our conversations.

Although Sayyid Sahib did not name any names, the leading

descendants of Ahmad Raza Khan are well known. According to

Sumbul Farah, when she did her ﬁ eldwork in – there were

two competing centres of power in Bareilly, as well as a number of

‘satellites’.  One of the main centres was Mawlana Akhtar Raza Khan

(known as Azhari Miyan), who held the o ce of mufti (jurist who

issues fatwas), and was the only one of Ahmad Raza’s descendants

with a reputation for scholarship. A great-grandson (third-generation

descendant) of Ahmad Raza through his older son Hamid Raza Khan,

 Personal conversation with Sayyid Sahib, December .

 Sumbul Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local Level Islam: A Case Study of

Barelwi Khanqahs’ (PhD thesis, University of Delhi, May ), pp. –

and passim.

 Scholars of Faith

he was in his seventies at the time.

 His house in Bareilly was at

the centre of a vast network of disciples and followers from all over

the world. In , he inaugurated a large and modern educational

centre in Bareilly, called the Centre of Islamic Studies Jami‘atur Raza.

Financed through donations from wealthy foreign Barelwi admir-

ers of Akhtar Raza, it is set on a large campus, and has large well-

equipped classrooms amidst manicured lawns (surprisingly green

even in June, when I saw them).

The second centre of spiritual authority was Subhan Raza Khan

(known as Subhani Miyan), a fourth-generation descendant of Ahmad

Raza. He was the current head ( sajjada nishin ) of Ahmad Raza’s

shrine, and as Azhari Miyan’s nephew was considerably younger than

him. He managed the Madrasa Manzar-i Islam and was the editor of

the monthly journal A‘la Hazrat , but seemed to have fewer ﬁ nancial

resources than his uncle.

The politics of the descendants of Ahmad Raza Khan in Bareilly,

and between the scholar–mufti (Azhari Miyan) and the sajjada nishin,

the spiritual successor to the shrine (Subhani Miyan), have been

Ahmad Raza Khan (1856–1921)

Tahsin Raza Khan

(d. 2007)

Mustafa Raza Khan (Mufti-i A’zam-i

Hind) (1892–1981) (7 daughters, 1 son

who died in infancy)

Ibrahim Raza Khan

(1907–1965)

Akhtar Raza Khan

(Azhari Miyan)

MUFTI

(d. 2018)

Subhan Raza Khan

(Subhani Miyan)

SAJJADA

NISHIN

Rehan Raza Khan

Hamid Raza Khan

(1875–1943)

Hasan Raza Khan (1859–1908)

Figure 2.2 Abbreviated Genealogical Tree of Ahmad Raza Khan and His

Descendants

 Born in , Mawlana Akhtar Raza Khan died on  July , at the

age of .

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

explored in great detail by Farah. She writes: ‘The sense of entitle-

ment that marks the family’s attitude[,] coupled with the veneration

of the believers serves to characterize the descendants of Ahmad Raza

Khan as the religious elite of Bareilly. They wield much power over

the masses and occupy … high ritual status. The metaphor of royalty

can therefore be aptly evoked in this context.’



As Sayyid Sahib indicated in his conversations with me, he had dis-

tanced himself from active involvement in the a airs of the Barelwi

‘ulama in Bareilly, choosing instead to build his own networks through

travel, teaching, and Suﬁ ties with men in di erent UP districts. As a

result, the ‘ulama in Bareilly had no active involvement in his educa-

tional e orts, though one of them (Tahsin Raza Khan, son of Ahmad

Raza’s younger brother Hasan Raza) was invited to the foundation

stone laying ceremony of the girls’ madrasa in . The ‘ulama in

Bareilly played little to no part in funding any of his projects.

In e ect, what we have here is a Suﬁ network that traces its spiri-

tual roots back to Mawlana Ahmad Raza Khan through his younger

son Mawlana Mustafa Raza Khan, while simultaneously distancing

itself from the spiritual lines that go through Ahmad Raza Khan’s

older son Hamid Raza Khan and his male descendants, particularly

the sajjada nishin of Ahmad Raza’s shrine.

 Since Mawlana Mustafa

Raza Khan had daughters but no sons, his spiritual lineage had been

overshadowed by that of Hamid Raza Khan. However, to his disciples,

who numbered in the thousands, his presence in their lives was real

even  years after his death. In many cases, the people who revered

him were young boys when they took their oath of loyalty ( baya‘ ) at

his hands. They ascribed small, everyday strokes of good fortune in

their lives to the blessings of their pir, Mustafa Raza Khan, who was

watching over their a airs. 

 Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local Level Islam’, p. .

 For genealogical charts and trees, see Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local

Level Islam’, pp. – and Appendix.

 Thus, to cite an example, a man from Bareilly who was trying to get to

Shahjahanpur to meet Sayyid Sahib and me in December  boarded the

wrong train, one that would have taken him straight to Lucknow instead of

stopping at Shahjahanpur. However, he was able to persuade the conductor

to stop the train about  miles outside Shahjahanpur to allow him to get o ,

 Scholars of Faith

Construction of the new school buildings that Sayyid Sahib began

to build in Shahjahanpur and Bareilly in  was made possible by

two grants from the Maulana Azad Educational Foundation in .

He said these grants, totalling INR  lakh altogether (INR . mil-

lion, or approximately USD ,) gave him the strength ( himmat )

to get started.  Thereafter, the people who helped him build his

four schools from scratch were small business owners, townsmen,

and villagers from the districts of Shahjahanpur and other parts of

west UP. Many were his Suﬁ disciples. In addition, he was construct-

ing a co-educational public school on the outskirts of Bareilly that

sought to combine secular and religious learning. Land and bricks

for the buildings of this ambitious project had been donated by own-

ers of brick factories that dotted the landscape on the highway from

Shahjahanpur to Bareilly, a distance of – miles.

The importance of the Suﬁ ethos of the madrasa was underscored

for me when one Thursday night in August  a student gave a

verbal performance, reciting in verse Sayyid Sahib’s Suﬁ genealogy.

Some of the verses went as follows:

He who is the lifeblood of Sunni identity/ Jo sunniyat ki jan hai

Leader of the community/ Qaum ka imam hai

He who is the slave of the Prophet/ Nabi ka jo ghulam hai

His name is Raza/ Raza us ka nam hai

My Raza, my Raza/ Mere raza, mere raza

Raza, raza, raza

The beloved of the Prophet/ Nabi ka pyara ladla

Who is a mountain of knowledge/ jo ‘ilm ka pahar hai

You are the roar of the lion/ tu sher ki dahar hai

The one of whom the Wahhabis were afraid /Wahhabi jis se dar gaye

an act of kindness that he ascribed to the blessings of his pir, Mustafa Raza

Khan.

 According to Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon, Educating Musim Girls: A

Comparison of Five Indian Cities (Delhi: Women Unlimted, ), p. , gov-

ernment schemes such as the Maulana Azad Educational Foundation ‘for

the establishment of schools, including residential schools and colleges for

girls—have made an insigniﬁ cant dent in their educational deprivation’. They

point out that ‘civil society initiatives have played a crucial role in educational

expansion’ in all states.

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

Many of them were [thoroughly] reformed/ Bahut se hi sudhar gaye

He is the leader of love/ Woh ‘ishq ka imam hai

My Raza, my Raza/ Mere raza, mere raza

Raza, raza, raza

…

He who, all his life/ Jo batilon ki umr bhar

Has been breaking the hearts of those who are false/ Dilon ko torta raha

He in whose veins ﬂ owed/ Ragon men jis ki mustafa kae

His love of the Prophet/ ‘Ishq daurta raha

He refuted the Wahhabis/ Wahhabiyon ko radd kiya

And gave [us] the Fatawa-i Rizwiya/Fatawa-i Rizwiya diya

He who fulﬁ ls all needs/ Jo hajat-i tamam hai

He is the imam of love/ Woh ‘ishq ka imam hai

Raza is his name/ Raza uska nam hai .

My Raza, my Raza/ Mere raza, mere raza

Raza, raza, raza. 

This poem was interesting on several counts. First, the Thursday eve-

ning student-led programme ( anjuman ) in which it was performed

was one of the few occasions when the madrasa made explicit its

Barelwi and Suﬁ identities. This did not happen in every student

presentation, but allusions scattered throughout student sermons or

poems gave ample evidence of themes such as love of the Prophet,

which is a signature Barelwi refrain, and certain characteristics such

as knowledge of the unseen ( ‘ilm-i ghayb ) which Barelwis ascribe to

him.  Unlike the well-known ﬂ agship Barelwi boys’ madrasa, Jami‘a

 Manqabat, August . This poem was written by Na’im Tahsini.

Personal communication with Na’im Tahsini in Bareilly,  August . I

am grateful to late Dr Sartaj Razwi for arranging the meeting with Na’im

Tahsini, and to Dr Mawlana Waris Mazhari of Jami‘a Millia Islamia for help-

ing me with the translation and meaning of the poem. Personal conversation

in Delhi,  August . I also thank Sumbul Farah, who corrected mistakes

in transcription and translation.

I have omitted a number of verses. Some of them mention the Suﬁ chain

of transmission from ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani, the founder of the Qadiri order in

Baghdad, through Ahmad Raza Khan to his younger son Mustafa Raza Khan,

and other luminaries of the Barelwi Suﬁ master–disciple relationship.

 On the Prophet’s knowledge of the unseen, see Usha Sanyal, Devotional

Islam and Politics in British India: Mawlana Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His

Movement, 1880–1920 (new edn, Delhi: Yoda Press, ).

 Scholars of Faith

Ashraﬁ ya in Mubarakpur, east UP,

 the girls at the Jami‘a Nur al-

Shari‘at did not routinely engage in open denunciation of other Sunni

groups. It was much more subtle than in the Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya: a

taken-for-granted ‘truth’, a given that the Deobandis were ‘Wahhabis’

and therefore Other. Given that Sayyid Sahib never used vitriol when

expressing his anti-Deobandi views in conversation or in writing, the

madrasa’s lack of overt anti-Deobandi rhetoric is not surprising.

The poem was also interesting because of its speciﬁ c references

to Ahmad Raza Khan as an ‘imam’, leader of the community, not in

the Shi‘i sense of the term but in the Suﬁ sense as ‘a leader of love’

( ‘ishq ka imam ), because it was ‘He in whose veins ﬂ owed his love of

the Prophet’. Yet he was also referred to as the author of the Fatawa-i

Rizwiya and the rebutter of Wahhabis. Thus the two went together, the

Suﬁ and the religious scholar or ‘alim . The poem went on to mention

Ahmad Raza’s younger son Mustafa Raza Khan, Sayyid Sahib’s Suﬁ

pir. And the reference to Azhari Miyan (in verses not quoted earlier)

was also signiﬁ cant, as it signalled that, in the Barelwi politics among

Ahmad Raza’s descendants, Sayyid Sahib had aligned himself with

the scholarly mufti rather than the caretaker of the Suﬁ shrine.

The poem also made clear, however, that these men ultimately

derived their spiritual legitimacy from their descent from Ahmad

Raza Khan, as he was its primary subject. It was, in e ect, an abbre-

viated spiritual genealogical tree ( shajara ) linking Sayyid Sahib to

Mustafa Raza Khan, and through him to Ahmad Raza, and through

him to Shaykh Sayyid ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani, the putative founder of

the Qadiri order, and from there directly to the Prophet Muhammad.

Given that some of the girls at the Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at were Sayyid

Sahib’s disciples, it was also their genealogical tree or shajara .

The Wardens

Below the level of the ‘core families’, the madrasa administration

consisted of between  and  older female wardens, many of whom

were required to live at the madrasa with the students during the aca-

demic year. Those who had been at the madrasa for a number of years

 On the Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya, see Arhad Alam, Inside a Madrasa: Knowledge,

Power and Islamic Identity in India (Delhi: Routledge, ).

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

were a ectionately referred to in kinship terms by both students and

adults. This use of ﬁ ctive kinship terminology was yet another way in

which relationships were forged, acknowledged, and strengthened.

It reﬂ ected the madrasa’s quasi-familial role in students’ lives, and

served to temper authority and social hierarchy with a ection and a

sense of mutual belonging.



The oldest and best-loved of the wardens, Fatima,

 was a lady

known to sta and students alike as Khala Ammi, ‘Aunt Mother’.

Her niece, who had taught Hindi (but had since married and left for

Mumbai, to be with her husband), called her Khala Ammi, and soon

everyone else did too. She was probably in her late ﬁ fties or early six-

ties when I met her. She had had a hard life: her mother had died

when she was little, and her father when she was a young woman. She

married, had two children who died in infancy, and then her husband

abandoned her for another woman (whom he married). Thereafter

she returned to live with her natal family. She told me how she came

to work at the madrasa:

There was a meeting ( jalsa ) for forty hours that I wanted to attend, but I

was being discouraged from going by my nephews (sister’s sons, bhanja s)

because it was not open to women. But I took two little girls with me

in a rickshaw and went there and sat in a cordoned o section, in my

burqa. Sayyid Sahib was the speaker. When he learned of my interest, he

expressed no opposition to my being there, as I was in my burqa and in

a separate section. I also attended celebrations [at the English-medium

school adjoining the madrasa] for th January and th August. 

Her story showed her pluck and courage. Had she not deﬁ ed the

authority of her male relatives in order to go to the public meeting

and listen to Sayyid Sahib speak, she would never have come to his

 This function of the madrasa is explored in some depth in Usha Sanyal

and Sumbul Farah, ‘Discipline and Nurture: Living in a Girls’ Madrasa, Living

in Community’, Modern Asian Studies (), (): –.

 All the personal names of wardens, teachers, and students (that is, the

women and girls at the madrasa) have been changed in order to protect their

identities. The names of the male administrators, however, have not, as they

play public roles and would therefore be hard to shield from view.

 Recorded ﬁ eld notes, August . India celebrates its Republic Day on

th January and Independence Day on th August.

 Scholars of Faith

attention. Later Sayyid Sahib invited her to work in the madrasa. That

was back in . She said she was treated with great respect, and of

all the wardens she was the only one who was still there. All the others

had come and gone.



Sayyid Sahib took her in as a means of helping her, recognizing

at the same time her high moral standing, family background, and

personal character—qualities that collectively deﬁ ned her as sharif or

noble, which since the twentieth century has been measured more by

behaviour than by birth, as we saw in Chapter , following Minault.

Although of rural ( dehati ) background, her sense of self was rooted in

her embeddedness in two relational networks: she was proud of the

fact that she came from a good family and that she was the disciple

of a great Suﬁ master, Mawlana Mustafa Raza Khan. These sources of

identity gave her the strength to stand up to desertion by her husband

and allowed her to hold her head up high, building a new life for her-

self in the demanding but supportive environment of the madrasa.

Her brother’s and sister’s married families were her other homes, and

she would occasionally visit them in her village outside Shahjahanpur.

She particularly loved her sister and her sister’s son, who told her she

should retire from her work at the madrasa and come to live with him

and his family. She su ered from a weak heart and other ailments

that she attributed to ‘old age’ (more likely simply poverty), such as

ear aches, acute itching of the body, and seasonal colds and coughs,

which she was loath to get treated by a medical doctor, choosing instead

to ignore them altogether or treat them with home remedies. In the

summertime, she would bring mangoes from the trees at her sister’s

home to share with the other wardens and teachers. She taught the

girls embroidery and sewing and when not busy with madrasa duties,

would busy herself with knitting or embroidering gifts for people.

 A

vegetarian by choice for over  years, she was also an excellent cook

 In fact, there were two others who had been there for several years,

though not as long as Fatima. They were still there when I visited in November

.

 Over the course of my many visits to the madrasa, Khala Ammi made

me small attractive cloth purses with tinsel, a woollen vest, and delicious non-

vegetarian meals as a goodbye gift prior to my departure, though she herself

would not partake of them.

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

(of meat as well as vegetarian dishes). She was always willing to take

the girls to the doctor, even when she herself was sick. Abu Ji said there

was no question of her ever being asked to leave. She could stay at the

madrasa as long as she wished, he said.

This was not the case with most of the wardens, for the turnover

among them was quite high. I got to know one of the wardens, Zeenat,

quite well, for on my ﬁ rst visit to the madrasa she was assigned to stay

with me in my room. Her -year-old granddaughter, who attended the

madrasa, also stayed with us. Zeenat was  years old. A pathan and

a native of Shahjahanpur, she came from a well-to-do family. She was

well-educated, having earned her BA in the s, and then studied

at a co-ed college for her BEd. After that she married her ﬁ rst cousin,

a brilliant man who had studied at the Indian Institute of Technology

(IIT) Delhi, she said. About two or three years into their marriage, he

went to Mecca, completed the hajj, and then got a job at Jeddah, where

he worked for a year. Zeenat and their son remained in Shahjahanpur

during this time. Before returning to India, her husband went back

to Mecca to perform the hajj a second time. But then disaster struck.

While he was in Arafat, he was bowing in prostration when a bus ran

over him. The bus driver had failed to see him while he was bending

down. They took him to the hospital, where he died.

So Zeenat was widowed at a young age with a three-year-old son.

Then followed a lengthy process of applying for a visa to go to Saudi

Arabia in the hope of ﬁ nding his body (which she never did), and later

of going to court for a compensation package, which she ultimately

got. She said Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Indian foreign minister at the

time and prime minister later, had facilitated her visa and compen-

sation package. But her husband’s two brothers refused to split the

family property three ways so she could have her husband’s share.

Instead, they gave her a small sum of money and said she had no

further claims on them.

For the next several years she was able to manage on her own by

putting her compensation money in a ﬁ xed deposit and living o the

interest,  while working as a warden in a variety of girls’ schools

 Interest on loans or bank deposits is not accepted as a legitimate

source of income in Islamic law. This period in her life predated her madrasa

employment.

 Scholars of Faith

in the region. Then followed another round of misfortunes caused

by her son’s ill-health and inability to work because of severe back

problems. He was married with two small children at the time I knew

Zeenat, and the entire family lived together. They had tried to open a

retail store in Delhi but the venture had failed, and they had lost their

savings in the attempt. Now back in Shahjahanpur, Sayyid Sahib had

hired her as a warden at the madrasa as a means of helping her out,

giving her free board and lodging, a small salary, as well as an educa-

tion for her grand daughter.



Hasina, a young woman with three children, the youngest being

in the ninth grade, had also had to face a number of misfortunes

caused by the death of her husband. When I met her in , she

had been in the madrasa for only a month. She had lost her husband

about ﬁ ve years ago. He used to work in a large garment export fac-

tory in Mehrauli, outside Delhi. Hasina explained that from there the

clothes were sent to the United States (US) and other countries. But

the Indian government demolished the factory because of a road wid-

ening plan, and her husband died of a heart attack around the same

time. Hasina decided to return to her parents’ home in Shahjahanpur.

They sheltered her and her children and helped take care of them.

Now Hasina was worried about her mother, who was sick. She also

worried about one of her children who had poor memory retention,

even though he was smart. She was no longer at the madrasa when I

returned the following year. I learned from Abu Ji that she had been

too pious, engaging in superoregatory prayers when she should have

been performing her duties. It was all very well to be pious, he said,

but it should not be done at the expense of the students!

 Listening

to Abu Ji telling me the story of this warden and others, I realized that

he acted as arbiter and judge in deciding which warden was worthy

of the madrasa’s trust. If Sayyid Sahib helped honourable (sharif)

women in ﬁ nancial trouble by hiring them, within the madrasa Abu

 When I returned to the madrasa a year later, Zeenat was no longer

working there. I learned, though, that her son was doing better and had

recently secured a job at a friend’s motor parts workshop. On his monthly

salary of INR ,/- (less than USD ) he was supporting his mother, wife,

and two daughters.

 From my ﬁ eld notes, November  and December .

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

Ji kept his ear to the ground on a daily basis and advised Sayyid Sahib

if the new hire should be retained or let go, and if so on what basis.

The ﬁ nal authority, however, was Sayyid Sahib’s.

Not surprisingly, the personal stories of the wardens I spoke to

illustrated to me their ‘precarity’, to use Attiya Ahmad’s term.



Zeenat, the second warden I proﬁ led earlier, was fortunate in that her

case attracted the attention of the highest politician at the time, Atal

Bihari Vajpayee, and she received a compensation package. Not sur-

prisingly, she was also well educated and her father was in a position

to give her sound advice when her husband died and her brothers-in-

law turned against her. Most are not so fortunate. Despite these initial

advantages, she was in dire ﬁ nancial straits when I met her later in

her life.

In her study of family courts in Chennai, in which she focuses

especially on Muslim women, Vatuk notes that the ‘paternalism’ of the

Indian legal system pushes women (of all religions) to remain in bad

marriages on the assumption that a woman needs a male ‘protector’,

no matter how abusive.

 Legal remedies are of little practical help to

most lower-class women in distress, no matter what their religion,

for reasons ranging from the culturally alien language of the courts,

high court expenses, the lengthy nature of the legal process itself,

and the likelihood of a verdict that is unfavourable to the woman. For

these reasons, the solution presented by Sayyid Sahib by hiring these

women was a pragmatic one which o ered immediate help—albeit

limited, because their salaries were low. Their connection with the

madrasa was for the most part of short duration, particularly if they

were young and had small children whom they had had to leave with

relatives while they stayed at the madrasa. Since the pay was low and

the work hard, and they had to satisfy the demands of aging parents

 Attiya Ahmad, Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South

Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait (Durham: Duke University Press, ),

Chapter  and passim.

 Sylvia Vatuk, ‘“Where Will She Go? What Will She Do?” Paternalism

toward Women in the Administration of Muslim Personal Law in

Contemporary India’, in Gerald James Larson, ed., Religion and Personal Law

in Secular India: A Call to Judgment (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

), pp. – and passim.

 Scholars of Faith

or young children, young women like Hasina could not ﬁ nd a long-

term future there.

What happened to these young or middle-aged women after they

left the madrasa? There is no way of knowing, as their relationship

with the madrasa ended there, with no lasting ties between them. Of

all the people I met at Jami‘a Nur, the wardens’ relationship with the

madrasa seemed the most contractual of all. Their plight highlights

the lack of institutional mechanisms and resources for young wid-

ows with small children or women whose marriages fail them and

whose parents and natal kin are unable or unwilling to provide them

help, food, and shelter. Recent scholarship on Muslim female judges

( qazi s) who run women-only shari‘a courts throws light on promis-

ing solutions being adopted in parts of India to address such issues,

providing a space and forum for dispute resolution within a shar‘i

framework rather than an alien Western one. Despite resistance from

some ‘ulama, these shari‘a courts seem to be gaining ground.

 How

much relief they are able to provide in the long term is an open ques-

tion, however.

I end this section with a story about another warden, a long-timer

who, like Khala Ammi, had been at the madrasa for many years. This

warden, Saﬁ ya, was highly educated and Sayyid Sahib addressed her

(as he did me) as Madam. She did not reside at the madrasa but came

every morning and left in the evening. Either widowed or separated

from her husband (and apparently childless), she lived with her mar-

ried brother, his family, and an uncle. Saﬁ ya had studied geography

at Jamia Millia Islamia University in Delhi and had hoped to do an

M.Phil. She worked at the Meteorological Department in Delhi for

several years. However, a bus accident led to a foot injury, and she had

to take an extended leave of absence and ultimately lost her job there.

She returned to her family home near Shahjahanpur, and around 

became a warden at the madrasa. There she had a number of admin-

istrative functions, including accounts management and keeping

track of school supplies and other day-to-day functions. Additionally,

she helped the regular English teacher by teaching an English class,

 Justin Jones, ‘“Where Only Women May Judge”: Developing Gender-

just Islamic Laws in India’s All-Female ‘ Shari‘ah Courts’, Islamic Law and

Society (): –.

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

as some grade levels have two sections. Unlike the other wardens, her

behaviour with sta and students was brisk and businesslike, though

also cheerful and sociable. In her spare time, she would read quietly

from one of the religious texts in the sta room, or scan her cell phone

for current news or family pictures, which she shared with the other

teachers. She was the most worldly wise of all the sta . Having lived

in Delhi, she knew which part of the city I come from, and sometimes

talked to me in English, asking me questions about what had brought

me to the madrasa (and why it was taking me so long to ﬁ nish my

research).

Saﬁ ya was thus di erent from the other administrative sta . She

commanded attention and respect because of her education, forth-

right manner, and worldly knowledge. In , though, a small alter-

cation between her and Sayyid Sahib illustrated for me an underlying

tension between her authority as an older, educated woman with work

experience outside the madrasa and the young teachers whose life

experience was much more limited but who nonetheless commanded

authority as purveyors of religious knowledge. At issue was the safety

of the students.

To put this in context, we need to understand the politics of space



that speaks to the administration’s deep concern for the physical

safety of the girls. The new madrasa building and location deliber-

ately fails to call attention to itself. Apart from a small board on the

main street with the name of the madrasa in Urdu, one would not

know it was down the wide brick lane running at right angles to the

street. Instead, one notices the boys’ madrasa buildings on both sides

of the main street, on the corner of the street and the lane, and the

boys entering and leaving the buildings, buying snacks from road-

side stalls, or walking away singly or in groups.

 To get to the girls’

madrasa, students and sta walk or drive about a city block down the

brick lane (which is devoid of vendors and tra c unrelated to the

 Nita Kumar, The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity: Essays on

Education in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. .

 This description dates to . Since then the layout of buildings and

side streets has changed, the boys’ madrasa having moved a little further away

from the girls’ madrasa than it was before. Nonetheless, the general point

being made here is valid.

 Scholars of Faith

madrasas) till they reach its tall metal gates straight ahead. Here, all

who wish to enter must present themselves at the front o ce, which

is equipped with a laptop computer, two-way mirrors on the walls,

and a telephone, and identify themselves to the person seated behind

the desk. If cleared to enter, they sign their names in a large register

and let themselves in through the small metal door within the big

metal gate. Visitors must wait on the plastic chairs provided, until the

students come to them. The madrasa itself, invisible until one crosses

over to the other side of the gate, consists of double-storey buildings

on all four sides of a large open courtyard, as well as other buildings

connecting it to what used to be the boys’ madrasa (the boys’ madrasa

having moved to another set of buildings on the other side of a public

road some distance away).

The dispute regarding security arose when some students appar-

ently left the madrasa premises early one morning without prior

authorization by the security personnel at the o ce. Sayyid Sahib held

Saﬁ ya responsible for this breach of regulations because she had been

deputed as gate keeper on the morning of the incident. It was early

in the new school year, and a conﬂ uence of factors had led to more

confusion than usual. Key among them was the fact that Abu Ji was

no longer in charge. He had left at the end of the previous academic

year after his father’s death which had left his -year-old mother

all alone and in sore need of him, back home in Azizalpur village,

Farrukhabad district. In addition, the girls’ madrasa was now in a new

location, with construction still ongoing. That year there had been a

huge inﬂ ux of new students, some as young as six. The madrasa had

gone from  students to about  in a single academic year. The

result, not surprisingly, was a great deal of confusion. Sayyid Sahib,

who normally had a hands-o approach to day-to-day administration,

had no choice but to intervene and try and solve problems as they

arose.

On the day in question, Sayyid Sahib attended the morning assem-

bly and addressed the students. He said:

You [girls] have come to the madrasa to learn the knowledge of religion

( din ). Knowledge of din creates an internal fear ( dakhili khawf ) in people.

Hazrat Mawla ‘Ali [the Prophet’s son-in-law] said [Sayyid Sahib quoted

in Arabic], The greatest teacher is death ( mawt ). Who are these [women]

here? They are your teachers. You are afraid of them. But when you are

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

away from them, you resume your mischief. But death, said Mawla ‘Ali,

is the greatest teacher. Will death reach your mother? [The students, ‘It

will’.] Will death reach your father? [The students, ‘It will’.] So the biggest

teacher is death. Now you’ve understood what I’m saying to you. This is

dakhili khawf . Din creates this khawf in those who believe. And the person

who internalizes this fear acquires humanity ( insaniyat ). And after that a

person gets spirituality ( ruhaniyat ). [The students repeated the words after

him.] If you don’t have humanity, you can’t have spirituality.

First you have to improve yourself ( islah karen ), you have to remove

your shortcomings ( kamiyan ), your defects ( ‘aib ), in order to acquire

humanity. Quarrelling, arguing, harming or hurting each other with your

words, ruining other people’s reputations ( izzat ka nuqsan pahunchana ),

whichever girl has these characteristics, she cannot have humanity.

You learn grammar [among other things] in your classes. But beyond

that is Suﬁ sm— tasawwuf —or ithar . What does this mean? In the

Qur’an, there is a verse about the Prophet’s family ( ahl-i bayt ), about

Mawla ‘Ali and Fatima. What did God say about them? ‘These people,

they would prefer others over themselves even if they themselves were

starving.’

Sayyid Sahib then told a story about himself. He wanted to go to the

bathroom, he said, but he allowed someone else to go ahead of him

even though it was his turn.

This is called ithar . You go ﬁ rst, you go ﬁ rst ( pahle ap , pahle ap ).

[His body language and gestures made the students laugh.]

If you don’t have these things in yourself, then you cannot become a

religious scholar ( ‘alima ). You can learn about the world ( dunya ), but you

cannot become an ‘alima . Is that understood? This is your lesson for today.

When you learn this, then you can go into society and do some good, solve

problems. Tell me, how will a doctor who is sick cure others? Can he make

others well when he himself is sick? [The students, ‘No!’] Did you under-

stand me? [The students, ‘Yes!’]

Then he asked the new girls: ‘What did you eat yesterday? [“Chick

peas ( chhole )”, they responded.] What will you eat today? What do you

want to eat? Meat and zucchini ( lauki gosht )? Yes, do you want to eat

meat and zukkini today? That’s what you will eat today. Now you girls

go, go to your classes.’



 Sayyid Sahib,  August . Tape recording.

 Scholars of Faith

After the students had dispersed and gone to their respective

classrooms, he addressed the teachers, who had remained in place,

turning to the question of students leaving the premises without per-

mission. Although Saﬁ ya defended herself in a spirited manner, her

responsibilities were reassigned to the teachers:

SS: The girls must not wear their burqas until they get past the gate and

into the o ce. That way they can be identiﬁ ed. Then they should put on

their burqas. The teachers should make two groups, of three each. Three

teachers should eat, sleep, then get up and o er their namaz , and take over

the responsibilities from the other three teachers, who have been watch-

ing the gate all this time. 

Then the teachers and Sayyid Sahib started to laugh because Phupha

came and joined the group. Sayyid Sahib’s tone of frustration gave

way to light-hearted banter.

This vignette sheds light on relations between Sayyid Sahib—who

as founder of the madrasa has overarching institutional and personal

authority—and the wardens, teachers, and students. The warden,

although senior to the teachers, was accused of a lapse of judgment

and reneging on her responsibility, while a number of teachers, far

younger than her in years and experience, were assigned increased

responsibility. The unexpected arrival of Phupha—a man whose lack

of institutional authority coupled with his goodwill towards everyone,

no matter the person’s rank, led him to be universally loved—defused

an otherwise tense situation.

But soon another question arose on the heels of the ﬁ rst. It cen-

tred on a simple question: how many students did the madrasa have,

and who were they? If the madrasa could not identify each and every

student by name and grade, it could not regulate their movements

into and out of the madrasa space each day. It immediately fell to the

teachers to make a list of all the students, especially the new ones, as

quickly as possible. And this they did, with record e ciency, under

the leadership of one of Sayyid Sahib’s daughters and the new English

teacher, who taught at all grade levels. By the following day, they had

a list for Sayyid Sahib.

 This onerous system was not in place when I visited the following year;

at most, it appears to have been a temporary measure while the new students

settled into the madrasa routine.

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

The Teachers

As I have indicated earlier, the day-to-day teaching and on-the-spot

troubleshooting at the madrasa were largely in the hands of female

authority ﬁ gures, namely, the wardens and the teachers. When I ﬁ rst

visited the school in June , there were three wardens and nine

teachers. Four of the teachers were former alumni of the school.

Three of them had studied upto the highest level of Fazila, while one

had studied upto the ‘Alima level. All four teachers lived with the stu-

dents at the school. The three with Fazila degrees were Suﬁ disciples

(murids) of Sayyid Sahib. Two of them—Maryam and Hafsa—were

Sayyid Sahib’s daughters.  The fourth teacher was a Suﬁ disciple

of one of Mawlana Ahmad Raza Khan’s descendants, Tahsin Raza

Khan. In addition, the Hindi teacher (Khala Ammi’s niece, who

subsequently got married and left the madrasa) had an MA from a

college in Bareilly. She too lived in the school. Since their educational

qualiﬁ cations were higher than those of the wardens, the Fazila teach-

ers were in the highest tier in terms of salary, despite their relative

youth compared to the wardens—a fact which supports the point

made earlier about their authority being greater than the wardens’.



In terms of social class background, there was a mix of castes. Sayyid

Sahib’s daughters were the highest in terms of social status, being

Sayyids or descendants of the Prophet. At the other end of the social

scale, one of the teachers was the daughter of a bangle seller and lived

in a village in a neighbouring district. Her father had a little land but

seemed to be poor and of low status. She and Sayyid Sahib’s older

daughter Maryam were good friends and stayed in touch even after

her departure from the school. Other friendships between teachers

also seemed to transcend class and status identities.

 This is in contrast to the situation described by Winkelmann, in which

the principal at the Madrasatul Niswan in Delhi sent her daughters to the pres-

tigious Delhi Public School rather than the madrasa to study. See Winkelmann,

‘From Behind the Curtain’ , p. . Sayyid Sahib’s elder son had studied at the boys’

madrasa, Jami‘a Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama‘at (a pseudonym) and was now teaching

there. The youngest son attended the Hindi-medium secular high school near

the boys’ madrasa during the day and the madrasa at night.

 See Appendix  of the next chapter on  salary scales for teachers

and wardens.

 Scholars of Faith

On each of my subsequent visits to the madrasa (which took place

for short periods every year until ), I noted the high turnover of

both wardens and teachers. We saw earlier that over the years, wardens

such as Khala Ammi had been accepted as part of the school admin-

istration and had become ﬁ xtures of the establishment, much like

the ‘core families’ related to Sayyid Sahib through either genealogical

or Suﬁ ties, while others had been dismissed or had left for personal

reasons. The pattern is slightly di erent for the teachers. In general,

the madrasa recruits new teachers from among the graduating class

of students to replace others who leave to get married. I encountered

only one case of the dismissal of a teacher in the seven years I have

visited the madrasa. This was the bangle-seller’s daughter, who had

left by , ostensibly because she was to be married. But she had

twice been chastised for engaging in the corporal punishment of a

student, which the madrasa does not allow. She was warned after the

ﬁ rst occurrence, but when it happened again she was dismissed.

In a pattern that is familiar from the history of Muslim girls’ edu-

cational institutions in South Asia since the early-twentieth century

(and that we will see repeated in Al-Huda later in this book),

 Sayyid

Sahib has been preparing the groundwork for his two daughters to

take over the leadership of the madrasa in due time. Over the years,

they have developed a reputation based on their knowledge of the

religious sciences, their good manners and comportment ( adab ), and

their knowledge of the madrasa itself. In  Amina, a cousin of

theirs, formerly a student and then a teacher, became part of this select

group. In December of that year she became Sayyid Sahib’s daughter-

in-law, after marrying Sayyid Sahib’s eldest son, who was a madrasa

teacher in the boys’ madrasa adjoining Jami‘a Nur. Simultaneously

Maryam married Amina’s older brother.

 After their marriage, both

 See Gail Minault, Secluded Scholars: Women’s Education and Muslim

Social Reform in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ),

pp. –, for the example of Shaikh and Begum Abdullah, founders in 

of the Aligarh Zenana Madrasa, and their daughters and daughters-in-law,

who continued their work after them.

 Amina and Maryam are parallel cousins, as their fathers are broth-

ers. While this is not unusual in Muslim families, the urilocal residence of

Maryam’s husband is, as it reverses the normal pattern whereby a woman

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

couples moved in with Sayyid Sahib and his wife in a newly con-

structed house right outside the madrasa gates, with ample room for

expansion when, in due course, the two younger children also get

married. In this way, Sayyid Sahib has ensured that the madrasa will

be in stable hands in the next generation.

To conclude this section, it is instructive to look at the teachers’ and

wardens’ stories side by side for the patterns they reveal. While the

teachers are young women approaching adulthood and married life

with the anxieties and expectations attendant on this crucial period

in their lives, the wardens are older, sometimes middle-aged women

who have experienced marriage and/or motherhood, and in some

cases widowhood or separation. Every warden’s life story I heard

involved a profound marital disappointment. Fatima experienced a

double loss, namely, the death of her two young children and subse-

quent desertion by her husband; Zeenat lost her husband to accidental

death in the early years of her marriage and had to raise a young son

on her own; Hasina’s husband died young of a heart attack, leaving

her without a source of income and three young children to raise;

and Saﬁ ya appears to have had a childless marriage. In each case,

the women’s natal families lent them vitally needed support without

which the women would probably have faced a life of unremitting

poverty. This pattern is common in South Asia and is not limited to

Muslim families. What is unusual for women in their situation is that

the madrasa o ered them a source of employment and self-respect

and allowed them to be ﬁ nancially self-su cient—if not wholly, then

at least partially so.

In the teachers’ case, their ﬁ nancial independence from their fami-

lies is a remarkable, if unremarked upon, factor in their relations with

their parents and in their future marriage prospects. I never heard the

teachers discuss money or what impact their earning capacity had on

their relations with personal kin. I believe they hand over the bulk (if

not all) of their earnings to their parents, and are thus able to provide

leaves her natal home to live with her husband and his family in the hus-

band’s natal home. This was the conundrum Sayyid Sahib faced, as the future

of the girls’ madrasa was dependent on his two daughters’ presence and ﬁ rm

leadership in years to come.

 Scholars of Faith

ﬁ nancial assistance in times of need.

 While the pay is not in abso-

lute terms very high (see Appendix  in the next chapter), their ability

to contribute to their families has social ramiﬁ cations, some of which

I explore in Chapter .

Unlike the wardens, who have family responsibilities outside the

school, the teachers are young, unmarried girls who appear to enjoy

the company of their peers and to be totally immersed in the day-to-

day life of the madrasa. In this context, they form friendships with

their peers which sometimes continue even after they have left Jami‘a

Nur. 

Adab and Tajdid , Etiquette and Reform

Sayyid Sahib had begun to teach his daughters the dars-i nizami syl-

labus at home before he founded the girls’ madrasa. They completed

the course in the madrasa all the way to the advanced (Fazila) level.

Since then, both daughters had been teaching a variety of subjects

at the madrasa. As noted earlier, they exercised considerable per-

sonal authority in the classroom and during afterschool hours on

the strength of their knowledge of the curriculum and several years

of teaching experience. Morever, they embodied a number of key

Islamic virtues—piety, humility, self-restraint, and self-e acement,

among others—outside the classroom. These qualities conferred

great authority in and of themselves, enhancing the respect they

enjoyed by virtue of their Sayyid descent.

As I noted in the ‘Introduction’, the Arabic concept of adab (often

translated as etiquette, though the English term does it little justice)

is at the heart of what the madrasa seeks to teach its students, both

 The madrasa method of teacher remuneration appears remarkably

informal, as in  I witnessed a senior male teacher enter the sta room

with cash in hand and call the teachers one by one to collect their pay. They

were being paid for the previous two months. He also asked them to let him

know if they needed more money, though to my knowledge none did. As

this happened during the cash shortage caused by the demonetization put in

place by the Modi government in November , it is possible that the o er

of extra cash was linked to that event and was not a normal occurrence.

 Chapter  examines some of their stories.

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

male and female. Central to the purpose of Jami‘a Nur is the daily

inculcation of a certain way of being in the world, or, to use the perfect

Arabic word for it, adab. While this term has multiple meanings and

dimensions,  the sense in which it applies to the students and teach-

ers of Jami‘a Nur is as an Islamic ideal of personal conduct grounded

in obedience to the rules of shari‘a as interpreted by the Barelwi

‘ulama.  The enthusiastic responses of the students at Jami‘a Nur

would seem to indicate that the students had internalized these ideals

thoroughly and saw themselves as future agents of change in their

home environments.

At the heart of the concept of adab, Barbara Metcalf tells us, is the

acceptance of hierarchy, which has both a religious and a social dimen-

sion: in religious terms, it entails acknowledgment of the oneness of

God—hence one must faithfully perform the daily and periodic duties

of prayer, fasting, and the like, as enjoined by the shari‘a—while in

social terms, for a woman it means abiding by the hierarchies of age

and gender. To quote Metcalf, she must ‘know her own position’.



According to Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi, whose guide Bihishti

 See, in particular, Barbara Daly Metcalf, ‘Introduction’, in Barbara

Daly Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South

Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). Also see Ira M.

Lapidus, ‘Knowledge, Virtue, and Action: The Classical Muslim Conception

of Adab and the Nature of Religious Fulﬁ llment in Islam’, in Barbara Daly

Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian

Islam (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).

 Francis Robinson’s essay about the Farangi Mahalli family, in the

same volume, is pertinent to my discussion here because both the Farangi

Mahallis and the Barelwis share a similar worldview. They both embrace the

idea that shari‘a must be complemented by Suﬁ sm (tasawwuf). Unlike the

Deobandis, the ‘ulama of Farangi Mahall have encouraged the visitation of

Suﬁ shrines, particularly during ‘urs . See Francis Robinson, ‘The “Ulama” of

Farangi Mahall and Their Adab’, in Barbara D. Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct

and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of

California Press, ), pp. –, for example.

 Barbara D. Metcalf, ‘Islamic Reform and Islamic Women: Mawlana

Thanawi’s Jewelry of Paradise ’, in Barbara Daly Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct

and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam (Berkeley: University of

California Press, ), p. .

 Scholars of Faith

Zewar has been widely read by South Asian women and men for over

a century now, ‘literacy and education … enhanced a woman’s capacity

to speak standard Urdu and practice scripturalist religion, manage the

household e ciently and proﬁ tably and raise well-behaved children,

and fulﬁ ll her obligations to all those with whom there are reciprocal

ties’.  By doing all this within the bounds of the rules of seclusion

(pardah), she will bring honour to her family and gain the respect of

those around her. In this view of the world, there appears to be no

di erence between the Deobandi explanation in Bihishti Zewar and

the more recent treatments in the Barelwi guides for women.

If, as Metcalf suggests, age and gender hierarchies are at the heart of

adab, we may ﬁ nd, contrary to our expectations of immediate e ects,

that the changes are slow and incremental, and follow the woman’s

progression through the lifecycle.

 Following students back home,

we may be able to track the recent dramatic expansion of madrasas—

and perhaps the related ties to Suﬁ networks for implementation of

these institutional changes—to a larger range of actors who under-

stand more closely the needs of di erent (rural rather than urban;

poorer rather than wealthier) subpopulations of Indian Muslims.



Finally, looking at the issue in historical terms, we have to see the

rise in number of girls’ madrasas as a continuation of the process

of reform (tajdid) that began in ‘ulama circles in the second half of

the nineteenth century. The ‘ulama believed then that education was

the key to lifting the Muslim community out of weakness and igno-

rance, that the reason they had lost political power to the British was

that they had allowed non-Islamic accretions to seep into the daily

 Metcalf, ‘Islamic Reform and Islamic Women’.

 See David Kloos, Becoming Better Muslims: Religious Authority & Ethical

Improvement in Aceh, Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ),

on how people’s ideas about religion change over the course of their lives,

especially Chapter . On p.  Kloos notes, ‘theological arguments … exert a

di erent appeal to di erent people at di erent moments in their lives’.

 Attiya Ahmad’s study of female domestic workers in Kuwait discusses

the importance of the gendered discourse of South Asian women being

‘naram’, soft and malleable, in their social relations with others, particularly

members of the household. This concept throws additional light on the dis-

cussion of adab earlier. See Ahmad, Everyday Conversions .

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

religious practices of Muslims. They had fallen away from shari‘a

norms, and the way out was through education. Now,  years

later, we are seeing a continuation of the same process. The chal-

lenges facing the Muslims in South Asia are di erent today. Their

socioeconomic status has altered (with fewer ashraf Muslims than

before), and once again the ‘ulama—and the Muslim community

more generally—are responding with a concerted e ort to educate

the young.

The Contemporary Context of Indian Girls’ Madrasas

A key di erence at the present moment seems to be that the focus

of madrasa education in many parts of India has shifted from boys

to girls. Je ery, Je ery, and Je rey’s research indicates that in 

there were fewer male students in madrasas in Bijnor, west UP, than

girls. They report that fewer Muslim boys stayed at the madrasa all

the way to the end of their education, preferring to switch to a secu-

lar government school at some point, as that was a better avenue to

getting productive employment in the future.

 My observations at

the Jami‘a Nur reveal that the boys’ madrasa next door to the girls’

madrasa was not expanding, while the latter was expanding rapidly.

Moreover, Sayyid Sahib’s younger son was pursuing both a madrasa

education and a secular one (in a Hindi-medium government school)

simultaneously.

Borker’s study of a girls’ madrasa in Delhi, and Zoya Hasan and

Ritu Menon’s work comparing Muslim girls’ education in ﬁ ve dif-

ferent Indian cities provide valuable data, allowing us to assess the

overall applicability of my ﬁ ndings in Shahjahanpur. Borker refers to

the ‘increasing feminization of madrasa enrolments documented by

recent government reports’, and notes that according to  govern-

ment statistics (District Information System for Education, or DISE),

 See Patricia Je ery, Roger Je ery, and Craig Je rey, ‘Islamization,

Gentriﬁ cation and Domestication: “A Girls’ Islamic Course” and Rural

Muslims in Western Uttar Pradesh’, Modern Asian Studies (), (): –,

p. . In many parts of the country, boys also had the option of getting paid

employment in the informal sector without much more than a middle school

education, as Hasan and Menon report in Educating Muslim Girls .

 Scholars of Faith

a little over half of all madrasa students were girls.

 Hasan and Menon

note an increase in girls’ educational institutions, including madrasas,

in Kolkata and Delhi.

 In Delhi, the literacy rate for Muslim girls went

up from . per cent in  to  per cent in .

 Alongside this,

the average age at marriage also went up, from  or  to .

 In

Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, girls’ education rates went up as a result of

parents’ (especially mothers’) eagerness to educate their daughters.

 In

Aligarh, west UP, the principal of the Aligarh Girls’ School, established

by Shaikh and Begam Abdullah in the early-twentieth century, noted:

‘Twenty years ago … [the] girls used to sit in the back row, embroidering

and sewing. Today they want to do maths and science, and be able to

compete’.  In Calicut, Kerala, the last of the ﬁ ve cities studied by Hasan

and Menon, the outlook for Muslim girls’ education was largely posi-

tive, in keeping with a history of high literacy rates in the state. In many

states, however, Hasan and Menon note that Muslim girls’ education

tends to level o after middle and high school, as parents withdraw

their daughters from school in order to get them married.

On the whole, it appears that the growth in Muslim girls’ madrasa

education is part of a larger trend, which Justin Jones calls the

‘democratisation of religious knowledge’.

 As data become available

about the increasing number of girls’ madrasas in India, a madrasa

in Hyderabad that o ers mufti courses for women, and all-women’s

shari‘a courts in places like Mumbai, Jaipur, and Kolkata,

 we seem to

 Hem Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), p. . The overall number of madrasa

students reported here is . lakh, or approximately . million boys and

girls. However, experts’ estimates vary widely and are hard—if not impos-

sible—to verify.

 Hasan and Menon, Educating Muslim Girls , pp. –, .

 Hasan and Menon, Educating Muslim Girls , p. .

 Hasan and Menon, Educating Muslim Girls , p. .

 Hasan and Menon, Educating Muslim Girls , pp. , .

 Hasan and Menon, Educating Muslim Girls , p. . The interview

appears to have taken place in  or . This is the same school described

by Minault in Secluded Scholars , which was the basis of my summary in

Chapter .

 Jones, ‘Where Only Women May Judge’, p. .

 Jones, ‘Where Only Women May Judge’, p. .

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at, a Barelwi Girls’ Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh, India 

be looking at a wider trend of change from below, originating within

local Muslim communities. Whether the goal is to educate daughters

in the religious sciences and give them the tools to become person-

ally orthoprax and raise orthoprax children, or to solve the problems

of married women who have abusive husbands, are widowed, or

are otherwise struggling economically because of adverse family

circumstances, access to religious and secular knowledge seems to

be growing among several lower-class sections of the female Muslim

population in India. This is a hopeful sign, for such knowledge gives

them the potential to become engines of change and uplift the Muslim

community in society as a whole.



PEDAGOGY AND DAILY LIFE AT

JAMI‘A NUR ALSHARI‘AT

Nowadays cotton is spun into cloth with machines. But before, didn’t

people spin their own cotton?

Spin your own cotton. Don’t pay attention to the defects of the other

spinner. There are four defects in your cotton: stinginess ( bughz ), anger

( gussa ), jealousy ( hasad ), and hatred ( kina ).

—Sayyid Sahib, class on Qur’anic exegesis, November 

Before Jami‘a Nur moved to its present location on the outskirts of

the city in , the girls’ madrasa was housed in a large, rather dark

three-story building with pale yellow walls, in the middle of a crowded

Shahjahanpur neighbourhood. The building was on one corner of

a city square, surrounded by shops and narrow streets. During the

course of the day, street noises included the constant blaring of horns

from passing cars, vans, and an array of slower tra c, including horse

carts, and vendors with pushcarts shouting out their wares, and the

barking and yelping of dogs at night. When I ﬁ rst visited the madrasa

in the summer of , I also heard men on cycle rickshaws speaking

into loudspeakers and urging residents to vote for an array of di er-

ent candidates for local o ce.

The Jami‘a Nur shared this building with two other schools founded

by Sayyid Sahib: an English-medium Islamic Public School for Girls

(which also admitted boys up to the ﬁ fth grade) and a Hindi-medium

school of the same name for girls (and boys up to the ﬁ fth grade). Both

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

schools followed the UP board curriculum, using NCERT textbooks.

The English-medium school had about  students in , while

the Hindi-medium one was much smaller, with about . A hand-

ful of the girls in the Islamic Public School, both English-medium

and Hindi-medium, were living in the madrasa, but majority of them

were day scholars.  The girls’ madrasa, on the top two ﬂ oors of the

building, was independent of the other two, and had a di erent aca-

demic calendar, curriculum, and teachers.

The boys’ madrasa, with about  residential students, is called

Jami‘a Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama‘at. It is located in a quiet area outside the

centre of the city, surrounded by green ﬁ elds. As noted in the previous

chapter, the girls’ madrasa moved next door to it in . Across the

Figure 3.1 Inside of the Madrasa (Old Location), Showing Classrooms

Leading O a Courtyard and Stairs (June )

Source : Author, June 

 The di erences between boarding and day students point towards di er-

ences in the geographic and class bases of the English-medium and madrasa

populations. This question is addressed in the next chapter.

 Scholars of Faith

street from the school, down a side lane, was Sayyid Sahib’s house.

A simple two-room house at the end of a big courtyard with papaya

trees, a hand pump, and a place to do ritual ablution ( wudu‘ ), it was

invisible from the street on account of its tall whitewashed walls. A

new two-story house was being built close by when I visited in .

In addition, Sayyid Sahib has a large public school for girls and

boys in Bareilly, about  miles to the north of Shahjahanpur, with

a girls’ madrasa occupying its top ﬂ oor. The next chapter will look at

Jami‘a Nur in a comparative framework to understand what is dis-

tinctive about it in relation to Sayyid Sahib’s two secular schools in

Shahjahanpur. In this chapter, I turn to the academic curriculum and

related issues at Jami‘a Nur.

Learning and Teaching

Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at confers the ‘Alima and Fazila certiﬁ cates on

its graduates. The ‘Alima certiﬁ cate can take upto six years of study,

depending on the educational level of the student when she joins,

and the Fazila takes another two years. The course of studies is

broadly in keeping with the dars-i nizami syllabus, though it incor-

porates variations that reﬂ ect its dual focus on girls and on imparting

Barelwi teachings.  Thus, a noticeable di erence in its syllabus from

that of a Deobandi or Tablighi girls’ madrasa lies in the fact that the

well-known book of ‘advice literature’ for women, Bihishti Zewar by

Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi, is not used because Mawlana Thanawi

was a leading scholar of the Deobandi school, to which the Barelwis

are opposed.  Rather, it uses its own books, known as Jannati Zewar

 See Appendix  at the end of this chapter for details of the syllabus at

the madrasa.

 On the Bihishti Zewar , see Barbara D. Metcalf, Perfecting Women:

Mawlana Ashraf ‘Ali Thanawi’s Bihishti Zewar, a Partial Translation with

Commentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). This book is

part of the syllabus at the Madrasa Jami‘atul Banaat studied by Winkelmann

( ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a Girls’ Madrasa in India [Amsterdam:

ISIM Press, ]) and the Madrasah Islahul Banat studied by Patricia Je ery,

Roger Je ery, and Craig Je rey, ‘Aisha, the Madrasah Teacher, in Mukulika

Banerjee, ed., Muslim Portraits: Every Lives in India (Delhi: Yoda Press, ),

which have Deobandi and/or Tablighi a liations.

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

and Sunni Bihishti Zewar , both written in the s by Barelwi ‘ulama.

In other ways, however, the ethical ideals it seeks to inculcate in its

students are a lot like those in Deobandi madrasas, such as the one

studied by Winkelmann in .

There were  classes altogether every day, as  of the grades had

 sections each. Three of these sections fell in the pre-‘Alima classes,

those into which new students were admitted if they lacked basic

literacy and could not yet follow the ‘Alima course. They began by

learning simple Urdu, Hindi, English, arithmetic, the basic teachings

of Islam, and Qur’an recitation. At this stage, they simply memorized

short verses or chapters of the Qur’an (including, of course, the

Fatiha, the opening chapter, but also the short chapters in the last,

thirtieth section of the Qur’an), without necessarily understanding

the meaning of the Arabic words.

 The purpose was to give them

basic familiarity with the sound of the Qur’an, and to get them used

to reading and sounding out the words.

Before the students started on the ﬁ rst year of the ‘Alima course,

they would also have studied Persian grammar and the ﬁ rst of two

advice texts for women, namely, Jannati Zewar (‘Heavenly Jewels’).

Prior to , when the madrasa moved into more spacious quarters,

the youngest age at which students could join the madrasa was about

; in  it began to accept the younger siblings of some of its cur-

rent students, some as young as . Usually, however, students were

around  or  when they embarked on the full course of studies at

the ‘Alima level. Thereafter, the list of books they would read over the

next ﬁ ve years would cover the normal range of subjects included in

dars-i nizami syllabi throughout South Asia. In increasing degrees of

complexity, they would study Persian literature and grammar, Arabic

literature and grammar, Qur’an recitation, translation of the Qur’an

(in year ), exegesis of the Qur’an (in year ), logic (in year ), juris-

prudence (starting in year ), principles of jurisprudence (in years

 and ), and Hadith (traditions of the Prophet; in years  and ).

In addition, this being what Winkelmann calls a ‘dual type’ madrasa

curriculum, that is, one that includes subjects taught in the state

curriculum, English and Hindi are taught throughout the student’s

 See Dale Eickelman, ‘The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and Its Social

Reproduction’, Comparative Studies in Society and History (), (): –.

 Scholars of Faith

course of studies, though arithmetic is not taught beyond the ﬁ rst

pre-‘Alima years. Finally, students also take certain subjects pertinent

to them as women, namely, Jannati Zewar , followed by two years of

Sunni Bihishti Zewar (‘Sunni Heavenly Jewels’), in years  and , and

sewing and embroidery classes (in years , , and ).

One of the teachers explained the logic behind the choice of sub-

jects and the order in which they are taught to students, as follows:

We don’t introduce the Qur’an until the fourth year because you can’t

teach the Qur’an right away. If students make even a single mistake in pro-

nunciation, they can come out of their religion ( din se bahar ho sakte hain ).

Instead, students ﬁ rst learn Hadith starting in the second year, and while

they are doing this, they will be taught relevant verses from the Qur’an

as well. When they come to the Qur’an in the fourth year, they will recog-

nize verses that they had already learned in earlier classes. They also study

jurisprudence ( ﬁ qh ) and day-to-day problems related to women—because

Figure 3.2 Students in One of the Classrooms of the Old Building,

Reviewing their Lessons for Exams.

Note : Their teacher is to the right, facing the students (not in picture). Note the

bedding stacked against the walls.

Source : Author, June 

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

if women don’t understand the ﬁ ner points of ritual puriﬁ cation ( taharat ),

fasting, ablution (wudu’), etc., who will? Not the men, right? This falls

on the women. For example, if an item of clothing is ritually impure, it

must not be allowed to come in contact with other clothes which are clean.

Women have to learn these things so they can educate their children prop-

erly. They need to know about questions that pertain to them as women,

not those which have no relevance for them.

In the next section, I will take the reader through a typical morning at the

madrasa, starting with students’ early morning waking up routines at

the old Shahjahanpur location, and then follow some students into their

classrooms to better understand the process of teaching and learning.

A Morning at the Madrasa: Going to Class

In June , many madrasa students slept outdoors on the ﬂ at, open

rooftop of the madrasa building. As always, their day started early

with the ﬁ rst sounds of the call to prayer:

. a.m.: Flip-ﬂ ops shu e down the steps from the rooftop of the school

building as the girls make their way downstairs to their rooms. Flip-ﬂ op,

ﬂ ip-ﬂ op … over a hundred pairs of feet.

 a.m.: The muezzin intones the morning azan from a mosque close by.

Flies begin to make it impossible to sleep outside anymore; beds and bed-

ding need to be moved indoors and many try to catch a little more sleep.

 a.m.: The public address system comes to life: ‘Sadia, your parents are

on the line’, and Sadia makes her way to the wardens’ room. And so on,

for the next hour or so and again in the evening. Students are not allowed

to use individual cell phones at school.

. a.m.: The whole building is abuzz with morning activity as students

roll their bedding, stacking it by the walls of their classrooms; wash their

faces; brush their hair; wear their uniforms; and eat breakfast.

. a.m.: Two hundred and thirty girls line up in neat rows in the main

hall outside their classrooms. Each is dressed in a green and white

checked kameez, white salwar, and white dupatta. Their teachers, dressed

in colourful outﬁ ts, stand facing them.

. a.m. Assembly begins. The school day has started.



 From my ﬁ eld notes, June .

 Scholars of Faith

At morning assembly (which the madrasa refers to as du‘a ), students

recite the Fatiha, the opening chapter of the Qur’an, followed by a

prayer ( hamd ) in praise of God, and a prayer (du‘a) for the Prophet.

Then an individual ﬁ fth-year (Khamsa) student comes to the front of

the assembly, and facing the students, relates a Hadith on a topic of

her choice—for example, purity rules (taharat), prayer, the etiquette

to be observed when eating and drinking or walking, and so on. This

done, they disperse for class, leaving in a single ﬁ le, row by row.

Two Ethnographies of Classes at the Madrasa: A Qur’an

Class and an Exegesis Class

Between  and , I attended a number of madrasa classes

with permission from the administration and teachers. In this sec-

tion I present an ethnography of two di erent classes. The ﬁ rst is a

Figure 3.3 Students Listening to a Senior Student Relate a Hadith during

Morning Assembly

Source : Author, June 

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

fourth-year Qur’an class I attended in , in which students studied

verses  through  of Sura al-Baqara, the second chapter. I present

it in full, as I think doing so will help readers get a better picture of the

nature of madrasa education in general, and of this madrasa in par-

ticular. The second is an exegesis class taught by Sayyid Sahib, whom

I have described in the previous chapter. These two ethnographies

will in addition allow me to compare the content and style of Jami‘a

Nur classes with Al-Huda classes on the Qur’an, in the later chapters

of this book.

The Qur’an Class

Students (standing): Al-salam alaikum.

Usha Sanyal (US): Walaikum al-salam.

All sit. Some moments of silence as students wait for the teacher to call

on them to read.

Student: ‘Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim.’ Moves right ﬁ nger on page as

she reads. Reads Qur’an : to : at rapid pace, phrase by phrase, trans-

lating each phrase into Urdu, then moving on to the next. ‘And if you are

in doubt …’

Teacher interrupts to correct her Arabic pronunciation, emphasizing

the ﬁ rst syllable: ‘al-nasu [the people]’. Student repeats the words, then

resumes reading. Teacher corrects her translation of : several times.

Student repeats after the teacher each time. When the student has ﬁ n-

ished, the teacher asks, ‘What is the meaning of this verse [:: “And give

good tidings …”]?’ The student translates, at ﬁ rst hesitantly, then more

rapidly. The teacher repeats the meaning in Urdu.

Teacher: Should we read on?

Students: Yes.

Teacher and students together: Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim.

Teacher reads, slowly and clearly, the ﬁ rst of four new verses (Qur’an :–

:). After reading the entire verse :, she translates it into Urdu. ‘Allah

tells us that … ( allah farmata hai ki … )’. Then she refers students back to

two previous verses (: and :) read some days earlier, to make the

point that Allah gives examples when He wants to explain something to

the people.

 Scholars of Faith

Teacher: Allah tells us that undoubtedly He is not shy ( haya’ ) about citing

the example of a mosquito or something more than that ( usse barh kar ). 

And there were those who believed, and they knew that what was being

revealed was God’s truth. And there were those who disbelieved ( kufr kiya ),

and who said, ‘What is God’s purpose in giving this example?’ God mis-

leads many people with this and He guides many with it. Those who are

misled by these means are the disobedient ( fasiqin ).

This is like the examples given in the two previous verses that we read.

In the previous verses [:, :], God compared the believers with light

and nonbelievers with darkness. When those verses were revealed, the

nonbelievers and hypocrites objected, ‘Why is God, who is so great, cit-

ing such a worthless thing [light and darkness] as an example? Since He

is so great, He should cite examples that are great.’ It was to rebut those

people that this verse was revealed. In it, it is said that God does not shy

away from citing whatever example He wishes, whether insigniﬁ cant or

great. The verse then says, as for the believers, they knew that what was

revealed was God’s truth. So the believers knew that God cites examples

that are in keeping with the subject under discussion. In this verse [:]

the nonbelievers only knew that God is great, they were not thinking of

what was being explained. So the example given will be in keeping with

the thing [being explained]. Why are examples given? [Teacher pauses,

then resumes when no one responds.] So that humans may understand

what is being explained. If something is lowly and the example given is

lofty, will people understand or not? If the thing is lowly, the example will

be lowly, and if the thing is lofty, the example will be lofty.

Students (in unison): … will be lofty.

Teacher repeats point again. Reads the verse phrase by phrase, translating

it into Urdu and moving on to the next.

Teacher: Who is being referred to as disobedient here ( fasiq )? … There

are three types of disobedient people ( taghabi , inhimaq , juhud ). The ﬁ rst

are those who accidentally say or do something wrong and seek forgive-

ness for it; the second are those who do or say something they know to

be very wrong ( gunah kabira ) but do not seek forgiveness for it, they just

keep doing it repeatedly; and the third are those who consider forbidden

 The literal words here, ‘and above it’ also have a di erent interpretation,

which I heard in an Al-Huda online class, namely, that there is a small mite

on top of the mosquito, and that the words ‘and above it’ therefore refer to

something even smaller than the mosquito.

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

( haram ) things to be good. A person in the second category will be consid-

ered a fasiq , while a person in the third group is outside the faith ( iman se

kharij ). What are they?

Students (in unison): … outside the faith.

Teacher: [Reads and translates v. :]. And those people who break the

covenant that God commanded be kept joined, after conﬁ rming it ( pakka

karne ke bad ), and they spread corruption on the earth, they are the losers

( ghate me hain ). What is God’s covenant? First, there is what God revealed

to the Prophet, on whom be peace, in the Qur’an. And second, God took

three promises from mankind. First, before God created the children of

Adam, He collected them all and made a covenant with them that He is

one. And they agreed. Second, God took a promise from all the messen-

gers that they should spread the message ( tum log tabligh karna aur dusron

tak pahunchana ). Third, He took a promise from all the religious scholars

( ‘ulama ) that they shall not hide the truth. [Teacher now repeats the points

made above.]

So, who is being referred to here, what is being broken? Here, the real

meaning is the breaking of a relationship ( rishta torna ). God forbade the

breaking of relationships, but what is happening today? A lot of people

break relationships. Second, people break mutual ties of friendship, love,

and so on. Third, people are told that they should do good, but they don’t.

But the real thing is that the meaning here is ‘to break a relationship’. So

God tells us that they spread corruption in the world and they are the losers.

[Teacher reads and translates verse :.] So how do you deny God

when you were dead ( murda ) and He gave you life, then He will give you

death, then He will give you life again, and then you have to go back to

Him. Before you were born, you were nothing. He created you from noth-

ing, then you were a drop of water, then He put ﬂ esh on you, then He gave

you a body, then He put a spirit ( ruh ) in it, then He sent you into the world.

You were nothing, right? Then God will also give you death. Won’t He?

We all have to die. Then He will give you life again. When? On the Day of

Judgment ( qiyamat ke din ). And you will have to go back to Him again. So

if you know everything, then why do you deny God?

[The teacher reads : and translates. Some students read the Arabic

text alongside the teacher.] And He is the one who made everything on

the earth. The earth has everything on it—land, rivers, mountains, isn’t

it? And He made the sky evenly ( thik asman kiya ), and He created seven

heavens, and He is the lord of everything ( har chiz par qadir hai ). He made

the world for you, seven heavens for you, everything to eat and drink, but

even then, what do you do, you deny God.

 Scholars of Faith

Teacher (addressing students): You want me to teach you again? You

weren’t able to remember it ( tumse yad nahin hua )? Do you want me to

start from the beginning?

Students: Yes.

The teacher then translates the four new verses into Urdu clearly and at

an even pace, not as slowly as before but not so fast that the students

are unable to follow her, either. After she has ﬁ nished, the students begin

reading the verses out loud, rocking back and forth. The teacher is silent.

A student leans over towards her and asks her to review the word fasiq in

verse :, so she explains it to the student individually while the others

continue their recitation. Another student asks her to review verse :.

The room ﬁ lls with the voices of the students and teacher.

The Exegesis Class: Jalalayn

The following is an exegesis class of the text Jalalayn taught by Sayyid

Sahib to ﬁ fth-year (Khamsa) students in November :

A student reads the Arabic text, verses – of Sura al-Baqara;

Sayyid Sahib interrupts her frequently to correct her pronuncia-

tion. (The student was sitting next to me. All the students were

wearing their nose pieces.)

Sayyid Sahib: Recites God’s name. ( Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim )

Sayyid Sahib: Allah is giving another proof here, about the fact that He has

complete power to bring the dead back to life on Judgment Day (qiyamat

ke din). This verse was revealed to address the people of Mecca, and most

Meccans at that time denied the existence of an afterlife. For them, life

consisted solely of what was in the world. They said, ‘What, when we are

reduced to rotten bones and decaying ﬂ esh and merge with the dust, will

Allah bring us back to life then?’ They were deniers ( munkir ) of this. This

is the reason for people doing bad deeds. People fear the government and

this fear keeps them from breaking the law. In the same way, this denial of

the afterlife is the reason why people commit sins ( gunah ) and bad deeds

( bad-kariyon ka sabab ).

So in this verse, Allah is giving His answer to this position.

Ibrahim is a prophet who is accepted by Jews and Christians [as well as

Muslims], although the Jews’ way of accepting him is somewhat strange

( mustaﬃ ya ). He is known as the ‘father of the prophets’ ( abul ambiyya ).

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

Allah saved him from the ﬁ re of Nimrud, as we studied in the previous

verses. Nimrud had ruled for  years. How many?

Students (in unison): .

Sayyid Sahib: And when he claimed to be God ( khudai da‘wa kiya ) and

challenged and disrespected the messengers ( paighambar ki tawhin ki ),

Allah gave the smallest and weakest of His creatures, the mosquito ( mac-

char ) sovereignty ( musallat ) over him. What did He choose?

Students: A mosquito!

Sayyid Sahib: And the mosquito came and entered his body through his

[Nimrud’s] nose and made its way to his brain. And none of Nimrud’s doc-

tors ( hakim ) were able to cure him. So one hakim said that there is nothing

to be done but to hit him on the head. So a man was given the job of hitting

Nimrud on the head with a shoe to give him relief. This was the punish-

ment he had to bear. Then he was reduced to nothing, and he died and his

wealth died with him. This was the result of his challenge ( muqabala ) to a

prophet ( paighambar ).

[Some text omitted here.]

Sayyid Sahib: Now this is the third proof. Hazrat Ibrahim was a prophet

( nabi ), and the knowledge of prophets is greater than that of ordinary

people. They know more about Allah’s power ( qudrat ), His essence ( zat ),

prophets have ‘ilm al-yaqin , ‘ain al-yaqin , and haqq al-yaqin . [These terms

were explained in the previous class: ‘ilm al-yaqin , what is known through

information ( khabar ), not seen by oneself; ‘ain al-yaqin , what is known

through sight; haqq al-yaqin , knowledge of the truth of something through

experience ( mu ’ aina , mushahida )]. But even so prophets keep entreat-

ing Allah ( du‘a karte rahte hain ) to increase their knowledge. So one day

Ibrahim asked Allah, ‘We all know that you bring the dead back to life, but

show me how you do this. I want to see with my own eyes’. He had ‘ilm

[ al- ] yaqin , but he wanted to witness it himself ( haqq al-yaqin ).

[Sayyid Sahib walks the students through the di erent kinds of knowledge

with examples.]

Sayyid Sahib: So Allah asked him, ‘Do you not believe?’ Ibrahim said, ‘Yes,

I believe, but I want to witness it’. So Allah gave him an extraordinary ( ajib )

proof. He said, ‘Bring four birds’. So he had four di erent birds brought to

him. They were: a peacock ( mor ), a vulture ( girdh ), a crow ( kawwa ), and a

chicken ( murga ). Then he said, ‘Now sacriﬁ ce ( ziba karo ) all four of them’.

So they were sacriﬁ ced. Their feathers, skin, meat, heads were separated.

 Scholars of Faith

Then Allah said, ‘Now grind everything together ( qeema kar do ) so that the

pieces are mixed together’.

Sayyid Sahib: What did he tell Ibrahim?

Students: Grind them together.

Sayyid Sahib: Around them there were seven mountains. How many

mountains were there?

Students: Seven.

Sayyid Sahib: Then he told Ibrahim, ‘Keep their heads with you and go

and deposit their meat on the mountains’. Where was he to put the meat?

Students: On the mountains.

Sayyid Sahib: And they had been completely ground together. They had

been ground together. They had been ground together. [These words are

repeated slowly, emphatically.] So, the pieces were put on the mountains.

Ibrahim put everything on the mountains and came back. Then Allah

said, ‘Now call those pieces of meat’. So all those pieces of meat began to

ﬂ y from the mountains [towards Ibrahim]. Each of the four birds reunited

with its original feathers, meat, and head, and the crow became a crow

again, and the chicken became a chicken again, and they began to speak.

So Allah said,

‘You see? In the same way, a human being can be burned and set aﬂ oat

on a river and his ashes scattered to the east and west, [or] buried under

the earth, but on Judgment Day I will awaken everyone from wherever

they are and call them to Myself. And I will make everyone stand in the

court ( ‘adalat ) of judgment.’

This is the incident that Allah is relating in this verse of Sura al-Baqara.

[Sayyid Sahib recites the verse in Arabic, with intonation, translates each

word with grammatical explanation, then pauses.] Now the question

arises, Why did Allah ask Ibrahim, ‘Don’t you believe?’ Doesn’t Allah

know everything?

The truth is, when a question is asked, it is not always asked because

the questioner does not know the answer. Sometimes you ask me a ques-

tion because you do not know the answer. Sometimes I ask you a question

in an exam to see if you know the answer. But sometimes the question is

asked to demonstrate ( zahir karne ke liye ) that the other person knows the

answer. If I ask this student to tell me the answer to a problem, it is not

because I think she is ignorant, or because I am ignorant, but because I

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

know that she is capable and I want to show that this student knows the

answer while the other student does not.

Students repeat after him: She knows the answer.

Sayyid Sahib: Do you understand?

Students: Yes.

Sayyid Sahib: Allah asked Ibrahim so that Ibrahim would tell him that yes,

he believed, and others around him would know that Ibrahim believed

and that he wanted to increase the level of his belief by witnessing that in

which he already believed.

[Sayyid Sahib reads on from the Arabic text.]

The Friend of God ( khalil al-illah ) asked Allah this question. And Allah

asked him the question not in the same way in which He asked Nimrud,

but with love. He asked Nimrud to make the sun rise from the west, but

was Nimrud able to do it?

Students: No.

[Sayyid Sahib interrupts the class for a few minutes to answer a call on his

cell phone.  Speaks softly but urgently for a few moments into the phone.

Then, turning his attention to the class once more, he repeats the lesson

with grammatical details.]

Sayyid Sahib: Then Ibrahim caught a vulture, a crow, a peacock, [and] a

chicken. Allah could have chosen to ask Ibrahim to catch an animal such

as a dog, goat, or cow, or some other animal. But birds resemble mankind

in many ways. A peacock has a great moral defect, as it thinks it is supe-

rior to everyone else. Because it is so beautiful, it is always preening itself,

and is full of pride ( ghamand ). And the vulture has the defect of stingi-

ness ( kanjusi ). And the crow has the defect of greed and anger ( hirs , lalach ,

ghazab ). And the chicken has the defect of having too much desire [ for

things] ( khwahishat ). These four things are [found] in humans too. And

they are very dangerous for humans.

So far I have done the exegesis at the level of shari‘at. Now I am going

to give you the spiritual ( ruhani ) exegesis of these verses.

Catch the four birds inside you. And sacriﬁ ce them, get rid of them.

Catch jealousy, greed, anger, desire, and stinginess and cast them out, and

 I did not observe any of the other teachers at the madrasa using a cell

phone in the classroom. Sayyid Sahib, by virtue of his administrative duties,

was the exception to the rule.

 Scholars of Faith

you will be able to ﬂ y like the birds. Just as Ibrahim’s shoes ﬂ ew. Did his

shoes ﬂ y?

Students: Yes, they did.

Sayyid Sahib: The magician came. He made the shoes ﬂ y.

[Sayyid Sahib reads from the text. Then he recites a verse by Baba Farid

Ganj-i Shakkar. He repeats it several times with rhythm and rhyme until

the students can recite it, and they fully understand and appreciate its

meaning.]

Card your own cotton /dhunle dhuniye apni dhun

Don’t ask about the other one’s defects/ parayi dhun ke pap na pun

There are four defects in your cotton/ teri rui men char binole

Stinginess and anger, jealousy and hatred/ bughz wa gussa hasad wa kina

Leave them and listen to me/ unko chhor de meri sun

Nowadays cotton is spun into cloth with machines. But before, didn’t peo-

ple spin their own cotton?

Spin your own cotton. Don’t pay attention to the defects of the other

spinner. There are four defects in your cotton: stinginess ( bughz ), anger

( gussa ), jealousy ( hasad ), and hatred ( kina ). Then listen to me.

We are so proud of our titles: ‘alim, ‘alima … But ﬁ rst we should take

out our own defects.

[Now Sayyid Sahib mimics an imaginary ‘alim who thinks very highly of

himself and throws his weight around. The students start to laugh. Then

he turns to the next verse.]

Analysis

Of the two classes I have presented above, the format of the ﬁ rst is

typical of the madrasa classes I observed, while the second is more

ﬂ uid and raises a di erent set of issues. Structurally, the ﬁ rst class

had a tripartite structure, as did all the ‘Alima and Fazila classes I

observed. During the ﬁ rst  minutes of the –-minute class, the

teachers of classes at all levels called upon one or a few randomly

selected students by name to answer questions relating to the previ-

ous day’s class material. The student would stand up, respond to the

question from memory and when the teacher asked her to explain in

her own words the meaning of the words she had just read or recited,

she was required to show her understanding of the text by doing so.

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

Then she sat down and the teacher proceeded to the next point. If she

was unable to answer the question, her neighbours were not allowed

to help her, although the teacher sometimes tried to do so by asking

related questions in an e ort to jog her memory. If this failed, she

would remain standing while the teacher called upon another stu-

dent to answer the same question. The ﬁ rst student was silent and

hung her head down low out of shame and embarrassment, her white

headscarf obscuring her face, and remained standing in her place

for several minutes until the teacher signalled to her that she could

sit down again. This happened in silence, with little to no attention

paid by the students sitting near her. Their full attention was on the

teacher.

The second part of the class, in which new material was intro-

duced, involved intense engagement between the teacher and

students, as we saw in both transcriptions. In the Qur’an class, the

teacher went to great lengths to make sure the students understood

the new material she was presenting and repeated the points she

wanted them to understand more than once, as she deemed neces-

sary. I observed this particularly in the more advanced classes which

had fewer students, and which sometimes involved understanding a

problem from several points of view. In the Qur’an class transcribed

earlier, the teacher made a connection between the Qur’anic text and

the lives of the students in her exegesis of : when she said, ‘God

forbade the breaking of relationships, but what is happening today? A

lot of people break relationships. Second, people break mutual ties of

friendship, love, and so on. Third, people are told that they should do

good, but they don’t.’ While these comments were not an invitation

to students to discuss their personal experiences of such matters in

class, the teacher was asking them to reﬂ ect on the meaning of this

verse in relation to their own lives and to internalize the message that

verbal promises between individuals are the basis for relationships

built on love and trust, and that these ties should be mutually bind-

ing. She thus related the term ‘covenant’ ( ‘ahd ) in the verse to the

everyday lives of the young students and their relationships with their

natal families as well as their future relationships with a nal kin. By

emphasizing that in this verse God was forbidding the breaking of

relationships, she was signalling strongly that it was binding on the

students as observant Muslims seeking to obey God’s will to do all in

 Scholars of Faith

their power to nurture their relationships with parents and kin, and

with their future husband and families through marriage.

The third part of the Qur’an class was devoted to in-class review of

the new material learned, in which students had the opportunity to

personally approach their teacher for further clariﬁ cation of speciﬁ c

points they had not fully understood. This face-to-face contact between

student and teacher sometimes continued after class in the evenings

during free time, if the student sought to approach the teacher in

the sta room or elsewhere. If others were present at the time, they

o ered their comments on the question at hand. It could thus become

a free-ﬂ owing discussion with comments ﬂ owing from one student to

the other, the teacher arbitrating between them. But such exchanges

occurred outside the classroom, never during classtime, and they

were usually related to exam preparation when students wanted to

make sure they had understood the material correctly, as the teacher

had presented it. In neither of the classes I presented earlier was the

teacher–student exchange intended to open a subject up for discus-

sion. Rather, when the teacher asked a question, s/he wanted to make

sure that the students were listening and paying attention, and that

they had understood what was being taught. This was characteristic

of both the classes presented earlier.

Sayyid Sahib’s class, which I have characterized as being more

ﬂ uid—in both structure and presentation—is a demonstration of

what an experienced, knowledgeable, and gifted teacher can do to

hold students’ attention and make broad connections between the

material being studied and ontological truths that s/he believes in.

The students were fully attentive in his class in part because of the

awe he inspires in them by virtue of his status as the founder of

the madrasa, his depth of knowledge, and his Sayyid ancestry, and

because it is a privilege to be taught by him. But their attention was

also a response to his performative abilities: his highly e ective use of

humour and mimicry to pour scorn on people who pride themselves

on their looks or wealth or knowledge and consider themselves to be

above other people (by analogy with the crow and other birds in the

Qur’anic exegesis) made students laugh on several occasions. Indeed,

like a skilled performer warming to his role, he grew more animated

as the class progressed, and when he presented his spiritual exegesis

of the verse by reciting the poem by the ﬁ fteenth-century Shaykh Baba

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

Farid Ganj-i Shakkar, the whole lesson appeared to come together in a

profound way, revealing the deeper meaning of the verse.

Thematically, the light-heartedness of some of the moments in

Sayyid Sahib’s class was balanced by the underlying seriousness of the

larger issues he addressed, chieﬂ y that of God’s absolute sovereignty

and power, as demonstrated by the story of God bringing the birds

back to life after their headless bodies had been completely ground

down and mixed with one another. The theme of God’s absolute

onenness and sovereignty and of mankind’s absolute subjecthood

and powerlessness is one to which Sayyid Sahib returns frequently in

conversation. He was thus able to e ectively link the subject matter

of the class with the ontological truths he believes to be self-evident,

truths with which the students as practising Muslims also fully iden-

tify. However, not all Sunni Muslims would accept the authority of the

Suﬁ saint, Shaykh Baba Farid Ganj-i Shakkar, and by interpreting the

verse in light of his poem, Sayyid Sahib was identifying with certain

strands of Islamic theology, especially the Barelwi school of thought

to which he belongs.

Classroom Discussions of the Fiqh of Taharat as It Relates

to Women

No discussion of the madrasa students’ education at Jami‘a Nur would

be complete without consideration of the central role played in it by

the ﬁ qh of taharat, the jurisprudence of ritual puriﬁ cation, insofar as

it relates to women. Taharat is discussed at every level of the madrasa

curriculum, from the ﬁ rst year (‘Ula) through the sixth (Sadisa), with

increasing levels of complexity. I found it being discussed when I

attended a second-year (Saniya) class on the Sunni Bihishti Zewar , as I

had fully expected, but also in a ﬁ fth-year (Khamsa) class on the book of

jurisprudence Hidaya , and a lesson on Quduri , another book of juris-

prudence, among others. A teacher explained that taharat is taught at

length in the ﬁ rst half of the academic year, while other subjects such as

fasting and marriage are taught in the second half. And as the teacher

quoted at the beginning of this chapter asked rhetorically, ‘If women

don’t understand the ﬁ ner points of ritual puriﬁ cation (taharat), fast-

ing, ablution (wudu’), etc., who will? Not the men, right? This falls on

the women. … Women have to learn these things so they can educate

 Scholars of Faith

their children properly.’ This comment illustrates the close connection

between the students’ book knowledge and the practical purpose of the

madrasa curriculum, namely, to inculcate a habitus of everyday piety

that will carry over into their lives as wives and mothers. Winkelmann’s

observation, noted in the previous chapter, is worth repeating here:

the Tablighi Jama‘at girls’ madrasa in Delhi, she noted, emphasized

practical virtues ( faza’il ) rather than theoretical legal issues ( masa’il ). 

Or in the words of Moosa, the Jami‘a Nur illustrates what he rues as

the madrasa’s ‘republic of piety’, a feature shared by most South Asian

madrasas today, those for boys included, over the ‘republic of letters’ or

knowledge for the sake of knowledge, of a previous era.



In the context of Jami‘a Nur and other girls’ madrasas, taharat deals

with personal matters such as menstruation and sexuality, and their

connection with ‘prayer-readiness’, to use Maghen’s term. According

to Maghen, ‘ Tahara , despite its prominent place in the Muslim ethos

and considerable girth in the ﬁ qh literature, is probably the single

most neglected area in Western Islamic studies’.

 Yet he argues

convincingly that in the legal literature, discussion of sexual issues is

‘never far removed’ from the discussion of religious ones, for the two

are ‘integrally connected’. In order to pray, one must be ritually pure,

performing either the greater or the lesser of the two ablutions, either

a full bath ( ghusl ) or washing of the face and limbs (wudu’), depending

on the state of one’s ritual impurity. Failure to perform the correct

purity-restoring ablution threatens to invalidate one’s prayer.

The Sunni Bihishti Zewar starts by saying:

Purity (taharat) is such a necessary part of the canonical prayer (namaz)

that without it there can be no prayer. According to the ‘ulama, a person

who deliberately o ers the prayer without ﬁ rst purifying him- or herself is

guilty of inﬁ delity ( kufr ). The Prophet said that prayer is the key to heaven

( jannat ) and purity is the key to prayer (Imam Ahmad).



 Mareike Jule Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a Girls’

Madrasa in India (Amsterdam: ISIM Press, ), p. .

 See Ebrahim Moosa, What Is a Madrasa? (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, ), Chapter .

 Ze’ev Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh: Passion and Purity in Early Islamic

Jurisprudence (Leiden: Brill, ), p. .

 Sunni Bihishti Zewar , p. .

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

In this section of the book, detailed instructions are therefore given

to the reader to help her distinguish di erent conditions requir-

ing either wudu’ or ghusl. In particular, women’s menstrual cycle,

sexual intercourse, and childbirth are discussed, being conditions

that require either the woman’s temporary cessation of prayer (dur-

ing menstruation and childbirth) or a puriﬁ catory bath (after sexual

intercourse). Throughout this section, and indeed in the book as a

whole, the woman is told to be constantly vigilant regarding her cor-

rect response to di erent situations. She must also keep track of how

many prayers she has missed, and has to make up once she is past

the temporary period of ritual impurity. The author also emphasizes

the importance of o ering the required daily prayers, and of making

up missed ones, before undertaking any additional, supererogatory

devotions ( naﬂ ). 

Some examples of classroom discussions of di erent aspects of

taharat which I observed will illustrate the detailed manner in which

the subject is analysed. Thus, in a class of the Sunni Bihishti Zewar for

second-year students, the teacher presented a Hadith from the book,

as follows:

Every time you rinse your mouth [in wudu’], the sins of your mouth are

washed away. When you clean your nose, those of the nose are ﬂ ushed out,

when you clean your ears, the sins of your ears are washed out. And when

you wash your hands the sins of your hands come out. And the sins of

your head come out when you rinse your head. And so on. When a person

does wudu’ once, then s/he gets the reward ( sawab ); when you do wudu’

twice, then you get twice the reward. But if you do it three times, the third

set of beneﬁ ts is only for the prophets.’

In a class for more senior students, the discussion took on greater

complexity. The ﬁ fth-year class on Hidaya discussed a di erence

 For example, on p.  the book reads, ‘Making up missed prayers

( kaza namazen ) is more important than o ering extra ( naﬁ l ) prayers’. This

statement is repeated frequently throughout the book. The two preceding

paragraphs are based on my chapter ‘Changing Concepts of the Person in

Two Ahl-i Sunnat/Barelwi Texts for Women: The Sunni Bihishti Zewar and

the Jannati Zewar ’, in Usha Sanyal, David Gilmartin, and Sandria B. Freitag,

eds, Muslim Voices: Community and the Self in South Asia (Delhi: Yoda Press,

), pp. –.

 Scholars of Faith

of opinion between two scholars on the things that break wudu’

( nawaqiz ) in di erent contexts. According to Imam-i A‘zam (Abu

Hanifa, the eponymous founder of the Hanaﬁ school or madhhab ),

the teacher explained, the impurity in question had to be su cient

in quantity to constitute a ﬂ ow, whereas for Imam-i Shaﬁ ‘i (al-Shaﬁ ‘i,

the founder of the Shaﬁ ‘i school) the quantity was immaterial to its

capacity to break wudu’. Even a small amount was su cient. So the

question was, how did one reconcile the two positions? The teacher

explained the situation as follows:

There are two kinds of proofs: rational ( ‘aqli ) and transmitted ( naqli ).

When the impurity comes out, it destroys the purity (taharat). This is clear

from reason ( ‘aql ). The limbs have to be washed. Then, applying analogi-

cal reasoning ( qiya s), he [Abu Hanifa] says: ‘There is a condition, that is,

the impurity (from blood or pus) must be ﬂ owing, if not one will not say

that the impurity came out.’

The teacher then explained that the impurity must exit the body, it

must come out. If it doesn’t do so, if it is not evident, then it will be

immaterial to the situation.

The mouth is full of vomit ( ulti , qai ). When will it be said that the mouth

is full? When it comes out of the mouth. There is no di erence whether

there is just a little or a lot. Vomit is an accidental cause of impurity ( hada s),

whether it is much or little. This is the opinion of Imam-i Shaﬁ ‘i. But

according to Imam-i A‘zam, if there is a spot or two of blood, purity will not

be broken. There has to be a ﬂ ow. Then it will be broken ( naqi s). Since there

is disagreement between [these two] Hadith, how do we reconcile them?

The Hadith from Imam-i Shaﬁ ‘i deals with there being only a little vomit,

whereas the Hadith from Imam-i A‘zam deals with a di erent situation. So

the di erence in their opinions stems from the di erent situations.

The lesson here, students learned, was that di erent situations and

contexts lead to di erent outcomes. In practical terms, they had to

know how to tell them apart and how to respond accordingly.

The Role of Memorization in Madrasa Learning:

Field Observations

As the subject of ‘rote’ learning is often raised in criticism of

madrasa teaching practices, I turn now to my observations of student

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

memorization in the course of my ﬁ eldwork. To return to the ﬁ rst

part of the Qur’an class in which students demonstrated their ability

to memorize material learned the previous day, I was impressed but

also puzzled by their capacity to memorize large sections of material

in a relatively short time. How did they do it? I also realized after

observing classes in di erent subject areas that memorization of class

material was not limited to the Qur’an. It spilled over to all the other

subjects as well.

In addition, I also puzzled over the fact that I had never observed

the students taking notes. They were not allowed to write anything on

the books themselves (as these belonged to the madrasa), but I had

never seen them take notes in a notebook to help them remember the

lesson. How did the students memorize their lessons so quickly and

so well without recourse to writing? When I raised the question in a

group discussion in , one of the teachers corrected me, saying

the students did indeed take notes. And she called one of the senior

students,  years old, intelligent and full of enthusiasm, and asked

her to show me one of her notebooks. As I recorded in my ﬁ eld notes

from :

The notebook contained neat handwritten notes on the subject written on

the outside cover. There is a notebook for almost every subject the student

studies. Since there are  periods per day, she would have anywhere up to

 notebooks for each academic year. However, not every subject needs a

notebook. They said that since Hadith, for example, is easy to remember

(as it is in narrative form), they don’t make notebooks for Hadith classes.

But other subjects—grammar, ﬁ qh, Sunni Bihishti Zewar , etc.—all have

notebooks. At the end of her studies, the student will have all these note-

books in her keeping, and they will be a good reference for her whenever

she needs to review something she had studied at the madrasa. These

notebooks are dictated by the teacher and corrected by her to make sure

they don’t contain any errors. The text dictated is a summary of the con-

tents of the book. Each student’s notebook will contain identical notes.

When a student is called upon in class to answer a question, she recites

the relevant part of the notes she took most likely the previous day.

This was how students learned and memorized their lessons. Note

taking in the madrasa context was thus akin to dictation, in that each

student’s notes were ideally identical to those of her classmates.

Individuality was not what was prized, rather it was uniformity and

 Scholars of Faith

accurate reproduction of the words dictated by the teacher. Ultimately,

the reason for the high value placed on such uniformity has to do

with the fact that the madrasa is imparting religious knowledge ( dini

ta‘lim ), which is of a higher order than the knowledge of reading,

writing, and arithmetic (the three r’s) imparted in secular schools.

Students respond to this message. Their demeanour in madrasa

classes attested to their intense engagement with the religious ques-

tions they were studying and discussing with their teachers. I will

show in the next chapter how di erent was the atmosphere in the

two secular schools that occupied di erent parts of the same building

until .

A third issue that puzzled me initially was that the amount of new

material introduced in each class was relatively small and the amount

of time spent on it was also quite brief, between  and  minutes

approximately. Then I realized that each student was taking eight dif-

ferent classes in quick succession through the course of the morning,

and she had to master the new material presented in each of those

classes by the next day. So it followed that the amount of new material

presented in each class would have to be brief, covering perhaps a

couple of pages in each class. In the next section on peer learning, I

will address the issue of memorization in further depth.

An Evening at the Madrasa: Peer Learning

On one of my visits to the madrasa, I noted:

The madrasa students spend about  hours each day after classes are over

and  hour in the morning before school starts— the same amount of

time as school itself—memorizing their lessons. This is what the muta‘ala

consists of. Muta‘ala takes place every afternoon after school, and every

night. Much of the activity is done in small groups where one student

recites aloud to another, and the other corrects her if she makes a mistake.

Then they switch roles. The teachers are always at hand during these study

sessions should the student have a question.  )

There are two intertwined issues here: memorization and peer learn-

ing, as much of the work of memorization takes place in concert with

 From my ﬁ eld notes, .

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

other students outside the classroom, in an informal group setting.

Dale Eickelman addressed both issues very insightfully in his 

article ‘The Art of Memory’, in which he argued that memorization

precedes understanding, which is demonstrated by the ability to

invoke Qur’anic verses in appropriate social contexts:

Former students [of the Qur’an in Marrakesh, Morocco] emphasized

that throughout the long process of memorizing the Qur’an they asked

no questions concerning the meaning of [a] verse, even among them-

selves, nor did it occur to them to do so. Their sole activity was memoriz-

ing proper Qur’anic recitation. … ‘Understanding’ ( fahm ) in the context

of such concepts of learning was not measured by any ability to ‘explain’

particular verses. … Instead, the measure of understanding was implicit

and consisted of the ability to use particular Qur’anic verses in appropriate

contexts … [and] to make appropriate practical reference to the memorized

text. 

Moreover, Eickelman notes that although the Islamic ‘concept of

knowledge’ rests on the assumption that there are ﬁ xed truths that can

be ‘possessed’ through memorization,

 scholars and students did in

fact discuss and comment on what they were learning in informal

study circles and peer groups. However, because these e orts were

not culturally valorized by the public, no attention was called to them.

I found, likewise, that while students at Jami‘a Nur studied or

‘learned’ their lessons in large part through a process of memoriza-

tion, this did not mean that they did not understand what they were

reading or memorizing. Older students who were even a few years

into the ‘Alima curriculum displayed an ability to understand and

convey to others the meaning of what they were memorizing. When

I asked a student to read to me from a book of Hadith in Arabic, for

example, she did so at breakneck speed, from which I knew that she

had memorized the text. However, when I stopped her and asked her

to explain to me what she had read, her neighbour, who was listening

intently to our exchange, immediately stepped in to convey the gist

of the text’s meaning in her own words, using simple Urdu. In this

case, the text was about the marriage contract ( nikah ). The students

 Eickelman, ‘The Art of Memory’, pp. , .

 Eickelman, ‘The Art of Memory’, p. .

 Scholars of Faith

told me that the bride-to-be must give her consent—even if this be

silently indicated through a gesture or simply by not objecting—for

her marriage to proceed.

Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy vividly highlights the di erences

between cultures that are primarily oral (those that have ‘primary’

orality) and print cultures in which modern sound technologies (radio,

television, and a host of new media) play a supporting role (those that

have ‘secondary’ orality).  He places these on a historical continuum,

with a number of societies, including Middle Eastern ones, falling

somewhere in between. These societies, he writes, ‘retain enough oral

residue to remain signiﬁ cantly word-attentive in a person-interactive

context (the oral type of context) rather than object-attentive’.

 The

implication of the word ‘residue’ is clearly that societies are moving in

a linear direction from orality to print (and now to electronic media).

But as Messick points out, this is a Western-centric model. It is more

accurate to see Muslim societies as exhibiting ‘a complex motif of

a fully realized type of civilizational literacy’ which have their own

‘particular understandings, and relative valuings, of the recited and

the written’. In the Muslim context, the oral was privileged over the

written because it was deemed to be closer to divine truth than written

communication: ‘recitation purported to convey an authoritative gen-

uineness of expression by replicating an originally voiced presence’.



They coexisted, each in its own sphere, the former being associated

with ‘shari‘a jurisprudence and supporting ﬁ elds’, and the latter with

professions such as medicine, history, and philosophy.



Moreover, as Messick shows, not every kind of text within the ﬁ eld

of shari‘a jurisprudence was memorized. The crucial distinction here

was between the ‘matn’ and the ‘sharh’, the original (stable, ﬁ xed)

text and the (unstable, incomplete) commentary thereon. This rela-

tionship was modelled on the relationship between the Qur’an and

the Hadith—the latter being a commentary on the former. Only the

 Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New

York: Routledge,  []).

 Ong, Orality and Literacy , p. .

 Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History

in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –.

 Messick, The Calligraphic State , p. .

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

former was memorized, not the latter. This dovetails nicely with the

student notebooks at the madrasa being made for subjects other than

Hadith. The former is concise, the latter expansive, therefore by deﬁ -

nition not amenable to memorization.

There is much new research on the importance in Muslim societ-

ies of attentive listening and its implications for social relations, nota-

bly by Charles Hirschkind on cassette sermons in Egypt but also by

Anna Gade on Qur’an recitation in Indonesia. They both emphasize

the importance of listening as a religious act, deriving from the belief

that the Qur’an, the literal word of God, transforms the human heart

if one listens actively to its message. In both studies, a ect is central

to the author’s analysis of individuals listening to, learning from, and

acting on the Qur’anic message. As Hirschkind describes it, a person

whose heart is receptive to the Qur’anic message, who is ‘Qur’anically

tuned’, responds to a good sermon with his or her whole body: ‘For

such a person, auditory reception involves the ﬂ esh, back, chest, and

heart—in short, the entire moral person as a unity of body and soul.’



Gade shows that a person’s emotional involvement in Qur’anic

learning holds the key not only to continuous practice, but to escalating

practice and self-imposed standards of perfection. As a reciter gains

greater competence, she is motivated to expand her engagement with

the Qur’an and push herself towards constantly increasing levels of

excellence. She is ‘lured’ into the learning process in a ‘spiraling hori-

zon’, ‘familiar and deﬁ nable … yet … never static’.

 Importantly, Gade

emphasizes that the transformation of self that follows is accompa-

nied by community transformation over time in a ‘feedback loop’, on

account of the individual’s moral responsibility to contribute towards

the greater good of the community at large. In her view, the process

 Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and

Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, ), p. .

When Al-Huda online students were moved by a Qur’an recitation heard on

tape, they would frequently say that it gave them goosebumps from sheer

emotion.

 Anna M. Gade, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the

Recited Qur’an in Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ),

pp. –. The words in quotes are from Gade’s citation, on p. , of Ron

Williams and James Boyd’s description of repetitive ritual action.

 Scholars of Faith

is better understood in terms of the Islamic concepts of adab and

da‘wa than the Foucauldian concept of technology of the self, which

‘views the self as constituting itself as a subject within social systems.

… [This concept] must be enhanced with the recognition that they are

also “technologies of the community”’.



I think these insights help us situate the learning process at the

madrasa in a wider frame, and free us from the narrow view of

memory work as being intellectually stiﬂ ing and stultifying.  At

the madrasa in , I noted the teachers’ high degree of emotional

engagement with the students under their care. An example of this

was the system whereby each teacher was assigned one particular

classroom as her responsibility. She checked on her room ﬁ rst thing

after she woke up, making sure all the girls were okay, that the room

was left clean before school began, and that nothing in the room (for

example, light bulbs) was broken or needing repair. If there was, she

would let the o ce know so that they could take care of the problem.

Thereafter, at di erent points during the day, she checked the girls’

attendance so that she knew where each one was at any given time.

And if a girl in her room had a personal problem, she would be the

one to whom the girl would go for advice and help.

I also found a similar degree of intellectual engagement. The daily

teaching load seemed to be quite heavy for some teachers, as they

taught students throughout the di erent grade levels from the start

of the school day until the end of school around midday. They also

taught di erent subjects. One teacher, for example, taught jurispru-

dence to senior students, Arabic grammar to third-year students,

Persian literature to ﬁ rst-year students, and elementary Urdu to the

youngest students—all in the course of a single day’s teaching. The

English teacher, who did not live in the madrasa, seemed on the other

hand to teach just English and arithmetic to all the di erent grades.

 Gade, Perfection Makes Practice , p. . Moreover, Gade also points out

that the learning process itself takes place in part in a community setting, as

in study circles. See Gade, Perfection Makes Practice , p. .

 For similar insights from a high-caste Tamil village school, see Bhavani

Raman, ‘Disciplining the Senses, Schooling the Mind: Inhabiting Virtue in

the Tamil Tinnai School’, in Anand Pandian and Daud Ali, eds, Ethical Life in

South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –.

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

It being exam time when I did my ﬁ rst round of ﬁ eldwork in June

, students were no longer taking classes. In fact, they had two

separate sets of exams: the ﬁ rst were state-mandated exams which

students had to pass in order to satisfy UP state madrasa board

requirements. These over, students then had about two weeks’ break

before they gave a second set of exams, which teachers said were

harder, set by them and graded in-school. The exam results would

be given to each student before she left for her month-long Ramadan

break. Students spent the fortnight reviewing the material with their

teachers during the day and doing group study in the evenings. The

teachers made up the exams and then spent several hours a day over

the course of two or three days preparing detailed lists of where each

student would be seated. The reason for this was that space being

so tight, students had to sit close together when taking their tests

and the teachers wanted to make sure that no one could look at her

neighbour’s work while she was taking her test. So they scrambled the

entire study body in such a way that students would sit next to other

students from di erent classes, taking entirely di erent tests at the

same time. Seniors and juniors would thus be seated side by side in

accordance with the plan worked out by the teachers ahead of time.

In the next section of this chapter, I turn the focus on the students

themselves, so we can hear their voices directly and see the madrasa

from their perspective.

Students and Student Life

The girls who attended the madrasa were largely rural and many were

from poor families. Their monthly fees in  were very low, at INR

 per month (equivalent to less than USD  at the time of writing),

which covered board and lodging, as well as tuition. Since some stu-

dents’ parents could not a ord even this much, the school had reduced

fees for some, and yet others paid no fees whatsoever. The school was

constantly stretched for funds. Administrators made up some of the

shortfall by drawing upon funds from the English-language school,

which had higher fees even though it was a day school.

As mentioned, space was very tight at the madrasa. All the class-

rooms were on the second ﬂ oor of the building. Students stored their

personal belongings in trunks arranged in neat rows along the four

 Scholars of Faith

walls of their classrooms. In the summer months, they had the option

of taking their bedding up to the ﬂ at roof of the building and sleeping

there rather than in their hot, stu y classrooms—this was a valuable

space with many uses during the day as well. Every evening, students

assembled here for evening ( maghrib ) prayers, forming neat rows and

praying in unison. The space also had domestic uses, a section of it

being used to hang laundry. Back downstairs, outside the classrooms

was a large hall where the morning assembly was held, and where

students formed informal study groups after school hours. One part

of this open space had been cordoned o to create a makeshift sick

room for students. Great discipline was required to ensure that each

student had a clean uniform for the school day and a change of clothes

for the rest of the day, not to mention sharing water for bathing and

ablutions before prayer time.

Although I was unable to have an extended conversation with the

students, as they were in the midst of ﬁ nal exams, I put together some

simple questions in writing, asking them to tell me about themselves

and what they were learning at the school. Here are some responses:



I am  years old. I study in Saniya [the second year of the ‘Alima course].

I have been at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at for four years.

I am from Lakhimpur Kheri town. My mother is a housewife [student’s

usage]. My father works at a tyre service station. He studied to the eighth

grade when he was young. Then he searched for a job and after a lot of

e ort he was successful. All his life he has taken care of us and made sure

we had proper education and training.

We are eight sisters and no brothers. Two of us study at Jami‘a Nur

al-Shari‘at. And ﬁ ve of my other sisters study at the G.G.I.C. Inter College

[name of college written in English]. My youngest sister is too young to

go to school.

I love everything at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at. But most of all, I love the

studies. And I love the rules and regulations ( pa-bandi ) here, because over

here great attention is paid to veiling (pardah). And in the morning, after

the dawn (fajr) prayer, we recite the Qur’an, which I like a lot. And I like

the way things are done here.

 I wrote the questions in Devanagari script and received the answers the

same way. Students are well-versed in both Devanagari and Nastaliq scripts,

in addition to being able to read and write simple English.

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

In response to the question, ‘What have you learned at Jami‘a Nur

al-Shari‘at and what will you do di erently when you go home?’ she

wrote:

I have beneﬁ ted a great deal from my education at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at.

In moral and ethical terms ( akhlaqi taur par ), I have learned good man-

ners ( husn-i suluq ) when interacting with people, including neighbours,

and how to live amicably with others, how to be kind to those who are

younger, and how to honour the elderly. In terms of worldly matters, I

have learned how to conduct myself well on a daily basis, how to distin-

guish between right and wrong, and how to keep good company and avoid

bad company. In terms of religion, I have learned how to pray and fast,

how to recognize the permitted ( halal ) from the forbidden ( haram ), the

di erence between that which is obligatory ( fard , wajib ) from that which

is recommended ( sunnat ) and approved ( mustahabb ). I also learned the

duties ( ahkam ) of the shari‘a, how to o er prayer … and questions related

to the essentials of the faith ( zaruriyat-i din ). And which actions will take

us to paradise and which ones to hell. I pray to God that I may do good

deeds and act upon whatever I have learned in this madrasa so that I may

be admitted to heaven.

In response to my question, ‘What are your future aspirations in life?’

she wrote:

After completing my studies, I would like to start a madrasa of my own so

that this tradition of learning ( silsila ) may continue.

When I return home, ﬁ rst of all I will teach my parents the duties of

o ering prayer and keeping the fast and I will teach my sisters how to

pray. I will teach everyone in my household that they must pray [daily]. I

will teach them all the good things I learned in this madrasa. I used to pray

even before I came here, but there were lots of things that I didn’t know.

I will teach those things to my family and to my neighbours ( muhalle-

walon ko ). And I will tell my mother, and my sisters, and women in the

neighbourhood that they must observe pardah, and I will teach them good

things, God willing.

I have quoted this student’s response extensively because of the

details she provided, not to mention her idealism and desire to lead

an orthoprax life, and urge those around her to do likewise. Other

students also responded in similar terms, speaking enthusiastically

of what they had learned at the madrasa, and how they had learned to

practice the basic duties of prayer and fasting during Ramadan, which

 Scholars of Faith

they had either not done before or had done incorrectly or intermit-

tently. They all spoke of their desire to teach their families how to do

these things.

Another striking response was the frequent mention of respect for

parents, especially their mothers, as in the following:

When I go back home after completing my studies here, ﬁ rst of all I will

kiss my mother’s feet, as paradise lies beneath the feet of the mother. Then

I will teach others whatever I have learned here so that this knowledge

may make its home in the heart of every human being the world over.

I will fulﬁ l the wishes of my mother and my father, and will follow in

my teachers’ footsteps and light up the whole world with the knowledge

given to me by them, and pray to God that no Muslim will be bereft of this

light. Amen.

This student wrote that she was  years old, had been in the madrasa

for  years, and was studying in the Salisa class (third year of the

‘Alima course).

Also noteworthy in student and teacher discourse in the Jami‘a Nur

al-Shari‘at madrasa was the absence of overt anti-Deobandi rhetoric.

While certainly welcome, this absence puzzled me initially in view of

the structured incorporation of such rhetoric in Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya, the

Barelwi madrasa for boys in Mubarakpur, Azamgarh district, east UP,

through group debates and speeches by students, and its importance

in shaping their sense of a ‘Barelwi’ identity, as reported by Arshad

Alam.  If students were not taught to deﬁ ne themselves against

another denominational group ( maslak ), how then did they identify as

‘Barelwis’? Was the pursuit of a Barelwi identity expected to be ‘lived’

through di erent practices?

The daily practices of the teachers and students did, in fact, contain

clues about the Barelwi identity of the madrasa. One such practice

was that of touching their thumbs to their eyes and then kissing

the thumbs every time the Prophet was mentioned in a speech or

sermon, as a gesture of love and respect. No less signiﬁ cant was the

way texts were read and interpreted in the course of the school day.

For instance, when commenting to me about the opening page of the

book Sunni Bihishti Zewar , one of the teachers noted that the Hadith

 See Arshad Alam, Inside a Madrasa: Knowledge, Power and Islamic

Identity in India (Delhi: Routledge, ), pp. –.

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

cited on that page illustrated the Prophet’s knowledge of the unseen.

For a Barelwi, this was a point of disagreement with Deobandis, and

her statement would therefore have been self-explanatory and self-

evident to both students and teachers, and therefore not the subject

of discussion or dispute. Similarly, when I asked Sayyid Sahib what

prompted him to choose the names he had for his schools, he said,

‘We [Barelwis] are between the Wahhabis [read, Deobandis, Ahl-i

Hadith, the Saudi establishment, and so on] on the one hand and the

Shi‘a on the other. While the Wahhabis denigrate the Prophet’s family

and the Shi‘a go overboard in praising them, we are in the middle.’ So

the Barelwis were Sunnis who loved the Prophet and therefore also

loved Sayyids, who are his descendants, and the concept of Nur [light]

was emblematic of that love.

 They demonstrated the perfect balance

between two extremes.

In these many unremarkable, everyday ways, Barelwi self-identity

was created without any overt need to engage in negative denuncia-

tion of an absent ‘Other’. Moreover, as I explore in the next chapter, the

ritual practices the students learned at the madrasa bore the hallmark

of the Barelwi interpretation of Islam, and their Barelwi identities

were articulated in particular ways in their morning assembly or du‘a

and weekly Thursday evening student presentations. The contrast

between this madrasa and Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya, the boys’ madrasa in east

UP, should be clearer in Chapter , in the context of their di erent

approaches to the Thursday evening programme.

Reading the students’ responses and observing them during

ﬁ eldwork, I did not get the impression that they were at the madrasa

because it was the only choice they (or their parents) had. Rather, like

Aisha, the madrasa teacher described by Je ery, Je rey, and Je rey, 

 Note that the madrasas’ and secular schools’ names have been changed

in order to protect their identity. The meaning of the question and Sayyid

Sahib’s response are therefore not as clear-cut as I would have liked.

Of course, as a Sayyid, Sayyid Sahib also enjoys a special relationship with

the Prophet’s family. For the Barelwi reverence for Sayyids, see Usha Sanyal,

Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Mawlana Ahmad Riza Khan

Barelwi and His Movement, 1880–1920 (new edn, Delhi: Yoda Press, ).

 See Patricia Je ery, Roger Je ery, and Craig Je rey, ‘Aisha, the Madrasah

Teacher’, in Mukulika Banerjee, ed., Muslim Portraits: Everyday Lives in India

(New Delhi: Yoda Press, ).

 Scholars of Faith

they seemed totally at home there, totally immersed in the world of

the madrasa, and by all appearances thriving in the atmosphere of

disciplined, rigorous study and religious observance, and the nur-

turing environment of supportive teachers and administrative sta ,

as well as fellow students, that the madrasa o ers.  If, as Je rey,

Je rey, and Je rey note, part of the reason rural parents and those

from small towns choose to educate their daughters today is that it

makes girls more eligible on the marriage market, by the same token

their education also postponed marriage by a few years and allowed

them to develop self-esteem through their newfound knowledge and

leadership skills through active participation in school activities. In

the case of the madrasa students, they also knew that their religious

education was highly valourized by their families and communities,

and if displayed in appropriate ways at home, would enhance their

status among both a nal and consanguinal relatives.

As I have noted previously, there is not much di erence in the

overall message to women between the Jami‘a Nur and the girls’

madrasa studied by Winkelmann. Though the two madrasas adhered

to di erent maslaks—Barelwi and Tablighi Jama‘at, respectively—

their students had similar socioeconomic proﬁ les and made do with

a number of privations in terms of space and the lack of resources,

but had a high sense of motivation and engagement with the goals of

their madrasa. In the next chapter, I will explore the issue of madrasa

students’ high level of emotional engagement with their education

in a di erent light, comparing what we have learned in this chapter

with the learning environment in the secular schools that until 

were located in the same building as Jami‘a Nur. What, if anything,

distinguishes the student populations of the di erent schools, their

learning and teaching styles, and their overall ethos?

 I am reminded of a student who fell ill while I was there and who cried

when her parents came to take her home so she could get treatment. She

didn’t want to go home. This happened during ﬁ nal exams, just a few weeks

before the students were to return home for the Ramadan holidays.

APPENDIX 

List of Classes and Subjects Taught at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at (June 2012)

Saliha Awwal

Pre-‘Alima

Saliha Dom

Pre-‘Alima

‘Adadiya

Pre-‘Alima

‘Ula

‘Alima 1st

year

Saniya

‘Alima 2nd

year

Salisa

‘Alima 3rd

year

Rabia

‘Alima 4th

year

Khamsa

5th year Fazila

1st year

Sadisa

6th year Fazila

2nd year

English Ta‘amir-i

Adab

(Elementary

Urdu)

Farsi

(Persian)

Nahw Mir

(Arabic

Grammar)

Nur al-Idha

(‘Allama

Abul Muhd

Ikhlas

Hasan ibn-i

Ammar)

(Juris

prudence)

Hidayat

al-Nahw

(Arabic

Grammar)

Majmu‘a-i

Qir‘at

(Qur’an

Recitation)

Majmu‘a-i

Qir‘at

(Qur’an

Recitation)

Bukhari Sharif

(Hadith)

Hisab

(Arithmetic)

Masnun

Du‘a

(Superorega-

tory Prayers)

Minhaj

al-‘Arabiya

(Arabic)

Faiz

al-Adab

(Arabic

Grammar

and

Literature)

Panch Ganj

(Arabic

Grammar in

Persian)

Majmu‘a-i

Qir‘at

(Qur’an

Recitation)

Sharh

al-Waqayah

(Juris

prudence)

Jalalayn Sharif

(Exegesis of the

Qur’an)

Muslim Sharif

(Hadith)

Nurani

Ta‘lim

(Basic

Islamic

Teachings)

Qur’an

Sharif

Hisab

(Arithmetic)

Gulistan

(Persian)

Majmu‘a-i

Qir‘at

(Qur’an

Recitation)

Qalyubi ma‘a

Insha

(Arabic

Literature)

Tarjuma-i

Qur’an

(Translation of

the Qur’an)

Nur al-Anwar

(Principles of

Jurisprudence)

Tirmidhi

(Hadith)

Qir‘at

(Qur’an

Recitation)

Hindi Qir‘at

(Qur’an

Recitation)

Khush

Khati

(Urdu

Writing)

Khush Khati

(Urdu

Writing)

English Muwatta

Imam

Muhammad

(Hadith)

Hidaya,  vols.

(Jurisprudence)

Jalalayn Shaﬁ r

(Exegesis)

Naqal o imla

(Writing and

Dictation)

Nurani

Ta‘lim

(Basic

Quranic

Teachings)

Tashil al-

Masadir

(Persian

Grammar)

Majmu‘a-i

Qir‘at

(Qur’an

Recitation)

Al-Nahw

al-Wazih

(Arabic

Grammar)

Jawahar

al-Mantiq

(Logic)

Silai

(Sewing)

English Hidaya

(Jurisprudence)

Qur’an

sharif

English Naqal o

Imla

(Writing

and

Dictation)

English Sunni

Bihishti

Zewar

(Advice

Literature for

Women)

‘Ilm al-Sigha

(Arabic

Grammar in

Persian)

Usul al-Shashi

(Principles of

Jurisprudence)

Mishkat Sharif

(Hadith)

English

Ta‘amir-i

Adab

(Elementary

Urdu)

Naqal o imla

(Urdu

Writing)

English and

Hindi

Sunni

Bihishti

Zewar

(Advice

Literature

for

Women)

English Karhai

(Embroidery)

Manshuraat

ma‘a Insha

(Adab and

Arabic)

Mukhtarat ma‘a

Insha, nd vol.

(Arabic

Grammar)

Du‘a

(Supplicatory

Prayers)

Qir‘at

(Qur‘an

Recitation)

Jannati

Zewar

(Advice

Literature

for Women)

Mizan

al-Sarf

(Arabic

Grammar)

Qasas

al-Nabiyin

(Stories

about the

Prophets,

Arabic

Literature)

English Kashida Kari

(Embroidery)

 Scholars of Faith

APPENDIX 

Teacher Categories

The teachers of the English-medium school and the madrasa are clas-

siﬁ ed into three groups:

. PRT: Primary Teachers (pre-Nursery to KG).

. TGT: Trained Graduate Teacher (has to have a BEd degree con-

ferred by the government)—they teach grades  through .

. PGT: Post-graduate Teacher (must have an MA/M Sc/MPhil).

Teacher Salaries

Salaries are as follows: () INR ,–, ( rates), () INR

,–,, and () INR ,–,. Teach grades  and above.

The ‘Alima teacher ( muallima ), who has completed the seven-year

course, belongs to the highest category.

Wardens

The wardens are classiﬁ ed into: () senior and () junior.

There are  wardens, present  hours a day every day, and another

who comes during daytime hours.

Five teachers stay in the madrasa all day, every day. Four more come

during the day.

Student Fees

English-Medium School

Admission fees (a one-time fee for all English-medium students, once

a year): INR /-

Pedagogy and Daily Life at Jami‘a Nur al-Shari‘at 

Miscellaneous fees (one-time, once a year): INR /-

PNC, NC, and KG: INR /- per month

Grade I–V: INR /- per month

Grade VI–VIII: INR /- per month

Grade IX–X: INR /- per month. (These classes have science

practicals.)

Madrasa Fees

INR /- per month for hostel (except for the  students who are

not charged any fees).

Day scholars are also not charged.

ATTACHMENT TO SCHOOL

The Madrasa and the Islamic Public School

for Girls Compared

Madrasa student : ‘I have two brothers and one sister. My older brother

studies in Bareilly’s St. Julius Public School and my younger sister

studies in Janata Public School. … Had I not come to Jami‘a Nur I

would be like other ordinary worldly women ( bazaru awraten ). What I

have learned at Jami‘a Nur I would never have learned in an ordinary

college. Here we are taught everything relating to religion ( din ) and we

are also taught how to implement ( ‘amal karna ) those teachings in our

lives.’ (October 2013)

Class XI public school student : ‘I want to become a doctor. It is also my

parents’ dream ( sapna ) that I should go far and make their name shine.

I too have to achieve something ( kutch karke dikhana hai ). I have to

become something ( kutch banke dikhana hai ). That we girls are not

weak. I have to go out and study. It is my dream that I might go out and

study and become something and be recognized. …. Pray for me that I

may be successful in my purpose. And pray for this college too that it

may prosper fourfold every day.’ (October 2013)

In her examination of education in the Indian state of Maharashtra,

Veronique Benei looks at ‘how people come to … bond with their

nation, how they become passionate in its defense or praise and

express their senses of belonging’, in other words, at the embodiment

Attachment to School 169

of nationalism in schoolchildren.

1 Where studies on Muslim wom-

ens’ education such as Minault’s Secluded Scholars and Winkelmann’s

‘ From Behind the Curtain ’ emphasize self-control and the restraint of

passion, this work focuses on how passion is channelled in certain

directions to produce a certain kind of citizen. Benei uses the concepts

of sensorium and embodiment to understand how schoolchildren

come to feel both Maharashtrian and Indian, where these identities

are implicitly identiﬁ ed as Hindu and the nation is gendered as femi-

nine. She examines the patriotic songs sung by schoolchildren during

morning assembly, the use of standardized Marathi at school, school

textbooks, ﬁ eldtrips to historic sites that evoke Shivaji’s defence of the

‘Maratha nation’, and, most tellingly, student drawings, to show how

attachment to a Hindu Indian nation is constructed.

In this chapter, I draw on Benei’s insights as well as van Gennep’s

concept of incorporation 2 to examine how the madrasa creates a

sense of belonging in its students. I do this by looking more closely

at the daily prayer ritual and morning assembly or du‘a , the latter a

daily event on any school day, and at the weekly anjuman , a student-

led programme to which reference was made in Chapter 2.

3 What

emotions do these rituals evoke in the students, and how do these

emotions bind them more closely to the school? Another way I try

to answer these questions is by drawing a contrast between the stu-

dents at the madrasa and the day students in the English-medium

and Hindi-medium schools that until 2014 operated out of the same

building as the madrasa. What accounts for these diﬀ erences between

the secular schools on the one hand and the madrasa on the other,

and the students’ attachment to their school and what it represents?

1 Veronique Benei, Schooling Passions: Nation, History, and Language in

Contemporary Western India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), p.

27. I am grateful to Barbara Metcalf for this reference.

2 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1960).

3 A third such ritual which bears inclusion here but has had to be omit-

ted for lack of data, is the ritual of the dastar-bandi or annual graduation cer-

emony, at which I was unfortunately not present. For a helpful account of this

from a Barelwi boys’ madrasa, see Arshad Alam, Inside a Madrasa: Knowledge,

Power and Islamic Identity in India (Delhi: Routledge, 2011).

170 Scholars of Faith

Rites of Incorporation at the Madrasa: The Fajr Namaz ,

Du‘a , and Anjuman

In the previous chapter, I portrayed the course of a regular school day

at the madrasa, starting with early morning prayer, morning assem-

bly, and a few sample classes. Here I will try to convey the subjective

experience of the ﬁ rst two of these daily rituals, namely, the morning

prayer and assembly, as I observed them in 2015 and 2016 after the

madrasa had transferred to its more spacious new location. I was

able to witness these everyday events from my vantage point in the

teachers’ staﬀ room, which doubles up as their dormitory at night.

The teachers had made space for me to sleep and set down my small

suitcase in a corner of their large room.

Every morning, the muezzin calls the Muslim faithful to perform

the dawn (fajr) prayer. His voice rings out in melodious Arabic over

a loudspeaker from a nearby mosque. It comes across loud and clear

in the dark, at about 5:30 a.m. in the winter. All is quiet, everyone

is asleep in the teachers’ staﬀ -room-cum-dormitory. Soon someone

stirs, sits up, adjusts her scarf over her head, silently stands and

straightens out her kameez, and steps into her ﬂ ip ﬂ ops. Unlatching

the locked door which leads into a wide well-lit hallway outside, she

steps out and walks down it, knocking loudly and urgently on each

classroom door to wake up the sleeping students. This duty falls to

a diﬀ erent teacher each morning. She has to go upstairs to the ﬁ rst

ﬂ oor and repeat the process. Then, coming back in, she wakes up

anyone still sleeping in the staﬀ room, and toothbrush and toothpaste

in hand, makes her way to the bathrooms on the other side of the hall

from the classrooms, to brush her teeth and do her ablutions ( wudu’ ).

Not a word is spoken as others follow suit. After a while the shuﬄ ing

of feet and the sound of splashing water from the direction of the

bathrooms become loud and insistent. Some students use the lone

hand pump in the open courtyard in front of the building, under a

now dimly lit sky, and pump out water for each other. Cupping their

hands under the tap, they splash the fresh cool water over their faces

and the tops of their heads, and their arms, legs, and bare feet in the

prescribed manner. Then, the dampness still clinging to their hands

and feet—for they do not towel themselves dry—they return to their

classrooms where they each have their own small rectangular prayer

Attachment to School 171

rug. Spreading it out on the bare cement ﬂ oor (or, for teachers in the

staﬀ room, on one of the wooden beds on which the teachers sleep),

each student and teacher starts her prayer while facing the qibla , the

direction of Mecca.

The morning prayer, preparations for which are largely conducted

in silence or in muted voices, is an individual ritual among teachers

and students, no one leading the others, though they may choose to

spread out their prayer rugs next to one another. As they do not all

begin at the same time, they complete the ritual at diﬀ erent times

during the course of the next half hour. The only ones who exempt

themselves are those who are menstruating; they might sleep a little

longer than the others, then brush their teeth and use the extra time

to straighten out their clothes, comb their hair, and get ready for the

day. In the staﬀ room, once the prayer has been oﬀ ered, each teacher

reaches for a copy of the Qur’an and for the next 10 minutes or so,

reads a section of it to herself in a low voice, opening to whichever

chapter she had left oﬀ at the day before, and rocking gently back and

forth as she recites. Only after this is done and she has put the book

back on the shelf does she turn to the others in the room and engage

in conversation.

One of the teachers squats down on the ﬂ oor in front of the little

stove in the staﬀ room and soon puts a cup of hot tea in my hands.

She gives me a big smile, then hurries on to prepare for the day. These

preparations include personal grooming and hygiene, having a light

breakfast, and on occasion reviewing the text to be taught in the ﬁ rst

class period, before the bell rings for morning assembly in the open

courtyard. Unlike the transition into prayer readiness through wudu’,

however, the transition back to the preoccupations of the day is seam-

less, unmarked by ceremony.

This predictable daily cycle of activities sets the tone for the school

day. The predawn period is notable for its relative silence and the

inward focus of each person on her ritual responsibilities, commun-

ing with God in full awareness of, but distance from, the others all

around her. The entrance into a state of ritual purity follows prescribed

rules. The wudu’, as Maghen writes, is a portal, a door ‘through which

the believer passes many times daily between a condition appropriate

to the bodily and a condition appropriate to the disembodied; between

awareness of the tangible present and awareness of the incorporeal

172 Scholars of Faith

absent ( ghayb ); between the sensual human and the psychic divine’.

The simple acts of eating, sleeping, and using the toilet since the

last prayer from the night before require that the believer enter that

portal in order to re-enter sacred space and time. There being ﬁ ve

such prayers through the course of the day, sacred time and space are

thus interwoven throughout the day with the human sphere. Maghen

suggests that this is not because the latter is less laudable but because

the devotee should turn her undivided attention to one or the other

at diﬀ erent times. The two should not be in competition with one

another: ‘the passion for man and the passion for God cannot (or

should not) co-exist in the same heart at the same time, speciﬁ cally

because of their underlying similarity. ’ 5 The fear and love of God—in

terms of gratitude and awareness of one’s own human frailty and

moral imperfections—must therefore be expressed in the course of

the day through prayer, an activity distinct and separated from other

preoccupations. For the madrasa, the task is to heighten the student’s

awareness of God’s presence in her life to the point where it becomes

as real to her as her own companions, teachers, and family, and the

guiding light in the decisions she makes in her life. Ideally, as the

student goes through her day, she will live fully in the moment, fully

focused whether she is at prayer or in the midst of study, fulﬁ lling

her responsibilities to those around her, or enjoying time with her

friends.

At 7:45 a.m. students are alerted by the sound of the ﬁ rst bell that

it is time for du‘a or morning assembly. I discussed the du‘a in the

previous chapter in terms of its performative aspects. Here I want to

look at it as a rite of incorporation, that is, at its aﬀ ective qualities.

What are the words of the du‘a, and what are its emotional and quali-

tative properties? In what way does it eﬀ ect transformational change

in students? Although I am calling the short ceremony at the start of

4 Ze`v Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh: Passion and Purity in Early Islamic

Jurisprudence (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 32.

5 Maghen, Virtues of the Flesh . Maghen is particularly focused on sexual

love between man and wife, and he makes clear that sexuality is not deemed

intrinsically dirty, shameful, or negative in the Islamic perspective. Rather, it

is seen as a blessing from God and therefore as a laudable sentiment, one that

deserves to be honoured in equal measure as the love of God.

Attachment to School 173

the school day ‘morning assembly’, because this is what it is function-

ally , the term du‘a is of course a religious one, meaning supplication,

or supplicatory prayer. But while the namaz or salat , described earlier,

is separated from everyday, corporeal time by the portal of wudu’, the

du‘a does not need to be set apart in this way. The du‘a is at heart

a prayer of supplication to God that can be personal or collective,

and can follow right after the salat as when an imam (prayer leader)

appends his own supplication to God at the end of a congregational

prayer ( salat-i jumu‘a ), asking God to safeguard Muslims around the

world or in particular communities. But it can be oﬀ ered by itself

as well and can sometimes be very emotional. A du‘a can be in any

language. It does not have to be in Arabic, unlike salat.

The morning assembly at the madrasa begins with all the students

lining up in about a dozen rows 30 or more deep in the open court-

yard, dressed in the madrasa’s uniform of green and white checked

tunics ( kameez ), loose white trousers ( salwar ), and white headscarf

( dupatta ). The teachers stand facing them, lined up in a single row.

They do not wear uniforms, but dress in colourful outﬁ ts of their

own. The assembly begins with the collective recitation ( qir’at ) of the

Fatiha, the ﬁ rst chapter of the Qur’an, followed by a senior student

coming to the front of the student body and leading the students in a

versiﬁ ed poem which combines the praise of God ( hamd ) with that of

the Prophet ( na‘t ). 7 The students recite 3 verses of a longer (15-verse)

praise poem by Ahmad Raza Khan, as follows:

1. He is the Lord who made you generous in every ﬁ bre of your being/ Wahi

rabb hai jisne tujhko hamatan karam banaya

He made us the beggars who come to your threshold/ Hamen bhik mangne

ko tera asta banaya

6 As we will see in Chapter 6, there are du‘as for every situation, from

prayers for safe travel to prayers for safe childbirth, recovery from illness, and

a host of everyday situations.

7 The verses translated here are numbered 1, 2, and 14 in the original.

My English translation follows the interpretive commentary of Mawlana

Ghulam Ahmad Qadri, Sharh Kalam-i Raza ﬁ Na‘t al-Mustafa, al-Ma‘ruf

Sharh Hada’iq-i Bakhshish (Delhi: Adabi Duniya, 2010), Na‘t sharif number

(76) , pp. 733–4, 739, 742–3.

174 Scholars of Faith

To you be all praise, O Lord/ Tujhe hamd hai khudaya

2. He made you the ruler of created beings, He made you the one who

distributes His bounty/ Tumhen hakim banaya tumhen qasim ‘ataya

He made you the one who removes [our] faults, He made you the one who

cures [our] defects/ Tumein dafe‘ balaya, tumhen shafe‘ khataya

Who else like you has ever come [to us]?/ Koi tumsa kawn aya?

To you be all praise, O Lord/ Tujhe hamd hai khudaya

3. O Lord, no diﬃ culty presents itself to you in [changing my] impure

thoughts/ Yeh tasawurat-i batil tere age kya hai mushkil?

You who possess supreme power, make them pure, O Lord/ Teri qudraten

hain kamil unhen rast kar khudaya

I have brought them to your beloved’s [court of ] intercession /Main unhen

shaﬁ ‘ laya

To you be all praise, O Lord/ Tujhe hamd hai khudaya

This is followed by a prayer for well-being ( du‘a-i khayr ), the words

of which are well-known to the students, as the prayer is included in

one of their textbooks, Jannati Zewar (‘Heavenly Jewels’). Some of the

verses, also written by Ahmad Raza Khan, are as follows:

Supplication/ Munajat

O Lord, may the gift of your presence be [with me] everywhere/ Ya illahi

har jagah teri ‘ata ka sath ho

Whenever there is diﬃ culty, may the assistance of the remover of diﬃ cul-

ties be there [with me]/ Jab parhe mushkil shah-i mushkil kusha ka sath ho

O Lord, when the severe darkness of the grave descends /Ya ilahi gor-i tirah

ki jab aye sakht rat

May the life-increasing morning of his beloved face be there [with me] /

Unke pyare munh ke subhe jan ﬁ zan ka sath ho

8 The English translations from the Urdu original are mine. The supplica-

tion ( munajat : from Ar. naja’ , to be saved, thus, a prayer that saves from pun-

ishment in the afterlife) is in ‘ Abd al-Mustafa A‘zami’s Jannati Zewar (n.d.),

Urdu edition, p. 448.

Attachment to School 175

O Lord, when the noise of the Day of Judgment descends [on me]/ Ya ilahi

jab pare mahshar men shor warid-gir

May the presence of the peace-giving Prophet be there [with me] /Aman

dene wale pyare Mustafa ka sath ho

O Lord, when my boldness brings colour [to my face] /Ya ilahi rang la’en

jab meri bebakiyan

May I have the presence of his downcast glances [with me] /Unki nichi

nichi nazaron ki haya ka sath ho

O Lord, when [my] tears ﬂ ow in consequence of my transgressions /Ya

ilahi jab bahen ankhen hisab-i jurm se

May I have the supplication of those smiling lips [with me] /Un tabassum

rez honthon ki du‘a ka sath ho

After the students complete their recitation, a student from the ﬁ fth

(Khamsa) year steps to the front of the assembly and gives a short

speech on a subject of her choice: the subjects usually include ritual

puriﬁ cation ( taharat ), prayer ( namaz ), the etiquette of eating and

drinking, and so on. The presentation centres around a few prophetic

sayings (hadith), and lasts about 5 minutes.

This marks the end of the du‘a. But before students are dismissed

and leave single ﬁ le for their ﬁ rst class of the day, teachers might

have an announcement to make or Sayyid Sahib may appear in their

midst to talk to them brieﬂ y. Since 2015, a new feature appended to

the du‘a has been a few minutes of physical exercise. Led by three

senior students who step to the front of the student body (the teachers

standing behind them, watching), all the assembled students follow

the movements of the leaders.

What makes the fajr salat and the du‘a rites of incorporation? I

would argue that through the practice of these rites, students learn to

become Sunni Muslims in the Barelwi mould. The daily prayers—of

which the morning prayer is the ﬁ rst—are the most universal of the

three rites. Barring certain details involving the position of the hands

during prayer, 9 the way the madrasa students oﬀ er their namaz is

9 On the speciﬁ cities of the Barelwi mode of oﬀ ering the prayer, see

Sumbul Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local Level Islam: A Case Study of

Barelwi Khanqahs’ (PhD dissertation, University of Delhi, May 2016), pp.

176 Scholars of Faith

replicated in Muslim communities the world over, particularly among

Sunni ones (the Shi‘i prayer ritual diﬀ ers from the Sunni one in a

number of small details, while being broadly similar).

10 As many

students indicated in their responses to my questions, they had either

prayed irregularly or incorrectly before coming to the madrasa. Thus,

as I learned from one of the students I quoted earlier, when she

returned home she would ‘teach [her] sisters how to pray, [she would]

teach everyone in [her] household that they must pray [daily].’

Figure 4.1 Madrasa Students Performing Morning Exercises

Source : Author.

77, 218 and passim (2013); see Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British

India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp.

274–5, on the Ahl-i Hadith mode of oﬀ ering the prayer.

10 On the diﬀ erences between Sunni and Shi‘i rituals and legal practices,

see Daniel Brown, A New Introduction to Islam (3rd edn, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley,

2017), Chapter 10.

Attachment to School 177

The emotional restraint and inward focus of the morning prayer,

noted in my description at the beginning of this chapter, is counter-

balanced by the full-throated, collective du‘a that begins the school

day. Under the watchful eyes of their teachers, who know each stu-

dent by name and will call out to reprimand anyone who steps out of

line or whispers to her neighbour, the students’ voices join in a clear,

melodious chant in praise of God and in aﬃ rmation of their need for

God’s forgiveness in light of their sinfulness:

O Lord, no diﬃ culty presents itself to you in [changing my] impure

thoughts/You who possess supreme power, make them pure, O Lord.

Yet, in close conjunction with the praise of God is the Barelwi hall-

mark theme of love of the Prophet, who ‘made you generous in every

ﬁ bre of your being’, ‘made you the ruler of created beings … the one

who distributes His bounty’, ‘the one who removes [our] faults … the

one who cures [our] defects’. For all these reasons, the students recite,

‘He made us the beggars who come to your threshold’ to ask for the

Prophet’s intercession with God.

The Barelwi scholar Mawlana Ghulam Hasan Qadri, responding

to critics who comment on the Barelwis’ ‘inability to praise God [in a

hamd ] without simultaneously praising the Prophet [in a na‘t ]’, writes:

The beauty with which A‘la Hazrat Imam of the Ahl-i Sunnat [Ahmad

Raza Khan] has brought together praise of God [in hamd] in the ﬁ rst verse

with love of the Prophet [in na‘t] while keeping in mind ( malhuz ) the dif-

ference between the two, is something only he could do and it is a loud

slap in the face of those critics who never tire, day and night, from saying

that these Sunnis don’t recite hamd so much as they keep harping on na‘t.

The reason we [Barelwis] do this is that you have become deniers of na‘ts.

For us, while hamd [in praise] of God is our faith ( iman ), na‘t [in praise]

of the Prophet is the life of that faith. We do not aﬃ rm the unity of God

( tawhid ) alone without prophethood ( rasalat ). Rather, we ﬁ ll our lungs with

tawhid and repeat the name of the prophethood of the king at the same

time. 11

The students, unconcerned about these inter-maslaki debates with

their accusations and counter-accusations, raise their voices harmoni-

ously in praise of both God and the Prophet. By reciting the verses,

11 Ghulam Hasan Qadri, Sharh Kalam-i Raza ﬁ Na‘t al-Mustafa , p. 734.

178 Scholars of Faith

they make the words of the na‘t’s author Ahmad Raza Khan Barelwi

their own words. It is they who are dependent on God’s forgiveness

for their sins, they who call upon the Prophet to intercede for them.

In the madrasa, their voices create an atmosphere of enthusiastic yet

disciplined aﬃ rmation of the vision of the founder, Sayyid Sahib, and

the intellectual tradition to which he belongs.

This is the one time in the day when the whole school comes

together. It is thus an important moment of incorporation. The

collective aspects of the ritual are balanced by the opportunity for a

few senior students to take a leadership role by either leading the

other students in the recitation of the na‘t or reading out from their

handwritten notes the short speech they have prepared on a religious

theme of their choice. Since the group exercises were added at the

end of the assembly in 2015, the students’ energy level and participa-

tion in the ritual have been further heightened by the opportunity for

physical exercise.

The last ritual I want to consider now, that of the Thursday evening

anjuman (assembly, meeting, a word of Persian origin), is undoubt-

edly the one that most clearly calls out the madrasa’s Barelwi identity.

As Alam points out in his study of Madrasa Ashraﬁ ya, the Barelwis’

largest boys’ madrasa in India, inter-maslaki competition is far more

important in Indian madrasas today than is anti-Hindu rhetoric. In

the east UP town of Mubarakpur, where Ashraﬁ ya is located, ‘[t]he

principal antagonism … is no longer between Hindus and Muslims;

rather it is between diﬀ erent social groups of Muslims themselves’.

Like the students at Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya, students at Jami’a Nur also ‘per-

form’ their Barelwi identities every Thursday evening, when they hold

what they call an anjuman, in which groups of students either recite

na‘t in praise of the Prophet or make speeches on diﬀ erent religious

topics. 13 The ‘absent Other’ in these performances are the Deobandis,

12 Alam, Inside a Madrasa , p. 46. On the importance of policing boundaries

between maslaks, see Sumbul Farah, ‘Aqeeda, Adab and Aitraaz: Modalities

of “Being” Barelwi’, Contributions to Indian Sociology (2012), 46(3): 259–81.

13 The Ashraﬁ ya assembly is called bazm , on which see Alam, Inside a

Madrasa , pp. 191–7. Interestingly, the same division of labour prevails at

Ashraﬁ ya as at Jami‘a Nur, in that junior students present na‘ts while senior

students present taqrir. However, the speciﬁ cs of how the groups are formed

and how topics are allocated, are diﬀ erent in the two madrasas.

Attachment to School 179

who, as I have argued elsewhere, are depicted as the ‘enemy within’,

in large part because they share a great deal of common theologi-

cal ground with the Barelwis.

14 Barelwis therefore draw boundaries

around them rather than around those theologically further removed

from themselves, such as the Ahl-i Hadith or the Shi‘a, to speak only

of Muslims. Hindus are seldom the subject of overt comment, being

too far removed from the students’ social world of family, neighbours,

and local town ( qasba ).

Given the purpose of the anjuman, which is religious persuasion

( tabligh or da‘wa ), we can understand why emotion, even impassioned

oratory, is considered an asset in this context and is admired. The

weekly anjuman gives students the opportunity—indeed, it com-

pels them—to stand before their fellow students and make an oral

presentation, whether a na‘t or a speech on a religious topic ( taqrir ).

Na‘t poetry, a characteristic feature of Barelwi gatherings in general,

has a long history in the Muslim world, and is one of a number of

related genres of praise poems, including the qasida (ode) and qaw-

wali (devotional song). Indeed, Schimmel writes ‘the ﬁ rst praise

poems for the Prophet were written during his lifetime’.

15 A poet

who became famous in later Muslim history was Ka‘b ibn Zuhair.

Ka‘b’s qasida , which he recited in the Prophet’s presence, had ini-

tially been composed in order to denigrate him. But Ka‘b sought the

Prophet’s forgiveness, and his poem came to be known as the Burda

(cloak) because the Prophet was so impressed with it ‘that he cast

his own mantle, the burda , on Ka‘b’s shoulders, thus granting him

forgiveness’. 16 Centuries later, this poem became the precursor for

14 See Usha Sanyal, Devotional Islam and Politics in British India: Mawlana

Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1880–1920 (new edn, Delhi:

Yoda Press, 2010).

15 Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The

Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Lahore: Vanguard Books, 1987), pp.

178–9. Schimmel relates that like a contemporary journalist, the Prophet’s

poet Hassan ibn Thabit was charged with recording events as they happened.

Denigrating the Muslims’ enemies and praising the Muslims for bravery

in battle, he also ‘extol[led] his spiritual virtues and his religious mission’,

making ‘repeated allusions to the light that radiated from the Prophet … his

miraculous birth and his hoped-for intercession’.

16 Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger , p. 180.

180 Scholars of Faith

another poem of the same name, Al-Burda , written by the Suﬁ mys-

tic Muhammad al-Busiri (d. 1298) of Egypt.

17 Busiri’s Burda , which

Schimmel describes as ‘a true compendium of medieval prophetol-

ogy’, enjoys great respect and is frequently recited in South Asia and

in the South Asian diaspora, by Barelwis and others.

Among South Asian Barelwis, Ahmad Raza Khan’s Salam (saluta-

tion, greeting) holds pride of place. The words of this poem are well

known in India and Pakistan, being recited on numerous occasions.

Consisting of approximately 170 stanzas, it praises the Prophet—and

secondarily his Companions, members of his family ( ahl-i bayt ), and

Suﬁ mystic ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani ( ghawth-i a‘zam ), among others—and

calls down God’s blessings on them in simple verse characterized by

a lilting cadence that ends in the recurrent rhyme ( radif ) ‘hundreds

of thousands of salutations’ ( lakhon salam ). The poem praises the

Prophet’s physical features, personal qualities, and kindness ( shama’il

wa lata’if ), and entreats God (in a du‘a) at the end, ‘O Lord, just as

during our lifetimes we have never ceased to extol your beloved, the

Prophet, so too on Judgment Day we pray that you will give us the

good fortune of praising him’.

19 At Jami‘a Nur, students start to learn

the Salam from the very beginning of their madrasa educations. I

found verses of the Salam in the book Ta‘amir-i Adab studied at the

pre-‘Alima level by students aged 10 or 11. As Schimmel writes of

17 To quote Schimmel: ‘According to legend the poet had suﬀ ered a

stroke, and in his misery he turned to the Prophet and wrote a poem in his

honor. Faith in the Prophet’s healing power was and is still strong, and indeed

Muhammad appeared to Busiri in a dream and cast his mantle over him as

he had done during his lifetime with Ka‘b ibn Zuhair. … And as Ka‘b was

granted forgiveness of his trespasses, Busiri was healed by the touch of the

Prophet’s mantle and could again move about the next morning.’ Schimmel,

And Muhammad Is His Messenger , p. 181.

18 Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger, p. 185. On the recitation

of the Burda in the South Asian diaspora, see Marcia Hermansen, ‘Milad/

Mawlid: Celebrating the Prophet Muhammad’s Birthday’, in Edward E. Curtis

IV, ed., The Practice of Islam in America: An Introduction (New York: NYU

Press, 2017).

19 According to Sumbul Farah, the Salam now includes the names of

descendants of Ahmad Raza Khan, by adding their names to the list of those

to whom salutation is given. Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local Level Islam’.

Attachment to School 181

South Asian na‘t poetry in general, the Salam is characterized by

‘strong rhythmical and comparatively simple rhymes, which are often

repeated like a litany’.

20 The recitation of such poetry, according to an

Indian scholar, does far more than simply express veneration and love

of the Prophet. Rather, it builds up character by instilling in its listen-

ers the desire to emulate the Prophet (the ‘Perfect Man’) and strive

towards the kind of spiritual and moral perfection he represents.

The Prophet is thus a role model for women no less than for men.

Turning to the anjuman at Jami’a Nur in November 2016, the pro-

gramme began after evening prayers ( maghrib ), at about 7 p.m., and

lasted for a little over two hours. It consisted of about 20 presenta-

tions, some from young students new to the madrasa and others from

those senior and more familiar with the process. Students gathered

together in two large adjoining classrooms, some in one room, some

in the other, and sat crammed together on cotton rugs ( dari s) on the

ﬂ oor. The teachers also divided into two, half and half, seated on plas-

tic chairs facing the students at the front of the large room. By their

side were a few students (two on this evening, though there could

be as many as four) who emceed the programme, calling out each

student’s name by turn. When a student heard her name being called,

she got up from the audience and made her way to the front. Rather

than weave her way through the seated students, however, she would

step to the back of the assembled students, exit through the classroom

door at the back of the room, and re-enter through the door close to

the front of the room. During the few minutes it took her to do this,

students collectively chanted a durud in praise of the Prophet. As soon

as she began her presentation, the audience was required to be quiet

and listen attentively, and to refrain from clapping at the end. Each

presentation was evaluated by the teachers, and the students’ perfor-

mance orally graded on a scale of three (excellent, average, or poor)

at the end of the evening, as were the students emceeing the event.

Thereafter, the names of the presenters for the following week’s

anjuman were announced. Finally, everyone stood for the collective

20 Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger , p. 211.

21 Ghulam Dastgir Rasheed, ‘The Development of Na‘tia Poetry in

Persian Literature’, in Islamic Culture (1965), 39: 53–69; quoted in Schimmel,

And Muhammad Is His Messenger , p. 178.

182 Scholars of Faith

recitation of select verses of Ahmad Raza Khan’s Karoron Durud , 22

after which teachers and students dispersed for night ( isha‘ ) prayers

and bed. For madrasa students, the anjuman was the highlight of

their week, organized and conducted entirely by themselves and their

teachers. The next day was Friday, their weekly holiday.

Throughout the evening, the host ( nazima ) emceed the programme

without a microphone. Another girl, sitting next to her, took notes

in a notebook. The host stood up, and projecting her voice easily in

the large crowded room, welcomed the students. Addressing them as

‘women of the Muslim community’ ( khawatin-i ummat-i islamiya ), she

said: ‘God Himself has told us to remember His blessings towards us.

God has showered us with many blessings. This gathering is intended

to honour the Prophet. God Himself said, “Undoubtedly, God and His

angels bless those who bless the Prophet”.’ The evening then began

with a student reciting a selection of verses from the Qur’an (al-Inﬁ tar,

the Cleaving Asunder, Q 82:1–8 and 16), a short Meccan chapter about

the signs of the Day of Resurrection. The next student delivered a

hamd in praise of God. Thematically, the presentations that followed

conveyed: praise of the Prophet, including miracles (such as a tree

moving and prostrating before him in acknowledgement of his sta-

tus as God’s last prophet) which Barelwis and other Sunni Muslims

ascribe to him; theological concepts disputed by some Muslims, such

as the belief that the Prophet, being made of light, had no shadow,

that he was the ﬁ rst of God’s prophets in addition to being the last,

and that he intercedes with God at all times; praise of Ahmed Raza

Khan and his veneration of the Prophet; references to Islamic history

particularly with regard to South Asia; and non-Muslims’ assertion

that Muslims engaged in violence to convert Hindus to Islam (this

came up in the last student’s presentation, and she countered it by

reminding the audience that Mu‘in al-Din Chisti beat back the attacks

of Prithviraj Chauhan with nothing but his Qur’an in one hand, and

rosary in the other).

22 A durud is a prayer calling down God’s blessings on the Prophet.

Ahmad Raza Khan’s Karoron Durud , like his Salam , is very well known among

Barelwis, and is included in most standard collections of his na‘t.

23 For more on these two fascinating ﬁ gures, see Cynthia Talbot, The

Last Hindu Emperor: Prithviraj Chauhan and the Indian Past 1200–2000

Attachment to School 183

Many presentations exhorted students to emulate the Prophet

in all walks of life and strive to be better Muslims. These themes

were touched on in prose and poetry, with some quotations from

the Qur’an and frequent allusions to hadith. Remarkably the stu-

dents spoke without reference to written notes, relying on memory

throughout. They strove to convey emotion through hand gestures

and a charged style of oratory. The best students enunciated clearly

and directly addressed the audience at frequent intervals, modulating

their voices in accordance with their subject matter and inviting stu-

dent participation through call-and-response. Less practised students

either rushed through their presentations or spoke in a monotone

which did not hold audience attention. This being a weekly event

that many students looked forward to with anticipation, their level of

engagement and attentiveness was remarkably high through most of

the programme.

While the madrasa operates within the framework of Barelwi

concepts and a Barelwi worldview, the anjuman conveys, just as

importantly, how students should become better Muslims in terms of

the things they do each and every day. One student spoke spiritedly

(in a 10-minute speech or khitabat ) to her audience on the subject of

prayer: 24

In hadith, the Prophet said, ‘Oﬀ er your namaz the way I do. Stand the way

I stand, bow down the way I bow down, and prostrate yourselves the way

I do. In short, copy my way of doing things completely. But you need to

be thoughtful ( ‘aql chahiye ) when emulating me. If you think that because

you are copying me, you are like me, you will end up going astray, and you

won’t even know you are doing so, and all your devotions will be wasted.’

My dear lovers of my dear master ( aqa )! Oﬀ er the namaz in just the

way that our master oﬀ ered it. Our master would stand in prayer all night,

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); and P.M. Currie, The Shrine

and Cult of Mu‘in al-din Chisthti of Ajmer (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

1989).

24 In my transcription of the student’s presentation, I have used the word

‘prayer’ to translate the Urdu word ‘namaz’ in the interests of readability. It

should be clear, however, that the reference is to the Islamic canonical prayer

which has to follow prescribed procedures and rules—not to freely formu-

lated personal prayer (du‘a).

184 Scholars of Faith

which is why he is without fault ( be-gunah ). Thus, whoever oﬀ ers her

prayer with humility ( khushu‘ wa khuzu‘ ), helplessness ( ‘ajizi ), sweetness

and feeling ( lazzat o taraz ), the way Allah and His Prophet told her to, her

prayer will deﬁ nitely lead to her sins being forgiven. Because prayer is the

glory ( shan ) of the believer, prayer is the life ( jan ) of the believer, prayer is

the deﬁ ning trait ( pahchan ) of the believer. Prayer is light ( nur ), prayer is

proof ( burhan ), prayer is the sign of faith ( a‘lamat-i din ). When you pray,

God is immensely pleased with you. So how can God be content to allow

such a humble servant ( banda ) to remain trapped ( munhakim ) in her sins?

What made this student’s presentation so compelling to the audi-

ence was in part her conﬁ dent, forceful delivery which made artful

use of alliteration (as in the words jan , shan , pahchan , and burhan ,

earlier) and elicited audience participation. She made use of Urdu

couplets, call-and-response in which the audience asked God to bless

the Prophet, and storytelling through hadith, only one of which I have

transcribed earlier. In addition, she invoked the emotion of love to

make her point: the believer’s love of God and love of the Prophet, if

reﬂ ected in the way she oﬀ ered her daily prayer, would in turn cause

God, in His love for her, to forgive her sins.

While love of the Prophet is a signature Barelwi refrain and thus

unsurprising in itself, what made this student’s message compelling

to her audience was that she connected this love with them person-

ally: it was their prayer oﬀ ered in emulation of the Prophet’s own that

would earn them forgiveness for their sins. In a sense, she was thus

elevating their stature in their own eyes. Had they ever thought of

themselves in quite this way before they came to the madrasa? They

were important to God in their own right, she was suggesting, and

could earn a place in heaven by means of daily prayer oﬀ ered in emu-

lation of the Prophet with heartfelt, personal, and emotional engage-

ment with the ritual rather than simply performing routine bodily

motions without thought or mindful attention to detail.

However, while her discourse was uplifting, it was cautionary at

the same time, the outcome being conditional on the students’ inter-

nalization of the purpose and meaning of the prayer ritual.

25 She

therefore ended her speech with an admonishment:

25 Perhaps there was also an implicit criticism of Sunni Muslims outside

the Barelwi fold in her comment that while Muslims should emulate the

Prophet, they should not make the mistake of thinking that by so doing they

Attachment to School 185

It is a shame that we claim to be followers of Imam Abu Hanifa [the epon-

ymous founder of the Hanaﬁ school], but in reality … we can’t even oﬀ er

our ﬁ ve daily prayers [regularly]. What a shame! When we see others pray-

ing, we mock them by calling them ‘mullah’ and other derogatory names.

And those who do not pray are considered ‘modern’. O Muslims! Come to

your senses! Repent! Repent! The door to forgiveness is still open. … There

are many forms of worship such as fasting, going on pilgrimage, giving

in charity ( zakat ). But there is no worship like this worship, about which

the Prophet said that it erases your sins and bad deeds. This is why the

Qur’an speaks repeatedly about oﬀ ering namaz. In one place, God says,

‘Oﬀ er the prayer, give zakat, and bow down with those who bow down’. …

O my pure Muslim sisters! Repent and make namaz the beauty of your

life. Prayer is servitude to God. Prayer is the guide of your life. Prayer is a

source of good and of blessing. Prayer is knowledge of God. Prayer is the

source of freedom. Ultimately, prayer is the coolness of the eyes of your

master [the Prophet]. If you really want to love the Prophet, oﬀ er your

prayer with humility. Don’t omit even a single one. If you want to go to

heaven, wear the sign of your servitude to the Prophet around your neck.

Salam alaikum .

The urgency and emotional tone of this student’s speech, conveyed

through her use of the imperative mode (‘Repent! Repent! The door

to forgiveness is still open’), were forcefully delivered, the words ring-

ing out loud and clear in the packed room. It was one speech among

several and like others of its calibre, it commanded audience attention

(and earned the highest grade at the end of the evening). In insist-

ing on students’ personal responsibility to become better Muslims,

it is also a good example of the kind of reformist Barelwi message I

believe this madrasa conveys to its students.

It is notable that while the anjuman touched on Barelwi themes,

particularly love of the Prophet, and therefore signalled the madrasa’s

Barelwi identity, it did so without overtly denouncing any other

Muslim group. This is very diﬀ erent from what Alam reports having

observed at the Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya, the ﬂ agship Barelwi boys’ madrasa

in Mubarakpur, east UP. That madrasa is an ‘ideological space’ in

might resemble him. For Barelwi Muslims, this is an unthinkable proposi-

tion, as the Prophet was no ordinary mortal. See Sanyal, Devotional Islam , for

Barelwi–Deobandi diﬀ erences, among others.

186 Scholars of Faith

more ways than one: Alam reports that administration and staﬀ have

to sign a pledge in which, inter alia, they declare that they are ‘true

Sunni Muslim[s]’ who accept the truth of every word of Ahmad Raza

Khan’s 1906 fatwa Husam al-Haramayn , in which he denounced

as unbelievers ( kaﬁ r ) a number of Muslims—mainly Ahmadis and

Deobandis—by name. 26

To better understand why the Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya takes this provoca-

tive stand, we need to review its history. As Alam explains, until 1906

the people of Mubarakpur were very supportive of their lone Sunni

madrasa, the Misbahul Ulum. That year, however, there was a split

between the ‘ulama of Mubarakpur on the theological issue of whether

God could, even theoretically, create another prophet like the Prophet

Muhammad (an issue known as imkan-i nazir ). Two camps emerged,

with those arguing that this was theoretically possible (the Deobandi

position) ranged against those who argued that it was not ( imtina’-i

nazir , the Barelwi position). 27 Over the next several years, Misbahul

Ulum (now the Barelwi madrasa, as the Deobandis had created their

own new one, Ehya ul-‘Ulum) struggled, not least because one of the

teachers was of Deobandi persuasion.

28 It was in this context that in

1934, Mawlana Amjad ‘Ali A‘zami (a disciple of Ahmad Raza Khan)

sent his disciple ‘Abd al-‘Aziz to Mubarakpur (from Ajmer), to ‘partici-

pate in an akhara (wrestling arena) and emerge victorious’.

26 See Alam, Inside a Madrasa , pp. 183–4. On this fatwa, see Usha Sanyal,

‘Are Wahhabis Kaﬁ rs? Ahmad Riza Khan and His Sword of the Haramayn’ ,

in Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Messick, and David S. Powers, eds,

Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1996), pp. 204–13.

27 For details, see Alam, Inside a Madrasa , pp. 59–60. I discussed this

debate in the ‘Introduction’ (in the section called ‘Apples and Oranges?’)

28 Alam notes that for many years after the Mubarakpur ‘ulama split on

this issue, the people of Mubarakpur continued to oﬀ er Friday and ‘Id prayers

together. It was only after a separate ‘Idgah was built in the late 1920s that the

ideological split became evident to the general Muslim population. The teacher

in question was Shukrullah Mubarakpuri. Alam, Inside a Madrasa , pp. 63–5.

29 Alam, Inside a Madrasa , pp. 55–8. Also see Usha Sanyal, ‘Ahl-i Sunnat

Madrasas: The Madrasa Manzar-i Islam, Bareilly, and the Jamia Ashraﬁ yya,

Mubarakpur’, in Jamal Malik, ed., Madrasa Education in South Asia: Teaching

Terror? (New York: Routledge, 2008).

Attachment to School 187

The term akhara is signiﬁ cant. Associated with Hindu masculin-

ity and male celibacy, Alter shows that wrestling is a ‘public perfor-

mance’, an enactment of identity that can be read as a ‘public text’.

The present context makes clear its association with male competition

for power between Barelwis and Deobandis in Mubarakpur. ‘Abd al-

‘Aziz was being charged with revitalizing the weak Barelwi madrasa,

winning the hearts and minds of the Mubarakpur Muslims, and

defeating the local Deobandis. Alam notes, ‘The qasba had indeed

become a wrestling arena between the Deobandis and the Barelwis.

Much depended on Abdul Aziz, on not only how skillfully he would

manage the aﬀ airs in madrasa Misbah Ulum, but also how eventually

he would shape a community of Barelwis.’

31 (In addition, we might

say that over time perhaps a second akhara came into being as well,

in that the Ashraﬁ ya leadership was in the hands of low-caste Ansaris

who were in competition with the Madrasa Manzar-i Islam in Bareilly

which was dominated by the Pathan descendants of Ahmad Raza

Khan.) 32

The tone of belligerent Othering continues to this day. Where

Jami‘a Nur students present speeches at the Thursday anjuman,

Jami‘a Ashraﬁ ya students participate in stylized oratorial perfor-

mances called bazm in which they denounce the absent Deobandi

Other in stark terms. Other practices include producing ‘wall maga-

zines’ (posters) against Deobandi positions and reading the incen-

diary works of a former Ashraﬁ ya graduate, Arshadul Qadri.

33 The

practice at Jami‘a Nur, by contrast, is to emphasize the positive—love

of the Prophet being at its core—and explore the implications for

action which that entails in students’ own lives. Denunciation of the

Deobandi Other is implied but is not at the front and centre of dis-

course. Sayyid Sahib sets the tone for the madrasa, and as I noted in

Chapter 2, the Deobandi author of a history of Shahjahanpur ‘ulama

30 Alam, Inside a Madrasa , p. 66; on akharas, see Joseph S. Alter, Moral

Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India (Delhi: Penguin Books,

2011), especially Chapter 2.

31 Alam, Inside a Madrasa , p. 66.

32 The word ‘akhara’ was not used in this sense by Amjad ‘Ali A‘zami, of

course.

33 Alam, Inside a Madrasa , Chapter 7.

188 Scholars of Faith

speaks of him in the highest terms as a man of God, one who ‘has

made the spread of knowledge his goal and purpose … and has never

made the Prophet’s pulpit a wrestling arena’.

34 The two madrasas

thus oﬀ er a clear contrast from one another.

In order to better understand what is distinctive about Jami‘a Nur,

in the next section I turn to the English-medium school (and second-

arily also the Hindi-medium school) that operated on diﬀ erent ﬂ oors

of the same building until 2014, when the madrasa moved to its new

premises in a diﬀ erent part of the city of Shahjahanpur.

Islamic Public School for Girls: The English-Medium

School

My observations of the two public schools operating out of the same

large building as the madrasa Jami‘a Nur until 2014 were made on a

single occasion, in October 2013. By the time I returned the following

year, the madrasa was no longer in the same building. In fact, the two

schools were now about 10 miles apart in the same city. I was unable

to continue my observations of the ‘secular’ public schools for com-

parative purposes. The following picture is therefore limited in scope,

but it is useful nonetheless in allowing us to view the madrasa from

the perspective of the Islamic public school, itself a small segment of

the Indian public school system as a whole.

Like Jami‘a Nur, the Islamic Public School for Girls (and boys up to

the ﬁ fth grade) is a private school that begins at kindergarten and goes

all the way to Inter, or twelfth grade.

35 School timings are 7:30 a.m.

to noon, Monday through Saturday. In the afternoon, from 12 noon

to 3:30 p.m, a Hindi-medium school operates on the ﬁ rst ﬂ oor of the

building. In 2012, the school had just under 1,000 students, of whom

about 100 were small boys; the Hindi-medium school had around 200

students. Although the English-medium and Hindi-medium schools

operated out of the same building as the madrasa, the students of

the diﬀ erent schools did not see or interact with one another during

34 Shah Mahmud ‘Ali Khan, Sar-zamin-i Shahjahanpur ka ‘Ulama-i Fuhul,

Huﬀ az o Qura’ (Shahjahanpur: n.p., 2014), pp. 168–9.

35 As with Jami‘a Nur, the Islamic Public School for Girls is a pseudonym

adopted to protect the school’s identity.

Attachment to School 189

school hours, being on diﬀ erent ﬂ oors or separated by internal archi-

tectural divisions on the same ﬂ oor. Nevertheless, the noise level

from the English-medium school, which was particularly high when

students arrived and left, and during recess, did reach the madrasa

on the ﬁ rst and second ﬂ oors of the building. Students arrived in all

forms of transportation, ranging from a few small white school vans

crammed with students, their backpacks on the van’s roof, to cycle

rickshaws with as many as ﬁ ve child passengers, to bicycles ridden by

students. During the school day, the internal courtyard at the back of

the building was full of pink bicycles belonging to the day students.

In 2012, the school had a female principal, Mrs Khan, probably

in her mid-ﬁ fties, who, like all the adult women at the school, wore

a salwar kameez with a dupatta over her head when I met her (and

like the teachers, she draped a black abaya over her clothes when exit-

ing the school premises). She was well-spoken in English and had

travelled widely outside India, having lived for 8 years in Tanzania

and 5 in Abu Dhabi. A middle-class woman educated at Carmel

Convent in Mumbai, she studied psychology in college in Mumbai,

and many years later, after her children were grown, did her master’s

in Bareilly. She had been principal since 2006, when the school was

still quite new. She told me she saw her job as a form of social work

that helped poor Muslim girls and boys who would not otherwise get

an education. 36

But by 2013, Mrs Khan had retired, and the school had a diﬀ erent

principal, Sultana. A former teacher at the school, Sultana was a slim

and energetic woman who seemed to be in her forties. She had been

a teacher at the school since it had opened in 2003–4. As principal,

she took an active role as an administrator and disciplinarian, making

her presence felt by visiting diﬀ erent classrooms to make sure classes

proceeded smoothly. In addition, being a devout person, she also found

time to give students religious instruction apart from the formal cur-

riculum, a feature many students seemed to appreciate, as we will see

subsequently. However, by the time I returned to Jami‘a Nur in 2014 (in

its new location), Sultana had left because her husband’s job had been

transferred to Bareilly. She was replaced by a male principal.

36 Personal conversation with Mrs Khan, 27 June 2012.

190 Scholars of Faith

In addition to the principal, administrative and ﬁ nancial leadership

of the school was exercised by the manager, Mr Khan (not a relative of

the former principal), whose association with the school was also of

long duration. A bachelor in his late thirties, he had been a runner as

a young man and was very fond of sports; after school hours he played

football with some of the boys at the former ordnance factory grounds

in Shahjahanpur, as there was no sports ﬁ eld at the school. His family

was from Shahjahanpur and was of pathan origin—like the warden

Zeenat discussed in Chapter 2, to whom he was distantly related, he

had distinctive physical characteristics such as light eyes and fair skin.

His pathan ancestry gave him elite status, as did Sayyid Sahib’s Sayyid

ancestry and Abu Ji’s pathan ancestry, both being part and parcel of

the core families of the madrasa, as discussed in Chapter 2. In addi-

tion to the manager, there was a management committee responsible

for running the aﬀ airs of the English-medium and Hindi-medium

public schools.

Figure 4.2 Day Students Park Their Bicycles in the School Courtyard

during School Hours

Source : Author.

Attachment to School 191

The syllabus of the English-medium school included a variety

of subjects: chemistry, physics, biology, maths, computers, Hindi,

English, Urdu, Arabic (until the eighth grade), sociology, education,

drawing, economics, geography, civics, and history. The Hindi-

medium school oﬀ ered the subjects listed earlier, but no science

or computer classes, nor Arabic.

37 The two schools used NCERT

books recommended by the UP board of education (UP Madhyamik

Shiksha Parishad, UPMSP, or Board of High School and

Intermediate Education). 38 This board, headquartered in Allahabad

in east UP, has four regional centres in the state, of which Bareilly is

one. 39 According to its website, the UP Board is ‘the biggest examin-

ing body in the world’, responsible for ‘holding the examinations

and preparing the results of nearly 32 lakh [3.2 million] students’ in

2002, the last year for which statistics were publicly available as of

this writing (in 2018).

40 The Islamic Public School website, for its

part, claims the following:

Best College of U.P. BOARD; C.B.S.E. Pattern for upto class 12th;

Dedicated Staﬀ ; Healthy Atmosphere for Girls; Hindi and English

Medium; Pleasant, Peaceful and most secure area; Minimum Fees

Structure; Conveyance Facility; Fee Relaxation for poor students; Alima

Classes are also running for girls; Inculcation and promotion of Islamic

culture in English environment.’ 41

37 In this section, I focus largely on the English-medium school, with

occasional references to the Hindi-medium school.

38 Textbooks produced by the NCERT are used throughout India by

schools that are recognized by their state boards of education. For more on

the NCERT, see http://www.ncert.nic.in/about_ncert.html.

39 According to the UP Board’s website, its main functions are:

• To grant recognition to aspiring schools.

• To prescribe courses and text books for High school and Intermediate

level.

• To conduct High school and Intermediate Examinations.

• To provide equivalence to the examinations conducted by other

Boards. (See http://upmsp.nic.in/aboutus.htm; accessed on 5 March

2017.)

40 See http://upmsp.nic.in/aboutus.htm; accessed on 5 March 2017.

41 I am deliberately not citing the school’s website address, as doing so

would reveal its identity.

192 Scholars of Faith

My observations bear out some of these claims, though the quality

of teaching and school discipline were somewhat mixed, as I detail

later in the chapter.

School fees for the day students at the Islamic Public School were

higher than for the madrasa students, and their books could also

become expensive. In 2012, the average fees per month were INR 750

or USD 12 per child (the fees being somewhat lower for children in

the junior classes and higher at the high-school level), in addition to

one-time admission fees and a one-time fee of INR 500 charged at the

beginning of each academic year. In 2013, the average fee had gone

up to INR 900 per month. In 2015, by comparison, madrasa student

fees were INR 800 per month, up from INR 500 a few years earlier.

In addition, parents at both the public school and the madrasa had to

pay for school uniforms (the public school students had two diﬀ er-

ent uniforms, a green and white one for Mondays through Fridays,

and a diﬀ erent one, all white, for Saturdays) and books, as well as

transportation.

Teachers’ salaries in both the school and the madrasa were based

on their educational qualiﬁ cations. They ranged from INR 1,500 per

month for elementary grade teachers to INR 2,000 for teachers with a

BA, BEd, or MA in the public school and INR 2,500–3,500 for teach-

ers who had a Fazila degree (2011 rates; see Chapter 3, Appendix 2).

While these fees and salaries will seem negligible to US and other

readers, the actual ﬁ gures matter less than the way they were expe-

rienced by parents and teachers. In both cases the evidence suggests

that parents considered the fees to be too high while some wardens

and teachers felt their salaries should be higher. At the same time,

the madrasa was constantly short of funds. Until 2013–14, when the

madrasa and public school were still in the same building, the latter

was used to oﬀ set some of the madrasa’s expenses; in other words, it

helped subsidize the madrasa.

These comparisons between the fee and salary structure at the pub-

lic school and madrasa raise the question of the class composition of

42 These ﬁ gures are based on the informal conversations I had with the

school manager and Sayyid Sahib, the founder of Jami‘a Nur. I did not ask to

see the oﬃ cial school or madrasa records and neither did the school manager

nor Sayyid Sahib oﬀ er to show them to me.

Attachment to School 193

students and teachers at the two institutions. What distinguished the

two populations in class terms? It seems reasonable, based on the pic-

ture painted in the preceding paragraph, to assume that the students

at the public school were largely urban and of a higher class standing

than those at the madrasa. To some degree, this was indeed the case.

Since the public school was a day school, its student body and teach-

ing staﬀ were locally based. From the informal conversations I had in

2013 with a small class of nine second-year Inter students (Class XII,

the equivalent of high school seniors in the US) of a Hindi-medium

education class, I learned that many of their fathers were engaged in

small businesses such as a scrap yard (two students), a motor parts

company, a cloth shop, and a factory (two students). One was a tailor.

None were engaged in agriculture.

43 Many of the students mentioned

that they lived in joint families. One related that she was one of ﬁ ve

daughters, and because her maternal grandparents had had sons

but no daughters, she had lived with them ever since she was a few

months old. In her grandparents’ household, there were also several

uncles and their wives and children. She visited her parents and sis-

ters once a week but considered the extended family she lived with

to be her ‘real’ family. Another student said she lived in a joint fam-

ily consisting of her parents and several of her father’s brothers and

their wives and children. A couple of students talked of older brothers

whose educational aspirations included entrance into IIT Kanpur and

a PhD programme. All the students spoke freely and seemed closely

bonded, having studied together for several years at the same school.

If these students’ stories seemed to reﬂ ect a South Asian urban

working-class background with middle-class dreams, this impres-

sion was reinforced by conversations I had with other students in the

English-medium and Hindi-medium schools. Two English-medium

science students, also in their last year of high school (Inter, second

year) talked about their classes and their aspirations for college.

43 However, this is not to say that none of the public school students’ par-

ents were engaged in agriculture. I did encounter one student who said her

father was a farmer. She was a Hindi-medium student studying as a boarder,

because she came from a village far away. She lived with the madrasa stu-

dents but studied in the Hindi-medium school during the day. There were

about 12–15 such students in 2013.

194 Scholars of Faith

Amina had been in the school since the ﬁ fth grade and her friend

Shahnaz since the eighth grade. They both liked the school. Currently

they were studying physics, chemistry, biology, Hindi, and English.

There were 22 students in their class, of whom 7 were in the science

stream and 15 in the arts stream. Unfortunately for the science stu-

dents, there was no science lab in the school. (The school also lacked

a library and playground, though it had a small computer lab, as seen

in Figure 4.3) When I asked them about their future plans for college,

they told me there were three colleges in Shahjahanpur: Arya Mahila

College (for women), G.F. College, and S.S. College. They wanted to

go to G.F. College, where they had friends and where one of them had

a sister. They said S.S. College was for rural people.

44 When I asked

them if they had ever studied at a madrasa, they said no. ‘Do you want

to?’ I asked. ‘No’, they replied.

Further indication that the student populations of the madrasa

and the public schools were diﬀ erent emerged from a small number

of student questionnaires that I asked both the madrasa and public

school students to complete. In response to my question, ‘How did

you learn about the madrasa/school?’, the madrasa students pointed

overwhelmingly to word of mouth information networks between

their parents (usually their fathers) or a relative and Sayyid Sahib,

or the recommendation of a religious elder (a mawlana ) or friend’s

father. In contrast, some of the public school students said that they

or their parents had heard about the school from a TV news chan-

nel or newspaper. 45 Diﬀ erences also emerged in response to my

question, ‘What would you like to do when you ﬁ nish your studies

here?’ All the madrasa students said they wanted to teach others what

they had learned, either in their own families or in a madrasa. The

44 The full names of the last two colleges they mentioned are: Gandhi

Faizam Degree College, Shahjahanpur, established in 1947 and aﬃ liated

to Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, UP, and Swami Shukdevanand Degree

College, established in 1964, also aﬃ liated to Rohilkhand University (Kailash

Narain Pande, Gazetteer of India, Uttar Pradesh, District Shahjahanpur

[Lucknow: Government of Uttar Pradesh, 1988], p. 232).

45 Ten madrasa students and 18 public school students completed the

questionnaires. Of the 10, 9 mentioned such oral networks. Of the 18 in the

latter group, 4 students mentioned newspapers or television.

Attachment to School 195

responses of the public school students were more varied: three said

they wanted to become doctors; seven said they wanted to become

an ‘Alima; four wanted to become teachers; one wanted to help the

poor; and one simply wanted to get a job.

46 While the large number of

students who wanted to become ‘Alima is noteworthy, given that they

were public school students, three of them gave negative reasons for

their choice. One student wrote: ‘I want to study in the ‘Alima because

there is no good arrangement ( achhi suvidha ) for studying here after

the Inter. For this reason, one will have to go outside [Shahjahanpur].

But my parents did not give their permission ( anumati ) for this. So for

this reason I want to do the ‘Alima after ﬁ nishing Inter.’

That all the students—both from the madrasa and the public

schools—had a personal or professional goal in mind after they had

completed their studies at the madrasa or school is in itself highly

Figure 4.3 Computer Lab at the Islamic Public School

Source : Author.

46 Two students did not respond to the question.

196 Scholars of Faith

signiﬁ cant. That these girls, whose future would in all likelihood be

marriage, motherhood, and domesticity, articulated an interest in

teaching and learning in response to my question seemed to indicate

that the school had opened up new worlds of possibility, new ways

in which they could imagine themselves. In my questionnaire I had

also asked about their parents’ educational level and occupations. All

the madrasa students’ fathers had some formal education: two had an

MA, two had completed their Inter, three had studied upto the tenth

grade, one upto the ﬁ fth grade, and two had madrasa educations. An

overwhelming number (8 out of 10) of their mothers, however, had

no formal education. That was fully 80 per cent of my small sample.

In the case of the public school students, most of the fathers had

some formal education (1 MA, 4 Inter, 8 up to the tenth grade, 2 up

to middle school) as did 8 of the 18 mothers. One mother, in fact,

had a BA. However, over half (10 out of 18) had no formal education.

Moreover, in no case did the mothers of either the madrasa students

or the public school students work outside the home. Regardless of

whether the trajectory of their lives followed in the same path as their

mothers or whether they did in fact venture out in new directions,

that the students expressed a desire to either continue their studies

beyond Inter or become teachers or doctors was striking.

One English-medium public school student in the eleventh grade,

whom I quoted at the beginning of this chapter, expressed herself

very eloquently:

After I complete my studies here I want to continue further. I want to

become a doctor. It is also my parents’ dream ( sapna ) that I should go far

and make their name shine. I too have to achieve something ( kutch karke

dikhana hai ). I have to become something ( kutch banke dikhana hai ). That

we girls are not weak. I have to go out and study. It is my dream that I

might go out and study and become something and be recognized. I want

to become a doctor and take care of the weak and poor. I want their bless-

ings. That’s all—for me my dream to become a doctor is important.

This student was 1 of 10 children, all educated, some upto the BA.

Her father was an imam and a hakim, and her mother had no formal

education. But she had big dreams.

I also got to know some of the public school teachers. Some were

struggling to support siblings and parents on their monthly salaries.

One teacher, Rehana, about 30, taught education, sociology, SST

Attachment to School 197

(social studies), and home science at the high school and inter levels.

She was one of ﬁ ve sisters. Their parents had died when they were

very young. Rehana had managed to educate herself and also get a

couple of her sisters married, though she herself was single. She

seemed to be the only wage earner among the sisters. She was slight

of build, cheerful, and energetic. When I met her she had henna

( mehndi ) on her hands, having recently attended the weddings of two

former teachers at the English-medium school. Similarly, the princi-

pal, Sultana, was helping her married daughter get through a crisis

resulting from the severe illness of her one-year-old son. The doc-

tors had been unable to diagnose the cause. At her wit’s end, Sultana

ﬁ nally got an amulet ( ta‘wiz ). Although she did not say that this is

what cured her grandson, he did recover.

Some of the teachers were clearly role models for the students.

Many students who answered the questionnaire mentioned Sultana

by name, commending her as a teacher of English and for having

taught them about Islam. Thus, one wrote: ‘Every day at assembly

Sultana mam tells us very nice things. About namaz, she asks every

day and makes us do namaz ( namaz ki pa-bandi karati hain ).’ Another

said: ‘Sultana Mam teaches us a lot about religion. … I have learned

a lot in this school about religion (din).’ All the students said they

appreciated the fact that the school gave them religious instruction

and that the teachers were good, caring people. For these students

and their parents, the fact that the public school gave students reli-

gious instruction was one of the main reasons they liked the school

despite the overcrowding, high noise level, and its lack of a proper

playground, library, or science lab—all of which they brought up in

their responses.

These responses problematized for me the class distinction between

the madrasa and the public schools. The distinction that had appeared

47 She also told me that a few days ago she had accompanied her daugh-

ter and grandson by train to Bareilly. The train arrived but her daughter had

still not arrived at the station. When she explained their plight because of the

baby’s illness, the conductor very kindly delayed the train’s departure by a few

minutes until she arrived. Sultana said she didn’t know of any other country

in the world where someone—and a stranger at that—would stop a train for

a sick baby.

198 Scholars of Faith

rather clear-cut at ﬁ rst was in fact not so. Religious instruction and the

religious ethos of the school mattered to these students. The fact that

parents strategically placed their children in diﬀ erent school systems

was also signiﬁ cant. As the madrasa student quoted at the beginning

of this chapter indicated, two of her siblings were in public schools,

one in a Christian school (St. Julius Public School) and the other pos-

sibly in a Hindu public school (Janata Public School).

48 She herself

was ﬁ rmly committed to her path as a madrasa student who wanted

to live a religiously observant life. The second student I quoted, who

expressed her strong desire to be a doctor, had an imam for a father

and had initially wanted to become an ‘Alima. Other instances of

eclectic school choice came from madrasa students who said they had

siblings at Aligarh Muslim University, public schools, and convent

schools. School choice seemed to be determined by a mix of factors:

the religious orientation of the parents (Muslim, Sunni, Barelwi), the

academic interests of the child, and ﬁ nancial aﬀ ordability.

However, one of the teachers I talked to suggested that increased

levels of education and urbanization over time led to decreased inter-

est in religion and religious observance. Shagufta, a kindergarten

teacher with a BEd, who was a widow with three grown children

in their twenties, had been teaching in the school for several years.

When I asked her why some parents chose to send their children to

the English-medium school and others to the madrasa, she said that

the parents who chose the madrasa were ‘very pardah nishin ’, that is,

they observed gender segregation and female veiling in public spaces

to a greater degree than others. ‘But didn’t all teachers and students

observe gender segregation (pardah)?’ I asked. ‘Yes’, she responded,

‘but the families that preferred an English-medium education for

their children were more ﬂ exible’. For example, when she left town

and went to a place where there were no relatives, she might take oﬀ

her burqa or hijab in public spaces. The madrasa-going families would

never do that. The people who chose an English-medium education

48 In India, following the British educational tradition, the word ‘public’

refers to what in the US is called a ‘private’ school, that is, it is funded by

private citizens rather than by the government. In contemporary usage, some

privately funded schools now refer to themselves as ‘private’. Government-

run schools in India are referred to as ‘government schools’.

Attachment to School 199

for their children believed that they had to do so in order to get ahead

in the world. The ones whose children were in madrasas were unedu-

cated and their children were the ﬁ rst ones in their families to study.

The madrasa children’s children would choose to study in English-

medium schools, in her view.

Shagufta was correct that the madrasa student population was

more rural than that of the public school (3 out of 10 questionnaire

respondents said their fathers were in farming, versus only 1 out of

18 public school respondents), and as already discussed, the formal

literacy rate of the madrasa students’ mothers was much lower (20

per cent) than that of the public schools (around 50 per cent). But the

public school students’ responses indicated clearly that they valued

the religious education and ethos of the Islamic Public School. This

was what made it distinctive and better in their eyes and in those

of their parents than other public schools available to them. They

wanted a balance between religious and worldly learning, in which

both played a part.

Stepping into the Classroom

It was early in the school day in October 2013, and on the third ﬂ oor

of the school building, a young teacher was quizzing her ﬁ fth grade

students orally in English on their biology lessons. I had stepped

into a rather dimly lit, large rectangular room on one side of a wide

hallway separating two rows of classrooms and had been given a

chair facing the students, near the teacher. The boys were seated

on the left of the room at four long rows of desks, one behind the

other, while the girls were seated in exactly the same way on the

right. Their numbers seemed to be evenly balanced. Facing them

and behind the teacher’s back was a blackboard. As homework, the

teacher had asked the students to make a chart showing the respira-

tory system. Many of the boys had not made their charts and did not

know their material. Most of the girls had, and most were able to

answer the teacher’s questions. She posed a question in English and

the student responded, reciting from memory. One or two seemed

very good. However, it was clear that English was not the students’

or the teacher’s spoken language. This made the interaction sound

stilted and wooden.

200 Scholars of Faith

The teacher looked very stern. While the student she had called

upon was answering her questions, the other students were talking

and paying no attention. She had to repeatedly ask the class to stop

talking. Occasionally she would hit her desk with a wooden stick to

get their attention. In one of the rows on the boys’ side of the room, a

couple of boys were squabbling about a pencil sharpener which one

of them claimed had been taken from him. The teacher punished

him by asking him to stand and keep standing. Unlike the madrasa

student I had seen being punished in the same way the day before,

the boy giggled and squirmed and didn’t seem a bit apologetic or

ashamed. He just turned to his friends and the boys around him, all

of whom were whispering loudly.

The teacher’s questions to the students showed that she had a

good command of her material. The class, however, was uninter-

ested in the subject being taught. At some point, a staﬀ member

walked into the classroom and handed the teacher a register. In it

she wrote down how many students were present that day and how

many were absent, and signed her name. This register was signed

by each teacher at the school and given to the principal every school

day. Turning her attention to the class once more, she continued

to call upon the students one by one to answer her oral questions.

When all the students had had their turn, she sat down and told the

students to revise their lessons by themselves in preparation for the

coming exam.

This teacher was very young. She was 18, had studied at a convent

school in Jhansi while living with her grandparents, and already had

her BA from G.F. College, where she had graduated among the top 10

students in her class. She was frustrated at the Islamic Public School.

She wanted to teach classes beyond seventh grade but was not being

allowed to, as she did not have the required qualiﬁ cations (a BEd or

MA). Now she wanted to study further. She wanted to go to Jamia

Millia Islamia University in Delhi.

Next I stopped by at a ninth-grade class, in a relatively well-lit and

open classroom with bare white walls, where Hindi-medium and

English-medium students had been joined together in one large

class. The teacher was not teaching anything, though, as the students

were supposed to be reviewing their lessons for the coming exams.

Some students asked me questions about where I was from and what

Attachment to School 201

I taught. One student invited me to her home to meet her parents.

After some time an older teacher came into the room and the previ-

ous teacher left. She seemed to be popular with the students. She

addressed them aﬀ ectionately as ‘child [ bete ]’, usually to ask them to

stop being so noisy ( bete, itna shor mat karo ). Unfortunately for me,

the students had just ﬁ nished the ﬁ rst half of the academic year and

had taken their oral exams the day before. This would be followed by

a midterm written exam shortly. Then the second half of the academic

year would follow. I had come at the wrong time, when students were

not receiving formal instruction.

Still with the same teacher in what was now a sixth-grade class,

we again sat at the head of a classroom—this one had been added by

installing metal partitions in one part of the wide hallway between the

classrooms on either side, and seemed temporary and incomplete—

facing a room full of noisy students sitting in pairs at their desks.

Finally, the teacher asked them to start reading from their English

textbook. As she called on diﬀ erent students by name, each student

stood up, read a few sentences, then sat down. The text was a short

story about a family of birds on a tree who were being threatened by

a snake. The mother bird prayed for her babies to be saved. Then a

hawk came and snatched the snake in its mouth and cut its body into

two. Turning to me, the teacher said the school chose stories with

a moral lesson. To me the book seemed much too easy for the stu-

dents, in contrast to the madrasa students who were studying diﬃ cult

Arabic texts in another part of the building. Also in contrast to the

latter, these students were bored and distracted. It is not unreason-

able to suggest that the school’s low level of expectations was in part

responsible for the students’ apathy.

Where Is the Passion? Comparisons across

the Two Schools

Despite the unevenness of my data for the reasons I have indicated,

I want to make some broad observations about what we can learn

49 However, the madrasa authorities did not want such visits to take

place. They said I could talk to students within the building premises but not

elsewhere.

202 Scholars of Faith

from my account about the distinctive features of these very diﬀ erent

schools. Fittingly, given that the madrasa and the English-medium

and Hindi-medium public schools see themselves as fulﬁ lling diﬀ er-

ent goals, their students also had diﬀ erent personal and social goals

in mind: the madrasa students were focused on self and community

transformation in terms of greater adherence to everyday orthopraxy

while the public school students were focusing on secular professions

which would materially help their families and society. Teaching and

medicine were foremost on their list of priorities, and at a more per-

sonal level they also expressed their desire to take care of their parents.

(Latika Gupta and other scholars have noted that Indian girls often

express a preference for teaching because the teaching profession

can be pursued without disturbing expected gender roles in society. I

explore this further in the next chapter.)

While I did not observe the kinds of rites of incorporation at the

public schools that I did at the madrasa, the students of the latter do

have morning assembly, observe annual holidays, and are subject to

school norms, expectations, and routines on a regular basis. Even the

simple act of wearing a school uniform—indeed, two diﬀ erent ones,

as on Saturdays they dress in an all-white uniform—is a means of cre-

ating school loyalty. My inquiries showed that they liked their school

and expressed a clear attachment to their teachers, fellow students,

and to the school at large. This was not the result of academic interest

in their classes, for they seemed completely detached from what they

were being taught in class. But as discussed earlier, they liked the

fact that their teachers gave them religious instruction outside the

oﬃ cial curriculum, taught them basic things like how to oﬀ er namaz,

and encouraged them to do this more regularly. This interested

them despite the fact that most of them did not want to be madrasa

students. What their schools represented, then, was a place where

being good (Barelwi) Muslims was encouraged and recognized. In the

context of Indian public education in the current era of the Bharatiya

Janata Party and right-wing Hindu nationalism, for the parents of

these children, the Islamic Public School oﬀ ered a safe, good, and

50 Latika Gupta, Education, Poverty and Gender: Schooling Muslim Girls in

India (Delhi: Routledge, 2015), pp. 91–5.

Attachment to School 203

aﬀ ordable education that had the potential to launch their child on a

viable path towards professional employment in the future.

But how realistic were their expectations? Nita Kumar has written

insightfully on Indian public and private education in Banaras and

Kolkata in her book The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity

(2011). She places all the Banaras schools in four tiers: at the lowest

rung, in her view, are the government municipal schools; then follow

the English-language schools, which have the ‘outward trapping[s] and

paraphernalia’ of ‘convent schools’ but none of their educational phi-

losophy or teacher training, and are only marginally better; then come

the madrasas, themselves internally distinguished by maslak orienta-

tion (Barelwi, Deobandi, and so on) and more importantly, by their

aﬃ liation either with the Basic Shiksha Parishad or the UP Madrasa

Board: ‘for every hundred students educated in the latter, religious

system, some one thousand are educated in the secular, nationalist

system’. 51 Schools in the fourth tier, that of the elite missionary or

English-medium public schools, which open doors to professional

middle-class jobs, are only available in the metropolitan cities. Jami‘a

Nur and the Islamic Public School, in light of this analysis, belong to

the third and second tiers, respectively.

Judging by Kumar’s diagnosis of the problems of Indian education,

the bulk of Indian schools—largely those of the ﬁ rst three tiers—suf-

fer from the structural limitations of what she calls ‘provincialism’.

These schools are characterized by ‘incompleteness’ at several levels.

In terms of the physical space they occupy, they are often located in

repurposed private homes rather than in buildings constructed as

schools, and are characterized by ‘overcrowded rooms with inadequate

light and air’. Not only does the child have to suﬀ er the pain of sitting

in such rooms through the school day, but he or she is subjected to

a meaningless curriculum as well as ‘[a] body trapped in synthetic

uniforms and badges, threatened by the ogres of homework and

51 Nita Kumar, The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity: Essays

on Education in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011). The quota-

tions are from pp. 62 and 90.

52 On this term and its ramiﬁ cations, see Kumar, The Politics of Gender,

Community, and Modernity , Chapter 1.

204 Scholars of Faith

examinations, altogether victim to overdisciplining’.

53 The tragedy of

it all is that ‘ this disciplining is for nothing ’ because the ‘students of pro-

vincial schools are denied the rewards of the national–global’. And in

a circular loop that appears to justify their exclusion, the products of

these schools fail to become the ‘inwardly directed’ modern citizens

and embodiments of the ‘minimal virtues of punctuality, uprightness,

and masculinity’ that the system intended them to become.

If on the one hand, the Islamic Public School may be raising some

students’ expectations unduly high, the greater problem seems to be

that most students are not engaged and motivated to learn. Kumar,

who describes several Banaras schools in her ethnography, ascribes

this problem to the schools’ failure to connect the formal educational

syllabus with the lives of the students and their families, and the

exclusion of their local histories from the national historical narra-

tive. This is where Kumar’s observations and mine converge most

strongly. My conversations with students and teachers and observa-

tions of classroom interaction suggested apathy on the part of many

teachers—and a sense of frustration among those wanting but unable

to do more—and lack of interest on the part of many students at the

Islamic Public School. Similar observations have been made by others.

Latika Gupta’s ethnography of a Muslim girls’ school in Darya Ganj,

Delhi, also speaks of teacher apathy and students’ lack of interest in

their school work, although at home the girls defended their right to

go to school when their parents questioned the utility of educating

girls beyond the eighth grade. Going to school gave them a precious

means of escaping the surveillance of parents, making friends with

other girls their age, and, most importantly, postponing marriage by

a few years. 55

As Kumar notes, there is much blame to go around in the state–

family–school triad, beginning with the fact that most state and local

schools, whether public or private, are chronically underﬁ nanced and

understaﬀ ed, and have been since British colonial times. Schools in

53 Kumar, The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity , p. 45.

54 Kumar, The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity , pp. 45–6.

Emphasis in the original.

55 See Gupta, Education, Poverty and Gender , especially Chapter 4,

‘Articulated Discourse’.

Attachment to School 205

the ﬁ rst three tiers also suﬀ er from the fact that working-class par-

ents’—particularly the mothers’—lack of formal education makes

them unresponsive to the schools’ desire for parental involvement in

their child’s education. Sultana, the principal of the Islamic Public

School, ascribed the students’ lack of discipline in the classroom

to their home environments. Since the students came from homes

where they had no parental support, she said, they suﬀ ered from a

lack of discipline and motivation to study. They were starting oﬀ at

the very bottom of the ladder and the school was doing all it could to

help them improve their prospects.

56 Kumar reports on a similar con-

versation with the teacher Mansoor Master of Jamia Hamidia Rizvia,

a madrasa in Banaras.

However, the Islamic Public School had great advantage over other

provincial schools in one respect, namely, that the teachers belonged

to the same social milieu and were broadly speaking from the same

community, both in class terms and in terms of religious orientation,

as the students. They understood their problems, and many were per-

sonally invested in the academic success of their students. Moreover,

as noted earlier, at the heart of the attachment between the students

and the school was the inclusion by the school of a moral, ethical, and

religious dimension to the instruction imparted during the school

day, for which students credited their principal Sultana in particular.

For this reason, they discounted the physical discomforts and lack of

facilities such as a playground, library, or science lab, saying that they

liked their school and wanted to see it prosper.

Turning now to the madrasa Jami‘a Nur, I have described at some

length the high level of engagement of its students and teachers. The

students at Jami‘a Nur who complete their studies to the ‘Alima and

Fazila levels, I suggest, imbibe the Barelwi ethos of the founder, Sayyid

Sahib, and their teachers and seek to embody it personally. As they

acquire greater knowledge of the textual sources of the Qur’an and its

exegesis, of hadith, jurisprudence, and related ﬁ elds of Islamic learn-

ing, their lessons, far from being disconnected from their personal

lives, increasingly shape the ways in which they conduct themselves

outside the classroom.

56 Personal conversation, November 2013.

57 Kumar, The Politics of Gender, Community, and Modernity , p. 53.

206 Scholars of Faith

But there is more to it than this. The madrasa succeeds in large part

because it connects the students to the Islamic scholarly tradition at

large. It is much more than just a Barelwi madrasa. By drawing young

Muslim girls from families with little prior knowledge of Islamic his-

tory and Islamic scholarly tradition and giving them direct access to

the medieval texts which make up the backbone of this tradition, the

madrasa opens their horizons to worlds they had never known and

which they can proudly call their own. The experience of sitting in a

study circle with other girls of one’s age—sometimes outside in the

open playground on a sunny winter’s day, but more likely in a big,

well-lit classroom with windows—moving one’s ﬁ nger on the line one

is reading, and turning the pages of a gigantic, heavy book of Tirmidhi ,

for example, is a real, tactile one, not merely a passive act of absorb-

ing received knowledge. The book, placed reverentially on a pillow,

is shared by two students sitting side by side. They lean their heads

forward together fully concentrating on the page, so as not to lose

their place as students take turns reading at a rapid pace. Likewise,

as they read and distinguish the text ( matn ) from the commentary

( sharh ) written in tiny print at an angle in the margins on the left,

right, and bottom of the page in a Hadith book like Tirmidhi , or a book

of Qur’anic exegesis like Jalalayn , they are traversing a well-known

path, one whose markers—made up of diﬀ erent inks, type sizes, and

physical placement—they have grown familiar with over their years at

the madrasa. Their success in reading, understanding, and mastering

these texts also constitutes a visible and tangible link between them

and the Islamic scholarly tradition.

Likewise, for younger students, the pleasure of copying lines of

Urdu calligraphy in order to learn how to connect the letters of the

Arabic alphabet correctly, is a means of participating actively in a new

world of learning. The children’s brows are furrowed in concentration

58 See Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and

History in a Muslim Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),

pp. 30–1 and passim, for an evocative discussion and excellent analysis of

the layout of the physical text. On the importance of commentaries in the

Islamic scholarly tradition, see Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in

Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 2002).

Attachment to School 207

over the task of getting the shapes of the letters and the consonant

and vowel dots and dashes above and below the lines just right. When

the student ﬁ nishes repeating the teacher’s line—likely a line of na‘t

poetry by Ahmad Raza Khan—at the top of her calligraphy notebook,

on the lower four or ﬁ ve rows of lines, she passes her notebook to the

teacher, who corrects her mistakes with a red ballpoint pen there and

then, and hands it back. The dozen or so students are all sitting in a

semicircle on daris on the ﬂ oor, in a small classroom with a sunlit

window, across from their teacher.

The visual experience of recognizing text and being able to write

ﬂ uently in Urdu and Arabic is of course but one dimension of the

larger madrasa ‘sensorium’, to recall Benei. The equally, if not more

important, auditory aspect, has been frequently commented on

in public media and the scholarly literature, often to cast doubt on

the practice of memorization. Charles Hirschkind, in The Ethical

Soundscape , has studied it in depth. Hirschkind’s use of phrases such

as ‘a listening that is a doing’, ‘the tradition of agentive listening’, and

‘ethical listening’ indicates that listening in the Islamic context is an

act , an embodied response to oral speech. In the Islamic ‘soundscape’,

the listener must do more than passively hear the utterance. She must

be actively engaged, fully attentive, and respond with the appropriate

bodily gestures and speech.

Studying the Qur’an has its own distinct and well-known rules of

adab and set of practices. When during the day the younger students

learn the rules of tajwid, with its complex and precise methods of

sounding out the words of the Qur’an, they practise the articulation

of Arabic sounds diﬃ cult for a native Urdu speaker, to be corrected

repeatedly by their teacher. How they handle the Qur’anic text and

under what conditions are issues of lively debate between diﬀ erent

maslaks? At the madrasa, students are meticulous in their observance

of the directive of textual guides such as the Sunni Bihishti Zewar , and

their young teachers, who embody their feminine ideal. Other daily

verbal and bodily responses constitute micropractices that become

59 Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and

Islamic Counterpublics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), pp. 34,

50, 53. Also see Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local Level Islam’, pp. 144, 256,

and passim.

208 Scholars of Faith

part of the students’ habitus: When the azan is called in the morning,

students rise, wash, and perform the dawn prayer; when they hear

the Salam , they stand; if the Prophet’s name is uttered during an oral

presentation, they kiss their thumbs and ask God to bless him, using

formulaic phrases that are familiar to Muslims the world over; if the

azan is sounded while they are in the midst of a conversation, they

adjust their veils over their heads and the speakers fall silent. These

and countless other small gestures and forms of speech ultimately

serve to connect the student to the wider Muslim community. Some

of these practices are speciﬁ c to the Barelwis while others have much

wider reach, uniting Muslims from West Africa to Southeast Asia,

North America, and Europe.

Subjective attachment to the madrasa thus has many dimensions

and is built up slowly over time, diﬀ erently for each student. Turning

from how Muslim girls connect with the Islamic scholarly tradition,

in the following chapter I explore the work of Sumbul Farah, who

interviewed a handful of Jami‘a Nur graduates in their homes, to see

what practical impact their madrasa educations had on them after

they returned home. My focus will be on how the students internalize

and process the madrasa’s civilizing mission, and how the madrasa’s

religious message in turn interacts with South Asian gendered dis-

courses and becomes meaningful to students in the context of family

and community expectations.

LIFE AFTER THE MADRASA

Education ﬁ nds its fulﬁ llment in teaching. When I was a student, I did

not realize the importance of all that I was learning. But when I began

to teach, I became like a sooty pot that is scrubbed clean and shiny

( main bartan ki tarah manjhti chali gayi ).

—Ghazala, Jami‘a Nur madrasa graduate, 2015, speaking to Farah

Expressed in an aﬀ ective register, my interlocutors were referring to

their ability to adjust to their newfound circumstances, an adjustment

hinging upon a gendered characteristic they associated with proper

womanhood. Women, they repeatedly indicated, are naram.

—Attiya Ahmad, Everyday Conversions , p. 109

What impact does students’ education have on their lives after they

leave the madrasa and rejoin their natal families, and then marry and

become wives and mothers? This is a critical question in assessing

the long-term impact of the madrasa. Here I draw on the research

of Sumbul Farah who followed a few Jami‘a Nur graduates to their

homes and talked to them for extensive periods, sometimes making

multiple visits, to learn about their home lives. We learn from this

about the continuity between the school and the home, the prestige

accorded by family members and neighbours to the madrasa stu-

dents’ religious knowledge and their consequent increase in authority

vis-à-vis other members of the family, their eagerness to hold classes

for women and children in their neighbourhoods, and their relations

210 Scholars of Faith

with their spouses, among other things. Although the sample of stu-

dent interviews is small, Farah’s data throw light on the transforma-

tive potential of Jami‘a Nur, and doubtless on that of countless other

girls’ madrasas similar to this one throughout India and South Asia.

Before I present Farah’s research ﬁ ndings and comment on how

they illuminate my own research on the students at the Jami‘a Nur

madrasa, a brief word about my ﬁ eldwork experience is in order here.

In late 2011, I asked Farah to help me ﬁ nd a Barelwi girls’ madrasa

in west Uttar Pradesh (UP) whose management would agree to the

madrasa being the site of my ethnography. Her own Barelwi back-

ground and PhD research on everyday Barelwi practices in and

around the Suﬁ shrines ( khanqah s) of Bareilly gave her a unique

vantage point and access to community sources and resources. After

some time, she came up with a short list of madrasas near Bareilly

that seemed promising sites and she visited a couple of them, accom-

panied by her father, a respected and well-known doctor in Bareilly

and a practising Sunni Muslim of the Barelwi school himself. Farah

recommended the madrasa Jami‘a Nur both because of its proxim-

ity to Bareilly and the willingness of Sayyid Sahib to host me for the

duration of my ﬁ eldwork. For me its attraction was enhanced by the

fact that Shahjahanpur is accessible by train from Delhi, my home of

origin. Thus began my association with Jami‘a Nur.

However, when I arrived in Delhi in June 2012 to begin my ﬁ eld-

work, I learned that Sayyid Sahib was having second thoughts. His

prime concern, he told Farah and later me as well, was that condi-

tions at the madrasa were diﬃ cult and I would not be comfortable

there, being accustomed to much more luxurious living conditions

in the United States (US). It took considerable eﬀ ort on the part

of several people, including myself, to persuade him to change his

mind. Eventually he relented, telling me I should come and see him

at the madrasa for a preliminary visit. This initial visit led to an

invitation to stay, and subsequently to permission to make several

return visits.

1 Farah’s research ﬁ ndings have been published in Usha Sanyal and

Sumbul Farah, ‘Discipline and Nurture: Living in a Girls’ Madrasa, Living in

Community’, Modern Asian Studies (2019), 53(2): 411–50. This chapter draws

on this article and Farah’s unpublished ﬁ eld notes, cited with her permission.

Life after the Madrasa 211

While Sayyid Sahib welcomed me warmly on all my subsequent

visits to Jami‘a Nur, even allowing me to tape record madrasa classes

and conversations with teachers and staﬀ , I found in time that he

was reluctant to allow me to visit students at their homes. The rea-

sons for this were hard for me to fathom.

2 But rather than argue with

him I asked Farah if she would collaborate with me on this aspect of

my research. She agreed to conduct a number of student interviews,

meeting former students and their families at their homes. Putting

our ﬁ ndings together we wrote a joint article on the madrasa and its

impact on the students’ home lives. Due to the importance of her data

to the overall study, in this chapter I draw on Farah’s work to show the

inﬂ uence the madrasa has had on these students’ lives.

Six Graduates and Former Students Recount Their Lives

Using pseudonyms to protect their privacy, Farah narrated the life

stories of six diﬀ erent Jami‘a Nur students after they had left the

madrasa. They were: the sisters Nayla and Khushboo, the sisters

Nida and Naghma, and the cousins Ghazala and Hajira. I will take

up their stories in this order, and analyse the lessons learned from

their life stories in the next section of this chapter. Putting these ﬁ nd-

ings together with the small but growing literature on girls’ madrasas

in India, I bring to bear the insights of Attiya Ahmad’s work with

South Asian domestic workers in Kuwait to show how the girls pro-

cess the teachings of the madrasa in tandem with a gendered South

Asian discourse about the importance of women being malleable and

pliable (that is, the expectation that they will develop the quality of

2 He was apparently in some doubt about my citizenship status. Friends

and associates had told him that he should have made sure I had registered

my presence with the local police oﬃ ce before allowing me to stay at the

madrasa. On post–9/11 ﬁ eldwork diﬃ culties, see, among others, Mareike

Jule Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a Girls’ Madrasa

in India (Amsterdam: ISIM Press, 2005); Arshad Alam, Inside a Madrasa:

Knowledge, Power and Islamic Identity in India (Delhi: Routledge, 2011),

and Sumbul Farah, ‘Piety and Politics in Local Level Islam: A Case Study

of Barelwi Khanqahs’ (PhD dissertation, University of Delhi, May 2016). As

these works make it clear that both Muslim and non-Muslim researchers face

challenges, though the nature of the diﬃ culties they encounter is diﬀ erent.

212 Scholars of Faith

being naram) around members of their households, particularly in

the marital home. It is through the unvoiced and unremarked upon

integration of these two discourses in their everyday lives, I argue,

that the young madrasa graduates inhabit and perform their new

religious identities.

Nayla and Khushboo

Farah’s ﬁ rst respondent was Nayla, who lived in Bareilly’s Old City,

in the heart of Bareilly. She went to Jami‘a Nur after ﬁ nishing her

studies at a mainstream, secular high school. She was accompanied

by her older sister Khushboo, so that together the two sisters would

ﬁ nd it easier to make the transition from being at home to living in

a residential madrasa. Unfortunately, ill-health forced Khushboo to

drop out after two years. Nayla, on the other hand, continued until she

had completed the course, which she did in seven years.

Their father, himself a religious scholar ( ‘alim ), took great pride in

his daughters’ religious education. Although he was away from home

a great deal in connection with his work, Farah was able to meet him

for one extended conversation. He told her that before their daughters

were born, he and his wife had visited Ajmer and had supplicated

the thirteenth-century Suﬁ saint Shaykh Mu‘in al-Din Chishti (popu-

larly known as Khwaja Gharib Nawaz, the Benefactor of the Poor) at

his shrine for the birth of a daughter. He had prayed to God to bless

him with daughters who would become scholars (‘alima). Now that

this had come to pass, they felt blessed by the fact that their younger

daughter had become an ‘alima and their son had memorized the

Qur’an (which gave him the title of haﬁ z ). He too was studying at a

madrasa, the Madrasa Manzar-i Islam in Bareilly, where his experi-

ence had been very good.

Nayla thought the madrasa had been enormously important to

her growth as a person. She told Farah that she had felt completely

at home there and wasn’t even homesick when she ﬁ rst joined.

She said the madrasa revealed to her what ‘Islam really is’,

3 and

that without this knowledge a person risks his or her success in

the world and his or her afterlife. She felt that while people were

3 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes.

Life after the Madrasa 213

easily impressed by women who become doctors or engineers, they

were not nearly as impressed by one who becomes an ‘alima, even

though the latter is clearly of greater importance. Farah noticed her

easy ability to quote verses from the Qur’an and interpret them in

her own words.

As Nayla went on to explain, the knowledge gained at the madrasa

had to be implemented in real life. She told Farah about a couple in

Mumbai that her family knew well. One day the woman called them in

great distress. Her husband had pronounced the triple divorce ( talaq )

in a ﬁ t of anger. Nayla responded that in that case, it was impera-

tive that she move out of her marital home immediately because the

triple talaq made it illegitimate for her to continue living in the same

house as her (now former) husband. But the woman did not follow

through, and Nayla and her family felt helpless to intervene. She said

the woman was leading a life of sin and ruining her prospects in the

afterlife as well. Nayla’s mother agreed. They had tried to counsel

the woman on the proper Islamic response to her situation, but they

couldn’t do anything if she ignored their advice.

Khushboo also gave Farah a serendipitous illustration of the imple-

mentation of the knowledge she had gained at the madrasa. Their

father was particularly proud of his daughters’ public speaking ( taqrir )

skills. Khushboo had a clear, ringing voice and conﬁ dent demeanour

and Farah could imagine her as an eﬀ ective speaker. But when her

father asked her whether she would like to speak at an upcoming

event, Khushboo, who had recently got married and was visiting her

parents, declined. She said her in-laws and husband were not keen on

her doing so. She hoped they would change their minds in the future

and if they did, she would go back to giving taqrir. Her response was

in keeping with the teachings of the madrasa, which emphasized the

importance of a married woman acting in accordance with her hus-

band’s wishes as long as they did not go against the shari‘a. Another

time, when Nayla had addressed a group of women in a taqrir, a

woman in the audience came up to her to congratulate her on her

delivery. But Nayla noticed that the woman was wearing nail polish

4 In 2018, in an important ruling, the Supreme Court of India declared

the practice of triple talaq to be unconstitutional. Farah’s interview took place

in 2014.

214 Scholars of Faith

and told her that ‘painted nails were disapproved of in Islam’.

5 Nayla

said the woman’s fear of God ( khawf-i khuda ) led her to immediately

remove the nail polish.

After completing her madrasa studies, Nayla had taught for some

time at Jami‘a Umm al-Mu‘minin (Jami‘a Umm for short),

6 Sayyid

Sahib’s girls’ madrasa in Bareilly. But the madrasa was on the out-

skirts of town and she had a long commute to get there and back. For

this reason, and also because her low teacher’s salary did not leave her

with much money after paying for transportation, she left. Now she

wanted to study further.

Nayla and Khusboo’s stay-at-home mother was very supportive of

Nayla’s wish to study further, though she said it had to be somewhere

closer to home than Shahjahanpur had been. Their mother also took

pride in the girls’ embroidery, needlework, and fabric painting skills,

showing Farah a tablecloth and bedsheets that they had painted at

the madrasa. At this, Nayla laughed and said that they had often been

called on to display their painting skills at Jami‘a Nur. Although they

had painted a bedsheet for a teacher when she was getting married,

they tried to conceal their skills from others at the madrasa lest they

receive too many such requests. Khushboo had taken the items she

had made to her married home as part of her trousseau.

In addition to talking about the deep impact of their madrasa expe-

rience on their lives, Nayla and Khushboo also gave Farah a glimpse

into its more light-hearted—if somewhat subversive—moments. One

Muharram, when Muslims customarily cook khichra , a meat, lentil,

and rice dish which is greatly relished but is time-consuming to cook,

some of the boys at the boys’ madrasa played a prank on the girls at

Jami‘a Nur. As Farah relates the story:

Some boys approached the cook for an extra helping of khichra after they

had ﬁ nished their portion, asking for some of the khichra set aside for the

girls’ madrasa. But the cook refused outright. The boys, rebuﬀ ed, [decided

to get back at the cook and] slipped a laxative into the khichra meant for

the girls. Unaware of what the [boys] had done, the girls heartily enjoyed

the khichra, only realizing later—too late—that something was wrong

with the food when they all started to have diarrhoea. 7

5 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes.

6 A pseudonym.

7 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes.

Life after the Madrasa 215

Farah recounts that Nayla and Khushboo were in splits of laughter

recalling the incident, which resulted in a doctor being called to the

madrasa (in a reversal of normal practice, as students are usually

taken to the nearest doctor by a warden). The culprits were identiﬁ ed

and severely punished. Although corporal punishment is generally

not practised at the madrasa, on this occasion the boys received a

beating.

Through Nayla, Farah got to meet Nida. Nayla called Nida on her

phone to introduce them.

Nida and Naghma

Nida was one of the ﬁ rst girls in her part of Bareilly—a village called

Umariya on the outskirts of town—to attend Jami‘a Nur. Her younger

sister Naghma and a cousin Shabeena also joined the madrasa after

her. When Farah met her in 2014, she was a newly wed bride. Farah

had to get her husband’s consent before being allowed to visit her.

Nida told Farah that she had had a hard time adjusting to madrasa

life. She did not know anyone there. The experience of being uprooted

from her familiar surroundings and having to stay with people she

did not know was diﬃ cult for her initially. When she cried and longed

for home, older girls who had been at the madrasa for some time

would comfort her. Before she knew it, she had got used to the place

and she too was comforting newcomers.

In fact, Nida thought that going to the madrasa was a turning point

in her life because of what she had learned there. The madrasa taught

students the reason for their lives as well as their rights and duties in

the world, she told Farah. Most parents, teachers, husbands, wives,

and children do not know the rights and responsibilities entailed by

these roles. Now that she was married, she clearly recognized both

her responsibilities and rights as a wife. After her marriage, Nida had

continued to read books about religion and she often spoke about

religious matters to her husband. He for his part took pride in his

wife’s knowledge of religion and encouraged her not to stop reading.

In practice, however, she confessed that married life left her with little

time for such pursuits.

8 Farah got permission after her father spoke to Nida’s husband on the

telephone and explained to him why Farah wanted to interview Nida.

216 Scholars of Faith

Before her marriage, Nida had taught at Jami‘a Umm, Sayyid

Sahib’s girls’ madrasa in Bareilly, just like Nayla. She too found the

commute long and tiring, particularly as the madrasa insisted on

teachers arriving punctually, and she had had a very demanding

course load. She used to prepare her lectures ( muta‘ala ) diligently

every evening, sometimes even falling asleep with her book in her lap.

But she said she was glad to have had the experience, because teach-

ing others what one had learned was one of the purposes of learning

itself. She quit her job before she got married.

Nida’s younger sister Naghma, who was not married when Farah

met her, was living with her parents in Umariya village. She too was

teaching at Jami‘a Umm, the same madrasa where Nida had taught.

Ghazala and Hajira

Ghazala was a graduate of Jami‘a Nur and a teacher at Jami‘a Umm—

like the previous interviewees—when Farah met her in 2014. She

was thus a work colleague of Naghma’s. Alongside this, Ghazala was

pursuing further studies, though Farah does not tell us what she was

studying. 9 Ghazala came from a village called Manpuriya outside

Bareilly. She had three brothers and a sister, none of them formally

educated. She was the only one of her siblings to be educated. As with

Nayla and Khushboo, her younger sister had also attended Jami‘a Nur,

but she fell sick often and was unable to adjust to life at the madrasa.

So her parents pulled her out and by the time Farah met Ghazala, she

was happily married, according to Ghazala. Two of Ghazala’s older

brothers had wives and children; they all lived in the same house-

hold as Ghazala. Theirs was a joint family consisting of the parents,

two married sons and their families, and one unmarried daughter,

Ghazala. 10

Ghazala had a close relationship with her mother. She was espe-

cially grateful to her mother for making it possible for her to study.

In households like hers, mothers depended on their daughters’ help

with domestic chores in order to do the large quantity of cooking and

9 Farah says Ghazala was pursuing her ‘graduation degree’.

10 Farah does not tell us where the third brother was living. Presumably

he had moved out of the family home for the purpose of employment.

Life after the Madrasa 217

cleaning that was required every day. Her daughter’s absence from

home during the many years she was at Jami‘a Nur was thus a real

hardship for her. This was also the case with Nayla and Khushboo’s

mother. As Farah says, ‘in such a scenario, girls can continue with

their studies only if their mothers are willing to forgo their help and

allow them to spend that time learning’.

11 Ghazala told Farah that

while the madrasa had given her knowledge ( ‘ilm ), her mother had

given her nurture and ethical and moral nourishment ( tarbiya ), all of

which together made her the person she was.

The importance of the mother in facilitating or impeding a daugh-

ter’s education is also illustrated by the counter-example of Hajira,

Ghazala’s cousin. Hajira had had to withdraw from the madrasa for

precisely that reason. Being the oldest child of her parents, with seven

younger boys who needed to be looked after, the youngest of them

only six years old when Farah met the family, Hajira’s mother could

not do without Hajira’s help at home. She tried for a while, but even-

tually Hajira had to give up her madrasa education in order to help

her mother at home.

Ghazala had a hard time adjusting to life at the madrasa at ﬁ rst,

particularly the cramped quarters at the madrasa’s initial location

(prior to 2014), the cloistered lifestyle, and the loss of personal space

and time. But she was careful to keep these privations to herself for

fear that her family might withdraw her from the madrasa if she com-

plained. She wanted at all costs to study and learn. Her determination

to succeed also helped her overcome a bout of severe sickness and

physical weakness. Like other madrasa graduates, Ghazala recalled

how at this time the madrasa teachers took special care of her. She

particularly remembered Darakhshan, a teacher who assisted her

during exam time, writing down the answers that Ghazala gave her

verbally so she would be able to complete her exams.

But Ghazala could be outspoken if she thought an injustice was

being done to someone. On one occasion, a girl fell very sick and the

madrasa called her parents and asked them to take her home. By the

time the parents arrived, however, it was late at night and the madrasa

11 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes.

12 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes. ‘ ‘Ilm mujhe madrasa ne diya magar

taribiyat meri maa nein .’

218 Scholars of Faith

refused to relax its rule forbidding students to leave the premises

at night. The parents were obliged to spend the night in the open

courtyard outside the madrasa building. When Ghazala heard about

the incident, she and some other students got together and protested

the madrasa’s treatment of the parents to the authorities, saying that

either they should not have told the parents about their daughter’s

illness in the evening (as it would take them a few hours to get to

the school) or they should have allowed them to take their daughter

home right away. Making them spend the night out in the open was

not right. When Sayyid Sahib learned of Ghazala’s leadership role in

registering the students’ objection, he was impressed by her for acting

on her convictions and articulating her views fearlessly. He told the

school administrators to help her in every way possible so that she

would be able to complete her studies at the madrasa.

Ghazala’s strong personality was also evident after she had gradu-

ated from school and returned home. Convinced of the importance

of teaching and passing on her knowledge of Islam to others, she

and her cousin Hajira started a small neighbourhood school for girls,

intending to give them basic Islamic classes in the afternoons. They

were dismayed to see young girls in their village immodestly dressed

or engaging in conduct that they considered un-Islamic. They felt that

the girls needed guidance with daily life skills such as how to dress,

how to carry themselves, and how to live in an Islamically correct

manner. They used the book Sunni Bihishti Zewar , which they had

studied at Jami‘a Nur, to guide them. Their classes were so popular

that adult women in the neighbourhood also began to attend them.

The classes continued for several months. Farah reports, ‘They taught

the women about their everyday duties, the importance of pardah,

and the correct way of remaining clean and oﬀ ering prayers. They

corrected the women’s mistakes when reciting the Qur’an and taught

them how to pronounce the Arabic words with proper enunciation

and intonation ( makharij ).’ 13

In the same way, Ghazala also taught her young nieces and neph-

ews how to pray correctly. When Farah went to meet her one evening,

she observed Ghazala’s nieces and nephews spread out their prayer

mats next to one another and line up in anticipation of the prayer. The

13 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes.

Life after the Madrasa 219

little girls had tied their scarves over their heads. Ghazala excused her-

self from her conversation with Farah and led them in prayer. They

followed her gestures and tried to follow the recitation of the prayer,

doing just as she did.

Ghazala and Hajira also demonstrated their skills at taqrir. Ghazala

gave a taqrir—with Farah and Hajira as her audience—about the

Prophet Muhammad’s daughter Fatima’s veil ( dupatta ) and how it

compared with those of ordinary Muslim women. Ghazala asked rhe-

torically why it was that when Hazrat Fatima prayed with her dupatta

on, her wishes were fulﬁ lled by God, but when ‘we-ordinary-sinning-

women do so, our wishes go unheard’. Ghazala went on to ‘establish

how “pure” Hazrat Fatima’s dupatta was. No man had ever set sight

on it. She would wash and dry it inside the house lest any man’s eyes

fall on it even inadvertently. She recited a poem about the dupatta:

Never has such a dupatta been heard of, nor will it ever be in the

future’. 14 When she had ﬁ nished Ghazala asked Hajira to recite a na‘t

for Farah, and Hajira obliged, reciting verses about the Prophet with

a lot of emotion. Her voice echoed oﬀ the walls of her house very

impressively, Farah said.

Looking ahead, the two cousins talked about the fact that their

parents were on the lookout for spouses for them. Hajira wanted

a deeply religious man, not a ‘modern’ person. Hajira objected to

women wearing make up, just as Nayla had objected to the woman in

the audience wearing nail polish. But Ghazala was more accepting of

people being diﬀ erent from herself. She thought that living in a joint

family had made her more accepting of diﬀ erences between people.

She wanted a man who would be religious but also enjoy spending

time with her. She talked wistfully of her brothers taking their wives

on their motorcycles for an outing and wished that religious men

would not think it was wrong to enjoy the ways of the world ( duniya

ke tawr tariqe ). Islam does not forbid married women from adorning

themselves (provided their husbands want them to), she said, nor

does it stand in the way of married couples enjoying themselves. She

hoped the person her parents found for her would be able to straddle

the two worlds in this way.

14 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes. ‘ Na kabhi suna hai, na sunega, aisa

dupatta .’

220 Scholars of Faith

The Dynamics of Family Decision Making: Should Girls’

Education Be Supported?

In the lower-middle-class households of Daryaganj, Old Delhi, in

which Gupta conducted her ﬁ eldwork, there were two intertwined

factors underlying the issue of girls’ education: limited funds and

early marriage for girls. Since the girls’ families had limited ﬁ nancial

means, they were reluctant to allow their daughters to study up to

high school and beyond. From their perspective, the funds they would

have to commit to their daughters’ continued education could be bet-

ter used to arrange a good marriage for them. From the perspective

of some of the daughters, however, their aspiration to study and teach

was linked to their desire to postpone an early marriage. If they could

get their parents to agree to let them continue their studies beyond

the eighth grade, they would be able to break out of the cycle of early

marriage and the lifetime of domesticity which deﬁ ned their mothers

and sisters. 15 But this outcome could only be realized by pleading

with their mothers and getting them to argue their case with their

fathers and extended kin, all of whom were opposed to it in principle.

As Farah’s interviews with the six graduates and former students

of Jami‘a Nur illustrate, a similar dynamic took place among some of

the madrasa students’ families, though the fact that their daughters

were going to study at a madrasa and gain religious ( dini ) knowledge

predisposed the parents to be more favourably inclined.

16 In their

case, word-of-mouth recommendations from other parents or rela-

tives who had sent their daughters to the madrasa also played a role

in the parents’ decision to send their daughters to Jami‘a Nur. But

mothers were key players in this decision, as we saw in Ghazala’s

case, for without her willingness to do without her daughter’s help at

home for the many years she would be away, Ghazala would not have

15 Latika Gupta, Education, Poverty and Gender: Schooling Muslim Girls in

India (Delhi: Routledge, 2015), pp. 90–5. On the importance of the aspira-

tion to study, see Arjun Appadurai, ‘The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the

Terms of Recognition’, in Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton, eds, Culture

and Public Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 59–84.

16 For similar observations in a girls’ madrasa in Delhi, see Borker,

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood .

Life after the Madrasa 221

been able to go to the madrasa. While ﬁ nancial considerations were

not absent, the daily burden of the lost household help of their daugh-

ters weighed on these students’ mothers perhaps even more severely

than the ﬁ nancial burden. This was a direct consequence of the fact

that Jami‘a Nur is a residential madrasa, whereas the school studied

by Gupta was a day school whose students returned home every day.

What Ghazala and other Jami‘a Nur students thus illustrate is that

the students at the madrasa had to have the support of their families

in order to study at there, especially their moral support. Students

who did not enjoy such support were obliged at some point to drop

out of the madrasa, even if they wished to continue their studies. This

was the reason Ghazala hid from her parents the personal discomfort

she felt when she was a new madrasa student. Being acutely aware

of the diﬃ culties her absence from home was causing her mother,

she wanted to give her parents no grounds to withdraw her from the

school. Nayla and Khushboo had no such worries, as their parents

had prayed to Khwaja Gharib Nawaz in Ajmer for the birth of daugh-

ters and had wanted them to become ‘alima.

A sociologically signiﬁ cant factor that inﬂ uences parents’ decisions

in the early twenty-ﬁ rst century South Asian context is the shift in

expectations among families looking for eligible brides for their sons.

Contrary to previous trends, young men today express a preference for

an educated wife with whom they can have a companionate marriage

(the powerful image of Ghazala thinking wistfully of her brothers tak-

ing their wives on their motorcycles for an outing to the movies, per-

haps, comes to mind). They also want their wives to become mothers

who will be good role models for their children. Indeed, as Darakhshan

Khan’s research shows, historical trends in favour of companion-

ate marriage in South Asia go back to the late-nineteenth century,

when the British Indian colonial government opened up lower-level

administrative jobs at the district level and young men and their wives

began to set up home in towns far from their families of origin.

17 As

the Jeﬀ ery, Jeﬀ ery, and Jeﬀ ery write: ‘nowadays some education is an

asset in the marriage market because boys are said to want educated

17 Darakhshan H. Khan, ‘Fashioning the Pious Self: Middle-Class

Religiosity in Colonial India’ (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania,

2016).

222 Scholars of Faith

brides, even if they are not highly educated themselves’.

18 Yet the

landscape is far from uniform and countervailing anxieties among

girls’ parents include the fear that educated daughters will require

larger dowries, and among those looking for eligible brides, the fear

is that educated daughters-in-law will put on airs and be ‘uppity’.

Therefore, while girls’ education is now desired, too much—by which

is meant a perceived disparity between the education of the bride and

groom—is not. Moreover, Borker’s research among female madrasa

students in Delhi shows that most Muslim parents perceive university

education for their daughters in a negative light for a host of reasons,

including the lack of gender segregated classrooms and the presence

of non-Muslims in the classroom.

Continuities between the Madrasa and the Home

In our article ‘Discipline and Nurture’, Farah and I argue that the

madrasa is a place not only of discipline but also of nurture, which

encourages students to develop a habitus through predictable rou-

tines and responsibilities throughout the day. The students’ relation-

ships with Sayyid Sahib and the wardens and teachers are couched

in terms of ﬁ ctive kinship, as the titles Abba Huzoor, Khala Ammi,

and Baji, among others, indicate. These kinship terms capture the

dual aspects of respect for authority ﬁ gures—or ‘discipline’—on the

one hand, and aﬀ ection and trust—or ‘nurture’—on the other. The

institution of the madrasa thus creates new relationships between

students and their teachers and elders, who are non-kin, by couching

them in familial terms. As Minault notes, the ‘Indian extended family

[has the] ability to expand virtually indeﬁ nitely through the device of

18 Patricia Jeﬀ ery, Roger Jeﬀ ery, and Craig Jeﬀ rey, ‘Islamization,

Gentriﬁ cation and Domestication: “A Girls’ Islamic Course” and Rural

Muslims in Western Uttar Pradesh’, Modern Asian Studies (2004), 38(1): 1–53,

p. 40.

19 See Jeﬀ rey, Jeﬀ rey, and Jeﬀ rey, ‘Islamization, Gentriﬁ cation and

Domestication’, pp. 41–3, for the class and rural–urban dimensions of girls’

madrasa education.

20 Hem Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018), Chapter 7.

Life after the Madrasa 223

ﬁ ctive kin’ and provides a model which can be and is used in many

social contexts in South Asia, regardless of religious aﬃ liation. 21 The

nurturing atmosphere of the madrasa is most evident when a student

falls sick and teachers express their aﬀ ection for her by taking care of

her in diﬀ erent ways. Students were particularly liable to fall sick in

the old madrasa location, when they were living and studying in very

cramped quarters.

The new relationships fostered by the madrasa are also signiﬁ cantly

structured by the circumscribed space of the madrasa—and here I do

not refer to the space being either physically cramped or open. Rather,

in Foucault’s terms, the madrasa is a ‘total’, or ‘complete and austere’

institution which closely regulates the student’s daily life and is thus

a place of discipline, and potentially, of punishment

22 —though not of

corporal punishment in Jami‘a Nur. As I indicated in Chapter 2, the

madrasa shields its students from outside attention by failing to call

attention to its physical presence. The madrasa is not visible until one

walks down a brick road and goes past the visitors’ centre through a

small metal door set into a much larger black metal gate. To enter,

one has to ﬁ rst get the permission of the man seated behind his desk

at the visitors’ centre and sign in. Within the madrasa, space is once

again set oﬀ in particular ways, especially because—as in many South

Asian madrasas—the classroom space alternates between a place of

rest and recreation in the evening and a place of study during the day,

as students move through their daily schedules of prayer, classroom

study, afternoon nap, evening peer learning, and nighttime sleep in

the same space. How one moves through physical space during the

course of the day is thus constantly subject to the disciplinary author-

ity of the madrasa.

The performance of gender roles is another important axis in the

madrasa space, indicated most visibly by pardah practices. I have

noted what students said about its importance in their questionnaire

21 Gail Minault, ‘Introduction: The Extended Family as Metaphor and

the Expansion of Women’s Realm’, in Gail Minault, ed., The Extended Family:

Women and Political Participation in India and Pakistan (Delhi: Chanakya

Publications, 1981).

22 See Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New

York: Vintage, 1977).

224 Scholars of Faith

responses, and a teacher’s comment that madrasa students were

likely to observe pardah rules more strictly than the students of the

Islamic Public School. Pardah provides important clues about the

performance of gender. As noted earlier, the madrasa space is over-

whelmingly female, but there are some male teachers, administrators,

and staﬀ members on the premises at various times during the day.

In senior Hadith and jurisprudence classes, the teachers are often

male, and the Qur’an recitation class is also taught by a male qari .

I observed two diﬀ erent strategies in such classes: in some Hadith

classes and in the Qur’an recitation classes, the male teacher sat

behind a curtain, in what Minault calls ‘a kind of pardah in reverse’. 23

In other classes, such as the Qur’an exegesis class on Jalalayn that

I discussed in Chapter 3, the teacher, Sayyid Sahib, sat before the

students without any intervening cloth partition, while the students

wore a nose piece, a black triangular cloth, attached to the ears, hid-

ing the lower part of the face. I observed the same practice in a class

on Persian literature taught by a young ‘alim as well. And in a third

instance, I have observed Hazrat teaching some classes from behind

a partition, and others without one. The only pattern I have discerned

in terms of which option is chosen is that classes with younger stu-

dents, which tend to have more students and to be taught in larger

classroom spaces, are usually taught with the teacher seated behind

a cloth partition, while smaller classes for more senior students tend

to be taught without it. However, it could also be a matter of personal

preference on the part of the teacher.

As Farah and I note in ‘Discipline and Nurture’, the students’ prac-

tice of wearing a nose piece ‘vividly illustrates … the “public–private”

nature of the madrasa space’.

24 That is, it is an intermediate kind of

space, one that partakes in some ways of features of the private realm

of the home, as indicated by students’ use of ﬁ ctive kin terms mod-

elled on the family, and in other ways of the ‘amoral’ public realm, in

which pardah nishin Muslim women interact with men who are not

23 Gail Minault, ‘Sisterhood or Separatism? The All-India Muslim Ladies’

Conference and the Nationalist Movement’, in Gail Minault, ed., The Extended

Family: Women and Political Participation in India and Pakistan (Delhi:

Chanakya Publications, 1981), p. 102.

24 Sanyal and Farah, ‘Discipline and Nurture’.

Life after the Madrasa 225

kin. 25 Thus, the madrasa expands the social horizons of the students’

worlds by taking them outside the protective walls of the home, bring-

ing them into a new kind of space where they will meet girls who

come from diﬀ erent parts of the country and some male authority

ﬁ gures who are not kin, but where they are nevertheless protected

from exposure to public spaces and public view.

As Farah’s interviews with the six students from Jami‘a Nur reveal,

after students have ﬁ nished their madrasa education or have had to

leave the madrasa early for personal reasons, the madrasa experience

continues to shape their lives at home. Following Moosa’s distinction

between three aspects of madrasa learning— ta‘lim , or the acquisi-

tion of religious knowledge, particularly knowledge of shari‘a; ta’dib

or the acquisition of adab , etiquette; and tarbiya , or the cultivation of

moral excellence—we see how students apply the lessons learned at

the madrasa to their lives at home, and later to their married lives. To

take ta‘lim ﬁ rst, students are punctilious in applying the rules of shari‘a

as they have been taught to do in their daily lives, whether by praying

regularly, at the prescribed times and in the prescribed manner; by

observing pardah; or by refusing to go against the wishes of their new

husband and in-laws, as in the case of Khushboo when she refused her

father’s invitation to address a women’s group in a religious discourse

or taqrir. Likewise, they observe the rules of adab when they honour

their parents, especially their mothers, for the sacriﬁ ces they have

made to facilitate their education away from home, or the myriad rules

of etiquette they have learned in Hadith and other classes about the

behaviour the sunna prescribes during menstruation, how they should

eat and drink in the approved manner, how they should address an

25 On the use of the term ‘amoral’, see Faisal Devji, ‘Gender and the

Politics of Space: The Movement for Women’s Reform in Muslim India,

1857–1900’, South Asia (1991), 14(1): 141–53. At home, women of the fam-

ily do not observe pardah before mahram relatives (those males with whom

marriage is forbidden by the shari‘a) and contrariwise, they appear in pardah

when meeting non-mahram men, though this does not include donning a

niqab , the all-embracing, usually black, robe thrown over their regular cloth-

ing. The latter is worn when urban women move about in public spaces such

as the marketplace, or when they need to go to the bank or a government

oﬃ ce on important family business. If possible, such visits take place in

groups of two or more women.

226 Scholars of Faith

older person, and how they should look after a guest, for example. And

tarbiya , or nurture, is expressed when they take care of their younger

siblings or nieces and nephews, teaching them the correct method of

prayer, or when they decide to educate those who have not had the good

fortune to study at a madrasa, as they have. Ghazala was so appreciative

of her mother’s sacriﬁ ce in doing without her household help for the

years she was at the madrasa that she said she had learned tarbiya from

her mother, and ta‘lim from the madrasa. Her statement seemed to

elevate the former over the latter in overall signiﬁ cance and importance.

As Farah points out, when students return to their homes, they

experience many changes: among other things, there are fewer

restrictions on their physical movements and they have greater free-

dom than at the madrasa in determining how they use their time. A

new situation thus presents itself: whereas at the madrasa they were

subject to its strict scheduling regimen, now

they see [the] lack of [such] regulation as a challenge that they must over-

come in order to fashion themselves as pious subjects. … [They] begin to

see the activities of their homes and neighborhoods through the lens of

Islamic practice, [and begin to see] what seem to them to be deviations and

transgressions which must be corrected and transformed in accordance

with their understanding of proper Islamic behavior.’

In other words, students’ internalization of the madrasa’s world-

view gives rise to a sense of obligation to teach those at home what

they learned at the madrasa. This includes family members as well as

members of the community. Yet there is a tension here, for they must

be careful not to transgress gender and age hierarchies and social

expectations. While none of the students addressed this directly, their

expression of deference towards parents, parents-in-law, and husband

was an indication that they were acutely aware of the need to strike

a ﬁ nely tuned balance between their desire to ‘teach’ and society’s

expectation that they would ‘obey’.

A Passion for Teaching

As many students expressed to both Farah and me in our conversa-

tions and questionnaires, they were eager to teach others what the

26 Sanyal and Farah, ‘Discipline and Nurture’.

Life after the Madrasa 227

madrasa had taught them. Indeed, as many studies have noted, teach-

ing in general is a popular profession among South Asian women

of all religious communities as it oﬀ ers a mode of paid employment

which does not require them to make a radical break from societal

norms for women. Instead, it oﬀ ers them a means of working outside

the home in a safe environment while keeping them connected to the

caretaking and domestic roles that they and their families expect them

to fulﬁ l. In addition, Latika Gupta points to the aspirational aspect of

a girl’s expressed desire to teach. It allows her to think of herself as

becoming a diﬀ erent kind of person from her mother, and of being

special in a way she is not at present. But it is an ‘accommodated

distinction’, to use Gupta’s phrase, because it allows her to stretch the

family’s norms of what it considers appropriate female behaviour, but

not too much, not beyond what society will permit.

Gupta’s ﬁ eldwork was conducted in a secular government-aided

school for Muslim girls in Old Delhi, similar in some respects to the

Islamic Public School I discussed in Chapter 4. As I noted there, many

students at the Islamic Public School felt disengaged from the formal

curriculum of the school; what many appreciated the most was the

school’s instruction in matters related to religion and morality, which

is a class oﬀ ered at the Islamic Public School but not required by the

UP state government. However, the students and teachers at Jami‘a

Nur displayed a high level of motivation and self-discipline for the

reasons I explored in Chapter 4. I suggested that the subjects of the

madrasa curriculum and ethos of the madrasa itself connected them

with something larger than themselves, namely, the Islamic tradi-

tion and the Islamic past, which gave them a sense of pride in their

identity as Muslim girls. The motivation for their desire to teach was

thus somewhat diﬀ erent as well. While at one level it could have been

linked to a desire to postpone marriage by a few years and chart a path

that would be diﬀ erent from that of their mothers, I believe it also has

a strong moral component centred on individual ethics, reform, and

self-fashioning.

This was evident in a number of students’ responses to my ques-

tionnaire, including the student I quoted in Chapter 3. The following

is a sample of the responses I received:

27 Gupta, Education, Poverty, and Gender , p. 93.

228 Scholars of Faith

Student 1 : After I leave here I want to teach. I want others to beneﬁ t by

the knowledge I have gained. I want others to know their duties ( ahkam )

towards Allah and His prophet; I want to encourage others to do good

( nek ) deeds. They should observe namaz and the fast, treat others well

( husn-i suluk ), and treat their parents well, wish for others what they wish

for themselves. And they should stay away from bad things like drink-

ing alcohol, stealing, having sex outside marriage ( zina ), and being unjust

( zulm ) to one another.

Student 2 : I will teach my brother and sisters good things. Like: If an elder

asks them to do something, then they shouldn’t make a face. They should

consider it their responsibility to do it and do it well.

Student 3 : When I ﬁ nish my studies, I want to start a madrasa and spread

the religion of Islam. And those people who are ignorant ( ghaﬁ l ) of the

religion of Islam, I want to tell them about it in order to earn the pleasure

( raza ) of Allah and His prophet.

Student 6 : I want to teach my brother and sisters the knowledge I have

gained here. And I want to make them observe the namaz and fast. And I

want my brother and sisters to stay away from bad things.

In these students’ minds (and those of others not quoted here), being

a good, moral person and being an observant Muslim thus went hand

in hand. They mentioned in the same breath wanting to teach their

siblings to tell the truth, to do as their elders asked them without mak-

ing a face, and to stay away from bad things, together with praying

regularly, fasting, and performing other duties God wanted of them.

Interestingly, none of them said anything about wanting to persuade

their families, neighbours, or other Muslims to give up their false

‘Deobandi’ or ‘Wahhabi’ views. The fact that this rhetoric never rose

to the surface of their discourse suggests once again that Jami‘a

Nur students did not deﬁ ne themselves in opposition to Deobandis.

Rather, as they saw it, the madrasa taught them to be good and moral

Muslims tout court , without qualiﬁ cation. While others would deﬁ ne

certain behaviours and beliefs at Jami‘a Nur as ‘Barelwi’, the students

did not need to use labels to describe the madrasa and its teachings.

As I noted in the previous chapter, this perspective ﬂ ows from the

tone set by Sayyid Sahib, in which interpretative diﬀ erences are

articulated without demonizing other Muslims (Deobandis chieﬂ y,

but other groups as well).

Life after the Madrasa 229

Farah’s interviews with the six graduates and former students of

Jami‘a Nur take this enquiry a step further, as they show us how the

students implemented the lessons they had learned at the madrasa.

As we saw, Nayla, Nida, Ghazala, and Naghma had all taught for some

time at Jami‘a Umm al-Mu‘minin (or Jami‘a Umm), Sayyid Sahib’s

madrasa for girls in Bareilly. That was fully 75 per cent of her inter-

view sample. Two of the interviewees, Ghazala and Hajira, ran a small

neighbourhood school for several months. Khushboo was the only

person Farah met who had not taught classes, though she too excelled

at a form of teaching, namely, oral public speaking or taqrir in which

she conveyed to her female audiences moral lessons and guidelines

to live by.

Teaching was thus something they all cared about deeply. Their

comments suggest that they saw it as an obligation to give back to the

community what they had been privileged to learn at the madrasa.

In Nayla’s case, this view was expressed by her father, who told Farah

that when Sayyid Sahib ﬁ rst oﬀ ered Nayla a teaching job at Jami‘a

Umm, he had consented gladly without even asking about her salary

and other terms of employment, because he ‘believed it was only fair

for his daughter to pay the madrasa back after she had received an

education. He considered it to be a service to the community and the

society at large.’ 28

Another view, closely associated with the one mentioned earlier, is

that by teaching others one learns more deeply and profoundly what

one had known only superﬁ cially before. Thus teaching beneﬁ ts one-

self as well as others. Nida had also taught at the madrasa for a while,

but eventually left because of the distance of the madrasa from her

home. She told Farah that despite the madrasa’s emphasis on punc-

tuality and the heavy teaching load, ‘ [I was] happy to get a chance

to teach because I believe that it is one of the purposes of learning

itself—to teach others what I had learned for myself’.

29 Ghazala

28 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes. Nayla’s father also expressed his dis-

satisfaction, however, with what he considered to be high madrasa fees which

made the madrasa unaﬀ ordable for some parents, and low teacher salaries

which did not provide a living wage.

29 Farah, unpublished ﬁ eld notes.

230 Scholars of Faith

expressed this view most eloquently, as I quoted at the start of this

chapter, when she compared herself to a sooty pot being cleaned and

made to shine by the experience of teaching. Her use of the passive

form—she said she was continually ‘being scrubbed’ ( mein manjhti

gayi ) clean, in an action very familiar to Indian housewives, both rural

and urban, who constantly have to clean their blackened cooking pots

to make them shine again—highlighted her implicit meaning, that

the act of teaching in and of itself enabled her to ‘see’ and understand

more clearly the underlying logic and wisdom of what she had earlier

accepted uncritically.

The madrasa students’ ‘passion for teaching’ is nowhere better

exempliﬁ ed than in the introductory Islam classes run by Ghazala

and Hajira in their neighbourhood, as this was a voluntary, unpaid

labour of love. Hajira in particular was ﬁ lled with distaste for what she

considered the village girls’ unacceptable modes of dress and speech,

and their ignorance of the proper rules of prayer and Islamic conduct.

In Ghazala and Hajira’s classes we clearly see the ‘civilizing mission’

of the madrasa at work, which wants to reform the daily practices of

Muslims in rural, semi-urban, and urban India to bring them into

greater conformity with textual shari‘a norms.

Mapping a New Religious Habitus onto South Asian

Gendered Norms

Attiya Ahmad’s work among migrant South Asian domestic work-

ers in Kuwait (all non-Muslim) in the early 2000s brings to the fore

how gendered norms informed the choices and decisions they made,

including the decision to convert to Islam, during their long sojourn

there. In her chapter ‘Naram’ (soft, malleable), Ahmad discusses the

unvoiced cultural expectation shared by the domestic workers, their

employers, and their families in South Asia that they would adapt to

the lifestyle of the household of which they were a part. Apart from

having to learn how to use unfamiliar gadgets, make diﬀ erent kinds

of food, speak a new language (Arabic), and understand a family’s

religious practices, they had to create new aﬀ ective bonds with their

employers. Ahmad describes paid domestic work as a realm requir-

ing ‘too much of the self rather than too little’. Through their labour,

they became ‘dual agents of reproduction’, reproducing both their

Life after the Madrasa 231

family and work households.

30 Only age and length of service con-

ferred privileges and the relaxation of these gendered expectations.

Furthermore, when they returned to their natal families, there too

they had to ﬁ t into existing hierarchies based on age and gender. Their

ﬁ nancial contributions to their families were verbally unacknowl-

edged so that social relations could continue as before, undisturbed

by their presence.

Despite the obvious diﬀ erences between the contexts and life

histories of the domestic workers and the madrasa students in my

ethnography, I found surprising resemblances between the two pop-

ulations—resemblances that I believe have analytical value. Being

domestic employees, the women had to adjust (to be naram) so as

to fulﬁ l their employers’ expectations. However, these expectations

were not carried over to male domestics: the latter were expected to

be unchanged by their Kuwaiti migration experiences.

31 After many

years of service with a single family and their emotional integration

into it, some of the women chose to become Muslim despite the

discouragement of many employers and the hostility of their natal

families.

As Ahmad notes, in South Asia the gendered expectation that

women are ‘naram’ is articulated in the context of marriage, where-

upon girls leave their natal families and begin to reside with their

husband’s family:

Studies have highlighted how women’s malleability is channeled toward,

and considered essential to, their marriageability and ability to adjust to

married life. Marriage involves signiﬁ cant transformation, most notably,

the remaking of women’s subjectivities and social belongings such that

they accommodate themselves to, and come to be identiﬁ ed with, their

husband’s household. 32

30 Attiya Ahmad, Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South

Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), pp.

115, 116.

31 Ahmad, Everyday Conversions , pp. 103–4.

32 Ahmad, Everyday Conversions , p. 109. It is ironic that the domestic

workers in Kuwait seldom marry and that these gendered expectations are

put to the service of their employers’ households. Their lives are characterized

by what Ahmad calls ‘suspension’.

232 Scholars of Faith

The students at Jami‘a Nur who adapt to life at the madrasa

undergo a similar process of adjustment. Many, such as Nida and

Ghazala, are homesick when they arrive. Over time they adjust and

come to value the madrasa both for what they learn there and for the

sense of purpose they acquire by internalizing its religious vision. By

being ‘naram’, they begin a process of self-making in the religious

mould of this particular Barelwi madrasa. In 2015, I happened to be at

the madrasa when a new student illustrated what might happen when

someone rejects the madrasa and its mission—when she refuses to

be ‘naram’.

[A] new student, who had little prior education and was placed in a class

with younger students, was very homesick. One of Sayyid Sahib’s daugh-

ters, tired of trying to cajole her, told her that all the madrasa students

were separated from their parents and yet they were going about their

business normally. The new student ﬁ rst responded rudely [saying that

she, the teacher, could not know what it was like to be away from home,

given that her parents lived close by], then [she] pretended to faint, falling

to the ground, in the hope that this would persuade the administration to

call her parents and ask them to get her. (The student’s father came and

got her two days later.)

In the discussion that followed, the student was roundly criticized for

having dared to speak to Sayyid Sahib’s daughter so rudely, as if the

two were equals, when one was an uneducated young student and

the other a highly educated teacher. What made the incident even

more galling for the madrasa authorities was the fact that the stu-

dent’s father was a disciple ( murid ) of Sayyid Sahib. Sayyid Sahib had

done his disciple a favour by taking his daughter in. The lesson the

madrasa’s teachers and administrators took from this incident—or

‘moment’, as Ahmad terms it—was that unless a person wants to

learn, there is nothing that anyone can do to help. If the desire ( ichha )

for learning is lacking, the person is unteachable—in other words, if

she refuses to be ‘naram’, she will fail. Her failure would follow her

home and be a source of shame and family censure. For the madrasa

administration, the fact that Sayyid Sahib’s daughter is a Sayyid made

the student’s behaviour even more inexcusable and perhaps also

incomprehensible, other than to ascribe it to her lack of education.

33 From my ﬁ eld notes, 2015.

Life after the Madrasa 233

***

This chapter concludes my ethnography of the Jami‘a Nur madrasa

students, and the examination of the transformative role of the

madrasa in their lives. By juxtaposing, in Chapter 4, the daily lives

of the madrasa students with a glimpse of student life in the Islamic

Public School with which the madrasa shared a building until 2014,

and by taking a brief look at the lives of a handful of madrasa gradu-

ates in their home environments in this chapter, I have tried to show

what distinguished the students of Jami‘a Nur from their secular

counterparts, and also how students’ families negotiated many vari-

ables in deciding whether to send their daughters to the madrasa,

which is often far from home and entails long periods of separation

between parents and their daughters.

How the madrasa changed the students and what lasting impact

their education has had on their subsequent family lives can only be

glimpsed from a distance. But the outlines seem clear: the students

return home imbued with a strong desire to adhere to the dictates

of the shari‘a in their lives, as the madrasa authorities interpret it,

and to abide by the duties of a practising Muslim. The reformist

impulse of the madrasa thus carries over into the community at large

through the students, though undoubtedly they will have to adjust

in practical ways to the particular circumstances of the families into

which they marry. The process of change is thus a negotiation over a

lengthy period of time, perhaps throughout adulthood, between com-

munity expectations of women’s roles, or the adab of social relations

in daily life, and the textually based knowledge of shari‘a norms that

the madrasa students imbibe and embody through ritual practice and

personal demeanour.

The broader question of what impact the spread of girls’ madrasas

in South Asia will have on society at large is the subject of vigorous

academic debate. In the current political climate in India, Muslims ﬁ nd

themselves on the defensive politically, socially, and economically. By

all measures, Indian Muslims are less well-to-do, live in poorer neigh-

borhoods, and are less educated than their Hindu counterparts, as the

Sachar Report and other studies have documented. There are some

who argue that in view of this replication of the colonial imbalance of

power—in which Hindus occupy the role of former British colonial-

ists and Muslims that of Hindus, Muslims, and other Indians in the

234 Scholars of Faith

colonial period—madrasas such as Jami‘a Nur merely reinforce the cul-

tural isolation of Muslims by separating Muslim girls from the Indian

mainstream. It is thus a defensive posture that can do nothing to help

the Muslim community overcome its marginalized status in society. In

fact, in the long run, it reinforces that social marginalization.

On the other side of the debate, there are those who point out that

the Indian state has failed in its constitutional duty to provide Muslim

communities an aﬀ ordable education and to ensure the availability

of adequately paid jobs in their neighbourhoods. Since the liberaliza-

tion of the Indian economy in 1991, state schools have been virtually

absent in rural and semi-rural India, where millions of Muslims live.

Private schools have had to ﬁ ll the gap. Given this reality, madrasas are

performing a valuable and much-needed service by providing Muslim

parents an inexpensive education for their children and giving them a

hot meal during the school day.

I would argue that this social service role of madrasas is only part

of the story. The eﬄ orescence of girls’ madrasas in South Asia today

must be seen in historical context, as a logical extension of the edu-

cational eﬀ orts of the Muslim reform movements in South Asia that

began in the late-nineteenth century. It is signiﬁ cant that girls’ madra-

sas are associated with the major South Asian maslaks—Deobandi,

Barelwi, and Ahl-i Hadith, to name the largest ones, to which we

must add the Jama‘at-i Islami and the Shi‘a. These girls’ madrasas

are therefore part of the maslaki competition for inﬂ uence that has

infused intra-Sunni politics in South Asia since the late-nineteenth

century, and continues to so do today. Although Jami‘a Nur does not

actively participate in inter-maslaki competition, the madrasa cur-

riculum and students’ micropractices at the quotidian level speak to

its Barelwi worldview. In this sense, it participates in the competitive

marketplace of ideas that South Asian Sunni Muslims have had to

choose from since the late-nineteenth century. Given the likely future

inﬂ uence of the female graduates on their home communities after

they marry and have their own children, I expect each of the maslaks to

continue to expand madrasa education for girls. At present there is no

evidence that the current anti-Muslim climate in India is leading the

maslaks to come together in the interests of Muslim self-preservation.

In Part II of this book I turn to the very diﬀ erent context of Al-Huda

International, which takes us to Pakistan and the South Asian dias-

pora in North America.

P A R T I I

Iman, Ahkam, Da‘wa



ALHUDA INTERNATIONAL

Muslim Women Empower Themselves through

Online Study of the Qur’an

Tell the people [O Muhammad], ‘If you sincerely love Allah then follow

me: Allah will also love you and forgive you your sins. Allah is forgiv-

ing, merciful.

Also tell them, ‘Obey Allah and His messenger.’ Allah does not love

the disobedient.

—Qur’an :–

The Prophet (on whom be peace) is told to say to the people, if you all

love Allah—that is, if you incline towards him with obedience—then

follow me, with attention and care, and follow closely, every footstep [of

the way]. If you are following someone in another car, and you don’t

know the way, you won’t follow at a distance, will you? No! You will

make sure you are right behind that car, not letting it out of sight.

—Exegesis of above verses by an Al-Huda teacher

Jihad in our time is to spread the din of Allah through da‘wa

—Al-Huda teacher,  May 

Think that today is your last day.

—Al-Huda teacher,  January 

 Scholars of Faith

Al-Huda International is a relatively new Muslim organization to have

emerged in South Asia, having been founded in  in Pakistan by

Dr Farhat Hashmi and Dr Idrees Zubair. It began modestly when,

after giving birth to her son in , Farhat Hashmi took maternity

leave from her teaching job at the International Islamic University.

While at home, she started teaching her children and their friends

the Qur’an. According to one of her daughters, other people liked her

lessons so much that they asked her to teach them too. She decided to

take a full year’s maternity leave and try teaching the Qur’an at home

as an experiment. When the year was up, instead of going back to her

job at the university, she resigned and expanded her Qur’an classes.

Al-Huda was born when Hashmi moved her classes to a building in

Nazimabad, Islamabad. 

Since then, Al-Huda has spread rapidly to other parts of Pakistan

and elsewhere in the world where the Pakistani diaspora is well-estab-

lished, notably in Great Britain, Canada and the United States (US),

and parts of the Middle East. It is thus no surprise that it has attracted

two book-length academic works already, namely, Sadaf Ahmad’s

Transforming Faith () and Faiza Mushtaq’s PhD dissertation, ‘New

Claimants to Religious Authority’ ().

Al-Huda (literally, ‘the guidance’) is an organization for Muslim

women with a straightforward and simple goal, namely, to teach

Muslim women the Qur’an in the original Arabic and to understand its

meaning, and beyond that, to encourage them to internalize its mes-

sage and use it as a guide for personal ethical transformation. While

this goal may sound quite unremarkable to outside observers—given

that the Qur’an is the pre-eminent source of religious guidance for all

Muslims everywhere and that its authority as the literal word of God

is the bedrock of Muslim faith—the goal of teaching Pakistani women

how to read it in Arabic is in fact both innovative and highly ambi-

tious. Indeed, as the vast majority of Muslims in non-Arabic speaking

countries are unacquainted with Arabic and know only parts of the

holy book by heart, the implications of such a movement for wider

social change are immense. In the view of the founders of Al-Huda,

if Muslim women (and all Muslims eventually) could read the Qur’an

 This information is based on my personal conversation with Taimiyyah

Zubair, Hashmi’s daughter, on  May .

Al-Huda International 

directly, without recourse to a translation, God’s word would enter

their hearts and change their lives, so that they would begin to live

the way God wants them to, the way the ﬁ rst Muslims did back in the

time of the Prophet Muhammad (–  ).

The emergence of Al-Huda at the present historical juncture is

part of a broader worldwide phenomenon of women’s movements in

the Muslim world that Saba Mahmood characterizes as ‘piety’ move-

ments. Like the Egyptian women’s mosque movement that Mahmood

analyses, Al-Huda seeks to inculcate in its female followers the values

of personal piety ( taqwa ) and its associated qualities of patience ( sabr )

in the face of personal hardship, adherence to scripturally enjoined

norms of Islamic behaviour, female segregation and public veiling,

and acceptance of male authority in the family, among other things.

For the social scientist, movements such as these raise the broader

question of how one is to understand what appear from the outside

to be ‘antifeminist’ Muslim women’s movements. All three writers

whose works most immediately concern me here—Saba Mahmood,

Sadaf Ahmad, and Faiza Mushtaq

 —address this issue in di erent

ways. All three are Pakistani women, and two of them (Mahmood and

Ahmad) write candidly about their personal identiﬁ cation as feminists

to whom the movements they were studying initially seemed ‘objec-

tionable’  or ‘problematic’.  In the course of their ﬁ eldwork, however,

both Ahmad and Mahmood came to see the movements they were

studying in a di erent light. Mahmood writes, ‘Over time, I found

these [ feminist] ideals could no longer serve as arbiters of the lives I

was studying because the sentiments, commitments, and sensibilities

that ground these women’s existence could not be contained within the

 My thanks to Faiza Mushtaq for generously sharing her PhD disser-

tation with me. This work has helped me enormously in understanding

the Al-Huda movement. See Faiza Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious

Authority: A Movement for Women’s Islamic Education, Moral Reform and

Innovative Traditionalism’ (PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, ).

 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist

Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), p. .

 Sadaf Ahmad, Transforming Faith: The Story of Al-Huda and Islamic

Revivalism among Urban Pakistani Women (Syracuse: Syracuse University

Press, ), p. .

 Scholars of Faith

stringent molds of these ideals’. Their world had to be understood on

its own terms, not in terms of the ‘ur-languages of feminism, progres-

sivism, liberalism, or Islamism’.

 Mushtaq, a sociologist, understands

the women of Al-Huda in Pakistan ‘as active producers of knowledge

about what womanhood means as they negotiate th[e patriarchal]

structures’ of Pakistani society,

 not as ‘subjects totally determined’ by

those structures. Thus, movements such as Al-Huda have caused aca-

demics interested in them to expand the very notion of what it might

mean to be a ‘feminist’. Winkelmann’s work on a Tablighi-Jama‘at-

a liated madrasa in Delhi also points in this direction.



Moreover, as both Ahmad and Mushtaq point out, Al-Huda must

also be understood in its Pakistani context,

 and in the context of the

history of Muslim reform movements in South Asia over the past cen-

tury.  Before I move on to the focus of this chapter, namely, Al-Huda’s

online Qur’an classes, I would like to brieﬂ y describe how Al-Huda

operates in Pakistan.

Al-Huda International in Pakistan

As noted earlier, Al-Huda began as a Qur’an school for girls in

Islamabad, Pakistan, and now has schools in all the major Pakistani

cities. As both Ahmad’s and Mushtaq’s ethnographies make clear, the

organizational framework within which the Al-Huda women operate

is a highly structured one. It is modelled on the secular schools of

Pakistan and yet is very di erent from them, in that it also uses con-

cepts and methods taken from the world of business and marketing,

emphasizing the optimization of time and resources and the use of

technology to achieve its goals. Mushtaq aptly describes this organiza-

tional form as a ‘hybrid’.

Al-Huda’s founders come from a South Asian reformist

Islamic milieu, speciﬁ cally from Ahl-i Hadith and Jama‘at-i Islami

 Mahmood, Politics of Piety , pp. , .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Mareike Jule Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a Girls’

Madrasa in India (Amsterdam: ISIM Press, ).

 Ahmad, Transforming Faith , pp. –.

 Mushtaq, ’New Claimants to Religious Authority’, Chapter .

Al-Huda International 

backgrounds.  Both these organizations advocated reform of reli-

gious practice in order to increase adherence to the normative exam-

ple of the Prophet, though their chosen paths were di erent. The

Ahl-i Hadith favoured the study of Arabic in order to understand the

Qur’an and hadith by oneself, without recourse to the recorded deci-

sions of the four schools of jurisprudence (Hanaﬁ , Shaﬁ ‘i, Hanbali,

and Maliki). This path of independent juristic reasoning ( ijtihad ) was

in radical opposition and contrast to the Deobandi, Barelwi, Nadwi,

and other traditionalist movements of the late-nineteenth century,

which advocated taqlid or juristic adherence to the decisions of a spe-

ciﬁ c school ( madhhab ), which for most South Asians was the Hanaﬁ

school. The Ahl-i Hadith were also strongly opposed to Suﬁ sm, as are

the founders of Al-Huda.

The Jama‘at-i Islami, founded in the early-twentieth century by

Mawlana Mawdudi (d. ), did not emerge from a madrasa-edu-

cated milieu of Islamic scholarship but from a university-educated

urban one, and sought to bring about institutional change from above,

through political means. As Zaman points out, Mawdudi attached

central importance to the concept of God’s ‘sovereignty’ ( hakimiya )

as mentioned in Q . and other Qur’anic verses. Zaman explores

the writings of a range of South Asian Muslim thinkers, including

Mawlana Azad (d. ) and Muhammad ‘Ali (d. ), on this

singularly ‘modern’ idea and examines its twentieth-century reso-

nance, including in the writings of Sayyid Qutb (d. ) of Egypt.



Ultimately, the language of the sovereignty of God was included in

 On the Ahl-i Hadith, see Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British

India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp.

–; Claudia Preckel, ‘Ahl-i Hadith’, in Gudrun Kramer, Denis Matringe,

John Nawas, and Everett Rowson, eds, Encyclopaedia of Islam Three , –

(Leiden: Brill, ), pp. –. On the Jama‘at-i Islami in Pakistan, see Seyyed

Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama‘at-i Islami of

Pakistan (Berkeley: University of California Press, ); and most recently

Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, ), Chapter . On the Jama‘at-i Islami in India, see Irfan

Ahmad, Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-

Islami (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, ).

 Zaman, Islam in Pakistan , pp. , –, and passim

 Scholars of Faith

the  Objectives Resolution of Pakistan. However, the modernist

Pakistani state, while acknowledging God’s sovereignty, envisaged

a democratic state guided by the ethical norms and values of the

Qur’an. The vision of the modernist state and that of Mawdudi were

incompatible. 

Al-Huda, while politically quiescent,  unlike the Jama‘at-i Islami,

resembles it in terms of its appeal to the secular, Western-educated

elites of Pakistani society; its use of secular models of organization;

and its well-deﬁ ned organizational structure (which in the case of the

Jama‘at was distinctly authoritarian). Maimuna Huq’s ethnographic

study of Jama‘at women’s Qur’an study groups in Bangladesh shows

striking similarities between the teaching style of Al-Huda and that

of the women she studied.

 It is also worth noting that Al-Huda

shares with all the nineteenth-century reformist movements the lat-

ter’s ready adoption of the latest technology (at that time, the printing

press, the telegraph, and the like) in order to disseminate their views

as widely as possible.

As Gilmartin points out, the link between state and society has

historically been a weak one in the Muslim world, even when the rul-

ers themselves were Muslim. In Pakistan, the relationship between

the two—between the moral community of individual believers and

the nation-state—has been ambivalent and subject to constant ten-

sion between the rulers and the army on the one hand, and Pakistani

society on the other.

 Today Pakistanis are turning increasingly to the

 Fazlur Rahman said that Mawdudi’s confusing of political sovereignty

with the religious worship of God was ‘the greatest mischief’. Zaman, Islam

in Pakistan , p. .

 In this, it is like the Tablighi Jama‘at, which emphasizes personal piety

and faithful adherence to the duties enjoined on all Muslims. The Tablighi

Jama‘at also emphasizes outreach or da ‘ wa , as does Al-Huda. See Barbara

Metcalf, Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan (New

Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –, –, and passim.

 Maimuna Huq, ‘Reading the Qur’an in Bangladesh: The Politics of

“Belief” among Islamist Women’, Modern Asian Studies (),  (/), pp.

–.

 David Gilmartin, ‘A Networked Civilization?’, in Miriam Cooke and

Bruce Lawrence, eds, Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip Hop (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press, ).

Al-Huda International 

universal umma beyond the state to deﬁ ne themselves as Muslims.

According to Mushtaq, Al-Huda’s relationship with elite Pakistanis

was important in its early years, and Al-Huda was not subject to state

interference in its curriculum or functioning. In Mushtaq’s view, this

was largely the result of Dr Farhat Hashmi’s personal connections with

people in positions of political authority,

 and of the organization’s

deliberate policy of staying away from direct political involvement, in

accordance with its stated aim of promoting Islamic knowledge in a

‘nonsectarian’ and ‘nonpolitical’ manner.



The broader Pakistani context for the creation of Al-Huda was the

period of Zia’s presidency from  to . At this time a number

of initiatives were promoted by the government to highlight the coun-

try’s Islamic identity. Mushtaq notes that the

‘Council of Islamic Ideology was restructured, a Federal Shariat court was

created with an appellate jurisdiction, and a Majlis-e-Shura (Consultative

Assembly) was to be a legislative body with appointed rather than elected

members. These institutions were meant to oversee the implementation

of shari‘a law for an Islamic state and the ulama were given prominent

representation in them.’ 

The Zia government, which came to power in the midst of the

Nizam-i Mustafa (the Prophet’s System) movement, took a number

of additional steps to increase the Islamic nature of the state: in

 it promulgated the Hudood Ordinances,

 and in  it began

 On this, see Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

Mushtaq notes that Farhat Hashmi came to the attention of Mrs Leghari,

the wife of Farooq Leghari, the president of Pakistan from  to .

Mrs Leghari became an admirer of Farhat Hashmi and invited her to pres-

ent dars at the presidential residence. According to Mushtaq, support from

‘elite circles’ was ‘crucial’ in Al-Huda’s early years. I should say, however,

that Taimiyyah Zubair, who read this chapter in draft form, commented that

‘Al-Huda is an NGO, I don’t see why the state should interfere in the function-

ing or curriculum of Al-Huda. … Her personal connection with Mrs Leghari

I believe is irrelevant to this, as Al-Huda existed even before Mrs Leghari

became familiar with Al-Huda’.

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Zaman, Islam in Pakistan , pp. –. Also see Anita M. Weiss,

Interpreting Islam, Modernity, and Women’s Rights in Pakistan (New York:

 Scholars of Faith

collecting zakat dues and making them available to the ‘ulama, who

used some of the funds to establish madrasas.

 Some changes

had begun earlier, during the Bhutto era, such as ‘greater space for

Islam in the military’,

 a trend that increased under Zia. The nar-

rative of jihad became marked in Pakistan after the Soviet invasion

of Afghanistan in , both among the religio-political groups (the

Deobandis, Barelwis, Jama‘at-i Islami, and Salaﬁ s) and in the govern-

ment. Anti-Shi‘i activity, spurred by the Iranian Revolution of 

which had given the Pakistani Shi‘a a sense of strength and hope,

also increased in the s: in Punjab’s Jhang district, which had a

sizeable Shi‘i landlord population, a new militant Deobandi group,

the Sipah-i Sahaba (Army of the Companions [of the Prophet]), was

founded by Haqq Nawaz Jhangawi (assassinated ) in order to

engage in anti-Shi‘i militancy.

 As Zaman noted in an earlier work,

the anti-Shi‘i activities of the Sipah-i Sahaba were implicitly also an

attack on Barelwi Sunnis.



The Zia government also put its stamp on the ﬁ eld of education.

The number of madrasas in the country increased dramatically in

the s and s, the result of multiple factors including the war

in Afghanistan and the inﬂ ux of Afghan refugees into Pakistan, and

also increased prosperity in the s among lower-middle-class and

middle-class Pakistanis working in the Gulf states.

 Both Zaman

and Mushtaq point out that the Zia government’s recognition of the

highest degrees conferred by madrasas as having university equiva-

lency in the government-funded educational system allowed madrasa

Palgrave Macmillan, ), on the implications of these changes for Pakistani

women.

 Zaman, Islam in Pakisan , pp. –, . As Zaman points out, there

were strong Shi‘i protests to this move, as the Shi‘a wanted to be subject to

Ja‘fari law, not Sunni Hanaﬁ law.

 Zaman, Islam in Pakisan , p. .

 Zaman, Islam in Pakisan , pp. –. The Sipah-i Sahaba was banned

in  by General Pervez Musharraf, along with a number of other groups,

but it continues to operate under other names.

 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam:

Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), p. .

 Zaman, Islam in Pakistan , pp. –.

Al-Huda International 

graduates to gain recognition for their madrasa educations and also

opened the door to employment in government agencies.



With regard to state-funded government education, Islamization in

government was expressed in terms of the creation of a new subject,

‘Pakistan Studies’. The  curriculum of this new subject has been

laid out in the Sustainable Development Policy Institute’s (SDPI)

– Report.  Starting in the s, the congruence of Islam and

Pakistan became central to the ideological message imparted by the

school system as a result of these policy decisions.

According to the SDPI Report, this reorientation of the govern-

ment curriculum had multiple dimensions across the educational

system, Mushtaq writes:

As part of the Zia regime’s Islamization drive, new syllabi were drawn

up and o cial textbooks were re-written to further reinforce the equation

between Pakistan and Islam and instill loyalty to both amongst students.

These revisions included various distortions of history, such as presenting

the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent as a nation deﬁ ned by a common,

uniform religion and always distinct from the Hindus and other commu-

nities, glorifying early Muslim conquests of the region and vilifying other

religious traditions, turning Jinnah into a religious-minded ﬁ gure and the

ulama into supporters of the movement that created Pakistan, and paint-

ing heroic images of the Pakistani armed forces. During this period, the

teaching of Arabic as a second language, Quranic recitation, and break-

ing for ritual prayers during school hours were made compulsory, female

students and teachers were forced to cover their heads, and applicants for

teaching positions had to demonstrate their knowledge of Islam. Some of

 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Tradition and Authority in Deobandi

Madrasas of South Asia’, in Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim

Zaman, eds, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim

Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), p. ; Mushtaq,

‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 A.H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim, compilers, ‘The Subtle Subversion:

The State of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistani Urdu, English, Social

Studies and Civics’, the Sustainable Development Policy Institute’s 

Report.’ (Islamabad [–]: unpublished). This -page report analyses

the cumulative e ect of the curricular decisions made during Zia’s rule and

by subsequent civilian and military governments up to , the year when

the report was written.

 Scholars of Faith

these practices have been rolled back by subsequent governments but they

have been unwilling or incapable to take on the religious lobby by making

curricular changes, and the public school system continues to indoctrinate

students into extremist views. 

According to Mushtaq, this was the system in which Al-Huda stu-

dents were educated. When they joined Al-Huda, they were therefore

receptive to the idea that they needed to bring their lives into greater

conformity with the normative ideals of a universal ‘Islam’ unencum-

bered by sectarian labels and a liations.  At the highest educational

levels, those at which Al-Huda’s founders Hashmi and Zubair have

taught is the International Islamic University (IIU) in Islamabad,

which was founded in  by General Zia with Saudi assistance,

with the ambitious goal of contributing to an ‘Islamic renaissance’

through the research and teaching of its scholars.



Mushtaq notes that part of the appeal of Al-Huda for urban

Pakistani women in the s was that it o ered an alternative to

madrasa education, which did not attract them. The secular liberal,

Western-oriented feminist movements—All-Pakistan Women’s

Association (APWA) and the Women’s Action Forum (WAF)—did

not attract them either, as they perceived these organizations as being

too Westernized, ‘out of touch with Islamic values, and following a

foreign agenda’.  More attractive to many urban women were the

women’s wings of the Jama‘at-i Islami and other Islamist groups,

which they saw as promoting a more authentic vision of what it meant

to be a Pakistani woman. It was in this urban context that Al-Huda

classes emerged in the early s, o ering a wholly di erent way of

being Muslim and modern at the same time.

This brings me to the present, online context of this chapter. As

noted earlier, in the online context, unlike the Pakistani one, the

Al-Huda community is geographically dispersed and often living

in a non-Muslim society. Although most of the students who join

Al-Huda’s online English classes today are of South Asian origin, and

overwhelmingly Pakistani (rather than Indian, Bangladeshi, and so

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 See Ahmad, Transforming Faith , p.  and passim.

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

Al-Huda International 

on), the concerns that they have as Al-Huda teachers, students, or

administrators are necessarily di erent from those of the Pakistani

women who ﬂ ocked to Farhat Hashmi’s classes in the s. They are

more likely to identify themselves as middle-class women in Canada,

Britain, or the United States (US) than as upper-class Pakistani

women. They are also English-educated, computer-savvy, immigrant,

and bicultural. This context is truly ‘international’, as indicated in

Al-Huda’s very name for itself.

Doing Virtual Fieldwork

Since , when Al-Huda began o ering online classes in North

America,  the number of such classes has grown every year, and they

continue to expand. From its Canadian headquarters in Mississauga,

a Toronto suburb, where Farhat Hashmi and her family have been

living since ,  Al-Huda manages a complex and sophisticated

network of classes which are partly live and partly based on taped

lectures of its onsite classes in Canada.

I was a participant–observer in one of Al-Huda’s many online classes

between December  and October , and in this virtual ethnog-

raphy I base my comments on my observations as a student during this

period. In December , I registered in the online Taleem al-Qur’an

Morning English Course, which is a three-and-a-half-year diploma

course o ered twice a week.

 Students who successfully complete the

course receive an Al-Huda diploma, which in Pakistan is recognized by

neither the state nor by any of the traditional madrasas.

 My research

experience was quite di erent from that of Mahmood, Ahmad, and

Mushtaq in at least two respects: ﬁ rst, the fact that my ethnography

was online and not face-to-face, and second, the fact that I was a non-

Muslim studying the Qur’an alongside Muslim students.

After I joined, teachers who interacted with me went out of their

way to help me feel comfortable with the groups I was in and to be

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, pp. –.

 This is the same ‘ﬂ agship’ course which, if taken on a full-time basis,

can be completed in  months.

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Scholars of Faith

accommodating. While including me in all regular class activities,

they also made allowances for the fact that I was studying Al-Huda

for the purposes of research and permitted me to observe rather

than participate in some activities, such as Qur’an recitation from

memory ( tajwid ). In other respects, such as giving periodic tests, I

participated like a regular student. In what follows, I want to give

the reader a sense of what it was like to be a virtual student of the

Qur’an.

A Typical Day at a Taleem al-Qur’an Online Class, 2010

It is a Monday, about noon Eastern Standard Time in the US and

Canada. Class begins promptly at :. You put on your headphones

and log on to the website on PalTalk a few minutes beforehand, pre-

pared for computer glitches, as often happens on a Monday. Over the

weekend, the course administrator will have emailed you the pass-

word, which often changes from week to week to prevent unauthor-

ized persons from accessing the site. Students also have access to a

secondary site, called WizIQ, which runs in tandem with PalTalk and

is speciﬁ cally used to hold a class called ‘Reﬂ ections from the Qur’an’,

using PowerPoint presentations. However, most of the classes are

conducted on PalTalk.

While you wait for the course administrator to come online, stu-

dents listen to recorded Qur’anic verses and greet each other by typing

in ‘As-salam alaikum, sisters’ and the appropriate response in various

abbreviated formats. Some students chat with one another directly,

exchanging news. On the right of the computer screen, the students’

names and IDs show up as soon as they ‘enter’ the ‘room’. By looking

at the last two letters of the ID, you can tell where the person is located

geographically. Apart from abbreviations such as CA, FL, KY, MI, and

so on, which tell you that the person is in the US, you also see UK (for

the United Kingdom), SL (for Sri Lanka), UAE (for the United Arab

Emirates), AB (for Alberta, Canada), and so on. You quickly realize

that everyone is dealing with di erent time zones. For some people,

particularly the ones in India and Sri Lanka, it is late at night. In fact,

it is already about  p.m. when the class starts—and it will go on for

a little over four hours. However, most of the students are based in

di erent parts of the US.

Al-Huda International 

Attendance is taken soon after the exchange of greetings, with each

student’s name being called out in quick succession. Each student

responds by typing a ‘’ to indicate that she is present. Sometimes

she also types in her ‘group name’ after the . All students are divided

into groups of about six or seven and meet with their group mates

under the supervision of a group leader later in the week to review the

previous week’s lessons. The group meeting is a smaller, more inti-

mate setting than the regular class, and schedules are more ﬂ exible

as well, accommodation being readily made for students who have

urgent family obligations to attend to. (This is, in fact, a good way to

make friends and get to know one another.) Almost all the groups are

named after one of the Prophet Muhammad’s wives: thus, there is a

Group Khadija, Group Sauda, Group Aisha, and so on (Group Fatima

is the exception, being named after the Prophet’s daughter).

The ﬁ rst class of the day, Qur’an recitation (tajwid), in which

students listen to Arabic recitation of the current lesson, is usually

conducted by a coordinator (or moderator) located in the US. When

the course began, a teacher from India, soft-spoken but ﬁ rm in her

manner, would recite each verse herself, twice over, in real time, ask-

ing students to listen the ﬁ rst time and recite with her on the second

round. However, after several months she switched to having students

listen to a well-known Qur’an reciter ( qari ) instead. This part of the

class lasts – minutes.

The recitation might be followed by a class on how to recite. At

the beginning of the course, students learned Arabic pronunciation

( makharij ) of the di erent letters of the alphabet, with an emphasis on

correct vocalization techniques. Midway through the course, though,

the teacher introduced a new class, namely, rules of Qur’anic reci-

tation, a rather technical and di cult subject. Periodically she tests

students’ recitation skills, asking them to come up to the microphone

and recite ‘in front of’ the rest of the class. Everyone listens carefully,

and at the end of the short recitation the teacher corrects her mistakes,

though she is also careful to praise her for her overall performance.

These tests are graded.

The ﬁ rst part of the class usually lasts about  minutes, after which

the tajwid teacher bids the students good-bye and signs o after saying

a short prayer. Since she is in India, it is close to midnight for her. She

also has a three-year-old baby girl. It is time for them to go to bed.

 Scholars of Faith

Students are required to buy the Qur’an in two very di erent

formats. One is the Arabic Qur’an (the mushaf ), which is especially

marked in di erent coloured inks to facilitate recitation. Indeed, one

of the topics discussed both during this ﬁ rst part of the class, and in

group sessions, has to do with the number of beats required for the

pronunciation of speciﬁ c Arabic words in a given verse, the correct

place to pause, and so on. Second, students also have the translated

Qur’an in  parts ( juz ). During the translation class, they will refer to

whichever juz they are studying that day, in order to understand each

verse, word by word, in English. During the Qur’an recitation class,

however, students are instructed to follow along in the mushaf (which

has no English translation) rather than the juz. This is done so as to

force them to relate text to meaning without an aid, thereby testing

their powers of memorization and comprehension.

These  sets of books are published in India (the mushaf by a pub-

lisher in Delhi) and Pakistan, respectively (the  juz by a publisher in

Islamabad).  Each juz consists of the Arabic Qur’an with two English

translations under each line of Arabic: ﬁ rst, a literal, word-by-word

translation of each word (and parts of each word, in case of conjoined

words), and second, a more idiomatic English translation under that.

Dr Idrees Zubair, one of the cofounders of Al-Huda, has certiﬁ ed each

of the juz to be true and accurate, and has signed his name at the end

of the book. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University

of Glasgow, where he did his research on a medieval hadith scholar.



 Mushtaq points out that the books used by Al-Huda bear a marked

Ahl-i Hadith interpretative imprint. Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious

Authority’, pp. , n. Also see p. : ‘In Al-Huda’s case, the particu-

lar content of Islamic education is shaped not only by concern for women’s

needs and responsibilities, but also by a reformist and literalist Ahl-i Hadith

orientation that prioritizes the Qur’an and hadis as foundational sources of

knowledge and denigrates competing styles and practices of Islamic learn-

ing’. Also see Chapter , passim.

 Dr Idrees Zubair’s PhD thesis, which may be obtained from the British

Library, was submitted to the University of Glasgow in . It is entitled

‘A Critical Edition of Kitāb Tuhḷfat Ḍhawī al-Irab fī Mushkil al-Asmāʼ wa al-

Nisab by Abū al-Thanāʼ Mahḷmūd b. Ahḷmad b. Muhḷammad, known as Ibn

Khatḷīb al-Dahshah al-Hḷamawī (–/–); with Introduction and

Notes’. I would like to thank Taimiyyah Zubair for personally responding to

Al-Huda International 

His ideological leanings are with the Ahl-i Hadith, while those of his

wife’s parents and of Farhat Hashmi herself while in college, were

with the Jama‘at-i Islami.

 I must add, however, that Taimiyyah

Zubair, their daughter, emphasized to me that her mother’s family

connection with the Jama‘at-i Islami was not as close as scholars

believe.

The next class is usually a du‘as (supplications) class. The teacher

for this class is in Canada and does not address the online students in

real time. Instead, the class hears her taped lecture, replayed for them

by a moderator (situated in the US), who interacts with the online

class directly throughout the day, moving them from one subject to

another, making sure there are no technical problems (voice issues

were a constant problem in the ﬁ rst months, with the teacher’s voice

suddenly either going silent mid-sentence or exploding in a cacoph-

ony of static, which hurt the ear), and answering student questions.

The du‘a class teacher asks her students to open a book of supplica-

tory prayers—there are prayers for the morning and evening, prayers

for knowledge and for good health, and so on—and to start reciting.

(These books are available for purchase from Al-Huda but can also be

downloaded from their website.) The du‘as are taken very seriously.

Students are told that if they do not start their lessons with a supplica-

tion to God, their e orts may not be successful. Du‘as are jointly read

aloud, translated, and must later be memorized. This is also a time

when the teacher might address students on matters of etiquette, the

dress code, and other disciplinary issues. She speaks authoritatively,

directly, and colloquially (asking on one occasion, for example, ‘When

you say your du‘as, are you on autopilot, or do you think about what

you are saying?’ ‘On autopilot’, lamented an online student.).

After this class is over students are usually given a break and

encouraged to walk around and stretch, though the break often coin-

cides with prayer time. Since the online students are located in di er-

ent parts of the US and on di erent continents, they will be leaving

my request for a copy of Farhat Hashmi’s PhD thesis, which is unavailable at

the University of Glasgow. I discuss this work in Chapter .

 Ahmad, Transforming Faith , pp. –; Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to

Religious Authority’, pp. –.

 Scholars of Faith

their computers to say di erent prayers—for some it is time to pray

the afternoon ( ‘asr ) prayer, while for others it is time for the evening

( maghrib ) or night ( ‘isha ) prayers.

The next class is one of the most intense, requiring that one pay

close attention and take rapid notes on what the teacher says. This

teacher, Taimiyyah Zubair, is also in Canada (as before, this lesson is

taped), and is a daughter of the founders of Al-Huda. The lesson con-

sists of word-to-word translation of the Qur’an. Over a period of three-

and-a-half years (the length of this online course), the Qur’an will be

translated word by word from beginning to end—starting with the

Fatiha (Chapter ) on the ﬁ rst day, to the th or last chapter in Juz

 at the end of the course. The number of verses dealt with in each

class varies, depending on their length and complexity, but as time

goes by, the speed of translation and exegesis picks up. On average

about  juz pages are translated every class. Careful attention is paid

to every detail of the Arabic—its literal and ﬁ gurative meanings, its

contextual meaning, the way the meaning can change depending on

the preposition that follows, the association of meanings that appear

unrelated, and so on.

To give an example, when studying Chapter , ‘The Women’

(Al-Nisa), verse , which discusses the conditions under which a

husband may strike his wife, the word ‘ daraba ’ ( wa-idribuhunna ) was

translated as ‘strike’, as in tapping lightly, rather than ‘beat’, and the

teacher discussed the change in the meaning of daraba when it is fol-

lowed by the preposition ﬁ (in) and when it is followed by a‘la (upon).

Thus, ‘ daraba ﬁ ’ means to travel, and is related to striking because

one strikes the earth with one’s foot as one walks. One would not say

that the foot beats the earth, but that it strikes it. But daraba can also

mean ‘cite’ or strike in a ﬁ gurative sense, as in verses where God is

said to ‘strike a similitude’, or give an example to illustrate a point.

The long-term e ect of this kind of analytical dissection of the Arabic

is to give students an appreciation of the linguistic nuances of the

Qur’anic text, while also encouraging them to accept the interpreta-

tion of the teacher. Her authority, based on her erudition, makes the

students eager to learn and follow, while despairing of how far behind

they are in their own mastery of the text.

Another aspect of the word-for-word translation class is its constant

reference to the students’ own day-to-day lives, and the connections

Al-Huda International 

they can—and indeed must—learn to make between the Qur’an and

the everyday events of their lives in Canada (and by extension, else-

where as well). As the epigraph at the start of this chapter illustrates,

one of the hallmarks of Al-Huda’s teaching style is to speak in terms

of the everyday. When talking about the importance of obeying Allah

and the Prophet, as in the exegesis of Q :–, the teacher illustrated

perfectly the need to follow closely behind, or one would be lost—just

as one would do if one were following a friend’s car in an unfamiliar

neighbourhood.

Taimiyyah’s ability to quote di erent Qur’anic verses e ortlessly

from memory is thus coupled with her knowledge of the context of

the students’ own lives, of their daily preoccupations as Canadian

Muslim women—or, for the online students, Muslim women in other

parts of the West. As one who has lived in the same cultural milieu

as they have, and who, like them, speaks ﬂ awless English, she can

relate to them in ways that an Urdu-speaking older woman could

not. However, because Taimiyyah Zubair also grew up in Pakistan

and speaks Urdu, she is intimately familiar with the Pakistani con-

text. This allows her—like some, but not all, of the other Al-Huda

teachers—to play an important hinge role in bridging the two worlds.

Pakistan was the primary context of her parents, and to this day her

mother, Farhat Hashmi, expresses herself far more ﬂ uently in Urdu

than in English.

This class, together with the exegesis ( tafsir ) class that follows, rep-

resents the heart of what the online Al-Huda course—and Al-Huda

more broadly—seeks to accomplish, namely, to make the Qur’an’s

message comprehensible to each student, to make its message come

to life in the context of their own lives, and to exhort students to live

by its rulings and spirit. The goal is, in short, to create ‘pious selves’,

no matter where in the world they may be.

The tafsir class, the last one for the day, reviews the verses studied

earlier in light of Hadith (sayings of the Prophet) and Qur’an com-

mentary, in particular the tafsir of Ibn Kathir (–  ). Here

more than elsewhere, connections are made between the idealized

past and the less-than-ideal present. Thus, commenting on a verse in

which the Companions asked the Prophet what foods they could law-

fully eat (‘They ask you what was made lawful for them. Say! All good,

clean things are lawful for you.’ Q :), the teacher asked rhetorically,

 Scholars of Faith

‘How often do we ask questions just for the sake of asking? Do we

ask because we really mean to act on our knowledge?’ Using the occa-

sion o ered by this verse as a teaching tool to highlight the students’

failure to meet the high standards set by the ﬁ rst Muslims of his-

tory, she exhorted them yet again to bring the Qur’an into their lives

through pious action in the everyday world. Another way in which

this was done in the ﬁ rst few months was by giving students a ‘reﬂ ec-

tion question’ based on that day’s lesson, asking them to o er their

own thoughts about how they would implement a particular teaching.

Over time, the mix of classes changed somewhat, with some reced-

ing to the background while others were added. Thus, while grammar

was less frequently addressed later in the course than at the begin-

ning, other subjects were added. These included ‘Reﬂ ections from the

Qur’an’, in which PowerPoint presentations depicting di erent verses

were projected on the screen while the teacher talked in real time

about what students were seeing. Students responded by typing in

comments which could be seen on one side of the computer screen.

Other subjects were: the life of the Prophet ( sira ), which was taught

from an English-language book called When the Moon Split ; rules of

recitation; and Hadith (sayings of the Prophet).

The Students: Online Relationships and Dynamics,

and Their Responses to the Course

As online students, it goes without saying that the teachers and

students could not see one another directly. This fact, unremarkable

because it was so basic, appeared to have a signiﬁ cant impact on the

way the class interacted. Thus, students could not, and therefore did

not, look around and observe how the others were dressed, what they

looked like, where their friends were sitting, or anything else at a

visual level. Notably, for quite some time I observed that none of the

informal discussions among the students dealt with matters related

to dress, unless speciﬁ cally brought up by the teacher or the Qur’anic

text itself. (This is not to say, however, that audiovisual aids were not

used, for Al-Huda utilizes all the latest technology. It is simply to say

that the students did not see each other.)

Almost all the work of teaching and learning was aural, empha-

sizing the capacity to listen carefully. However, the students did not

Al-Huda International 

hear one another talk, except brieﬂ y as described earlier, and again in

the small groups in which they participated on a regular basis once a

week through Skype. Although students quickly learned to recognize

the voices of the teachers, they were almost completely unfamiliar

with those of their fellow students. The way one ‘knew’ one’s fellow

students in this online environment was thus quite di erent from

the way one gets to know other people in a physical classroom. Yet—

given that this was a long course, lasting three-and-a-half years (or

one-and-a-half for full-time students)—people did of course form

close relationships.

During the four hours of class, students and teachers communi-

cated almost constantly by typing comments, responses, or questions

on the computer screen. These hastily typed messages—the subject of

which was almost always occasioned by the circumstances at hand—

were the means for the creation of a new kind of community among

the students, and between them and the onsite teachers and mod-

erator, themselves former students of Al-Huda’s Taleem al-Qur’an

course, just a few years senior to them in terms of their association

with Al-Huda. As time went by, some students took a more active

role in the class and emerged as leaders, helping others who, hav-

ing joined after the start of the course, were struggling to catch up,

or those who were simply less knowledgeable than they. Friendships

also formed, particularly among students who lived in the same city

or geographically close to one another.

All the students were women, and almost all of them were of South

Asian origin. Their families’ ﬁ rst language was either Urdu or one of

the other South Asian languages, such as Punjabi, Kashmiri, Sinhala,

or Telugu. For none of them was Arabic their native language. The

need to master the intricacies of Arabic in order to fully understand the

Qur’anic text gave rise, over time, to a deepening sense of appreciation

for the complexity of the language and a sense of accomplishment in

having come so far. In my view, the challenge posed by this linguistic

hurdle was itself an important source of bonding among students.

(Once I inadvertently logged on during a student ‘reunion’ of recent

graduates and immediately felt like I had gate-crashed a party, judging

by the sounds of joy as di erent students ‘met’ each other again. As in

any room where everyone knows one another and you don’t, I felt like

an outsider. I quietly closed the door, as it were, and left the room.)

 Scholars of Faith

The fact that the students of the class I was a part of had chosen

to enrol in Al-Huda’s English course rather than one of its Urdu-

medium courses indicates that they were more comfortable commu-

nicating in English than in their families’ language of origin. When

they discussed issues that arose in class, they did so in English—with

a liberal sprinkling of Islamic/Arabic abbreviations, greetings, and so

on—though their knowledge of Urdu was also periodically evident.

Their bilingual upbringing, as also the Western context in which

many (though not all) of them lived, were apparent in small ways,

unremarked upon, during class. However, judging from their English

accents and references to everyday matters in informal conversation,

to me many of them seemed to be second-generation immigrants

who had grown up in Canada, the US, Great Britain, or elsewhere in

the South Asian diaspora. This would account for their decision to

be part of the English class rather than the Urdu ones, which had far

more students because those classes were centred on Hashmi’s Urdu

lectures on tape.

Most of the women were young, in their twenties or thirties. Some

were married with small children. Others were unmarried, or, in a

few cases, older women with grown children. Also, they were—over-

whelmingly, though not exclusively—Muslim by birth. There may

have been some converts, judging by the fact that some of the students

had Christian ﬁ rst names. Some described themselves as ‘reverts’,

that is, Muslims who did not practise their faith until recently (similar

to being ‘born again’, in the Christian context). Also important was

the obvious fact that the students were educated. Al-Huda as an orga-

nization attracted educated, upper- and upper-middle-class Pakistani

women from the very start,

 though its current students represented

a wide spectrum of income categories, from the wealthy to the poor.

Since its relocation to Canada (and the US) it had attracted middle-

class, second-generation South Asian Muslim women.



 Ahmad, Transforming Faith , pp. , , , n, and passim; Mushtaq,

‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, pp. –.

 Taimiyyah Zubair, Farhat Hashmi’s daughter, commenting on the class

composition of Al-Huda students, wrote:

Our vision is Quran for all, in every hand, in every heart. You will ﬁ nd in every

Al-Huda class, students from very diverse backgrounds. On my recent visit to

Al-Huda International 

Once a student joined, Al-Huda made every attempt to keep her

from leaving. To encourage students in the task ahead, the teachers

told them at the very start that it was ‘easy’ to understand and memo-

rize the Qur’an, as there is much repetition in it. Thus, they must not

be intimidated. They were given positive reinforcement and praise for

their e orts, as well as tips on how to study and how to organize and

manage their time (including advice on cutting down on time spent

cooking elaborate meals on social occasions), and religious sources

of encouragement. Despite their best e orts, however, some students

did drop the course on account of small children, illness, family prob-

lems, and so on. In no case, however, to my knowledge, did students

leave for economic reasons. The monthly fees for the course were

quite low (USD . for US students, and less for those in South

Asia, when I took the class in –). In my class, there were about

 students at the outset, and a year later there were between  and

. Two years into the course, there were just under . While some

left, a few also joined during the year.

The teachers and students radiated a sense of conﬁ dence. There

was a clear sense of empowerment among women who had completed

the course (all the teachers were former Al-Huda graduates) as well as

students who had dedicated themselves to mastering the Qur’an and

staying the course, which meant they had embarked on a process of

self-transformation. They were clearly attracted to Al-Huda’s method

of marrying a modern teaching style—which emphasizes active

rather than passive learning, and incorporates considerable variety in

the daily routine—with an urgent religious message—namely, that

the here and now is the ﬁ eld of action in which each Muslim individu-

ally must work towards (his or) her own salvation in the hereafter, and

that the stakes for success or failure couldn’t be more momentous,

Pakistan, as I sat in a hall full of over  students, I saw all sorts of women:

from the highly educated to even those that could barely read/write. At Al-Huda,

everyone is welcome. When I took the course myself in Karachi, there were

women from [the] upper most classes of Pakistan (Noor Jehan’s daughter being

one) and also women that came from the most rural areas of Karachi. This is

something that you would instantly observe when you sit in any Al-Huda class.

The same, she wrote, was true of Al-Huda’s classes in Canada.

 Scholars of Faith

for failure would condemn one to eternal hellﬁ re. In these and other

ways, Al-Huda worked assiduously to create a ‘pious self’.

Over time, it was clear that the shared experience of taking the

long classes, sometimes at odd hours of the night, had helped these

students to bond with one another. In fact, the bond had grown so

strong that before an unprecedented two-month break for Ramadan

and the summer of , some students thought the break was too

long. They were afraid that they would forget what they had learned.

They encouraged one another to keep practicing the Qur’an every day;

to use their free time to pray each prayer at its allotted time, not put-

ting it o until the last minute; to review the lessons they had studied

since the class began; talk to family and friends about what they were

learning so some of them might decide to try the course themselves;

and to spend time with relatives and friends, renewing social relation-

ships which had been neglected over the past year. Other words of

advice included a simple message: smile and do good works such as

visiting a sick person or cooking for a neighbour, thereby earning a

reward for yourself in the hereafter.

On a day when (after the break was over) the Qur’an lesson turned

to permitted ( halal ) versus forbidden ( haram ) foods, there was a lively

discussion online as students tried to sort out which grocery stores

they could patronize for the purchase of meat. Since they had to

avoid any meat over which the name of God ( basmallah ) had not been

pronounced, they agreed that they could not buy meat at a Christian-

owned store. But what about Jewish butcher shops? Were they accept-

able, given that Jews observe kosher? They decided they would ask

their group in-charges, in e ect asking their group leaders to render a

religious judgment based on their greater knowledge of Islamic pre-

cepts. In a sense, they seemed to be expecting their group leader to

have the kind of specialist knowledge that in previous eras would have

been rendered by a jurisconsult ( mufti ) in a fatwa. In practice, how-

ever, most of the teachers—who had been students of the Qur’an only

a year or two longer than the students had—were unable to answer

questions such as these and were compelled to report the question to

someone with greater religious knowledge than they.

On a few occasions since the class began, another kind of student

response was the outpouring of emotion when something unusual,

special, or moving occurred in the course of the day. This happened,

Al-Huda International 

for instance, when Farhat Hashmi was heard (on tape) interacting

with the Canadian students, asking them questions, and being play-

ful, serious, and caring all at the same time. The online students got

to listen and to respond on their computers, to an audience consisting

of the moderator and themselves. Twice they listened to ‘games’ of

musical chairs, in which the students were seated in a circle on the

ﬂ oor, one presumes—as this could not be seen by the online class,

only heard. At a signal—the abrupt cessation of a taped Qur’an recita-

tion—one of the teachers asked whoever was left holding a ball (the

one who was ‘it’) a question, and if she responded correctly, she stayed

in the circle. If not, she had to get up and become a spectator. The

questions came at a rapid pace, leaving one no time to think. One had

to know the answer.

As each question was asked, the online students quickly typed in

the answers, thus joining in the game and also competing with one

another online. Like the onsite students, they too were fully engaged,

‘on their toes’, as it were, to get the right answer. After a while, Farhat

Hashmi could be heard consoling students who had had to leave the

circle by saying that there was no shame in being wrong, that this was

another way of learning the Qur’an, that there are always winners

and losers, and that they were earning a reward in Allah’s sight by

their e orts. She thus showed her sensitivity to their public embar-

rassment. The online students responded warmly by typing in com-

ments expressing their appreciation of her. The next time a similar

game was played, the students who didn’t get the right answer were

told to sit inside the circle, rather than outside it. On both occasions,

the online students were moved by Farhat Hashmi’s concern for the

students and expressed their deep admiration of her.

Another memorable occasion occurred when a young male Qur’an

reciter ( qari ) was invited to address the students in Canada on tech-

niques of recitation. Again, the online students got to listen. This

recording was played over the course of two separate classes and was

enthusiastically received both times. In the second segment of the

talk, the speaker gave his audience some practical tips on what they

could do to improve their vocal chords and hence the quality of their

oral recitation of the Qur’an. These included the avoidance of certain

kinds of food (hot and spicy) and drink (anything acidic or too cold),

as well as moderation in the amount they ate (because no one could

 Scholars of Faith

recite well if they had overeaten—he was quite graphic here) and the

practice of yoga to tone the body. The online students responded both

with admiration and a sense of dismay that everyday items like tea,

co ee, Pepsi, lemon juice, and hot, spicy foods were bad for the voice.

Instead, the speaker recommended a regular dose of honey (which is

praised in the Qur’an for its intrinsic qualities) in warm water.

Contrasting the speaker’s style of recitation with that of others, the

online students said that the sound of his recitation was beautiful,

unlike some reciters who shouted out the Qur’anic verses in a pierc-

ing tone. They wondered about the role of yoga, though, which was

associated in their minds with Hinduism and therefore to be avoided.

But, responded the online moderator, it was just a kind of breathing

exercise and had nothing to do with Hinduism. That day the students

were excited and animated. The speaker they were responding to was

dynamic, young, and engaging, and very comfortable in his role as

public speaker, even before an audience of white-clad, veiled ( muha-

jibba ) Al-Huda students. His manner—and theirs—spoke of their

full immersion in, and yet their implicit self-distancing from, their

Canadian environment.

Another animated conversation took place in the context of our

lesson on verses – of Sura al-Nur (Q ). Verses  and  com-

mand believing men and women to lower their gaze and protect their

modesty. The teacher and students were looking closely at a series of

Power Points relating to verse , an unusually long verse addressed

speciﬁ cally to women, and answering questions posed by the teacher.

Teacher: When you learned these verses ( aya s), how did you feel? Did you

feel that there was anything you had to change? [She quoted the part of v.

 about lowering the gaze.]

For men, the command is: not looking at women, not looking at other

men, or looking at a forbidden ( haram ) act. If by chance a man sees a for-

bidden act, he must look away.

Women are also commanded to do the same. But in addition, women are

given an extra command. Lower the gaze, guard the private parts. Aya 

says to women, st, to lower the gaze and guard the private parts. nd.

Women should cover their heads, must not be dressed [provocatively].



 According to Shawkat Toorawa, ‘the Qur’an provides little information

regarding speciﬁ c forms of dress, though it is categorical regarding women

Al-Huda International 

Let’s say, you are watching something on TV, or attending a lecture.

Are you going to look around and then look at him continuously? You

shouldn’t look at men who are unrelated ( na-mahram ) continuously. Kids

should not do so either. Don’t wear revealing clothes.

How can someone make sure in a swimming pool, club, or party that they

stay within the limits? Or when you go to the doctor?

Does this mean that we cannot wear nice clothes? No. But it means that if

we are around a na-mahram , we must put a jilbab or hijab over us.

If you wear a ﬂ ashy jilbab or hijab , then you aren’t within the limits. But

they don’t have to be black either.

What is the most di cult part? Allah has given us the knowledge, and in

Sura Nur he has given us these commands. We have to be strong enough

to implement these commands. Is it easy?

Maryam: We should check our intentions. For whom are we doing this?

Hafsa: Control your [base, desirous] self ( nafs ).

Farah: Seek Allah’s help.

Sadia: Make supplication (du‘a) for them [Muslim women who do not

wear the hijab ], tell them the importance of this in Islam.

Farah: Delaying [wearing the hijab ] is a tactic of Satan (the shaytan ).

Teacher: Where should a hijab go up to? The headscarf is so small? Does it

fulﬁ l our purpose? No, it should cover the chest.

Nur: Should cover neck, head, ears, and over chest.

While the students were discussing these Qur’anic verses, they were

watching a succession of Power Points on their computer screens.

One picture showed a girl in tight jeans and top but wearing a tightly

wrapped scarf over her head. Next, there was a picture of a woman with

who should “draw their hooded robes ( jalabib ) close around themselves.”

Yet the Qur’an’s use of clothing imagery in a metaphorical sense is note-

worthy’. Shawkat M. Toorawa, ‘Clothing’, in Jane Dammen McAuli e, ed.,

Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an , vol.  (Leiden: Brill, ), pp. –. There is

extensive literature on di erent forms of veiling, and its political ramiﬁ ca-

tions. See, among others, Joan Wallach Scott, The Politics of the Veil (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, ).

 Scholars of Faith

a ﬂ owing abaya and headscarf, and a check mark. Further PowerPoints

indicated that certain items of external adornment ( zeenat ), such as

shoes, purse, kohl, henna on hands, small ring, nice clothes under the

jilbab —were okay. Women were said to be faced with a double problem:

() Disobedience by not covering properly, and () To be the cause of

disobedience for men by attracting their attention. The PowerPoints

also cited two opinions regarding how the verse about protecting one’s

modesty should be interpreted: Opinion : Covering the entire body

except the face and hands, which would eliminate any danger of social

dysfunction ( ﬁ tna ). Opinion : Covering the entire body, including face

and hands, except what was exposed unintentionally.

My notes during the class convey something of the ﬂ avour of

Al-Huda online classes. The students’ eager responses to the lessons

were striking. They were astounded and delighted by the Qur’an’s

ability to ‘speak’ to them and proud to be, as Al-Huda put it, part of

God’s ‘chosen community’. Although they could not have a face-to-

face discussion, they interacted animatedly by typing in their com-

ments and responses to the teacher’s questions on their computer

screens. The topic of the lesson varied from day to day, depending on

the verses being studied. In each case, they were related to the real-

world situations in which the students lived and students were asked

to take a good look at themselves to see if they matched up to God’s

commands. This was a multidimensional, everyday undertaking

which had to be informed by correct knowledge and intentionality.

Al-Huda’s Many Contexts: Creating a ‘Pious (Muslim)

Self’ Here, There, and Everywhere

My use of the term ‘pious self’ is indebted to the work of Saba

Mahmood in Politics of Piety (). Mahmood’s ethnography of the

mosque movement in Cairo, Egypt resonated with me deeply as I

read it. Mahmood insists that we take seriously the women’s religious

worldview, and that we—by which she refers primarily to Western

intellectuals grounded in a secular–liberal, feminist perspective—rec-

ognize the parochialism of our assumptions when we look at contem-

porary Muslim women’s movements.



 For a sharply critical view of Saba Mahmood’s work and that of other

scholars she labels ‘revivalist’, see Aﬁ ya Shehrbano Zia, ‘Faith-Based Politics,

Al-Huda International 

The Al-Huda women I write about here, like the Egyptian women

Mahmood studied, had chosen to study the Qur’an and the traditions

of the Prophet (Hadith) in order to apply the teachings of these foun-

dational Islamic texts to their own lives in the here and now. They

focused on certain key concepts, such as fear of God ( taqwa , also

translated as piety), patience ( sabr ), and spreading the faith to others,

mainly other Muslims ( da‘wa ). Although their goals did not challenge

the patriarchal order and were therefore not what we would recog-

nize as ‘feminist’, yet what they were doing was nonetheless radical,

new, and potentially subversive of the existing order.

 In this sense

Al-Huda was also political. The very act of learning the Arabic Qur’an

directly, interpreting its message, and applying that message to their

personal, day-to-day behaviour—without the intermediacy of male

authority ﬁ gures—gave these women personal authority with the

people around whom they lived, be they family or friends. Anecdotal

evidence suggests that sometimes considerable disputation, conﬂ ict,

and life-changing decisions resulted from this.



Paradoxically, while Al-Huda played down the importance of

human intermediaries, it nevertheless relied heavily on the media-

tion of technology in order to spread its message and reach out to a

wider audience around the world.

 The organization’s reliance on

Enlightened Moderation and the Pakistani Women’s Movement’, Journal of

International Women’s Studies (November ), (): –. Also see the

discussion of Mahmood’s work in Hem Borker, Madrasas and the Making of

Islamic Womanhood (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, ), which deals

with a girls’ madrasa in New Delhi.

 Mushtaq describes the reasons why Al-Huda has been criticized both

by the Pakistani ‘ulama (primarily Deobandis) and by Western-educated, sec-

ular, liberal Pakistanis. See Faiza Mushtaq, ‘A Controversial Role Model for

Pakistani Women’, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ)

(), : paras –. Available at http://samaj.revues.org/index.html.

 Among other stories, I have heard of instances in which Al-Huda

women in Pakistan ended up living in a nuclear family arrangement rather

than a joint family one because they insisted on observing strict veiling ( par-

dah ) in the presence of brothers-in-law in their husband’s parental home. The

inconvenience of this led them and their husbands to eventually move out

into separate living quarters altogether.

 I am grateful to Sumathi Ramaswamy for this insight at a South Asian

colloquium in the Research Triangle ().

 Scholars of Faith

technology—including everything from the Internet, to PowerPoints,

Skype, MP players, cassettes, and others—was striking. Mastery of

this range of technology was put to work in a variety of ways to further

the goals of the organization. Women who were skillful in the use of

these tools found many ways to volunteer their time and thereby rise

to positions of leadership in the organization.

Nevertheless, technology was no more than a tool. Leadership was

highly prized in Al-Huda and the leader at the very centre of it all was

Farhat Hashmi, known as Ustaza (female teacher) to the students.

Her ability to delegate authority to trusted students had allowed oth-

ers to take up many of the day-to-day teaching and administrative

duties of the organization, freeing her up for travel, giving public

lectures, and opening new girls’ schools all over the world.

 Online

broadcasts of her lectures kept students all over the world connected

with her even in her absence. Complementing her leadership, a

well-ordered hierarchical structure below her linked all the di erent

parts together, over many continents. In turn, leaders at every level

recruited volunteers from among the best students, and new students

were attracted throughout the year through personal networks and

word-of-mouth recommendations. As Mushtaq points out, the decen-

tralized structure of the organization (like a franchise that can be

replicated anywhere) has been a key factor in Al-Huda’s rapid growth

and remarkable success.

***

To conclude, the dynamics at play in the Pakistani context of Al-Huda’s

onsite classes and that in the online classes based in Canada were

clearly di erent. My sense is that some of the younger students



were charting a new path for themselves that was di erent from that

 Taimiyyah Zubair told me that her mother does not do any fund rais-

ing on her travels: ‘At Al-Huda we never do fund-raising, nor do my parents

ever travel for this purpose. The maximum we do is inform people about an

upcoming project and its cost and how they [can] contribute if they wish to.’

 Sometimes the roles are reversed. In one conversation, the UK-based

mother of a young woman lamented the fact that her daughter did not wear

the veil in public.

Al-Huda International 

of their immigrant parents, while also distancing themselves visibly

(through their voluntary donning of the hijab) from their Western

(or other) environments. Thus, the act of wearing the hijab or of

praying regularly, fasting during Ramadan, or displaying other signs

of Muslim religiosity, assumed di erent meaning(s) in Toronto or

London, for example, than it did in Karachi or Lahore. While poten-

tially oppositional in both contexts, in a non-Muslim context it was a

more visible statement of di erence than in a Muslim-majority one.

Such distancing may also be seen, for instance, when Al-Huda teach-

ers remark on the wasteful expenditures of Canadians on Christmas

gifts or expensive tickets to a ball game.

 For the students living in

di erent Western cities, their decision to be part of Al-Huda and its

vision for personal change based on study of the Qur’an thus seemed

to be an individual choice.

At the same time, the online community provided by the Al-Huda

class was a powerful source of support and a rmation in a diasporic

context. The community of Al-Huda ‘sisters’, ephemerally created in

cyberspace, was—by virtue of its being chosen rather than ascribed,

based on the shared goal of studying the Qur’an and transforming the

self—a means of re-creating the self and of transcending the ascribed

relations of family and kinship as well as the non-Muslim environ-

ment around the student. For those coming to Al-Huda for the ﬁ rst

time, it could be a heady experience, though the heavy demands it

made on students’ time tested their resolve. But paradoxically these

heavy demands were a source of Al-Huda’s attraction as well, a source

of a rmation and pride, and of connection to others in this online

community.

For students who were married with young children, the family

dynamics may be more complicated if their Al-Huda educations led

to conﬂ ict with husbands or in-laws. Students were repeatedly told

to talk to their families about what they were learning in their online

classes (this being a form of da‘wa ), but not to be arrogant about their

knowledge or talk down to those around them. Whatever the speciﬁ cs

of each student’s circumstances, their newfound knowledge of the

 However, at other times teachers also praised their Christian neigh-

bours and fellow-citizens and directed their criticism towards fellow Muslims

instead.

 Scholars of Faith

Qur’an in Arabic was a source of immense empowerment for every

student and a conduit for personal change which undoubtedly had

ramiﬁ cations for interpersonal relations and structures of authority.

The fact that online students had to negotiate a double set of loyal-

ties—to their families on the one hand, and to their online commu-

nity on the other—was a source of conﬂ ict in some cases, though

students did their best to bring spouses and children into the fold

of their new community and into greater conformity with their own

orthoprax lifestyle. 

Finally, the online classes showed a remarkable shift in the linguis-

tic usage of the Al-Huda movement. The use of vocabulary appeared

to have shifted in signiﬁ cant ways from its South Asian context to an

Arabized one in the online classes. This shift was evident in the use of

language in the two settings. The reliance on English as a language of

instruction in the class in which I was a participant–observer, and the

increasing Arabization of its vocabulary were marked. Students and

teachers did not use Urdu terms to understand aspects of Qur’anic

language and grammar. Rather, their language was based on Arabic

usage. This appears to me to be a signiﬁ cant change between the

Pakistani context and Al-Huda’s online English-language classes.

 See Attiya Ahmad, Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and

South Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait (Durham: Duke University Press

), for related observations in the context of South Asian domestic work-

ers in Kuwait; and Attiya Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space:

Foreign Resident Muslim Women’s Halaqa in the Arabian Peninsula’,

in Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella, eds, Islamic Reform in South Asia

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).



ALHUDA’S INTELLECTUAL

FOUNDATIONS

al-Silaﬁ is credited with having heard traditions from the shaykhs of

more than  di erent towns. His shaykhs and those who transmitted

on his authority are too numerous to count. … He was unparalleled for

being heard for more than eighty years.

—Farhat Naseem Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ

Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-Mujiz ’, p. .

In hadith sciences, ‘I1m al-rijal [the science of men] has great impor-

tance. Traditionists were conscious of this at an early date and, over

the centuries, produced in every branch of it a considerable amount

of material.

—Idrees Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitāb Tuhḷfat Ḍhawī al-Irab fī

Mushkil al-Asmāʼ wa al-Nisab ’, Preface

Before I focus on the teachers, students, and the institutional and

organizational aspects of Al-Huda, I want to examine the religious

and intellectual dimensions of the movement in some detail. The

attention of most observers of Al-Huda International is on Farhat

Hashmi. However, in this chapter I want to bring in the important

imprint of Idrees Zubair on the organization. Although Farhat

Hashmi comes from a family which had a liations with the

Jama‘at-i Islami, after her study of the Hadith sciences, she became,

like her husband, an Ahl-i Hadith follower. Both have PhDs in

 Scholars of Faith

Islamic Studies from the University of Glasgow. In this chapter I

examine this background in order to understand how it is reﬂ ected

in the Al-Huda organization that they have jointly founded. The

evidence from their scholarly research as well as the books Al-Huda

students study—ranging from di erent editions of the Qur’an to

biographies of the Prophet, Hadith collections, and others—point

clearly in the direction of an Ahl-i Hadith inﬂ uence. It therefore

becomes important to learn the history of the Ahl-i Hadith move-

ment in South Asia as well as the ways in which it di ers from other

contemporary Sunni movements.

Farhat Hashmi: The Scholar

Faiza Mushtaq writes that Farhat Hashmi was born in Sargodha,

Punjab, on  December . She was the eldest of  siblings. Along

with them, she learned the Qur’an at home from her father, Abdur

Rehman Hashmi, a homeopathic doctor by profession. Her father

was also a member of the Jama‘at-i Islami, and held the position of

amir (leader) of the Sargodha branch of the Jama‘at for some time.



Although Hashmi’s parents were not keen for her to study beyond

middle school, Hashmi took the initiative to complete high school,



and then obtained her BA from the Government College for Women

in Sargodha, having studied Arabic, Islamic Studies, and psychology

(subjects in which she would retain a lifelong interest).

After her BA, Hashmi went to the University of Punjab, Lahore, to

do an MA in Arabic. She graduated from there in , and shortly

afterwards married Idrees Zubair, a fellow student at the university.

In , they both moved to Islamabad, where they got teaching posi-

tions at the International Islamic University (IIU). While there, she

 Faiza Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority: A Movement for

Women’s Islamic Education, Moral Reform and Innovative Traditionalism’

(PhD. dissertation, Northwestern University, ) p. . This entire bio-

graphical sketch is based on information from Mushtaq. Taimiyyah Zubair,

Farhat Hashmi’s daughter, di ers from Mushtaq on the importance of the

Jama‘at-i Islami connection in Farhat Hashmi’s youth and student years.

 This information is based on my personal conversation with Taimiyyah

Zubair,  May .

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

would hold dar s (informal Islamic lessons), teaching the Qur’an in

Urdu translation to other students on campus.



As Faiza Mushtaq relates it:

Hashmi started as a lecturer of Arabic language, moved to the faculty of

Islamic Studies ( Usul-ul-din ) as an assistant professor, and also served as a

student advisor in the women’s section of the university. During this time

she received a government of Pakistan scholarship for higher studies. …

She and Zubair both proceeded to the University of Glasgow.



The mother of two small daughters at the time (a third daughter was

born in Scotland, and a son after the couple’s return to Pakistan), she

left them in the care of her parents back in Pakistan and accompa-

nied her husband to Glasgow in the late s. While there, both of

them worked towards getting their PhDs on topics related to di erent

aspects of Hadith studies.

As Mushtaq notes, ‘The Al-Huda movement literature emphasizes

Hashmi’s doctoral degree, and she is widely addressed by her title

of “Dr. Farhat Hashmi,” linking her to specialized forms of modern

knowledge and the prestige associated with them’.

 By the same token,

however, the fact of a PhD degree from a Western university has also

been used to discredit her in ‘ulama circles. The well-known Deobandi

‘alim Mawlana Taqi ‘Uthmani, for example, ‘is dismissive of her doc-

toral education because it was supervised by non-Muslims, based on

biased interpretations of Islamic knowledge, and bereft of the char-

acter-building, truth-seeking spirit of guidance’.

 Or as another critic

said, ‘She has a PhD but she does not have the ijaza [authorization] to

 Mushtaq writes that Farhat Hashmi was a nazima (head) of the Islami

Jama‘at-i Talibat, the student wing of the Jama‘at-i Islami, but according to

Taimiyyah Zubair, this is incorrect. Taimiyyah said her mother gave dars in

her spare time when she was at the International Islamic University, because

she was passionate about studying the Qur’an and passing on her knowledge

of it to others. Personal conversation with Taimiyyah Zubair,  May .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, pp. –. Here

Mushtaq is citing Mufti Abu Safwan, ed., Maghribi Jiddat Pasandi aur Al-Huda

International [Western Modernism and Al-Huda International] (n.p.: Jamhoor

Ahl-i Sunnat wal Jamaat, Pakistan, ).

 Scholars of Faith

spread Islam. … Who has given her the authorization?’

 Many ‘ulama

see the recourse to Western institutions of higher learning as a form

of ‘orientalism’ and a continuation in a di erent form of ‘the Western

ideological domination over Muslims of India since colonial times’.



However, as Zaman points out, it has become normative for leading

Pakistani ‘ulama to seek university degrees themselves, as Mawlana

Taqi ‘Uthmani’s intellectual biography illustrates.



To my knowledge, none of Al-Huda’s critics—nor, indeed, the

admirers of Al-Huda or scholars—have actually read Hashmi’s thesis.

It is hard to access, being unavailable on the University of Glasgow

library website. It seems important, therefore, to sum up the contents

of the thesis here, as the scholarship on which it rests should be in

no doubt.  Farhat Hashmi’s research deals with a twelfth-century

Hadith scholar named Abu Tahir al-Silaﬁ (d.   ). Originally

from Isfahan, Persia, as a young man al-Silaﬁ travelled widely in

the Muslim world—to Baghdad, Mecca, Medina, Cairo, Damascus,

Azerbaijan, Kufa, Alexandria, Armenia, and elsewhere—over an

-year period, settling eventually in Alexandria, Egypt. During his

travels, or rihla , he studied under famous Hadith scholars,

 collect-

ing Hadith from each of them, and writing numerous books. Most

of these have remained unpublished and unknown to the scholarly

world. Hashmi lists and brieﬂ y describes the content of his works,

both published and unpublished, indicating where copies of the latter

are still to be found. For the most part, they are housed in libraries in

Istanbul, Baghdad, Damascus, Rabat, or European cities. The most

important of al-Silaﬁ ’s published works is a biographical dictionary

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. .

 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, ‘Tradition and Authority in Deobandi

Madrasas of South Asia’, in Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim

Zaman, eds, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim

Education (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp. –.

 As noted in the previous chapter, I am very grateful to Taimiyyah Zubair

for making her mother’s PhD thesis available to me electronically. I had tried

to obtain a copy from the University of Glasgow, but they do not have it on

record. Consequently, I wrote to Dr Hashmi requesting a copy and some time

later, in June  my request was granted.

 Seventeen of his over  teachers were women.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

called Mu‘jam al-Safar (Biographical Dictionary of [Hadith Scholars

Encountered during] Travel), which contains the biographies of a

number of contemporary Hadith scholars, many of them of Sicilian

or Spanish origin. This book is the subject of two previous PhD dis-

sertations. Hashmi analyses and translates an unpublished work

called Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-Mujiz that is housed at

the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

 In this book al-Silaﬁ defends the

practice of seeking ijaza s (deﬁ ned as a ‘license [oral or written] given

by a scholar to the recipient to transmit or teach a particular text’), and

gives brief biographies of a number of Hadith scholars he had met

and from whom he received permission to transmit Hadith in the

course of his travels.



Al-Silaﬁ ’s text shows clearly that the practice of giving ijazas was

controversial. Of the di erent methods by which Muslim scholars col-

lected Hadith, sama‘a (deﬁ ned as ‘a method of taking up of hadith in

which the teacher reads and the students listen and memorise’)

 was

the oldest and the most prestigious. Closely related to this—in that it

was also oral—was the practice of qira‘a in which ‘the student reads

under the shaykh and the latter listens and approves the reading’.

 In

addition to memorization and reading, accuracy of transmission from

teacher to student was ensured by the teacher dictating the text orally

to his students, and the latter copying it in the teacher’s presence. Avid

‘seekers of knowledge’ like al-Silaﬁ travelled far and wide in order to

hear as many Hadith as possible from di erent teachers, copy them

 See Farhat Nasim Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr

al-Mujaz wa al-Mujiz by Abu Tahir Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Silaﬁ al-Isba-

hani (d. /) with Introduction, Translation and Notes’ (PhD thesis,

University of Glasgow, ).

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , pp. –.

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , p. .

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , p. . A third kind of personal transmission from teacher to student

was munawalah , deﬁ ned as ‘a method of taking up of hadith in which the

shaykh hands on his traditions to the recipient without sama‘ or qira‘ah ’.

Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-Mujiz ,

p. .

 Scholars of Faith

down, and collect them in books of their own, carefully recording

the chain of transmission, or isnad , of each Hadith, which ultimately

went back to the Prophet through a number of transmitters.

After the canonical collections of al-Bukhari, Muslim, and others

became widely accepted in the eleventh century, however, the oral

transmission of Hadiths and Hadith collections became less vital

to the Muslim community (as the fear of forgery receded), and the

method of written ijazas also came into use.

 Hashmi lists eight

kinds of ijazas.  Some of these, such as the ijaza ‘amma (which

is ‘permission given to people in general as, “I give ijazah to the

Muslims”, or “to all of my contemporaries”’)

 were accepted by some

scholars but rejected by others. Others, such as transmission to an

unknown person or to a child, were almost universally condemned.

Not all ijazas were suspect, however. Some kinds, in which a teacher

certiﬁ ed that a student had mastered a particular book and was able

to teach it to others (as in, ‘I give you ijazah to transmit the book of

al-Bukhari’),  were widely accepted by scholars.

It is in this context of debate about the growing practice of giving

ijazas that al-Silaﬁ ’s writings should be understood. Hashmi notes

that al-Silaﬁ was a ‘fervent advocate’ of the giving of ijazas, and was

most persistent in seeking them from scholars who were reluctant to

give them.  She gives two examples of al-Silaﬁ ’s persistence: the ﬁ rst,

when he wrote to al-Zamakhshari (d. /), the famous Persian

scholar, asking for his ijaza, and when the latter did not respond, he

wrote again the following year. In the second example, he asked Abu

Hafs ‘Umar b. Yusuf al-Siqilli (d. /), a Sicilian scholar, for his

ijaza:

 For a comprehensive history of Hadith transmission, see Jonathan

A.C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World

(Oxford: Oneworld, ), Chapter .

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , pp. –.

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , p. .

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , p. .

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , p. .

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

The latter was renowned for not wanting to transmit hadith to anyone,

and no one had previously been able to obtain his ijazah . However, when

al-Silaﬁ found out that he had been the recipient of particular material, he

argued with him for a long time until he persuaded him to give his ijazah

of what he himself had received either by ijazah or sama‘. 

Once he had obtained the ijazas, al-Silaﬁ was very ‘generous’ in pass-

ing them on to ‘other people’.

In the second part of the thesis, which consists of an English trans-

lation (critical edition) of al-Silaﬁ ’s book, one encounters passages

which clearly explain the reasons for al-Silaﬁ ’s position. Travel was

not possible for everyone, he argued. Many could not a ord to travel

for one reason or another, and therefore face-to-face transmission

through sama‘ was ‘a matter of fortune’, only possible for a few. In

order to make sure that no sunnas of the Prophet were lost to pos-

terity, other methods must also be used. The Prophet himself had

shown the way by writing letters to leaders in distant places through

emissaries. 

Furthermore, al-Silaﬁ argued, what mattered most was ‘the trans-

mitter’s knowledge, carefulness and precision, however the transmis-

sion takes place, whether by sama‘ , munawalah or ijazah , since all

these are permissible’.  As long as the transmitter was reliable, it was

unimportant how the Hadith was transmitted. More important was

the fact that by transmitting the ‘material by ijazah [through stringent

standards]’, the sunna was strengthened and thereby a sound basis

was laid for the shari‘a. He suggested that Hadith scholars should

indicate how they had learned the Hadith they were transmitting by

using phrases such as ‘I heard’ ( anba‘ani ) or ‘we heard’ ( anba‘ana ) if

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , p. .

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz , pp. , , , and  (for the phrase, ‘ sama‘ is a matter of fortune ’,

which is repeated elsewhere in the work as well). Al-Silaﬁ also argued, quot-

ing the Qur’an, that Allah did not want to create di culties for the believer, so

they should heed the ‘concession’ made available. Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition

of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al- Mujiz’, pp. –.

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz’, p. .

 Scholars of Faith

they were transmitting ‘from someone whom he has seen and spoken

to face to face’, or ‘he wrote to me’ ( kataba ilayya ) if the Hadith had

come from someone through correspondence, and so on.

 This way,

the method of transmission would be evident to all, and each person

could decide whether to accept the Hadith or not.

A further issue that greatly concerned al-Silaﬁ —and Hadith schol-

ars generally—was the nature of the isnad, or chain of transmission,

this being another important factor in determining the reliability of

the Hadith. Even a Hadith that had been acquired by ijaza had to have

a known isnad, for it was ‘the isnad … that connected a scholar to

the Prophet and allowed him to act as an authoritative interpreter of

Islam’.  Further complexity was added over time, as books of Hadith

were handed down rather than individual Hadith. These too came to

have chains of transmission from teacher to student, initially passed

on orally but later in writing. By al-Silaﬁ ’s time, Hadiths with short

chains of transmission, with fewer rather than more transmitters, had

become particularly prized. Where initially the desire for short chains

sprang from concern with accuracy and authenticity (if there were

fewer transmitters, the chances of error were reduced), over time the

reason for wanting short chains was that the number of intermediar-

ies between oneself and the Prophet was smaller and therefore one

was closer to the Prophet both in authority and blessing.

 Al-Silaﬁ

notes in several of the Hadiths he transmits that they had an ‘elevated’

chain. 

To conclude, Farhat Hashmi’s research on al-Silaﬁ ’s book estab-

lishes her mastery of a complex Arabic textual tradition. While al-

Silaﬁ is not well known in scholarly circles today, this unpublished

manuscript raises issues that are important in the history of Hadith

 Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al-

Mujiz’, p. .

 Brown, Hadith , p. .

 Brown, Hadith , pp. –.

 ‘Uluw al-sanad , derived from ‘ali , deﬁ ned as ‘a tradition [in] which the

isnad contains relatively fewer authorities’. Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of

Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al- Mujiz’ p. . For an example of such a

mention in al-Silaﬁ ’s text, see Hashmi, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab al-Wajiz ﬁ

Dhikr al-Mujaz wa al- Mujiz’, p. .

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

studies, especially in its discussion of the method of transmission

through ijaza rather than face-to-face interaction between master and

student. Hashmi’s scholarship has undoubtedly informed the way

she conducts her own classes on the Qur’an and Hadith at Al-Huda.

Likewise, her lived experience of being in a Western university with

high academic standards, the stringent demands made by academic

life on one’s time, and travel to a wide variety of European, Turkish,

and Middle Eastern libraries and cities (engaging in a rihla of her

own, as I suggested earlier), probably also inﬂ uenced the way she and

her husband organized the institute which they went on to establish

in Islamabad after a short period of time.

Idrees Zubair’s Scholarship

Idrees Zubair’s thesis, like Farhat Hashmi’s, deals with a medieval

Hadith scholar, and the structure of his thesis is similar as well. It

is dedicated to his father Abul al-Tayyib Shams al-Haqq, who Zubair

describes as his teacher. He was a muhaddith , one who ‘dedicated

his life to teaching the Hadith’.

 In the family, a story illustrating

his impeccable integrity was told that in his old age two young men

came to him asking him for an ijaza for a particular isnad, but he

refused to do so because by this time he had become forgetful and

could not guarantee that he would remember the chain of transmis-

sion ( silsila ) of the Hadiths correctly.

 Mushtaq notes that Zubair’s

father had completed the dars-i nizami syllabus at the Madrasa

Dar al-Hadis Rahmaniyah in Multan, Punjab.

 While studying in

Glasgow, both Farhat Hashmi and Idrees Zubair were helped by

 Muhammad Idrees Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitāb Tuhḷfat Ḍhawī al-

Irab fī Mushkil al-Asmāʼ wa al-Nisab by Abū al-Thanāʼ Mahḷmūd b. Ahḷmad b.

Muhḷammad, known as Ibn Khatḷīb al-Dahshah al-Hḷamawī (–/–

); with Introduction and Notes’ (PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow,

). In the Acknowledgements, Zubair thanks Professor John N. Mattock,

then chairman of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, under

whose supervision he conducted his work. (Professor Mattock was also the

thesis supervisor for Farhat Hashmi, as noted in her Acknowledgements.)

 Reported to me by Taimiyyah Zubair in an informal conversation, 

May , at Mississauga, Canada.

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. , n. .

 Scholars of Faith

Shaykh Muhammad Sa‘id al-Badhanjaki, the then Director of the

Islamic Institute at Manchester, UK, who provided access to old

manuscripts and gave them intellectual and personal guidance,



and Mahmud Ahmad Ghazi, then Director of the Da‘wah Academy

in Islamabad.

Zubair’s thesis consists of two parts, in the ﬁ rst of which he analy-

ses the life and works of the fourteenth-century Syrian scholar Ibn

Khatib al-Dahshah al-Hamawi (–  /–  ),  and the

second of which contains the Arabic text which is the subject of analy-

sis in Part One. The thesis analyses an ‘alphabetical dictionary’ by Ibn

Khatib called the Kitāb Tuhḷfat Ḍhawī al-Irab fī Mushkil al-Asmāʼ wa al-

Nisab (The Gift of the Possessors of Wisdom, or alternatively, The Gift

to those in Need),

 ‘which deals with the vocalization of the names

and nisba s [su x indicating a person’s place of origin] which occur

in the three canonical hadith collections, namely the Sahihayn (the

two Sahih s) and the Muwatta‘ [,] regardless of whether these names

occur in the isnad s [chains of transmission] or in the matn [subject

matter] of these books’.

 Although this work was the subject of an

earlier PhD thesis in , Zubair says that many of its conclusions

were erroneous because it was based on incomplete access to primary

source material. He also writes that early traditionalists recognized

the importance of correct vocalization of the Hadith literature, in

view of the frequency of mistakes in reading ( tashif , deﬁ ned as ‘the

fault of reading a name with the wrong consonant, e.g. Marhum

 In his ‘Acknowledgements’, Zubair writes of al-Badhanjaki’s ‘keen

interest in hadith and its sciences’, and refers to him as a teacher and friend.

Taimiyyah Zubair also mentioned Farhat Hashmi’s immense personal respect

for him as one of her teachers. Informal conversation,  May .

 The Hijri dates for Ibn Khatib given on the title page of Zubair’s thesis

appear to be a typographical error, for –  would make Ibn Khatib

over  years old at his death. The Gregorian dates –  are equiva-

lent to –  . On p. , Zubair gives Ibn Khatib’s date of birth as  

and on p. , he writes that Ibn Khatib was  years old when he died in 

 .

 Translation given in Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi

al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-Asma wa al-Nisab ’, p. .

 Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-

Asma wa al-Nisab ’, Abstract.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

and Marjum’, and tahrif , deﬁ ned as ‘the fault of reading a name with

metathesis, e.g. reading Marhum as Mahrum’).



Ibn Khatib belonged to a well-respected family in Hamah, approxi-

mately  miles north of Damascus, Syria. His father, Ibn Zahir

(d.   ), originally from Fayyum, Egypt, settled in Hamah and

became, by royal appointment, the khatib (person who gives the ser-

mon during the Friday congregational prayer) at the Jami‘ al-Dahshah

mosque in Hamah. This was a mosque with outstanding architectural

features and a major library containing , volumes.

 After the

completion of his elementary education, Ibn Khatib, like contem-

porary Hadith scholars, travelled ‘extensively’ in Syria and Egypt in

order to study and ‘receive’ speciﬁ c Hadith collections face-to-face

from di erent scholars.  In time he acquired a scholarly reputation

of his own, the result of teaching, issuing fatwas, and becoming an

authority in Hadith, ﬁ qh, adab, and nahw (grammar). He was also a

cultured man who wrote letters in verse to various scholars. For about

 years he held the powerful position of qadi (judge) of Hamah, until

his ouster when a new ruler came to power in   (  ).

 He

died about  years later.

Zubair next summarizes the content of  of Ibn Khatib’s extant

works, many of which are currently located in libraries in Egypt and

Hamah. Some of them are ‘devoted to the discussion of tashif [dis-

tortions resulting from consonants being read incorrectly, as noted

earlier] and i‘rab [case endings] … found in various MSS of ahadith

from various transmitters’,  others to unusual words found in the

Hadith in the Muwatta‘ and the two Sahih s, and some to the art of

calligraphy, among other topics. After this, Zubair comes to the main

focus of his study, namely, the Tuhfah .

 Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-

Asma wa al-Nisab ’, Preface. The deﬁ nitions are given on p. , n. .

 Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-

Asma wa al-Nisab ’, p. .

 Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-

Asma wa al-Nisab ’, p. .

 Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-

Asma wa al-Nisab ’, pp. –.

 Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-

Asma wa al-Nisab ’, p. .

 Scholars of Faith

In this book, as noted earlier, Ibn Khatib discusses two subjects,

that is, the names and the nisbas which occur in the Hadith collec-

tions known as Sahihayn (al-Bukhari and Muslim) and the Muwatta‘

of Malik ibn Anas, founder of the Maliki school of law. Incredibly, he

‘compiled the work in  days’, which led him to occasionally make

some careless errors in copying his material. However, in Zubair’s

view these are relatively small in number, considering the scope of

the complete work. Zubair compared eight di erent manuscript edi-

tions of the work, housed in libraries in Istanbul, Damascus, London,

and Berlin, and prepared an annotated critical edition on the basis

of three of these.

 This critical edition—in Arabic, not in English

translation—constitutes the bulk of the thesis.

While recognizing that the di erent aspects of Hashmi’s scholar-

ship and that of Zubair are closely related, perhaps we could sum-

marize their respective studies by saying that Hashmi’s work deals

primarily with the transmission of Hadith—its many forms and

methods, and their respective strengths and weaknesses in the eyes

of her subject, al-Silaﬁ —while Zubair’s focuses on the accuracy of

transmission of one part of the Hadith, that is, the names of the

transmitters and the su xes indicating their geographical origins,

as evidenced in a major alphabetical dictionary by Ibn Khatib. Taken

together, their research shows clearly the importance of Hadith stud-

ies for them and also illustrates the many di culties inherent in the

process of accurate Hadith transmission, given the enormous volume

of material, the possibility of error in both oral and written transmis-

sion (though as both authors make clear, oral modes of transmission

were regarded as more accurate than written), and the geographic

spread of the works of medieval Hadith scholars.

Mushtaq throws further light on the matter through her discus-

sion of a slim booklet by Zubair entitled ‘Why Does Hadis Need

Protection?’ According to Mushtaq, this book forms the basis for

many of Zubair’s lectures at Al-Huda classes. In it, he argues that the

Hadith are a necessary complement to the Qur’an, as each is needed

to fully understand the other. Furthermore, there can be no contradic-

tion between the one and the other. He also maintains that one cannot

 Zubair, ‘A Critical Edition of Kitab Tuhfat Ḍhawi al-Irab ﬁ Mushkil al-

Asma wa al-Nisab ’, pp. , , .

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

selectively pick and choose what one wants from either the Qur’an or

the Hadith, but must implement them both in full in one’s daily life

(an argument also made by Farhat Hashmi in her Al-Huda lectures,

and by other teachers who have followed in her footsteps). Mushtaq

writes:

Zubair charges that some people even modify or invent ahadis to make

religion seem attractive and appeal to people’s emotions to lure them to

religion, and criticizes cults of personality around commentators whose

followers reverentially collect their arcane and convoluted rulings. Zubair

sees concerted e orts going on to undermine the status of hadis , through

ridiculing it, fabricating baseless ahadis , and turning it into a contentious

issue with which to divide the Muslim community. He responds with

a spirited defense of the work of the muhaddisin —scholars who gather,

study, and verify traditions attributed to the Prophet—as being exemplary

in the quality and rigor of its research. Their method of authenticating a

hadis by verifying the authority of its chain of transmitters ( sanad ) is the

only sound one, according to Zubair, no matter how popular or preva-

lent an unsubstantiated hadis might be. In contrast, he alleges that other

branches of Islamic knowledge such as ﬁ qh rely upon weak standards,

dubious authorities, and personal biases. 

This lengthy quotation points to the contentious nature of some of

the positions taken by Zubair with respect to other Muslim interpreta-

tions of the Islamic tradition. In the following section, I turn to the

Ahl-i Hadith movement to better understand the arguments being

made.

Who Are the Ahl-i Hadith?

As noted earlier, Farhat Hashmi’s father had been associated with

the Jama‘at-i Islami and Idrees Zubair comes from an Ahl-i Hadith

background. Mushtaq’s research shows that Hashmi gradually moved

away from the Jama‘at-i Islami towards the Ahl-i Hadith perspective.



 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. . Mushtaq

does not give the Urdu title of this booklet. As it is not cited in her bibliogra-

phy, I was not able to ﬁ nd the publication information.

 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, pp. a. Taimiyyah

Zubair told me this had less to do with her father’ Taimiyyah Zubair told me

 Scholars of Faith

Most students at Al-Huda are unaware of these or other South Asian

movements by name, particularly if they are second-generation South

Asian Muslims living in Europe, Canada, or the US. Instead, Al-Huda

guides them on how to be ‘good Muslims’, deliberately eschewing

any sectarian identity or label. In other words, students learn about

‘Islam’ as Al-Huda believes it was taught to the Prophet Muhammad

through the revelation of the Qur’an. Nevertheless, in view of Farhat

Hashmi and Idrees Zubair’s backgrounds I want to explore the ideas

that the Ahl-i Hadith espouses, particularly as it is less well known

than the Jama‘at-i Islami.



The Ahl-i Hadith is the older (and smaller) of the two movements,

having emerged in the mid- to late-nineteenth century ﬁ rst in Delhi,

then in Bihar, Bhopal, Punjab, and elsewhere in South Asia. The

Ahl-i Hadith trace their intellectual roots back to Shah Wali Allah

(–), in particular his call for the need for independent juristic

reasoning ( ijtihad ) rather than received opinion according to the four

Sunni schools of law ( madhhab ). Further inﬂ uences are the teachings

of Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (–) and Shah Muhammad Isma‘il

Dihlawi (–), leaders of the Tariqa-i Muhammadiya reform-

ist movement of the early-nineteenth century. In particular, Shah

Muhammad Isma‘il’l two books Sirat al-mustaqim (The Straight Path)

and Taqwiyat al-iman (Strengthening the Faith), which emphasize the

transcendent unity of God ( tawhid ), are ‘important sources for the Ahl-i

Hadith movement’.  After the – jihad in the northwest (in and

this had less to do with her father direction as a result of her own personal

study. Given that Hashmi has studied Hadith in depth for her PhD, this is

entirely plausible. Personal conversation,  May .

 On the history of the Jama‘at-i Islami, see in particular Seyyed Vali Reza

Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama‘at-i Islami of Pakistan

(Berkeley: University of California Press, ). Also see Muhammad Qasim

Zaman, Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

), Chapter .

 Claudia Preckel, ‘Ahl-i Hadith’, in Gudrun Kramer, Denis Matringe,

John Nawas, and Everett Rowson, eds, Encyclopaedia of Islam Three , –

(Leiden: Brill, ), p. . Shah Muhammad Isma‘il was Shah Wali Allah’s

grandson. On the Tariqa-i Muhammadiya, see Harlan O. Pearson, Islamic

Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-century India: The Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah ,

with a Foreword by David Lelyveld (Delhi: Yoda Press, ).

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

around Balakot, which is now in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province

of Pakistan),  against the Sikh kingdom of Ranjit Singh (–)

had ended in defeat and the deaths of both Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi and

Shah Muhammad Isma‘il,  some continued the jihad movement in

Patna, Bihar, while many became followers of Shah Muhammad Ishaq

(–). He was Shah Wali Allah’s great-grandson and Shah ‘Abd

al-‘Aziz’s (–) grandson, spiritual successor ( sajjada nishin ),

and successor as head of the Madrasa Rahimiya in Delhi. One of Shah

Muhammad Ishaq’s followers ‘helped found … the Ahl-i Hadith’.



There is thus a direct connection between Shah Wali Allah’s descen-

dants, the Tariqa-i Muhammadiya, and the Ahl-i Hadith.

A third major intellectual inﬂ uence was the Yemeni scholar

Muhammad b. ‘Ali al-Shawkani (–), whose teachings are

traceable to the Andalusian scholar Ibn Hazm (–) and the

Syrian Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (–).

 Some of Sayyid

Ahmad Barelwi’s followers had travelled to Yemen after going on

hajj to Mecca prior to the jihad, studied under al-Shawkani, and then

returned to India and spread his teachings. However, unlike the Shah

Wali Allahi tradition and the Tariqa-i Muhammadiya, which embraced

Suﬁ sm while distancing themselves from the popular practices asso-

ciated with it, al-Shawkani is known for his anti-Suﬁ stance. Like Shah

Wali Allah, he was a strong supporter of ijtihad, thereby ‘reinforc[ing]

the tendency away from Hanaﬁ sm and the madhhab-system in

general’.  Al-Shawkani’s inﬂ uence among Tariqa-i Muhammadiya

 In addition to Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-

Century India , pp. –, the hajj of – and the subsequent jihad are

also described in Barbara D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband,

1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ), pp. –.

 For the reasons for the jihad movement and its course and outcome,

see Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-century India , pp. iva

 On the historical importance of Shah Wali Allah and His descen-

dants to the Barelwi movement, see Introduction, section entitled ‘Apples

and Oranges? Suﬁ s and Wahhabis?’. Pearson, Islamic Reform and Revival in

Nineteenth-century India , pp. ival in Nineteenth-century

 On al-Shawkani, see Bernard Haykel, Revival and Reform in Islam: The

Legacy of Muhammad al-Shawkani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

).

 Martin Riexinger, ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity? A

Study of the Ahl-i Hadis in Late Nineteenth/Early Twentieth Century South

 Scholars of Faith

followers was also spread by Mawlana ‘Abd al-Haqq Banarasi (d.

) who had studied with al-Shawkani in San‘a, and later spread

his ideas in India, and by two Yemeni students of al-Shawkani who

settled in Bhopal, then a princely state in Central India. By the late-

nineteenth century, Bhopal had become a centre for Ahl-i Hadith

views on account of the writings of Nawab Sayyid Siddiq Hasan Khan

al-Qannawji (–), the Ahl-i Hadith leader and husband of the

then ruler of Bhopal, Shah Jahan Begum (–).



The Ahl-i Hadith insistence on ijtihad means that ‘any legal decision

should be supported by a source in either the Qur’an or the sunna of

the Prophet’.  When a layman asks a scholar for an opinion ( fatwa ),

he or she should try and ensure that the opinion is based on either

or both of these sources. According to the Ahl-i Hadith, the practice

of following the rulings of a single school of law, which in South Asia

is largely the Hanaﬁ school (and secondarily also the Shaﬁ ‘i school in

southwest India), is a reprehensible innovation ( bid‘a ). By extension,

the Ahl-i Hadith do not accept the validity of the practice of analogical

reasoning ( qiya s) or the consensus of the scholars ( ijma‘ ) either. This is

a very contentious issue among the South Asian ‘ulama and has earned

the Ahl-i Hadith the derogatory designation of ‘ ghair muqallid ’, or those

who do not follow taqlid .  They are also called ‘Wahhabi’, a term used

by opponents since the nineteenth century to discredit their ideas.



Asia’, in Gwilym Beckerlegge, ed., Colonialism, Modernity and Religious

Movements in South Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, ), p. .

 Preckel, ‘Ahl-i Hadith’, p. . See also Siobhan Lambert Hurley, Muslim

Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal

(Abingdon: Routledge, ); and Barbara Metcalf, ‘Islam and Power in

Colonial India: The Making and Unmaking of a Muslim Princess’, American

Historical Review (February ), ():  ():

 Preckel, ‘Ahl-i Hadith’, pp. a.

 This does not mean that the Ahl-i Hadith do not consult the rulings of

past jurists or scholars. Rather, they are encouraged to follow these rulings

judiciously, choosing the best ones on a case-by-case basis regardless of the

law school followed by particular scholars.

 For a history of the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, see Natana J.

DeLong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (New

York: Oxford University Press, ).

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

Apart from the Ahl-i Hadith insistence on ijtihad, they are also dis-

tinctive in several other ways. Notably, when they o er the daily prayer

( salah ), unlike Sunni Muslims in South Asia, they raise their hands

up to their ears between each cycle ( rak‘a ) and say amin out loud.  In

addition, the Ahl-i Hadith, stressing the equality of all believers, hold

that the Friday noon-time sermon, which is given at the end of the

congregational prayer in large mosques, must also be given at village

mosques, and furthermore that it should be in the local vernacular

language rather than Arabic, so the audience can understand it.



Unlike the Hanaﬁ ‘ulama they believe women should be allowed to

pray in mosques rather than at home. In marriage, they reject the

prohibition of marriage between a higher status woman and a man

of lower status ( kafa’ ) and the validity of the triple divorce, whereby

a man can divorce his wife in one sitting by repudiating her three

consecutive times.  They also make it easier for a woman to get out

of a bad marriage by ‘seeking the mediation of a scholar and forfeit-

ing’ her marriage settlement ( mahr ), in e ect buying herself out of the

marriage.  Metcalf argues that the Ahl-i Hadith were ‘millenarian, a

perspective adding urgency to their teachings’.



According to some scholars, the Ahl-i Hadith’s reformist mes-

sage based on scriptural knowledge, self-discipline, and emphasis on

austerity, simplicity, equality, and hard work, is an illustration of the

 As Alan M. Guenther notes, the latter practice was the cause of a law-

suit in Banaras in . See Alan M. Guenther, ‘A Colonial Court Deﬁ nes a

Muslim’, in Barbara D. Metcalf, ed., Islam in South Asia in Practice (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, ), pp. –.

 Riexinger, ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity?’, p. .

 In , the Supreme Court of India declared the practice of triple

talaq to be unconstitutional. The government decision has been controver-

sial among Indian Muslims. While some have welcomed the new law, which

bans a practice already banned in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other Muslim-

majority countries, others worry about the criminalization of a part of Muslim

personal law in India, which is protected by the Indian constitution, and the

possible imposition by the government of a uniform civil code in the future.

 Riexinger, How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity?’, p. .

 Metcalf, ‘Islam and Power in Colonial India’, p. . And on p. : ‘Siddiq

Hasan and the Ahl-i Hadith were millenarian, inclined to think that with the

turning of the thirteenth Islamic century, the ﬁ nal days were at hand’.

 Scholars of Faith

Weberian ‘Protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism’ thesis, which is

associated with an urban, educated, and merchant population seek-

ing spiritual salvation through faith and good works. However, while

their insistence on ensuring that the Qur’an and sunna be followed

in legal matters has in practice led the Ahl-i Hadith’s following to

be largely urban and educated,

 Reixinger cautions that this is not

always so (any more than one can assume that the Barelwis are neces-

sarily rural). In the Punjab, ‘it was … in their rural surroundings that

the ﬁ rst people converted to their teachings. In certain “Ahl-i Hadis

villages”’, the majority of the residents belonged to the Ahl-i Hadith.

And indeed it was from certain rural districts in the Punjab that

many of the ﬁ rst leaders of the movement emerged.

 He also argues

that the ‘inner-worldly asceticism of which Weber wrote might have

favoured capital accumulation among the Ahl-i Hadith had they not

been prone to a ‘particular kind of conspicuous spending … namely,

extensive donations for missionary purposes’.



Most importantly, though, Reixinger argues that when it comes to

religious teachings, the Ahl-i Hadith exhibit contradictory tendencies.

On the one hand, the requirement that the religious scholar explain

his rulings to the layperson who asks him for an opinion has the e ect

of elevating the status of the layperson and giving him or her an active

voice in community settings such as voluntary associations ( anju-

man s). However, by the same token, the insistence on giving primacy

to the Qur’an and Hadith to the exclusion of the corpus of Hanaﬁ law

leads to ‘literalist and anthropomorphist interpretations’ and favours

conservative positions on a host of issues, not just religious ones.



 See Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India , pp. e.

 Riexinger, ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity?’, p. .

 Riexinger, ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity?’, p. . Of

course, the donation of money and time for missionary purposes, or da‘wa ,

has been enormously important in building up the Al-Huda movement to

where it is today, in a relatively short period of time.

 Riexinger ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity?’, pp.  .

Riexinger illustrates his argument with two examples, namely, debate over

the interpretation of the phrase, ‘ thumma stawa a‘la l-warsh ’ (Qur’an : and

elsewhere) (‘then God ascended the throne’) and the question of miracles. He

also cites the case of Muhammad Husayn Batalwi and his attitude to secular

scientiﬁ c education.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

But given that not everyone in the Ahl-i Hadith movement (or any

other movement for that matter) acts mechanistically and in the same

manner, Reixinger concludes that one must judge the ‘modernity’

of the Ahl-i Hadith—or lack thereof—by attending to the ‘concrete

historical phenomena’ and contexts of events.



Islamic Sources Cited in Al-Huda Classes

In this examination of Al-Huda’s intellectual formation, another

aspect that deserves our attention is its use of Islamic sources in the

classroom, particularly Hadith and tafsir or Qur’anic exegesis. Given

Al-Huda’s inclination towards the Ahl-i Hadith perspective, it is not

surprising that teachers refer regularly to the corpus of Hadith lit-

erature in Arabic, some of which is also taught by the Sunni ‘ulama

of di erent schools of thought in their madrasas in South Asia. In

addition, certain works of tafsir are used regularly.

Reference to the Hadith collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim,

two of the most widely accepted Sunni collections, is interwoven into

Al-Huda classes. These books are readily available on Al-Huda’s web-

site without charge and are therefore easily accessible to students.

Teachers also refer to Hadiths from the other well-known collections

of al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa‘i, Abu Dawud, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Most

often, however, reference is made not to a particular book but to

the person(s) who related the Hadith. One of the names that crops

up frequently during translation classes is that of Ibn ‘Abbas (d. 

/–  ), a Medinan Companion ( sahaba ) who is said to have

been either  or  years old when the Prophet died.

 Ibn ‘Abbas

was both a major transmitter of Hadith and an early exegete of

great importance—he is described as the ‘father of qur’anic exege-

sis’ because many of the exegetes in the next generation, that of the

Followers ( tabi‘un ), were his disciples. Their names too are frequently

mentioned in translation classes as primary sources, among them

Ikrima (d.  /  ), al-Hasan al-Basri (d.  /  ), and

 Riexinger, ‘How Favourable Is Puritan Islam to Modernity?’, p. .

 Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by

the Early Muslims, a Textual Analysis (Princeton: Darwin Press, ), p. .

 Scholars of Faith

Qatada (d.  /  ).  Like chains of Hadith transmission,

works of Qur’anic exegesis also had transmission chains from one

generation to the next, exegetes in each successive generation trans-

mitting and adding to the exegesis they had received.

In addition to the citation of scholars’ names when translating

and explaining verses of the Qur’an, another characteristic practice

in Al-Huda classes is that of citing variant opinions on the mean-

ing of speciﬁ c words and telling students which opinion, in the

teacher’s view, is the strongest one in a given context. For example,

in explaining Sura , verse  (Al-Shura, Counsel): ‘Say: “I do not

ask of you a wage for this, except love for the kinsfolk …”’ (Arberry

trans.), Taimiyyah gave ﬁ ve di erent exegetes’ interpretations of the

words ‘love for the kinsfolk’, including those of Ibn ‘Abbas and Ikrima

(who interpreted them as ‘a ection for my nearness to you, that is,

I am your relative’). But she said the strongest interpretation of the

phrase, given the context of the verse as a whole, was that it meant ‘I

want you to have love for nearness to Allah’, this being Hasan al-Basri

and Qatada’s interpretation.  Or again, in Sura , verse  (Al-Fath,

The Victory): ‘Their mark is on their faces, the trace of prostration’

(Arberry trans.), she said the distinctive mark on the faces of the

Prophet’s Companions could be interpreted as being both ﬁ gurative

and literal. In terms of the literal marks on their faces, Ibn ‘Abbas

interprets the word as meaning ‘beautiful demeanour’, while Hasan

al-Basri interprets it as ‘paleness of the face, tiredness because of stay-

ing up at night to pray’.

 In this case, she emphasized that the words

‘their mark’ ( seemahum ) should not be understood in the literal sense

alone, but also ﬁ guratively as ‘glowing faces’.

When students take tests at the end of each of the  parts (juz)

of the Qur’an,  of the  tests is devoted to exegesis.

 The primary

sourcebook used for this in Al-Huda classes, as noted in the previous

 On Ibn ‘Abbas being the Companion who transmitted his exegesis to

many of the major exegetes in the generation of the Followers, see Claude

Gilliot, ‘Exegesis of the Qur’an: Classical and Medieval’, in Jane Dammen

McAuli e, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an , vol.  (Leiden: Brill, ), pp.

–.

 Lesson ,  January .

 Lesson ,  February .

 The other two deal with translation and grammar.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

chapter, is the tafsir of the Syrian scholar Ibn Kathir (–  ).

Ibn Kathir is considered to be the second major exegete in the history

of Qur’anic hermeneutics after al-Tabari (d.   ) in the methodol-

ogy known as tafsir bi’l-ma’thur , or ‘interpretation according to what

has been handed down, that is, the sayings of the prophet and the

venerable companions and successors’.

 A student of the Hanbali

scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. ), Ibn Kathir was greatly inﬂ uenced by

him. McAuli e explains that in Ibn Kathir’s methodology the ﬁ rst

step in tafsir was ‘“to interpret the Qur’an according to the Qur’an”.

Letting the Qur’an interpret itself presupposes understanding the

Qur’an as a uniﬁ ed body of revelation, one part of which can often

clarify another. Ibn Kathir underscores this by noting that, in the

Qur’an, what is said succinctly in one place is treated in detail in

another place.’  When this method has been exhausted, the next step

is to interpret the Qur’an in light of the ‘prophetic sunna , because the

sunna is a “means for laying open the Qur’an and a means of eluci-

dating it”’.  Having been trained in the Shaﬁ ‘i tradition, Ibn Kathir

regarded the sunna as having been ‘sent down by inspiration ( wahy )

as the Qur’an was, although it was not received [through Gabriel] as

was the Qur’an’.  Further steps in the process involve relying on the

sayings of the Companions of the Prophet, because they were eye

witnesses to events in the Prophet’s life, and beyond them, on the

sayings of the Followers ( tabi‘un ). 

 R. Marston Speight, ‘The Function of Hadith as Commentary on the

Qur’an, as Seen in the Six Authoritative Collections’, in Andrew Rippin, ed.,

Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’an (Piscataway, NJ:

Gorgias Press, ), p. . This method is contrasted with tafsir bi’l ra’y ,

‘interpretation by the use of reason’, which many Muslim scholars consid-

ered prone to error. See Speight, ‘The Function of Hadith as Commentary on

the Qur’an, pp. –.

 Jane Dammen McAuli e, ‘Quranic Hermeneutics’, in Andrew Rippin,

ed., Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur’an (Piscataway, NJ:

Gorgias Press, ), p. .

 McAuli e, ‘Quranic Hermeneutics’. Where double quotes are used,

McAuli e is quoting from Ibn Kathir’s Tafsir al-Qur’an al-a‘zim.

 Farhat Hashmi articulates the same point in one of her lectures, Lecture

.f ().

 McAuli e, ‘Quranic Hermeneutics’, pp. –.

 Scholars of Faith

According to Waines, a characteristic of Ibn Kathir’s exegesis is

his emphasis on the absolute sovereignty of God, and a second is his

view that ‘divine existence and unity are mirrored in the multiplicity

of God’s creation’.  A simple example of both points (and there are

many in the Qur’an) is the phrase al-rabb al-‘alamin or ‘Lord of the

worlds’, in the opening chapter, the Fatiha. Ibn Kathir explains ‘the

worlds’ by saying, ‘the word ‘alam is itself a plural word, having no

singular form. The ‘alamin are di erent creations that exist in the

heavens and the earth, on land and at sea.’

 In other words, God’s

sovereignty encompasses all of creation, including everything in our

galaxy and beyond.  In Farhat Hashmi’s exegesis of this verse to her

students, this point is made at length, with the gloss ‘all’ before ‘the

worlds’ and extensive references to current scientiﬁ c data about the

planetary system, a point to which I turn in the next section.



A noticeable feature of Farhat Hashmi’s message to students of

Al-Huda, which may be traceable to her study of Ibn Taymiyya and

Ibn Kathir, is a strong emphasis on the importance of unity and the

avoidance of dissension. McAuli e notes that while Ibn Kathir was

open to the idea of using non-Islamic material ( al-ahadith al-isra’iliya )

in Qur’anic exegesis, he cautioned against exegetical discord over

minor matters which beneﬁ ts no one: ‘The proper course of action

is to take into account the various views expressed, ratify the sound,

reject the false, and then let the matter drop … “lest contention and

debate lengthen into what is useless and you occupy yourself with it to

the exclusion of what is more signiﬁ cant”.’  It is entirely in keeping

 David Waines, ‘Agriculture and Vegetation’, in Jane Dammen

McAuli e, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Quran , vol.  (Leiden: Brill, ), p. a.

 Shaykh Saﬁ ur-Rahman al-Mubarakpuri, Tafsir Ibn Kathir (Abridged),

vol.  (Riyadh: Maktaba Dar-us-Salam, ), p. .

 This is a far more expansive interpretation of the phrase than that of

Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford:

Stanford University Press, ), p. , where Asad translates the phrase as

‘“Lord of the two worlds” (namely, the world of men and the world of jinns

([spirits])’.

 Farhat Hashmi, Lesson .c–d (). By picking this example out of

many possible ones, I am not suggesting that this interpretation of the verse

is controversial.

 McAuli e, ‘Quranic Hermeneutics’, pp. –.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

with such a view that Farhat Hashmi decries what she sees as the

current division of Muslims in South Asia into numerous denomi-

national groups ( ﬁ rqa ) and tells students that Muslims can only be

strong if they work together. In the classroom, she strongly encour-

ages students to learn from one another in a number of di erent ways

and to share their knowledge with others.

Al-Huda’s Approach to Science and Everyday Life

Also striking when one listens to Farhat Hashmi’s lectures to students

is the frequency with which she incorporates references to scientiﬁ c

knowledge, in ﬁ elds as diverse as medicine, biology, psychology, and

so on, and notable developments as reported in contemporary media

or aspects of life relating to computer science or communications

technology that she relates to her exegesis of the Qur’anic verses at

hand. The Qur’anic material is seamlessly integrated with modern

science, technology, and the everyday realities of the students.



As the Urdu lectures I listened to were delivered in Mississauga,

Canada, in , she was referring to aspects of life as experienced

there at that time. Thus, in one breath her discussion might centre

on the roots of the Arabic words being studied and the intricacies

of the Arabic language, while in the next her focus could shift to the

absurdity of the driver of a car simply following whatever route the car

in front was taking in the hope that this would lead her to her destina-

tion, because she had no map. Here the student had a vivid image

of getting o the highway and taking the wrong exit, going north

when she should have gone south. The Qur’anic term ‘the straight

path’ ( sirat al-mustaqim ) was thus perfectly illustrated with a negative

example of what happens when one goes in the wrong direction.

References to scientiﬁ c facts abound in Farhat Hashmi’s lectures

even when the context does not appear to call for them. Thus, in her

exegesis of Qur’an  (al-Baqara, The Cow), verses  through , which

deal with the characteristics of people who profess faith in Islam but

are in fact opposed to it (in the Prophet’s time, the term Hypocrites,

munaﬁ qin , referred to such a group of people), she focused particularly

 On Hashmi’s approach to science, see Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to

Religious Authority’, pp. – and passim.

 Scholars of Faith

on the phrase ‘in their hearts is a disease’ ( ﬁ qulubihim maradun ). The

root of the problem of deception—which in reality was (and has always

been through history, Farhat Hashmi said) self -deception—was that it

is a disease of the heart. First she asked her students to ask themselves

whether they did any of the things mentioned in these verses. This self-

assessment was for themselves, she said; she didn’t want to know what

answers they came up with. Because if they deceived themselves, then

how would they be cured? Second, she described the physical properties

of the human heart in considerable detail, emphasizing its importance

to the maintenance of life, its functions, and the amount of energy it

expends in the course of a single day in order to pump blood to all parts

of the body, down not just to the hair on one’s body but to each cell.



Thereafter, she discussed the relationship between the heart and

the mind, comparing the heart to a computer’s memory and the brain

to its hard drive. Depending on the message sent by the heart to the

mind, we activate di erent parts of our brains, she explained. The

brain follows the heart, not the other way around. She mentioned

the research of a couple of neurologists whose work shows that there

is two-way communication between the heart and the brain.

 For

homework, she asked the students to ﬁ nd out about di erent kinds

of heart diseases, their causes, and their remedies. She said that as

students of the Qur’an it was their job to know themselves, and this

self-knowledge included knowledge of their bodies and the functions

 Lesson .e–f (). In this context, Hashmi also mentioned that the

Prophet’s words show that he was a recipient of divine inspiration ( wahy )

in non-Qur’anic contexts as well as the Qur’anic one. A Hadith from the

Prophet, recorded in Bukhari, reports that the Prophet said, ‘There is a piece

of ﬂ esh in the body, if it becomes good (reformed) the whole body is well, and

when it becomes spoilt the whole body is sick’. This is a reference to the heart,

Hashmi said. Given that he had no medical knowledge and , years ago

people did not know the scientiﬁ c facts they do today, this goes to show that

the Prophet’s words were inspired by God.

 Lesson .e–f (). The scientists referred to were Dr John and Dr

Beatrice Lacey, of the Fels Research Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Dr John

Lacey died in June . I ﬁ nd it very interesting that Farhat Hashmi would

be referring to the work of a scientist who, having died just a few months

before this lecture, probably came to her attention when obituaries in the

press described the nature of his research.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

performed by di erent organs. Without physical health, they would

not be able to study the Qur’an.

It is characteristic of Farhat Hashmi’s pedagogical style that in

explaining a set of Qur’anic verses like the ones cited earlier, she

would bring in information from the ﬁ elds of science, technology,

and psychology, and use them to raise moral and spiritual questions

of direct relevance to the students. This approach, I would argue,

accounts in large part for the appeal she has for students, in that she

is able to show how the Qur’an speaks to all aspects of life and can

guide contemporary Muslims through life if they heed its lessons.

Farhat Hashmi’s own interest in and embrace of the world of science

and technology in the service of a life lived in accordance with the

teachings of the Qur’an also shows students that they can be ortho-

prax Muslims and modern, tech-savvy women at the same time.

Indeed, taking this a step further, one might argue that Farhat

Hashmi as a practicing Muslim seeks to inform herself as fully as

she can of new discoveries and research in the sciences, no matter

what their speciﬁ c discipline, because by so doing she believes she

can better understand what the Qur’an says about di erent subjects,

particularly those relating to the natural world. Maurice Bucaille,

whose work Hashmi cites approvingly,

 argues not only that the

Qur’an contains accurate information about the natural world which

predates scientiﬁ c knowledge by several centuries, but that in order to

understand the Qur’an fully, one needs to be a scientist:

It is easy to see … how for centuries commentators on the Qur’an (includ-

ing those writing at the height of Islamic culture) have inevitably made

errors of interpretation in the case of certain verses whose exact meaning

could not possibly have been grasped. It was not until much later, at a

period not far from our own, that it was possible to translate and interpret

them correctly. This implies that a thorough linguistic knowledge is not

in itself su cient to understand these verses from the Qur’an. What is

needed along with this is a highly diversiﬁ ed knowledge of science.



 In Lesson .b (), one of her very ﬁ rst lectures, Hashmi men-

tioned Bucaille’s work The Bible, the Quran, and Science: The Holy Scriptures

Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge (translated from the French by

A.D. Pannell and the author; Indianapolis: n.p., ).

 Bucaille, The Bible, the Quran, and Science , p. .

 Scholars of Faith

If Hashmi accepts this argument, as she seems on the evidence of

her exegesis to do, then it follows that modern scientiﬁ c knowledge

should be eagerly sought by the student of the Qur’an. Thus, to return

to her exegesis of the phrase ‘Lord of the worlds’ ( rabb al-‘alamin )

referred to earlier, she began by asking students what word the word

‘alamin resembles. When they replied, ‘ilm (knowledge), she asked,

what is the connection between ‘alam , the world, and ‘ilm , knowl-

edge? The answer, she told them, is that everything in the world is

God-given—the trees, the plants, the animals—and a blessing from

God, and so when you look around you, you get knowledge of God.

They are a means of conveying knowledge of God.

In a subsequent lecture, Hashmi spoke at length about the mean-

ing of the word rabb , lord, saying it means owner, sovereign, and cre-

ator, and that God is sovereign over all the worlds, not just the Earth,

not just our galaxy, but the entire universe, which goes far beyond

this galaxy. A student then gave a PowerPoint presentation in English,

in which she mentioned a vast array of scientiﬁ c facts and statistics

to show how unimaginably vast the universe is, and by comparison,

how very small the individual person on Earth is.

 At the end of the

lecture Hashmi told students to visualize a lord who was sovereign

over the vastness of the universe at one end of the spectrum and sub-

atomic particles at the other end. This, she said, is what they should

understand by the phrase ‘Lord of the worlds’. This is the lord before

whom they must submit in a spirit of awe and fear, but also of love

and trust because God is extremely merciful ( rahim ).

The Al-Huda view of science and the Qur’an must be placed in

historical context for it to be better understood. Ahmad Dallal points

out that there is a noticeable di erence between the attitude to science

of the classical exegetes of the Qur’an and of those of the modern

era.  While all the classical exegetes, like the modern ones, agree

that ‘the Qur’an … encourages the acquisition of scientiﬁ c knowledge

and urges humans to reﬂ ect on the natural phenomena as signs of

 In a di erent lecture, Hashmi vividly illustrated how small the indi-

vidual is by referring to aerial photographs of individual streets and houses

on each street, as seen on Google Earth.

 Ahmad Dallal, ‘Science and the Qur’an’, in Jane Dammen McAuli e,

ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an , vol.  (Leiden: Brill, ), p. a.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

God’s creation’,  there are many di erences between them. Citing

the work of al-Ghazali (d. ) and al-Suyuti (d. ), for example,

Dallal writes that although both scholars held that ‘the Qur’an is a

comprehensive source of knowledge, including scientiﬁ c knowl-

edge’,  ‘neither [of them] proceeds to correlate the qur’anic text to

science, in a systematic interpretive exercise. Moreover, there are no

instances in which these two or other exegetes claim authority in

scientiﬁ c subjects on account of their knowledge of the Qur’an.’



Likewise, Dallal ﬁ nds that Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. ) studied the

science of astronomy

not to establish correspondence between scientiﬁ c verities and the Qur’an,

but simply to reﬂ ect and hence to reinforce belief in the creator of the

awe-inspiring universe. This kind of reﬂ ection in the service of belief does

not produce knowledge about the natural order. .. According to this logic,

everything in nature, however explained, as well as all scientiﬁ c discover-

ies and facts, irrespective of their certainty, serve as proofs for the exis-

tence of the maker. And this is the fundamental reason why the scientiﬁ c

and unscientiﬁ c could appear side by side in the commentaries on the

Qur’an. 

However, with the onset of Western imperialism in the nineteenth

century, the political context changed dramatically and it became

important for Muslims to counter European claims to superiority by

showing that the Qur’an was in harmony with science. Among the

ﬁ rst thinkers to argue for the compatibility between science and Islam

was the famous nineteenth-century scholar and activist Jamal al-Din

al-Afghani (d. ). In India, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. ) also

made similar arguments in writings in which he compared the word

of God (the Qur’an) and the work of God (the natural world). However,

his position that where there is an apparent contradiction between the

two, the latter takes precedence and the former should be interpreted

allegorically was condemned by many traditionalist ‘ulama. Since

then, there has been a further development in Qur’anic exegesis, as

in the work of Maurice Bucaille cited earlier, in which it is argued

 Dallal, ‘Science and the Qur’an’, p. a.

 Dallal, ‘Science and the Qur’an’, p. b.

 Dallal, ‘Science and the Qur’an’, p. a.

 Dallal, ‘Science and the Qur’an’, p. a and b.

 Scholars of Faith

that the Qur’an anticipated many scientiﬁ c discoveries by over 

years.  Dallal concludes, ‘In insisting on the possibility of multiple

scientiﬁ c explanations of the natural phenomena, classical Qur’an

commentators were able to guard the autonomy of qur’anic, religious

knowledge not through the co-optation of science but by assigning it

to a separate and autonomous realm of its own’.



In Al-Huda’s view of the matter, however, the Qur’an is the ultimate

touchstone ( mayyar ) for all aspects of life, regardless of their subject

matter. Where science appears to say something in contradistinction

to the Qur’an, as in the currently hotly debated subjects of evolution

and gay rights, Al-Huda takes the view that Muslims should be guided

by what the Qur’an says on the matter. Furthermore, it maintains a

strictly literal interpretation of the relevant verses on these disputed

questions.

Political Implications

Having examined Al-Huda’s intellectual perspective in some detail,

we must ask what implications this has for social and political change.

Does Al-Huda take a stand on social and political issues in Pakistan

and elsewhere? If so, what form do its politics take? And how does its

own institutional reach among Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere

inﬂ uence the larger political landscape in Pakistan and in the world

at large?

There are no easy answers to these questions, as Al-Huda has

adopted a deliberately apolitical stance in its classes. But at the same

time, its position, following from its emphasis on da‘wa, is that one

must be actively engaged in the world. To illustrate with an example, a

teacher commenting on the Qur’anic phrase ‘enjoin what is right, for-

bid what is wrong’ ( ‘amr b’il-ma‘ruf wa anha ‘an al-munkar ) (Q :),

noted that the verse has both an individual and a social message. This

verse is part of an address by the prophet Luqman to his son. The

prophet adopts an a ectionate tone, addressing him as ‘Ya bunaiya’,

 Dallal lays out the arguments on this subject of several twentieth-cen-

tury thinkers other than Bucaille. See Dallal, ‘Science and the Qur’an’, pp.

–.

 Dallal, ‘Science and the Qur’an’, p. b.

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

‘O my little son’. He tells him he should ‘establish prayer’—an indi-

vidual duty—and ‘enjoin what is right [and] forbid what is wrong’—a

social one—and then he returns once more to action at the individual

level, saying, ‘and be patient over what befalls you’. The teacher anal-

ysed this verse by saying:

We see that ‘establish prayer’ ( aqim al-salat ) is at a personal level and

‘enjoin what is right, forbid what is wrong’ ( ‘amr b’il-ma‘ruf wa anha ‘an

al-munkar ) is related to communal societal life. This is necessary because

a person cannot live in society selﬁ shly. If you want to be a productive

member of society, you have to be selﬂ ess, you have to think about others.

… You also need patience when you encounter other people’s harms, when

they hurt you, when they annoy you. … Some people will accept, they will

believe and will become your friends but others will not believe, so [they]

will taunt you. 

The thrust of this exegesis is that it is not enough to be a good

Muslim, but one must go further. If one does not go further, it would

mean that ‘They are only concerned with themselves— as long as I am

doing good everything is good. It’s all good, it’s all ﬁ ne— but it is not! Thus

if you are clean and your house is dirty, then after some time, the

dirt will come back to you.’

 The instruction to enjoin the good and

forbid evil is, in this interpretation, that of proselytization or da‘wa,

that is, taking the message of Islam to non-Muslims or non-practicing

Muslims. The teacher said it would be ‘selﬁ sh’ not to do this, and even

though it is di cult to face social hostility, one can do it by cultivat-

ing sabr , ‘patience’. The forms that this da‘wa might take will vary

depending on the particular expertise of the individual. Since in this

verse Luqman was addressing his young son, it doesn’t have to wait

until one is an adult with knowledge and expertise, but it can start in

childhood:

a child will do it at his level, the youth will do it at their level, the older

people will do it at their level, the scholars will do it at their levels and the

intellectuals will do it at their level, but nonetheless each and every person

has to do this because it is every person’s responsibility. Enjoining good

and forbidding evil is coming right after aqim al-salat [establishing the

prayer].

 Lesson ,  March .

 Lesson ,  March .

 Scholars of Faith

This emphasizes the importance of spreading the good to others—in

other words, of doing da‘wa.

Al-Huda was founded in  in Islamabad and has grown tre-

mendously since then. It occupies public space in Pakistan by virtue

of its size, the scope of its activities, its command of media, and the

class status of its students and audience. The fact that it has opened

up a new religious space for Muslim women, neither traditionalist

nor secular, is the source both of its popularity among its students and

of the opposition that it has faced in Pakistan from the ‘ulama and

from some among the secular public. Moreover, its growth has taken

place against the larger context of post-/ politics in Pakistan and

the escalation of violence in the country, as explored by many scholars

and brieﬂ y touched on in Chapter .

 All this inserts it into the politi-

cal arena. As Mushtaq notes, ‘the regulatory powers of the modern

nation-state extend to the most intimate spheres of life, which means

that all social spaces are political’.



There are two South Asian Muslim organizations with which

Al-Huda can be compared today. The ﬁ rst is the Jama‘at-i Islami. One

of the commonalities between the two is what Iqtidar characterizes as

the ‘objectiﬁ cation’ of religion. She writes:

I understand this objectiﬁ cation to include the attempted subjection of

religious practices and beliefs to the structures of a homogenizing logic

insofar as an attempt is made at erasing…contradictions, but more criti-

cally to a conscious engagement with the many aspects of religious praxis.

Thus, transcendence is not erased but consciously sought through a mod-

eling of subjectivities, behaviors, and praxis. 

Iqtidar explains that the ‘objectiﬁ cation’ of religion involves the con-

scious thinking-through of questions about religious identity and

conduct at the individual level, something to be problematized rather

 For an excellent recent exploration of these issues, see Zaman, Islam

in Pakistan .

 Faiza Mushtaq, ‘Moral Purity and Social Reform: The Case of a Women’s

Religious Education Movement in Pakistan’ (unpublished paper, ).

 Humeira Iqtidar, Secularizing Islamists? Jama‘at-e-Islami and Jama‘at-

ud-Da‘wa in Urban Pakistan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ).

This links up with the objectiﬁ cation of education, on which see Gregory

Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation

in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

than taken for granted.

 In addition, both the Jama‘at-i Islami and

Al-Huda emphasize an unmediated understanding of the Qur’an and

Hadith, unlike the South Asian ‘ulama, who are for the most part

Hanaﬁ Sunnis. Iqtidar also suggests that movements such as the

Jama‘at-i Islami and Jama‘at al-Da‘wa—and I would add, perhaps

Al-Huda as well—attract women followers because membership in

them actually increases women’s options and life trajectories, giving

them access to careers within the framework of strict adherence to the

rules of female seclusion and a greater pool of marriage partners than

they would otherwise have had. In this she echoes Mahmood’s work

on women in the mosque movement in Egypt. Iqtidar argues that in

the long run, the rationalization and functionalization of religion that

the Jama‘at-i Islami is facilitating in Pakistan will change the nature

of Pakistan’s religious and political landscape.



Al-Huda also bears similarities with the Tablighi Jama‘at. The

name of the latter refers to tabligh or ‘calling’ people to Islam, or in the

case of those who were born Muslim, encouraging them to become

‘better’ Muslims, a goal akin to da‘wa. The Tablighi Jama‘at, which

arose in the s just prior to the birth of the independent nation-

states of India and Pakistan, is said to be one of the largest Muslim

organizations in the world today. And like Al-Huda, it too has deliber-

ately eschewed any involvement in politics. Darakhshan Khan’s work

on women of the Tablighi Jama‘at throws light on the democratizing

aspects of the Tabligh’s decoupling of piety from a madrasa educa-

tion, and of its de-emphasis on ritual:

The Tablighi Jamat, the most tenacious reform movement to have emerged

[in the twentieth century], was also the most successful in forging [a] part-

nership [between men and women] by replacing scriptural authority with

piety. The only company that mattered for the Jamat was the company of a

pious Muslim who was willing to spend time teaching and learning from

other Muslims. The biggest beneﬁ ciaries of this shift were the women

who could become religious daas without enrolling in a madrasa.



 Iqtidar, Secularizing Islamists? , pp. , , –, , and passim.

 But whether it will ultimately secularize society, as she argues in the

book, is I think open to question.

 Darakhshan Khan, ‘In Good Company: Reformist Piety and Women’s

Da‘wat in the Tablighi Jamat ’, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

(), (): –. The quote appears on p. .

 Scholars of Faith

Metcalf had earlier pointed out that the frequent absence of Tablighi

men from the home transformed Tablighi ideas of masculinity, as

while on the road, men were obliged to perform domestic chores such

as cleaning and cooking for themselves and for the group.



All these factors have a bearing on the political implications

of the Al-Huda movement in the future. Given its transnational

dimensions, which has meant that in many cases it is operating in

an environment in which its members are part of a small religious

minority—and often a beleaguered one—I believe it is likely to con-

tinue on its present politically quietist path. Judging from studies of

Al-Huda in Pakistan, the Persian Gulf,

 and my own observations

of its online classes in North America, so far Al-Huda’s activities

have taken place at the level of social and personal, rather than

political, change. 

Al-Huda: Scholarly and Reformist

I have explored three distinct intellectual strands in this chapter—the

Western, as represented by the PhD degrees obtained by both Farhat

Hashmi and Idrees Zubair in the late s, the Ahl-i Hadith, and the

Jama‘at-i Islami—and indicated the inﬂ uence particularly of the Ahl-i

 Barbara D. Metcalf, ‘Tablighi Jama‘at and Women’, in Muhammad

Khalid Masud, ed., Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama‘at as a

Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal (Leiden: Brill, ).

 Attiya Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space: Foreign

Resident Muslim Women’s Halaqa in the Arabian Peninsula’, in Filippo

Osella and Caroline Osella, eds, Islamic Reform in South Asia (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, ).

 Al-Huda has had a quietist presence and inﬂ uence in North America,

below the national radar, though here too politics have not been absent, as I

noted in the ‘Introduction’. If I had to characterize Al-Huda in terms of other

worldwide Muslim organizations, I would cite the Muslim Brotherhood as

kindred spirits. The latter has an active women’s wing and plays a major role

in social service activities, as Al-Huda does to some degree. When there was

an earthquake in Pakistan in  which killed , people, Al-Huda was

involved in the relief e orts, though it also earned considerable condemna-

tion in light of Hashmi’s comment that the victims had invited God’s wrath by

being ‘immoral’ Muslims. See Ahmad, Transforming Faith , p. .

Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations 

Hadith on Farhat Hashmi and Idrees Zubair’s thinking. Their Ahl-i

Hadith background causes them to place strong emphasis on direct

knowledge of the two primary religious sources of the Qur’an and

Hadith. This in turn implies knowledge of Arabic; study of Islamic

history, particularly the life of the Prophet ( sira ); and the ability to dis-

cern context and intent in order to understand the underlying princi-

ple behind certain verses or statements in the primary sources which

might on their surface appear contradictory. This reliance on ijtihad

rather than taqlid is widely shared across di erent Islamist groups,

including the Jama‘at-i Islami (as well as the Muslim Brotherhood in

the wider Muslim world).

The question remains, what inﬂ uence did Hashmi’s and Zubair’s

engagement in the scholarly discourse of a Western university,

namely, the University of Glasgow, have on their intellectual forma-

tion? In both cases, the major contribution to the ﬁ eld of Hadith

studies made by their theses is their reconstruction or translation

of a critical edition of the texts they chose to study. Zubair stud-

ied eight di erent manuscript editions and used three in order to

reconstruct the critical edition of Ibn Khatib’s text, while Hashmi

appears to have used just one. The careful attention to words and

the implications of di erent readings of the same word in di erent

contexts, evident in their scholarship, has been a central feature

of the teaching methodology of Al-Huda Qur’an classes. They also

explore—both in their scholarship and in Al-Huda—di erences

arising from variant readings of a word (a frequent subject of

debate) or even where one pauses in a sentence. As scholars, both

Zubair and Hashmi note that although the subjects they examine

have been studied previously, in their view these studies fell short

on academic grounds. Moreover, both of them emphasize the

importance of Hadith studies to the academic study of Islam. In

these respects, Hashmi and Zubair’s outlook is clearly scholarly

rather than faith-centred, and these features are also evident in the

work they have done at Al-Huda.

Yet I would argue that faith is more important to their work than

scholarship in the Western academic sense. In Al-Huda classes, Farhat

Hashmi and other teachers repeatedly emphasized the importance

of Al-Huda students becoming exemplary ‘embodiment[s] of Islamic

teachings’ whose lives would be worthy of emulation by Muslims

 Scholars of Faith

today.  As Hashmi put it in one of her lectures, they should be a

‘living tabligh’ or, like the Prophet, a ‘walking Qur’an’ ( chalta phirta

qur’an ) to those around them, whose personal conduct brings others

into the fold of Islam rather than turning them away because their

behaviour is deemed blameworthy.

 Rather than seeing Hashmi

and Zubair as academic scholars, I see them primarily as religious

activists and educational reformers who have enlarged their intellec-

tual horizons through study, international travel, and long years of

residence abroad. In my view, they have undertaken three important

reforms in Muslim religious education: contrary to the traditional

madrasa syllabus, they have made the study of the Qur’an, and sec-

ondarily the Hadith, the central focus of their syllabus and introduced

other subjects in a supporting role; they have directed their attention

primarily towards women; and they have reached out to the secular,

Western-educated middle- and upper-middle classes in Pakistan and

the South Asian diaspora who are not normally exposed to a madrasa

education and curriculum. By speaking in a modern idiom, they have

attracted the attention of middle-class, urban, educated Muslims both

in Pakistan and in the South Asian diaspora, people who were never

attracted to the maslaki identity politics of the ‘ulama. In so doing,

they are bringing about tangible change on the ground, especially in

Pakistani cities.

This leads me to the next chapter, which examines how Al-Huda

ideals are inculcated into students, and how students live out their

lives in light of their very modern Al-Huda Qur’anic educations.

 See Barbara D. Metcalf, ‘The Past in the Present: Instruction, Pleasure,

and Blessing in Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya’s Aap Biitii’, in Islamic

Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan (New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, ), p. .

 Lesson .a (), Lesson .c ().



ALHUDA ONSITE AND ONLINE

Teacher–Learners and Students in North America

[The di erence between studying and not studying] the Qur’an is like

looking at the world with one’s glasses on or o . If we look at it without

glasses on, some things look right but some things look di erent from

what they really are. … When you acquire knowledge of the Qur’an, you

put on such glasses that the true nature of everything begins to become

apparent to you. And then you put everything in its proper place.

—Farhat Hashmi to her students on the ﬁ rst day of class, 

We are Muslims … so we never stop learning till we die.

—Farhat Hashmi, 

How, concretely, does social change occur at the level of the everyday

among a geographically dispersed set of Muslim women studying

the Qur’an? In this chapter, I try to answer this question by looking

closely at both teachers and students, including teachers who a few

years ago were Al-Huda students. I refer to these teachers as teacher–

learners to indicate that their study of the Qur’an and related subjects

is ongoing, even after they begin to teach students of their own. They

are in a di erent place on the full arc of the Al-Huda learning experi-

ence from their students, because many are taking more advanced

courses in related ﬁ elds in addition to teaching. The chapter begins

with Dr Farhat Hashmi and her daughter Taimiyyah in Canada,

 Scholars of Faith

paying attention to both the content of their teaching and the connec-

tions they make between the Qur’an and their everyday lives as well

as the lives of the students they teach. Farhat Hashmi’s relationship

with her students, I argue, can be understood as a form of ‘cultural

translation’, a term which seems particularly appropriate in view of

Al-Huda’s focus on translating the Qur’an from Arabic into Urdu and

English so as to make it understood. As Asad points out, a key task

for the person ‘translating from other cultures’ (referring to the cul-

tural anthropologist studying an alien culture) is that he or she ‘look

for coherence in discourses’.

 It is by articulating the ways in which

the Qur’an has internal coherence as a moral teaching and source of

guidance,  it may be argued, that Farhat Hashmi makes the Qur’an

meaningful to her students. However, unlike the anthropologist who

‘is waiting to read about another mode of life…[but] not to learn to

live a new mode of life’,

 in Al-Huda’s case the purpose of the act

of cultural translation is precisely that, to bring about personal—and

ultimately social—transformation as a result of students’ deepening

understanding of the coherence of the Qur’an.

As with textual translation, the act of cultural translation is also an

act of interpretation. Farhat Hashmi makes the Qur’an meaningful

to her students by ‘translating’ it and the seventh-century Arabian

context in which it is embedded into a twenty-ﬁ rst century transcon-

tinental one that ‘makes sense’ to students and appears ‘logical’ in

a matter-of-fact, self-evident, and unambiguous way. For those who

 Talal Asad, ‘The Concept of Cultural Translation in British Social

Anthropology’, in James Cli ord and George E. Marcus, eds, Writing Culture:

The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California

Press, ), pp. –.

 For arguments for the coherence of the Qur’an both as a text and as a

moral guide for behaviour, see, for example, Neal Robinson, Discovering the

Quran: A Contemporary Approach to a Veiled Text (Washington, DC: George

Washington Press, ); Carl W. Ernst, How to Read the Qur’an: A New

Guide, with Select Translations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina

Press, ); Anna M. Gade, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and

the Recited Qur’an in Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ),

p. .

 Emphasis in original. Asad, ‘The Concept of Cultural Translation in

British Social Anthropology’, p. .

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

accept her interpretation, it becomes a call to action. In e ect, she tells

them, ‘This is God’s clear message to us in the Qur’an. Will you heed

it or will you choose to walk away?’ Because she relates the Qur’an to

the everyday world in which she and her students live, she becomes a

role model they can hope to emulate in their own lives.

Hierarchical relations between the two sides are balanced in some

respects by egalitarian ones because all are bound by their mutual

submission to the same rules and standards of conduct based on the

Qur’anic text. Generational di erences are thereby to some extent

elided. On the other hand, Farhat Hashmi’s mastery of Arabic and of

the classical sources of the Qur’an and Hadith, and her ability to inter-

pret them in novel ways, give her voice immense authority. Moreover,

students of Al-Huda are persuaded of the validity of her arguments in

large part by her personal example, seeing in her an embodiment of

the values she preaches. As I noted earlier, this teacher told me, ‘What

she is on the outside, she is also on the inside’. This is a key point to

which I will return later in the chapter. Because this study focuses on

the online experience, I turn next to the translation (in both its literal

and ﬁ gurative senses) of Taimiyyah Zubair, who has stepped into her

mother’s shoes as the teacher of the English-language classes. Basing

herself largely on her mother’s (and in Hadith classes, on her father’s)

lectures, Taimiyyah presents a more contemporary face to students

in Mississauga, Canada, and secondarily to the online students who

listen to her recorded lectures.

Viewing Hashmi’s and other teachers’ lectures through a narrative

lens, I also want to highlight the stories teachers and students tell

about themselves. How do they see themselves in relation to others?

What is their model of behaviour and how do they aspire to achieve

it? What obstacles do they face? What is the social context of their

everyday lives? And looking at teaching and learning through a per-

formative frame, how do teachers and students enact their roles and

who is the target audience for which each set of actors performs? How

does this inﬂ uence the message being conveyed by the teacher and

the way it is received by her students?

At the end of this chapter I focus on other teachers and students,

and on some of the organizational aspects of the online classes.

Speciﬁ cally, I explore the pivotal role of the Al-Huda Testing Center

in Hurst, Texas, in making the online classes work, and focus on the

 Scholars of Faith

contributions of the North America Regional Coordinator, Shazia

Nawaz, and her circle of examiners, who are also Qur’an and Hadith

teachers in their own right.

Farhat Hashmi as Teacher: Challenging Students to

Become ‘Rabbani’, ‘Servants of God’

Although I have never met Dr Farhat Hashmi in person, like many

others I have heard a number of her taped lectures and listened to

them carefully. I have listened in particular to her  lectures on the

ﬁ rst part (juz) of the Qur’an, delivered to a class of female students

in Mississauga, Canada. Although this is admittedly a small part of a

very large corpus of orally delivered lectures available in a variety of

electronic formats (for MP players, iPods, iPhones, and a number

of others), it allows me to draw some valuable lessons on the content

and style of her teaching, and on the relationships she builds with her

students through person-to-person interaction and online interaction.

The lectures follow a methodical structure: word-for-word trans-

lation from Arabic to Urdu of a given number of Qur’anic verses;

discussion of basic grammatical principles, especially the root letters

of individual words being studied; and most importantly, exegesis

( tafsir ) of the Qur’an. Within this format, Farhat Hashmi brings in

an array of topics including history, psychology, science, religious and

social etiquette, and advice on time management and interpersonal

skills, among others, peppering her lecture throughout with Qur’anic

and Hadith references in ﬂ uent Arabic. The style is erudite but per-

sonal, making constant connections between the verses being studied

and the lives of the students before her. Her address to her students

combines respect for the e ort they are making with constant admo-

nition to expect more of themselves, to push themselves harder, to

remember that what they are doing is not for the sake of winning

her approval but that of earning a place in heaven in the afterlife by

seeking to please God. The goal is, in a word, to become ‘ rabbani ’,

a servant of God, with every ﬁ bre of their beings, at every waking

moment. This is the goal she has set for herself and that she embod-

ies for many of her students as they get to know her better.

If the tone and focus of her lectures are oriented toward per-

sonal self-improvement, they are also concerned with the Muslim

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

community in general, particularly the divisiveness and sectarian-

ism she deplores, among Muslims and among religious leaders, the

‘ulama. The need for Muslim unity is a strong theme in her lectures.

If Muslims would stop wasting their energy arguing about the need

to follow this or that group, she says, and give all their energy to fol-

lowing God, they would be strong and Islam would be respected by

others. These kinds of remarks are made in a generalized way and

seek to make the point that the Qur’an (and Hadith) should be the

only touchstone for correct action and belief in a Muslim’s daily life.

An example of this is Farhat Hashmi’s discussion of the three

‘broken letters’ ( huruf muqata’at ) at the start of Sura al-Baqara (Q :).

Hashmi said that according to some people these letters represent

God (Allah), the angel Gabriel, and the Prophet Muhammad. But the

person to whom these verses were revealed, that is, the Prophet, never

explained these letters in this way. They were left unexplained and we

must leave it at that, as something only God knows. Should we think

we know better, or the Prophet? Elsewhere, commenting on the verse

‘And do not confound the truth with vanity, and do not conceal the

truth wittingly’ (Q :), she compared the Jewish scholars who were

being addressed in this verse to Muslim scholars today who ‘mix up

truth with falsehood by engaging in idolatry ( shirk ). … What people

think about Islam is born of ignorance. If people don’t teach them

[the truth], then how will the ignorant learn?’



At the outset of the course in , Farhat Hashmi told students

that they must learn to engage in self-assessment. Until they knew

their own positive and negative attributes, they could never move

forward. She reiterated this theme often, tying it in with the goal of

being ‘God-conscious’ (having taqwa ). To be conscious, one has to be

awake, she told her students.

 Being a believer therefore means you

are awake, that is, conscious of the fact that everything you do in your

life is a means to attaining either heaven or hell. People are motivated

by both love and fear. If you are told that there will be an earthquake in

the middle of the night, for example, would you go to sleep peacefully,

saying it has nothing to do with you? No, you wouldn’t. You would be

 Lessons .a and .f ().

 Lesson .a–f ().

 Scholars of Faith

frantically planning what to do to remove your family and yourself

out of harm’s way. You wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink. That’s how it

should be with fear of God, but unfortunately these days, no one fears

God. They fear other people, or the loss of their wealth and property,

but not what they should be afraid of, namely, the accounting to God

after their deaths.

Illustrating this principle perfectly with a homework exercise one

day, she asked the students to write down things that they knew they

should be doing but didn’t do (this was in the context of a discussion

of people who know what God wants of them but still don’t obey;

the maghdub at the end of the Fatiha, Q :). The next day, when the

subject of the homework came up she reminded the students of what

she had asked them to do and hoped that they had done it. However,

to their surprise (I imagine), she said that she didn’t want them to

read their answers out loud to her or to tell her what they had written.

This was their own matter, something for which they would have to

account to God and it was up to them to watch themselves so they

would not make the same mistakes again. And with that, she moved

on to the next topic.



An important aspect of students taking responsibility for their

own learning is the management of personal time so that they can

meet their obligations to their families while also making time for

the demanding study schedule that Al-Huda courses require. An

online student explained that she had signed up for the online course

because she lived too far away to drive to the Al-Huda centre in

Mississauga. However, because she was studying at home, her fam-

ily took her responsibilities towards her course very lightly, making

it necessary for her to initiate a number of changes in her lifestyle

at home. She listed the following changes she had made since she

became an online student:

The ﬁ rst thing I did was to promise myself that the class time is my time

to study, so I will not pick up the phone, and that’s what I have been doing.

Let the answering machine take the calls.

nd. I started cooking on weekends, preparing the food in advance and

freezing it. My husband loves food, so I didn’t want him to feel like I was

neglecting him.

 Lesson .e–f ().

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

rdly. Doing the laundry in the evenings, that helps in folding it right away

when taking it out of the dryer, because no one else will do it for you. So

why not do it then and there right away?

th. When I drop my son to school, I run to the grocery shop and do the

groceries. I should add that I have exactly  minutes to do the grocery

before the class starts. A good idea is to make a list of the things you need

to buy, that helps in saving the precious minutes.

At this point Farhat Hashmi, who was playing the student’s voice on

tape, interjected and addressed her Mississauga students in Urdu:

Why does so much time get wasted in the store? Because we start out

without any planning. After going quite far in one direction, we remem-

ber, Oh, that thing got missed out in that store, let me turn the car around.

When we get there, we remember, Oh there was something else that

I should have got from there [where I was before]. Then we set out on

another route. When we start out without planning, it’s a big ‘time waster’.

Before leaving the house, ﬁ rst think, What do I have to get, and where is it

available? If you don’t know, then ask someone. And go to the exact place

where that thing is, go to that shelf where it is, don’t look left or right, and

pick up the thing you need, and return [home] if you have something more

in your life than just looking at shops in town.

Then the tape resumed:

No. . When my son is at the madrasa for the Qur’an, I stay in the masjid

(mosque) and do my homework. Mostly it is looking for references in the

Qur’an, etc. At our masjid we have this lady who is very good in tajwid

(recitation of the Qur’an). So she listens to my lesson every Tuesday. I

know it’s just once a week, but I guess having one day is better than

having none. So it’s a good idea to ﬁ nd someone who can listen to your

lesson, because over the Internet no one can listen to us and correct our

mistakes.

No. . Try and do your homework late at night when everyone is asleep

or at fajr time (dawn). I have taken this course full time and it demands

far more than what I have mentioned and I know everyone’s family is

di erent and their demands are di erent. And they too are not used to us

doing something other than taking care [of them], cooking, and cleaning

for them. So don’t dishearten or give up and keep on trying. It’s my expe-

rience that Allah helps whoever seeks His help. So inshaAllah we WILL

be okay! I hope my letter could make a di erence and I too am looking

forward for ideas of how the other sisters are managing their lives.

 Scholars of Faith

Farhat Hashmi interjected here to say, ‘The main thing is that you

have to make yourself do the work’. This student went on to explain

that she had three young children, ‘an -year-old, a seven-year-old,

and a -month-old. My seven-year-old daughter is mentally impaired,

and also unable to talk.’ Despite these di culties, she had managed

to continue with her studies while also looking after her husband

and children.  Her inspirational story well exempliﬁ ed the quality of

taqwa as well as the practical time management skills which Hashmi

was urging students to cultivate.

This multidimensional, three-way conversation o ers a fascinat-

ing window into the way digital media are transforming traditional

classroom learning. In the above example, we see several modes of

communication occurring simultaneously. The online student sent

her message to Farhat Hashmi by email; a student at the Al-Huda

centre in Mississauga read the email out loud to Hashmi and the

onsite students during class. This class—with the email message

included—was taped and made available via electronic media such

as iPods or laptops to future online students who wished to listen

to Hashmi’s exegesis of the verses in question. The student’s experi-

ence has thus been incorporated into the body of Hashmi’s lesson,

to encourage others to soldier on in the di cult road on which they

have embarked.

Turning now to Hashmi’s teaching style and manner of exegesis,

I would like to quote from one of her lectures (translating from the

Urdu). The Qur’anic verses being discussed in the exegesis read: ‘He

leads none astray save the ungodly such as break the covenant of God

after its solemn binding, and such as cut what God has commanded

should be joined, and such as do corruption in the land—they shall

be the losers’ (Q :–, Arberry trans.).

 Hashmi explained that

the immediate reference here was to the Hypocrites (those who had

 Lesson .a ().

 These verses were also the subject of one of the classroom ethnogra-

phies at the Jami‘a Nur girls’ madrasa that form part of Chapter . In her

exegesis, the madrasa teacher told the students that the verse referred to peo-

ple breaking o social relations ( rishta torna ) that should not be broken. The

overall interpretations of the verse by the madrasa teacher and Hashmi were

in many respects similar.

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

accepted Islam during the Prophet’s lifetime but were secretly trying

to undermine the Muslim cause by allying with the Jews of Medina

and the Quraysh in Mecca):

Every created being, every human being, is in a silent bond with his or her

creator. We can’t separate ourselves from our creator. … When God created

us, he asked us, ‘Am I not your Lord?’ and [we] all answered, ‘Yes, you are

our Lord.’ (This was the verbal bond, on top of the silent bond.) And then

we came to the earth. And God started sending us messengers. And the

messengers started reminding us of our promise, and we read ‘La illah il-

allah’ (there is no God but God). We accepted it. And after accepting it, we

broke it as if there were no connection between us and God.

We had promised that whatever you ask us to do, we will do. That’s

what ‘la illah il-allah’ means. It means we will worship you. So when after

saying they’ll do it, they don’t, then what are they doing? They are breaking

their promise. After conﬁ rming it. But if instead of obeying God we start

obeying our desires ( nafs ), isn’t that breaking our promise?

‘And they cut that which God has asked them to keep joined.’ What is

it that God has asked them to keep joined? First the connection with God.

They live their lives as if God doesn’t exist. They don’t ask what does God

want of me, but what do I want? And the second thing they cut is relation-

ships. They create misunderstandings between human beings. 

Somewhat later in her lecture, she returned to the subject of relation-

ships between people:

There are some relationships which you can walk away from if you want.

But there are others from which you cannot walk away. These are blood

relations. You have to do the utmost good ( ihsan ) with them. Blood rela-

tions should be maintained no matter how justiﬁ ed one is in thinking that

the other party is in the wrong. In particular, one should never cut o one’s

relations with one’s parents. But beyond this, one should also maintain

good relations with one’s siblings, their families, as well as the siblings of

one’s parents and those siblings’ families. Visit those who are close to you.

Talk on the telephone with those who are more distant relations, especially

those with whom you are angry. Women are the ones in particular who

teach their children these things. This work is the mother’s more than the

father’s. This is our work, yours and mine. We should create good feelings

in our children for their relatives. The mother has more power to create

 Lesson .e ().

 Scholars of Faith

good feelings in the children, more power and more responsibility than

the father.

As homework, sit down with your children and talk to them. Do they

know who their aunts ( khala , phuphi ) and uncles ( mamu , phupha ), and

grandparents ( dada , dadi , nana , nani ) are? If you have stepbrothers and

stepsisters, they should know about them too. Pick up the phone and

call your more distant relatives. And don’t poison your children’s minds

against any of them, no matter how bad your relations are with them.

When they grow up they’ll ﬁ nd out for themselves. Some mothers keep

their children so closely attached to themselves that they alienate their

children even from their father. This is wrong, no matter what the father

may have done. This is how divisions start, in the family.



Remarkably, two days later Hashmi returned to the subject of the

homework, saying that she had received an email response from one

of the online students which she wanted to share with the class. The

response was in English and was read by the same Al-Huda student

who had read the email about time management. It read:

I wanted to share with you and with Madam Farhat Hashmi, the feelings

I had after the homework which we had been given on Thursday. She

wanted each of us to call or get in touch with someone who had been

forgotten due to whatever reasons. So here I was thinking about my hus-

band’s older brother who had not been talking to us since [the] last sixteen

years or I can say, since I got married. It was a very touchy subject to

discuss with my husband initially to make him understand what we have

done. But I prayed and made du‘a for this to work and with Allah’s bless-

ing I explained [to] him what Allah’s orders are towards us humans and

how Allah doesn’t like fasiq s [sinners]. I am so proud to be his wife. I also

can’t thank Allah enough for being blessed with such a husband. He right

away picked up the phone and found out where his older brother was liv-

ing. We found out that he is in Houston, and so he called him and luckily

his brother picked up the phone. His brother was sick and was missing

him very badly. After listening to my husband’s voice he couldn’t say a

word. Both expressed their feelings not with complaints but with tears

instead. He said that he wanted to call but since he was the older one and

the person to be blamed, he never had the guts to face his younger brother.

Both talked for a long time and didn’t want to get o the phone. He also

talked to me and the kids and showered us with his du‘as. Me and my

 Lesson .f ().

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

husband are very thankful for the homework we have been given. We both

also want to thank our teachers who are guiding us to choose a righteous

path to have a fruitful life here and in the hereafter. Jazakallah khairan for

your e orts and may Allah bless our teachers. Amin.



These exchanges between Hashmi and her students, including online

ones whom she hasn’t actually met, illustrate her ability to connect

with them through the Qur’an and begin the process of bringing

about change in personal behaviour in response to what she inter-

prets to be the Qur’an’s teachings. This exchange took place early on

in the history of online classes o ered by Al-Huda. Since then these

classes have multiplied manifold under the leadership of a younger

generation of teachers who have studied under Hashmi, or have

taken Al-Huda classes in Pakistan, Canada, or as online students in

di erent parts of the world.

A key interpretive method of Hashmi’s is to insist that the verses

be read in both their historical context and in terms of their mes-

sage to the believer in the here and now. As she put it in discussing

verses that refer to the Children of Israel (Bani Isra’il) in Sura , these

verses are not just ‘for them, they are for us too’. In other words,

they are addressed to Muslims today; they have a relevance beyond

their immediate seventh-century context and audience. Although

Hashmi is not unique in making this connection by any means, her

pedagogical style, and especially her foregrounding of women’s role

in bringing about change in society, are di erent from the way the

Qur’an is taught in South Asian madrasas by the ‘ulama (though, as

my ethnography of Jami‘a Nur in the ﬁ rst half of this book explores,

the Qur’an forms a surprisingly small part of the madrasa syllabus),



and indeed in other parts of the Muslim world as well.



 Lesson .f ().

 Also see Waris Mazhari, ‘Hindustani Madaris Islamiyya: Nisab o

Nizam-e Ta’lim, Imkanat o Masail, Ek Jaiza’, (PhD thesis, Jami‘a Millia

Islamia, New Delhi, ), Chapter , for his argument that madrasas in

South Asia do not focus su ciently on teaching the Qur’an and spend far too

much time on jurisprudence or ﬁ qh .

 See for Africa, Corinne Fortier, ‘Orality and the Transmission of

Qur’anic Knowledge in Mauritania’, in Robert Launay, ed., Islamic Education

in Africa: Writing Boards and Blackboards (Bloomingdale: Indiana University

 Scholars of Faith

The ﬁ rst point to be made about Hashmi’s exegesis is an obvious

one, namely, that at the heart of her faith and practice is absolute belief

in one God (monotheism; tawhid ), who is seen as creator ( khaliq ),

owner ( malik ), and planner ( mudabbir ) of all that happens in creation,

both human and non-human. All Hashmi’s actions are grounded in

this basic concept. Many of the arguments between her (and the Ahl-i

Hadith more generally) and the South Asian ‘ulama spring from her

view that they have compromised the principles of monotheism in

one way or another and thereby introduced innovations ( bid‘at ) in

their practice of Islam.



For Hashmi, being a Muslim requires that one acknowledge one’s

dependence on God through daily prayer (when one talks to God

directly, as she puts it) and in other ways as required by God, in the

hope of earning a place in heaven after death. But in addition, it requires

that one make choices in life that conform with belief in monothe-

ism—and this is where her exegesis of the Qur’an leads her to take

an agentive view of how a Muslim should live in the world, in that one

must act in the world in order to implement God’s will. I argue as well

that for Hashmi Muslim women are at the centre—rather than at the

margins—of the possibility of bringing about social change because of

their role as mothers, as wives, and as caregivers. In the exegesis above,

Hashmi pointed out that women are the ones, rather than men, who

can inﬂ uence how their children view the extended family network,

and it is women rather than men who can heal rifts in the family when

they occur. The online student’s response was the perfect illustration of

her point. As Hashmi commented, she could have chosen to do noth-

ing, since after all the dispute had taken place in her husband’s family,

not her own. But with God’s help, she had brought her husband and

Press, ); Dale Eickelmann, ‘The Art of Memory: Islamic Education and

Its Social Reproduction’, Comparative Studies in Society and History (),

(): –; and Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite (Reading,

MA: Addison-Wesley, ). Qur’an recitation among Indonesian women

is a well-developed art and skill, which has been documented among oth-

ers by Anne K. Rasmussen, Women, the Recited Qur’an, and Islamic Music in

Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) and Gade, Perfection

Makes Practice .

 For detailed exploration of this issue, see Chapter .

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

his brother together in order to carry out God’s command that their

relationship not be severed. This example also shows how women can

be agents of change while upholding values that are shared by the wider

society, in this case by preserving family unity.

However, the choices that Hashmi encourages women to make do

not always bring about harmony in the family. Sadaf Ahmad docu-

ments a number of cases of family conﬂ ict in Islamabad, Pakistan,

as a result of Al-Huda students donning a hijab (headscarf ), abaya

(cloak), and niqab (face and head covering), garments which are not

traditionally South Asian, and by insisting on being veiled in the pres-

ence not only of unrelated men but also of certain male relatives in the

extended family.  Today there are so many Al-Huda students dressed

in this way that the hijab , abaya , and niqab have become ‘naturalized

in society, so that women who may not be a liated with the school …

may decide to adopt [them as well]’.



This picture is challenged by some Al-Huda women, however. One

woman I met said that Hashmi cares deeply about keeping the family

together (as my earlier examples taken from Hashmi’s  lectures

also show), and she knows that change does not occur overnight.

When necessary the rule that a woman cover her face in the presence

of her brother-in-law can be relaxed as long as she covers her hair

and does not wear makeup. ‘When people are unkind, one should

respond by looking out for their welfare and being gentle. In time the

other person will have a change of heart and realize that you are not

doing any harm, only good.’

 This teacher did not deny that Al-Huda

students and teachers try to change their own personal behaviour

in a number of ways and that they try to inﬂ uence their families to

make certain changes. She herself had prevailed upon her parents

not to visit saints’ tombs or to o er supplications (du‘a) when there.

While her father had been easily convinced, she said, it had taken her

mother ﬁ ve years to bring herself to stop these practices.

 Sadaf Ahmad, Transforming Faith: The Story of Al-Huda and Islamic

Revivalism among Urban Pakistani Women (Syracuse: Syracuse University

Press, ), Chapter .

 Ahmad, Transforming Faith , pp. –.

 Notes from a personal conversation with students at the Al-Huda

Testing Center,  August .

 Scholars of Faith

In di erent ways, then, as Stuart Hall comments, these women

are ‘engaged in an “ideological struggle” that involves attempts to

“win some new set of meanings for an existing term, of disarticulat-

ing it from its place in a signifying structure”.’

 And as Starrett says,

the modernity of their endeavour lies in their objectiﬁ cation and

functionalization of Islamic education.

 What makes the Al-Huda

discourse so persuasive that women are willing to brave the disap-

proval of their families

 in order to transform their personal lives in

such profound ways? Why does Hashmi’s argument that God ‘wants’

Muslim women to dress in this way in public places make them

eager to comply? As many scholars have documented from around

the world, the upsurge of Muslim women’s piety movements is a

global phenomenon today and Al-Huda must therefore be placed in

this wider context. 

However, turning to Al-Huda speciﬁ cally, I would argue that the

free choice of students to fall in line with the lifestyle changes that

Hashmi encourages them to make is based on her ability to be morally

persuasive. Like a ‘good’ patron in Indian politics who is perceived

to exercise ‘legitimate’ inﬂ uence for the good of the people through

advice, persuasion, and his own moral example—in contrast to a ‘bad’

patron who is seen to exercise ‘undue’ inﬂ uence through various

 Stuart Hall, ‘Signiﬁ cation, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the

Post-Structuralist Debates’. Critical Studies in Mass Communication (),

(): –. The quote appears on p. . Quoted in Ahmad, Transforming

Faith , p. .

 Gregory Starrett, Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and

Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press,

), p. .

 Sadaf Ahmad documents numerous examples of intra-family conﬂ ict.

See, in particular, Transforming Faith , pp. –.

 To cite just a few examples: in Egypt, Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety:

The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, ); in Yemen, Anne Meneley, ‘Chador Barbie and Islamic Socks’,

Cultural Anthropology (), (): –; in Sri Lanka, Farzana Hani a,

‘Piety as Politics amongst Muslim Women in Contemporary Sri Lanka’,

Modern Asian Studies (), (/): –; in Bangladesh, Maimuna

Huq, ‘Reading the Qur’an in Bangladesh: The Politics of “Belief” among

Bangladeshi Women’, Modern Asian Studies (), (/): –.

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

forms of intimidation  —Hashmi is persuasive because she leads by

example. Thus I would argue that Farhat Hashmi’s moral leadership

is a lot more important than Al-Huda’s organizational structure,



or tactical factors that enabled Al-Huda students in Islamabad to

gradually become more comfortable with veiling practices.

 While

these are deﬁ nitely important, the key factor is Hashmi’s personal

example. An Al-Huda teacher who ﬁ rst took the one-year diploma

course with Hashmi in Islamabad in the late s and is now in a

leadership position in the United States (US), told me that what she

most admired in Farhat Hashmi was that whatever she preached to

her students, whatever ideals she asked them to live by, she herself

followed them even more faithfully than she asked them to. What she

was ‘on the outside’, she was also ‘on the inside’. This is a powerful

testimonial to Hashmi’s moral leadership; indeed, without it, I doubt

Al-Huda would have achieved the degree of success it has. Likewise,

Mushtaq also records the impressions of Hashmi on those who have

known her personally: the qualities they highlight include her dedi-

cation, humility, ability to connect with her students as if she knew

them, and her knowledge and passion for teaching the Qur’an.



Comparing Hashmi’s lectures to her students in  with those

she gave to students in Islamabad

 in , I see signiﬁ cant changes

in style—though the content is consistent—with some variations

 David Gilmartin, ‘The Paradox of Patronage and the People’s

Sovereignty’, in Anastasia Piliavsky, ed., Patronage as Politics in South Asia

(Delhi: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –, , and passim.

 Faiza Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority: A Movement for

Women’s Islamic Education, Moral Reform and Innovative Traditionalism’

(PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, ).

 Ahmad, Transforming Faith , pp. –.

 The Al-Huda website (alhuda.pk.com) also records a number of peo-

ple’s comments about how listening to Farhat Hashmi’s lectures on cassette

while on their way to and from work, for example, gradually changed the way

they lived, to bring their lives in greater conformity with Qur’anic values.

 These recorded lectures do not say where they were given, or who

the audience was. Only the date is given. However, internal evidence sug-

gests that they were given to educated women, which makes it likely that

the audience consisted of Al-Huda students. They were most likely given in

Islamabad, which is where the main Al-Huda centre in Pakistan is located.

 Scholars of Faith

related to the changed context. In , commenting on the verse

‘Take forcefully what We have given you, and remember what is in it;

haply you shall be godfearing’ (Qur’an :; Arberry trans.),

 Hashmi

talked at length about the importance of reading the Qur’an directly

oneself rather than relying on others to do so, and of following its

dictates thoroughly:

According to the Qur’an, the ignorant are those who do not know the

Book. This is the criterion. Not the way it is today, where an educated

person is one who has an FA, a BA, etc., even if he or she doesn’t know

what’s in the Qur’an. Many people today are adding things to din and tell-

ing people that this is your din . The result is that din becomes di cult, and

people leave the din and go far away. If you just give fatwas, saying this is

forbidden ( haram ), that is forbidden, then people think that Islam is just

about forbidding everything, but they never know what the reason is for

the command. If you, the educated people, read the Qur’an, then you can

begin to change this state of a airs.

Let me give you an example. Excuse me but I will give you an example.

These things may not be to the liking of some people, but I will talk of

some things that are not part of din . When a person dies, the dead man’s

family feed people on the ﬁ rst Thursday ( jum-i rat ). What a great injustice

( zulm ) it is to engage in this practice. It reduces religion to a matter of eat-

ing and sending out invitation cards, and collecting together. It doesn’t tell

you to do this anywhere in the Qur’an or in any of the Hadith collections.

Then after three days you must do this, after seven days do this, then on

the fortieth day, and then on the death anniversary ( barsi ). It doesn’t help

anyone, neither the family, nor the dead person. But those who tell you to

do it are eating and drinking. The religious people ( din wale log ) are telling

you to do this. Seventy per cent of the people can’t read and write. The peo-

ple are sick. They don’t have money to pay the fees. There are no books.

There are no school buildings. The population is ignorant. And our com-

munity ( qaum ) is wasting all its money in this way. And those crazy people

( diwana ) who, like me, criticize these customs are called Wahhabi—I don’t

know where this name came from—in order to silence them, so that they

may keep eating and the cooking pots don’t become empty. These cus-

toms are not a part of din . Where did Allah tell you to do this, where did

 This verse precedes the story of how some of the Children of Israel

broke the Sabbath and then reluctantly sacriﬁ ced a golden calf after asking a

number of questions (Q :–).

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

the Prophet tell you to do it? Where is the proof of this? You can make up

whatever customs you want.

Six years later, in Mississauga, Canada, Hashmi’s style of delivery was

very di erent. It was more personal, more closely tied to the Qur’anic

verses at hand, and made frequent cross-references to other Qur’anic

verses to make the point that the Qur’an comments on itself.

 In

, the oratory was frequently of the ﬁ re and brimstone variety,

delivered at a very rapid pace, and seeming at times to be read from

a written text. In , Hashmi made a direct connection with the

students by referring to their lives and the ways in which they should

make them more God-centred. Her comments on how people distort

the meaning of the Qur’an to suit their own purposes were also more

general:

Hold on to what is in this book ﬁ rmly, so that you may be saved. Again, I

repeat to you, you must ﬁ rst look at the verses of the Qur’an in context. So

here the discussion relates to the Bani Isra’il. Second, we must apply it to

ourselves. We must take its message and remember it. I had told you two

meanings of dhikr . First, to remember something that you had forgotten,

and second, to keep it in your mind all the time, to remember it constantly.

Keep it present, don’t lose it. So the meaning is, O Bani Isra’il, fulﬁ l the

promise that you had made when We lifted the Mount Tur over you, hold

it ﬁ rmly, take it, because if you don’t you will be punished for forgetting

your promise. 

Somewhat later, Hashmi referred to how the ‘ulama and others

change the meaning of religious obligations:

Some people change God’s command. For example, they will read ‘ Kul

hua Allah ’ (‘He is God, One’, Arberry trans.; Q :) three times and they

will say they’ve read the Qur’an. Is that what God meant when He said

we should read the Qur’an? What else do they do? They do many things

to interpret God’s command in ways that please them, and they pretend

that they are following religion ( din ). This is the worst kind of deception

( dhoka ). For example, when the matter of the veil ( hijab ) comes up, they

say, ‘The veil of the heart is enough’ ( dil ka parda kaﬁ hai ), whereas what is

required is ‘the veil of the eyes’ ( ankh ka parda ). In the Qur’an, ‘the veil of

the heart’ is referred to as a sign of neglect ( ghaﬂ at ). What else do they do?

 See Chapter  for discussion of this issue.

 Lesson .d ().

 Scholars of Faith

They change some prophetic practices ( sunnat ). Instead of giving women

their inheritance, they give them a dowry ( jahez ) and say that they’ve done

their duty. What else? Instead of giving money for the sacriﬁ ce ( kurbani ),

a sunnat that has been going on since Abraham’s time, they spend the

money on something else. You can spend your money the way you want

all year long, but when the time comes to spend it in a particular way,

that’s what you have to do. What other example is there? They say that just

as there is proﬁ t in trade, so the money made from interest ( sud ) is the

same. That’s also proﬁ t. To engage in dishonesty in this way with din , or to

change the meaning of din according to one’s desires, and to think this is

a sign of how smart one is, is a sign of their stupidity. No one can deceive

(‘give dhoka to’) God.

Reviewing her lectures on di erent Qur’anic verses, we see how

Hashmi foregrounds women’s ability to bring about change in society.

In , she told her audience that educated women like themselves

could potentially loosen the hold of the ‘ulama on society by study-

ing the Qur’an and ﬁ nding out for themselves why certain things are

forbidden, rather than taking the ‘ulama’s word for it and thinking

that Islam is a religion that forbids everything, without any reason.

In her class to the students in Canada, as pointed out earlier, she put

women at the center of potential change in family relationships, if

they acted on God’s message not to sever that which God has com-

manded be joined. Hashmi o ered a stinging rebuke of certain social

practices—death rituals in the ﬁ rst case, and a range of practices such

as not veiling, denying a woman her right to an inheritance, refusing

to spend money on the ritual sacriﬁ ce at the end of the month of

pilgrimage ( hajj ), or wrongfully engaging in interest-bearing loans, in

the second. These examples illustrate how wide-ranging is Hashmi’s

exegesis of the Qur’an, or to put it di erently, how all aspects of social

life are viewed through the lens of the Qur’anic text. This, as she says

often—together with the prophetic traditions, or Hadith—is the only

true touchstone ( mayyar ) for action in the world.

However, it is clear from Hashmi’s condemnation of the ‘ulama

on the grounds that they have introduced unacceptable innovations

in religion ( bid‘a ) that there are others who do not share her views.

Hashmi refers to herself rhetorically in  as a ‘Wahhabi’, a pejora-

tive term used by many of the ‘ulama for the Ahl-i Hadith and other

groups. Likewise, in lectures given in Canada, she refers to others’

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

view that women who veil in public the way she does are ‘extrem-

ists, terrorists’. The divisiveness of these issues in an intra-Muslim

context thereby becomes clear: Al-Huda students must choose which

voices they will listen to, those of other Muslims around them—in

their families, in mosques, in a variety of public arenas—or the word

of God, as they hear it unfolding before them in their Al-Huda classes.

The stylistic di erences between the  lecture and the one in

 are striking. In , she addressed her audience collectively,

her words ﬂ owing rapidly, switching back and forth from the histori-

cal context to the present one in a way that was sometimes confusing.

In the  classes, her pace, while still fast, was more measured, the

address was more personal, and the tone was more conversational.

We see this, for instance, when she asked students if they could think

of examples of religious innovations from their everyday experience.

Although she seemed to answer her own questions, there was more

give and take, more involvement of the audience by the simple fact

of asking questions and listening to their responses. Asking ques-

tions of her audience seems, in fact, to have become a hallmark of

Hashmi’s teaching style.

Also interesting is the fact that Hashmi’s  lectures are charac-

terized by a great deal of a ect.  The focus of her exegesis is on inner

personal transformation as the key to outward changes in behaviour.

Like a Suﬁ master addressing his disciples—but also in signiﬁ cant

ways di ering from the classic image of the Suﬁ master whose

disciples owed him absolute obedience

 —she speaks frequently of

the importance of the heart. In her exegesis of Qur’an : (‘In their

hearts is a sickness, and God has increased their sickness’) and :

(‘Then your hearts hardened thereafter and are like stones, or even

yet harder’), she described the person whose heart has become hard

 On the importance of a ect in Qur’nic education, see Gade, Perfection

Makes Practice , pp. – and passim.

 The well-known adage that the Suﬁ disciple must be so completely

devoted to his master that he is like a dead body in the hands of the under-

taker would likely be repudiated by Hashmi. See, for example, Annemarie

Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, ), p. .

 Scholars of Faith

as worse than a stone, because even stones bow down before God and

allow the water to ﬂ ow between them, water that swells into rivers.

How do we know when our hearts have become hard? she asked her

students. Ask yourselves three questions: Do you enjoy being part

of religious gatherings ( mehﬁ l ) where the Qur’an is being discussed

or do you long to be somewhere else? Do you enjoy listening to the

Qur’an being recited? Does it stir your heart or are you indi erent to

it? And third, do you enjoy being alone with God in prayer or do you

constantly seek human company so that you are not alone?

 If they

answered these questions honestly and faced up to them, they could

begin to diagnose their spiritual sickness of the heart and embark on

the work of reform.

In Hashmi’s interaction with her students, there is a ﬁ ne balance

between giving due respect and deference to her as an authority ﬁ gure

and requiring that students be active thinkers, listeners, and learners.

On the one hand she demands of her students that they make full

use of their faculties, that they ask questions, that they use their intel-

ligence ( ‘aql ). Yet at the same time, she demands strict conformity to

high standards of etiquette, discipline, and respect for her authority

as a teacher, and especially for the Qur’an that is at the centre of their

joint endeavours.  She can be heard on tape upbraiding students for

perceived breaches of etiquette, including mildly disruptive behav-

iour such as talking in class, asking a question at the wrong time,

being silent when spoken to, not paying attention in class, and so

on. In this sense, there is not much di erence between the defer-

ence expected of madrasa students for their teachers and in Hashmi’s

interactions with students. While she opens up the classroom space

to discussion of personal matters in a way that I did not observe

at Jami‘a Nur, such discussion occurs in an overall context of tight

control of the parameters of legitimate discourse. This was illustrated

by the fact that both the personal testimonials received from online

students, which were selected for being read aloud by a student in the

classroom, were highly respectful of Hashmi’s authority. There was

no challenge therein. Rather, they were chosen because they bore wit-

ness to the truth-value of arguments Hashmi was making about the

 Lesson .d–e ().

 Lessons .–. ().

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

need to use personal time wisely and to maintain and nurture family

relationships rather than allow them to be severed.

This said, Hashmi is very good at delegating authority to others,

and has in fact stepped away from the hands-on intensive teaching

that she did in the s and the ﬁ rst decade of the s. That role

is now performed by younger Al-Huda teachers, among them her

daughter Taimiyyah in Canada.

Al-Huda at Mississauga, Canada

The Al-Huda Institute at Mississauga is located on a quiet street in the

Toronto suburb. It sits on a large property, a white, two-storey corner

building with a wide driveway and large staircase leading to a glass-

fronted entrance. There is some parking space behind the building,

though both the building and the parking lot are full to capacity and

the facility, once considered spacious, is now becoming too small for

the number of people who use it. Inside, there is a lobby in the front,

with a bookshop and several small o ces leading o the reception

area on one side. Upstairs are classrooms and a conference room

and library, and downstairs a kitchen and large gym that has multiple

uses as a prayer hall, play area for children, dining room, and even

some classrooms cordoned o from the rest of the gym space where

small boys are taught by male instructors. The building is well lit and

airy, and teachers and sta move about briskly. Mu ed conversations

in muted voices can be heard in the hallways. The women radiate a

sense of purpose, gravitas, and amiable sociability.



Taimiyyah Zubair, the third daughter of Idrees Zubair and Farhat

Hashmi, moved to Mississauga in . Born in Scotland in , she

completed her O Levels in Islamabad and then took the Qur’an class

with her mother and some other students, completing it in a year.

She was  at the time. She recalls that they studied from Monday

through Saturday, from early morning until . in the evening. It

was very intensive and thorough. After that her mother began teach-

ing a Ramadan class in Karachi (similar to the Fahm al-Quran course

 This description is based on two visits to the Institute, in  and

. It is possible that the observations I make here no longer reﬂ ect current

realities on the ground.

 Scholars of Faith

today), which later grew into a full-time one-year course. The English

Qur’an classes in Mississauga started in  in response to public

demand and need. The initial impetus for the class came from two

non-South-Asian students who did not understand Urdu. Both were

recent converts. One was African American. They used to manage by

looking at the notes of one of the students who wrote in English. In

view of the inadequacy of the resources available to them, Taimiyyah

began teaching English classes, ﬁ rst to a small number of students,

then gradually to more and more.

Now, the number of students was greater than she could handle.



When I met her in , she was teaching a weekend Qur’an class

(Taleem al-Quran English) on Saturdays and Sundays, which took

place in the gym. Student demand was so great that as many as 

enrolled but after that lack of space and sta dictated that others

had to be turned away. Prior to this, Taimiyyah had been teaching

the word-for-word translation in the weekly Taleem al-Quran English

 The information in this paragraph is based on a personal conversation

with Taimiyyah Zubair,  May .

Figure 8.1 Entrance to Al-Huda Institute, Mississauga, Canada

Source : Reproduced with permission of Al-Huda.

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

class. This class covered the same ground, but during Saturdays and

Sundays. One Sunday, I was a participant–observer in the gym.

The students sat in neat rows on white sheets spread out over the

fully carpeted gym ﬂ oor, their short narrow desks in front of them.

They faced the white qibla wall, which marks the direction of prayer.

The wall contained a simple unadorned niche and a number of book-

shelves along its length ﬁ lled with Hadith and other books. Above

the bookshelves was a large projection screen onto which teachers

projected words or images that pertained to the lesson at hand. There

were also ﬁ ve large clocks, each of which indicated one of the ﬁ ve

canonical prayer times, ranging from  a.m. to  p.m. Two other

clocks on the wall running along the length of the gym indicated the

local time. This wall had a number of large windows, clear above and

tinted below, which let in plenty of light while shielding students

from outside view. In the front of the gym, by the qibla wall, there was

a large wooden desk on which was seated a student–teacher working

at a laptop through which she controlled the images being projected

on the screen. At the back of the gym there were several rows of chairs

for older students who were unable to sit on the ﬂ oor like the younger

ones. Some, who were not yet full-time students, were dressed in

Figure 8.2 Classroom in Al-Huda Institute, Mississauga, Canada

Source : Reproduced with permission of Al-Huda.

 Scholars of Faith

colourful clothes, not in the student uniform. The lesson being taught

that Sunday consisted of ayahs – of Sura Hud (Q :–).



Taimiyyah stood in front of the desk facing the students, speak-

ing in a clear voice that carried very well throughout the large hall.

Dressed, like the students, in a black abaya—though she wore a large

blue headscarf, unlike their white ones—she was reading o an iPad

in her hand, and a microphone was clipped to the inside of her robe.

There were no trailing wires, and she therefore had full mobility of

movement. She walked back and forth in front of the students, and

at one point even joined them in one of the front rows, watching

while a group of seven or eight students staged a short performance

illustrating a verse in the lesson. The students listened attentively and

took notes throughout, occasionally answering a question posed by

Taimiyyah. At no point did any of them raise their hands to speak—

likely a result as much of the speed of the lesson as of their shyness in

speaking before a large crowd of people.

However, some students did speak up during and after a group

presentation about how hearing works in the human body, in refer-

ence to the frequent phrase in the Qur’an, ‘Will you not hear?’ The

leader of the group made seven young women stand in a row. Each

was carrying a placard slung around her neck bearing terms such

as ‘inner ear’, ‘muscle’, ‘outer ear’, ‘cochlea’, and ﬁ nally ‘brain’. The

one with ‘brain’ was at the end of the row, and the leader directed

each person to make motions with her hands and body to show the

way that part of the ear responds to sound. They were thus making

di erent kinds of movements, and the audience periodically broke

into laughter. Taimiyyah had moved into one of the student rows

meanwhile, the better to watch the performance. The group leader

explained in simple terms how sound moves from one part of the ear

to the other, and also what happens if one or other part of this complex

mechanism is impaired. She said that these days it is possible to buy

a replacement for some of the parts but it costs thousands of dollars

and doesn’t work as well as the natural ears we all have. So God has

given us a big gift for free, and we should look after it. One should

 Lesson ,  May . The lesson numbers are the same as those

in the ﬂ agship year-long Taleem al-Qur’an course, whether in Urdu or in

English.

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

never turn the volume on audio equipment to its full capacity, but

only up to  per cent. Beyond that, it would start to damage one’s ear.

Then she asked students for comments, and a few girls spoke up

softly, making brief comments about the value of listening. One stu-

dent said it’s important to listen carefully before speaking. Taimiyyah,

now at the front of the hall again, took this up, saying how important

it was to ﬁ rst listen, and then speak. Then a woman walked up to a

small enclosure on one side of the hall, where she couldn’t be seen

by the other students, and said she had something to say. She had

su ered from hearing loss for many years and wanted to tell her story,

but she didn’t want the students to see her. Many years ago she had

had a blockage that had prevented her from hearing. For this she

underwent long and complicated surgery, although the doctor only

gave it a  per cent chance of success. But she took the risk, and after

several hours of surgery she was able to hear—but now everything

was so loud and hurt her so much that she couldn’t stand it. So three

weeks later she underwent another round of surgery. Since then she

has been able to hear, but her hearing is very sensitive and loud noises

hurt her. She was very emotional as she described her trials over the

years. Another woman came up to her and the two hugged each other

closely. Later, when the class was over, Taimiyyah spoke some words

of comfort to her. Her personal testimony had borne powerful witness

to the message which the group performance had sought to convey.

Taimiyyah is a very knowledgeable, hard-working, and highly dedi-

cated teacher of word-for-word translation of the Qur’an from Arabic

into English and an avid student of tafsir. In her translation lessons,

which follow the path charted by her parents, she frequently points

out the di erent ways in which particular words or phrases have been

read and interpreted, and also cites the opinions of di erent exegetes.

A simple example is provided by the verse describing the splitting of

the moon (Al-Qamar, Q :) which Taimiyyah said has been inter-

preted in two ways: the stronger of the two opinions, supported by the

fact that the past tense is used, is that it was a miracle of the Prophet

Muhammad, while the second opinion is that it will occur on the Day

of Judgment.  By contrast, an ambiguous verse such as ‘by the even

 Lesson ,  April . The references in this paragraph, and their

corresponding dates, are from the Taleem al-Quran Morning English course

 Scholars of Faith

and the odd’ (Al-Fajr, Q :; Arberry trans.) has been interpreted

in at least  di erent ways, she told the class, and she gave them

some of the opinions.

 In keeping with the Al-Huda principle that

one’s teaching style should be suited to the language and knowledge

base of the students being addressed, sometimes Taimiyyah draws

on examples from everyday life to vividly convey an image invoked

by the verses being studied. Thus, describing the crumbling of the

mountains on the Day of Judgment (Al-Waqi‘a, Q :) to a ﬁ ne pow-

der, she said it would be like grinding something in a blender or food

processor.  Likewise, she explained the word tabaqat (layers) in the

verse ‘[He] who created seven heavens one upon another’ (Al-Mulk,

Q :; Arberry trans.) by evoking the image of plates stacked one on

top of the other.

 And in the very next verse, ‘Thou seest not in the

creation of the All-Merciful any imperfection [ tafawut ]’, she explained

the word ‘imperfection’ by evoking the harmony a woman seeks when

she designs the interior of her home so that ‘everything goes together,

it matches’.  At other times a verse led to a discussion of real-life

situations in a person’s life. Thus, the word ‘Hadith’ in the verse

‘Hast thou received the story [Hadith] of Moses?’ (Al-Nazi‘at, Q :;

Arberry trans.) prompted an extended discussion of how one’s under-

standing of the same verse changes depending on one’s life situation.

Taimiyyah said that after she had her ﬁ rst child, her understanding of

the Qur’an changed. 

Taimiyyah exempliﬁ es the role of teacher–learner. Over the years

she has studied a number of Al-Huda and other courses after complet-

ing the Taleem al-Quran class in Islamabad. She is also an avid reader

when not fulﬁ lling administrative and teaching duties at the Al-Huda

centre, or domestic roles at home. Having mastered Arabic grammar

and word-for-word translation and analysis, which she has taught

since , her scholarly interests have turned, not surprisingly, to

that I was part of during –. The lessons were from a pre-recorded tape

played on the date speciﬁ ed for the online students of that class.

 Lesson ,  September .

 Lesson ,  April .

 Lesson ,  June .

 Lesson ,  June .

 Lesson ,  August .

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

exegesis (tafsir), one of the most important of the Qur’anic sciences.



She told me that ‘the internalization of the Qur’an takes place at this

level. People who admire the language of the Qur’an are only look-

ing at its surface. Yes, it’s beautiful, but that’s only the ﬁ rst step. It

doesn’t further one’s understanding of its meaning, which is what

tafsir does.’  And there are many di erent kinds of tafsir. Some focus

on the language of the Qur’an, such as the tafsir of al-Zamakhshari

(d. ), the Mu‘tazili scholar. Her mother and she refer to this tafsir,

among others, though they have di erences with him on some issues,

given his Mu‘tazili views.

 Some focus on the views of di erent

scholars, such as Ibn al-Jawzi (d. ).

 Another kind of tafsir looks

at what laws can be derived from the verses of the Qur’an. She herself

was not very interested in this, because the Qur’an is so much more

than a lawbook.  The mufassir who Taimiyyah said had a ected her

deeply was Shaykh ibn Uthaymin al-Tamimi (–), an inﬂ uen-

tial Saudi scholar ( ‘alim ) whose opinions are considered deﬁ nitive by

many Salaﬁ s today.  A student of ‘Abd al-‘Aziz bin Baz in Riyadh, he

 See Claude Gilliot, ‘Exegesis of the Qur’an: Classical and Medieval’,

in Jane Dammen McAuli e, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an , vol.  (Leiden:

Brill, ), pp. –; and Rotraud Wielandt, ‘Exegesis of the Qur’an: Early

Modern and Contemporary’, in Jane Dammen McAuli e, ed., Encyclopedia of

the Qur’an , vol.  (Leiden: Brill, ), pp. –.

 Notes from personal conversation,  May .

 On al-Zamakhshari, see Anthony H. Johns, ‘Air and Wind’, in Jane

Dammen McAuli e, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an , vol.  (Leiden: Brill,

), p. , among other articles in the Encyclopaedia.

 On Ibn al-Jawzi, see Leah Kinburg, ‘Ambiguous’, in Jane Dammen

McAuli e, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an , vol.  (Leiden: Brill, ), p. ,

among other articles in the Encyclopaedia.

 In contrast, Mawdudi’s tafsir, the Tafhim al-Qur’an , is greatly interested

in such matters. See Charles J. Adams, ‘Abu’l A‘la Mawdudi’s Tafhim al-

Qur’an’, in Andrew Rippen, ed., Approaches to the History of the Interpretation

of the Qur’an (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, ), pp. –.

 A native of Unayza, a regional town in the Al-Qasim region, north-

west of Riyadh, he was educated at the Riyadh Educational Institute and the

Faculty of Shariah in Riyadh. When his shaykh died, he succeeded him as

imam of the al-Jami‘ al-Kabir mosque in Unayza in . He was the imam

there until his death over  years later. During this time, he also taught at

 Scholars of Faith

had an illustrious career as a teacher and author of numerous books,



including a commentary on Ibn Taymiyya’s exegesis of the Qur’an.



Al-Huda Online Testing Center, Hurst, Texas

Turning now to the centre of the online classes in Hurst, Texas, we

encounter some remarkable women—teacher–learners again—who

have made it possible for students all over the world to beneﬁ t from the

classes taking place in the Al-Huda Institute in Mississauga, Canada.

The person who started it all, Shazia Nawaz, was  when she became

a student of Farhat Hashmi in Islamabad in –, in the ﬁ fth and last

batch of students before Hashmi moved to Karachi. Later Shazia also

moved to Karachi, as an Al-Huda sta member, staying in the hostel

along with  other women. She helped Hashmi’s children with their

maths and English homework and became close to Hashmi’s family.

She described these two years as the best years of her life.

 After her

marriage in , she moved to Arizona and later to Dallas. While

she was in Arizona, she began to teach lessons on PalTalk,

 and later

broadcast an online course from Arizona to Lahore. This course had

 students. It was the precursor to the Qur’an online classes to come.

Hashmi came to Canada in January . That year, she had 

students. Shazia Nawaz wanted to listen to Hashmi herself but was too

far away to do so in person. So she took the initiative to get the Al-Huda

online classes up and running despite the widespread scepticism of the

leaders of Al-Huda that they could be made to work, given that every-

body would be in di erent time zones.  The Taleem al-Quran online

the Educational Institute of Unayza, among other places. See Al-‘Allamah

‘Abdul Muhsin Al-‘Abbad Al-Badr, The Life of Imam Muhammad bin Salih al-

‘Uthaymin (Mecca: Makkah Publishing, ).

 Al-Badr, The Life of Imam Muhammad bin Salih al-‘Uthaymin , pp. –.

 Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Salih Al-Uthaymin, An Explanation of Shaykh

al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah’s Introduction to the Principles of Tafsir (Birmingham:

Al-Hidaayah Publishing, ).

 Notes from my telephone conversation with Shazia Nawaz,  August

.

 For more on PalTalk, see Chapter .

 Information based on my personal conversation with Taimiyyah

Zubair,  May .

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

courses were initially slow to take o for lack of teachers and trained

volunteers. But by  there were enough trained volunteers to help

run the classes. At ﬁ rst, evening and weekend classes were added for

students who had registered in advanced courses but were far behind

the existing students, who were almost halfway through the year-long

course. So they studied on weekends or evenings—in addition to taking

the regular daytime classes—to make up the lessons they had missed.

A hundred and ninety students joined the weekend class, and  joined

the evening class. This was when the online classes were expanded.

In , Shazia and her band of volunteers were managing  online

classes altogether from the Hurst centre. Most were in Urdu, though

some were in English. Some classes had as many as – students,

while others were much smaller, with only –.

To get a better idea of what the work entailed, in  I visited

Shazia Nawaz at her o ce in the Hurst location. The Al-Huda Testing

Center consisted of a suite of rooms in a single-storey building in

a suburb of Dallas, close to the airport. Inside, there were cubicles

for di erent volunteers, a kitchen, a small conference room, and an

L-shaped space as you entered that served as a classroom with chairs

and a blackboard. Shazia Nawaz had a spacious o ce. Five volun-

teers, Shazia, and I sat around the conference table and they told me

about themselves and their work.

Maryam,  a young woman of Pakistani origin, was living in Dallas

with her husband and children when she took the Al-Huda online

Urdu class in . She took the intensive -month certiﬁ cate course.

That year, tafsir classes were taught by Farhat Hashmi and streamed

live online, and were a big draw for the online students. Maryam said

that the classes helped her a lot as a mother, as she was able to give

her children a good upbringing based on Qur’anic teachings. Since

then she had taken a number of other Al-Huda courses, and when

we met she was in charge of grading the Urdu tests. This was an

important role, as the number of Urdu speakers outnumbered that

of students taking English classes. Contrary to my expectations that

there were only two language groups (Urdu and English), the situa-

tion was in fact more complex as there was in addition a hybrid group

which was ﬂ uent in spoken Urdu but read English more ﬂ uently than

 A pseudonym, not the volunteer’s real name. All the volunteers’ names

in this section have been changed to preserve their anonymity.

 Scholars of Faith

Urdu. The students in this group took notes in English, although they

were enrolled in Urdu classes. Finally, there was also a small group of

students from India and Bangladesh whose languages of instruction

were Gujarati, Hindi, or Bengali. Volunteers translated the tests into

these languages (or hired an outside person, if none of them knew

the required languages well enough). In , only a handful of the

students belonged to this last group.

The volunteer sitting next to Maryam, Asiya, was an older woman

with a degree in computer engineering and many years of experience

working in industry. She ﬁ rst learned of Al-Huda through her hus-

band, who was a doctor. They had grown children. When she heard

Hashmi deliver a lecture in which she challenged the women in her

audience to ‘serve Allah’ after having ‘served the dunya [the world]’ for

so many years, Asiya enrolled in the course, excited at the prospect

of studying the Qur’an in the original Arabic. Originally, because the

students were already four months into the course, she was Shazia

Nawaz’s student, studying seven juz with her. But once she had

caught up with the others, she joined the regular online class. During

our conversation, she explained that she was now coordinating the

English-language online tests.

Asiya’s neighbour at the conference table that day was Hafsa.

Hafsa, who was born in the US, had lived in California for many years

before moving to Texas. She smiled easily. While still in California,

she asked her husband for permission to go to Mississauga and

study the Taleem al-Quran class from Hashmi. He agreed, and she

and her mother left together to study with Hashmi. She was one of

the ‘hybrids’ whom Shazia Nawaz had spoken of earlier. She took the

Urdu language class taught by Hashmi but took notes in English. She

and her mother completed the course in two years. Meanwhile, her

husband had moved to Cleveland to be closer to her, and he would

commute to Mississauga on weekends to see her and her mother.

After the course was over, they decided to buy a house in Dallas, as

housing prices there were lower than in California. A number of her

husband’s friends moved too. She had four children, the oldest of

them a teenager, and volunteered at the centre once a week. In one

day, she would correct between  and  tests.

Next to Hafsa was Saﬁ ya, a young woman, married, with children.

She had a computer science degree from Kansas, and like Asiya,

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

many years of experience working in the corporate world, in her case

in information technology (IT). In  she got laid o from her

job—which, in retrospect, she said was the best thing that could have

happened to her. She ‘told Allah to take her where He would’, and

when she found out about the Al-Huda course she never looked back.

Since completing the course, she had applied her computer skills to

keeping the Al-Huda website updated. Periodically she took refresher

courses to keep abreast of changes in the ﬁ eld of computer technology.

She taught condensed courses to kids (one of her former students was

sitting next to her). She said she and the other students had to keep

learning in order to apply their skills to the Al-Huda course materials.

Now she was in charge of grading tests, like the others in the group.

The last person was a young girl with glasses, aged , who was

in college studying towards a business degree. She also worked at

the centre part-time, twice or three times a week. Fauzia’s work con-

sisted of data entry, as all the test grades had to be entered into the

computer database before they could be mailed back to the students.

In one week she could enter up to  student grades. She was also

in charge of accounts, which involved a lot of responsibility. Initially

she had taken some short classes (Dawra-i Qur’an) with a friend of

hers at someone’s house. Then she went on to take other classes and

had helped to make visual study aids and materials that would be

interesting to younger people. Initially she had a hard time reading

Urdu and Arabic, but now she was quite ﬂ uent and was able to write

Urdu comfortably. In this way, Al-Huda had helped her develop her

language skills. She said Al-Huda was like her second home, that she

loved it there.

What does the Al-Huda Testing Center do? What is its role in

Al-Huda online classes? To give the reader some idea of the work it

does, a small incident from the online experience of which I was a part

may be helpful. Starting in early , my class, which had started

in December ,  regularly took tests on the material we were

studying. All the students would receive an email attaching the test

from the Bengaluru, India-based course-in-charge once half a juz had

been completed. Students were given a deadline for the submission

 Taleem al-Quran Morning English course; see the Appendix at the end

of this chapter for a list of online classes o ered during , , and .

 Scholars of Faith

of tests. Failure to complete the test on time invited a small mon-

etary ﬁ ne, which rose incrementally as time passed, though it was

capped at three weeks (after three weeks, the ﬁ ne did not increase any

further). The translation tests were closed book and the tafsir assign-

ment, given at the end of each juz, was open book. Students were on

an honour system, there being no way Al-Huda could supervise them

in the online environment. We were given a time limit and told not to

open the test until we thought we were ready to take it. Given that the

course was new to us and all the students were anxious to do well, we

were eagerly awaiting the receipt of our graded tests through the mail

(‘snail’ mail, not email).

 However, months passed before any of the

graded tests came back, and then too just a few. By the second half of

, the number of tests completed was already considerably greater

than the number returned to students.

In June , responding to students’ periodic enquiries about the

matter, the testing centre sent a long email explaining the enormity

of the volunteers’ workload as well as teething troubles encountered

at the beginning of  when the testing process started. Apart from

an unanticipated forced move by the testing centre from one loca-

tion to another in February, which caused a month’s delay, the email

explained that when the volunteers began their work, ‘there were lots

of surprises waiting for us Subhanallah’.

 Chief among these was

that because almost all the courses (then over  in all) had course IDs

that began with ‘TQ’ (for ‘Taleem al-Quran’), the volunteers had di -

culty placing the tests in the correct courses when students carelessly

misidentiﬁ ed their course title or failed to write their full names at the

top as required. This was especially challenging when the material

students were being tested on was the same in di erent courses. As

there were more than  tests to be graded by this time, it took the

volunteers a whole month to make an accurate list of students’ names

in each course and match the tests to the students. Only then could

 The online classes were still so new that the testing centre hadn’t yet

worked out a deﬁ nitive system for the receipt of graded tests. We went to a

system of online uploading of tests for a while, then returned to the use of

snail mail.

 Email from Shazia Nawaz, ‘Reasons for Delay in Posting Exams Back’,

 June .

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

the grading begin. Even after the grading was done, new problems

arose as the volunteers found that the mailing addresses they had on

record for many students were incomplete.

The email concluded by saying that after several months, the test-

ing centre had developed a multiple-stage checking process:

. Sorting the tests received into their respective courses, making answer

‘keys’ for the questions, and putting the tests and keys in packages for

the ‘checking team’.

. The checking team graded the tests using the keys provided, and if

necessary revised the key.

. The checking team then returned the tests, which went to the ‘re-check-

ing team’. This team rechecked the graded tests and calculated the stu-

dent’s total grade.

. The volunteers noted which questions students repeatedly answered

incorrectly, whether in translation or ‘fahm’ (understanding, exegesis)

assignments, and reported their ﬁ ndings to the ‘course in-charges’.

. After rechecking, all the tests were given to the regional coordinator for

‘ﬁ nal approval’.

. An additional grade was added for students’ participation in group dis-

cussions (which occurred once a week), and a ﬁ nal grade for each stu-

dent was entered on a grade sheet.

. Address labels were made, each test was folded and put into a white

envelope, and the tests were mailed after making a record of this ﬁ nal

step. 

As is apparent from this email, there was a clear hierarchy of func-

tions and roles at the Al-Huda Testing Center, ranging from the

regional coordinator at the top, to the course in-charges (one per

course), group in-charges (responsible for speciﬁ c parts of the daily

teaching schedule), and the volunteers working in the o ce or grad-

ing tests at home. The thoroughness of the work being done, most

of it on volunteer basis, spoke volumes for the high morale, motiva-

tion, and dedication of all involved. The e ciency with which it was

done was evidence once again of the ‘hybrid’ bureaucratic structure

of Al-Huda as a whole, modelled on both an educational institution

and a corporate one.

 Unlike many schools or contemporary o ces,

 Email from Nawaz, ‘Reasons for Delay in Posting Exams Back’,  June

.

 See Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, Chapter .

 Scholars of Faith

however, there was much greater transparency and sense of common

purpose at Al-Huda.

***

In this chapter I have looked at a range of teachers, students, and vol-

unteers at di erent Al-Huda teaching sites, including the online one.

Two key points that emerge from this examination are the continuous

nature of the learning experience for students at Al-Huda and the

way in which course material—the Qur’anic text that is at the heart

of it all—is ‘translated’ into action. The word must become embodied

action in the world for Al-Huda’s purpose to be fulﬁ lled. I have tried

to encapsulate the concept of continuous learning by using the term

‘teacher–learner’, for many students who complete the -month

diploma course go on to enrol in other Al-Huda courses to deepen

their knowledge and love of the Qur’an by continuous exposure and

study. Simultaneously they might volunteer in some capacity at an

Al-Huda centre if they are within driving distance of one or start

a small study circle of their own at home with the aid of recorded

lectures, visual materials available on YouTube and other media, and

traditional written texts. In the next chapter I turn to students’ and

teachers’ narratives, drawn largely from people I came to know, meet,

or correspond with over the four years that I was an active listener and

online student.

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

APPENDIX 

As of , the following Al-Huda courses were being o ered online

on di erent days of the week:

Al-Huda Online Courses, 2011–13

Course Name Days Time Abbreviation

Urdu Quran Courses

Taleem al-Quran

Diploma Course

Urdu 

Tuesdays and

Wednesdays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

TDCU

Taleem al-Quran

Diploma Weekends

Urdu 

Saturdays and

Sundays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQWD

Taleem al-Quran

Fridays 

Fridays : p.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQCF

Taleem al-Quran

Mondays 

Mondays : p.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQCP–

Taleem al-Quran

Course Mondays



Mondays : a.m. to

: p.m. EST

TQCP–

Saut al-Quran Course

Sundays

Sundays : a.m. to

: a.m. EST

SQEC

Taleem al-Quran

Diploma Course

Urdu 

Tuesdays,

Wednesdays,

and Thursdays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQMU

Taleem al-Quran

Diploma Course UK

Tuesdays and

Wednesdays

: a.m. to :

p.m. (UK time)

TQUK

Taleem al-Quran

Certiﬁ cate Course

Mondays and

Tuesdays

: p.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQCE

Taleem al-Quran

Diploma Urdu

Course 

Wednesdays

and Thursdays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQMD

 Scholars of Faith

Course Name Days Time Abbreviation

Taleem al-Quran

Diploma Urdu: UAE

Timings 

Mondays and

Tuesdays

: a.m. to

: p.m.UAE

Timings

TQMD

Quran Evening

Certiﬁ cate Course

Urdu

Tuesdays and

Wednesdays

: p.m. to :

p.m. EST

AQCE

English Quran Courses

Taleem al-Quran

Certiﬁ cate Course

English: Weekdays



Tuesdays and

Wednesdays

: a.m. to

: p.m. EST

TCCE

Taleem al-Quran

English Course

Weekends 

Saturdays and

Sundays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

TWCE

Taleem al-Quran

English Diploma

Course 

Mondays

through

Thursdays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQE- Live

from Canada

Taleem al-Quran

Evening English

(TQEE) Course

Wednesdays

and Thursdays

: p.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQEE

Taleem al-Quran

Weekend English

(TQWE) Course

Saturdays : a.m. to :

p.m. EST

TQWE

Saut al-Quran

Weekend English

Course

Saturdays/

Sundays

: a.m. to

: p.m. EST

SQEC

Taleem al-Quran

Morning English

Course

Mondays and

Tuesdays

: a.m. to

: p.m. EST

TQME

Taleem al-Quran

English Conference

Call Wednesday

Course

Wednesdays : p.m. to :

p.m. EST

CCW

Taleem al-Quran

English Conference

Call Friday Course

Fridays : p.m. to :

p.m. EST

CCF

Al-Huda Onsite and Online 

Course Name Days Time Abbreviation

Fehm al-Quran

and Seerah Course:

Saturdays

Saturdays : a.m. to

: p.m. EST

AFQS

Quran Certiﬁ cate

Evening Course

English 

Wednesdays

and Thursdays

: p.m. to :

p.m. EST

AQEE

Urdu Hadith Courses

Taleem al-Hadith

Morning Urdu

Course 

Thursdays : a.m. to :

p.m. EST/:

a.m. to : p.m.

UAE Time

AHM

Sahih Bukhari Friday

Evening

Fridays : p.m. to :

p.m. EST

HBE

Sahih Bukhari

Thursday Morning

Thursdays : a.m. to

: a.m. EST

HBU

Sahih Bukhari

Wednesday Morning,

UAE Timings

Wednesdays : a.m. to

: a.m. UAE

Time

HBU

Taleem al-Hadith

Weekdays Urdu

Tuesdays,

Wednesdays,

and Thursdays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

THB Live

from Canada

English Hadith Courses

Taleem al-Hadith

English Advanced

Course: Bukhari 

Fridays : a.m. to

: p.m. EST

THBLive

from Canada

Taleem al-Hadith

Morning English

Course

Mondays : a.m. to

: p.m. EST

AHME

Short Courses

Hifz and Riyad

us-Saliheen

Mondays : a.m. to

: p.m. EST

HFRS

Da‘wa-e-Shaaﬁ

Tazkiya Course

Thursdays Morning Session

: p.m. to :

p.m. ESTEvening

Session : p.m.

to : p.m. EST

TDS

 Scholars of Faith

Course Name Days Time Abbreviation

Seerah an-Nabavi

s.a.w. Course

Fridays Morning Session

: a.m. to

: p.m.

ESTEvening

Session : p.m.

to : p.m. EST

AHSC

Islamic Creed Course Thursdays : a.m. to

: p.m. EST

IAQ

Fiqh al-Quloob Tuesdays : a.m. to

: p.m. EST

FQH

Da‘wa-e-Shaaﬁ and

Tajweed Course UAE

Time

Fridays : a.m. to

: a.m. UAE

Time

TDS

Advanced Courses

Advanced Tahfeez

Al-Quran Course

Fridays : p.m. to

: p.m. EST

HFZ

Advanced Course:

Ruh ul-Bayan

Weekend Urdu

Saturdays and

Sundays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

ADWE

Advanced Course:

Ruh ul-Bayan

Weekdays Urdu

Tuesdays,

Wednesdays,

and Thursdays

: a.m. to :

p.m. EST

ADVM

Hifdh Courses

Advanced Tahfeez

Al-Quran Course

Fridays : p.m. to

: p.m. EST

AHQ

Advanced Tahfeez

Al-Quran Course:

Juz 

Thursdays : p.m. to

: p.m. EST

HFZ

Note: s.a.w: sallallahu alaihi wasallam (may Allah’s peace be upon him); HIFDH:

classes on Qur’an memorization.

Source : Al-Huda Testing Center, Hurst, Texas, .

STUDENT NARRATIVES

Personal Transformations and Reorientations

Lut was the only messenger who was sent to a people not his own—he

was an immigrant.

—Al-Huda teacher to Taleem al-Quran Morning

English online class, 4 July 2011

You will write books, you will die, your eﬀ orts will be forgotten. What’s

the point of working for the dunya ? The only thing that endures is the

akhira , and that’s what I have dedicated myself to in my life.

—My conversation with an Al-Huda teacher, July 2012

For most Muslims the story of Lot in the Qur’an is an illustration of

the punishment visited upon those who disobey God’s commands.

This is also how Al-Huda interprets the story. However, as with many

verses in the Qur’an, Al-Huda teachers draw more than a single les-

son from it. In studying the story of Lot in Sura al-Hijr (Q 15), verses

51–77 in class, the teacher pointed out, for example, that when the

angels told Lot to take his family (all except his wife) to safety in the

middle of the night because God was going to destroy the city in the

1 However, see Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay,

Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims (New York: NYU Press, 2013), especially

Chapter 1, for other ways of interpreting the story of Lot and his community.

340 Scholars of Faith

morning, they told him to walk at the back, behind the others. The

teaching to be drawn from this, she said, was that when a teacher

is with younger students, she should walk at the end of the line in

order to protect them.

2 Another teaching—from another verse in this

lesson—is that one should not look back when running away from

danger, because it would slow one down. Instead one should get away

as fast as one can. And last but not least, the fact that Lot’s people

were distributed over ﬁ ve cities, one of which had 400,000 people,

and that none of them were saved other than Lot and his two daugh-

ters, 3 shows that one should not be afraid of acting on that which one

knows to be right just because one is in the minority. As the teacher

concluded: ‘So what lesson is there in this for us? When you convey

the message to people, will they accept? No. Should you give up? No.

You should just keep going. Don’t be misled that because you are in a

minority, you’re wrong. Here, Lut and his daughters were in a minor-

ity, yet they were right.’

This is just one example of Qur’anic exegesis in which Al-Huda

teachers relate an exemplary story to the students’ day-to-day lived

experience. The use of the words ‘immigrant’ and ‘minority’ was

striking in this lesson, given that most of the online students’ par-

ents—or they themselves—had migrated to North America, Europe,

or other parts of the world from South Asia. They were therefore inti-

mately familiar with the experience of being bilingual, bicultural, and

members of an ethnic and religious minority in the cities and coun-

tries in which they lived. In the present chapter I bring in a number

of students’ narratives—which have been overshadowed thus far by

the discussion of authority ﬁ gures such as Farhat Hashmi and other

Al-Huda teachers—in order to hear their voices. These narratives are

drawn from one-on-one conversations I had with Al-Huda women in

a variety of places ranging from Mississauga, Canada; to Hurst, Texas;

to Bengaluru, India, in addition to online communication with some

2 Lesson 133, 4 July 2011.

3 These details are not in the Qur’anic verses being referenced but are

drawn from Jewish and Christian traditions included in the exegetical litera-

ture. See Heribert Busse, ‘Lot’, in Jane Dammen McAuliﬀ e, ed., Encyclopaedia

of the Qur’an , vol. 3 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 231–2.

4 Lesson 133, 4 July 2011, my notes.

Student Narratives 341

fellow students in the class I was in. Since a number of people were

uneasy about being identiﬁ ed in the book even by a pseudonym, the

narratives are organized thematically.

In this chapter, I present excerpts of a class discussion about the

daily prayer (salah) drawn from my ﬁ eld notes. 5 This is followed by

the section ‘Students Narrate Their Lives’, in which students in dif-

ferent life stages talk about education and employment in the United

States, their experience of immigration from South Asia, family–work

balance, and family relationships. The chapter ends with Jasmine

Zine’s analysis, a Canadian scholar who speaks from a self-declared

‘critical faith-centered’ perspective, about the issues addressed by the

Al-Huda student narratives.

Students Ask Questions

On a day in mid-January 2013, when we were on the 25th part (juz)

of the Qur’an, just nine months away from ﬁ nishing the three-and-a-

half-year Taleem al-Quran Morning English (TQME) course, students

had a lot of questions about some details of the daily prayer. The class,

Fiqh of Salah, was one of a handful that had been gradually added to

the students’ list of classes over time; it followed the translation and

exegesis lessons for the day. Of a practical nature, this class taught

students the rules of prayer; after the book on which it was based was

ﬁ nished, similar short classes over the next few months dealt with the

rules of puriﬁ cation, tithing ( zakat ), fasting, and so on.

On this day, students were confused about the ‘prostration of for-

getfulness’ ( sujud al-sahw ), the need for which arises when the wor-

shiper is in doubt as to how many cycles of prayer ( rak‘a ; pl. raka‘at )

she has prayed. 6 Students asked one another:

1st student : What did she ask us to write? I missed it.

2nd student : If we missed any rak‘a , we have to repeat that prayer. Not sure.

Please conﬁ rm it?

5 I acknowledge with thanks the help I received from a fellow student who

wishes to remain anonymous. This student’s class notes, which she gener-

ously shared over a lengthy period, were an enormous aid to me.

6 Muhammad Zulﬁ qar, Prayer According to the Sunnah (Riyadh:

Darussalam, 2006), pp. 343–6.

342 Scholars of Faith

3rd student : Repeat the rak‘a , that’s what I got.

2nd student : Doing the prostration of forgetfulness ( sajda sahw ) in some

speciﬁ c conditions, not in all conditions.

Much later, as I was trying to make sense of this conversation and

understand its signiﬁ cance, I asked my friend Saﬁ ya, 8 also an online

student in the class, whether the matter had any practical application.

Was this an arcane rule that students had to master, or did they actu-

ally practice it? She responded:

Unfortunately the answer is yes, it can happen in every salah , especially

when the person is tired, has a lot of things on their mind, etc. It requires

a lot of concentration during the salah to overcome the mind from not

straying to thinking about other things.

The fact is that as soon as a person starts praying the thoughts seem

to wander so much to other things. Things you may have forgotten about

during your life can spring up all of a sudden in your mind, a promise you

may have made to someone, new ideas, things that you were supposed to

do and didn’t do, all spring up at that moment.

Although in TQME we have memorized the meaning of the Qur’an, it

is still a lot of eﬀ ort to focus on the meanings in the salah. In fact, the only

thing that helps you focus in the salah is if you are concentrating on the

meaning of what you are reciting.

Sadly, I personally have been in this situation where I have had to do

sajdah sahw , as I have been unsure about the number of raka‘at I have

read. 9

To return to the students’ conversation, a few moments later they

were discussing diﬀ erent categories of voluntary prayer and the right

times to do them:

1st student : Can somebody tell me what is the 2nd naﬁ l after witr ? Is that

2nd naﬁ l considered as tahajjud ? 10

7 The transcription of the conversation is not exact, but accurately reﬂ ects,

in my own reconstruction, what was stated. The same is true of the student

conversation reported later in the chapter.

8 A pseudonym. All students’ names and some teachers’ names in this

chapter have been changed to preserve their anonymity.

9 Email from Saﬁ ya to me, 19 January 2015.

10 Naﬁ l : General term for supererogatory prayer, does not replace the ﬁ ve

obligatory daily prayers, but can be added to them on a voluntary basis; witr :

Student Narratives 343

4th student : I think there is no naﬁ l after witr . Witr has to be prayed after

naﬁ l . If you think you will not wake up for witr , pray it and then sleep. But

if you wake up in the night and you want to pray naﬁ l , it is okay. … Can

anyone write the deﬁ nition of qunut 11 she gave?

1st student : In Isha 4 sunnah , 4 fard , 2 sunnah , 2 naﬁ l , 3 witr , and 2 naﬁ l .

Taught to us in India. So if no prayer is oﬀ ered after witr , then what is 2nd

naﬁ l ?

3rd student : [Anwering 1st student’s request for a deﬁ nition] It is the name

of the du‘a oﬀ ered at a speciﬁ c time while praying.

4th student : In India they say so many things. My mom told me 2 raka‘at

of witr is the lock and one rak‘a of witr is the key. It locks all our prayers. I

do not know if this is written anywhere.

Moderator : I will send you all the recording, inshaAllah.

The students’ level of engagement with the technical aspects of the

diﬀ erent kinds of voluntary prayer, most of which are oﬀ ered at night,

was remarkable. Despite the fact that they were unclear about the

ﬁ ner details of voluntary prayer, their three years of Qur’an study were

evident in the very questions they were asking. Students’ interactions

with one another, in which they readily tried to help their classmates,

as also the willingness of the moderator to help them by sending the

whole class the recording of the lesson so that they could review the

material afterwards, illustrated the spirit of cooperation between the

online students and teachers and administrators. Clearly, relation-

ships of trust, friendship, and community had been built up as a

result of their shared devotion to the Qur’an over the period of study.

The comment by one of the students that a piece of wisdom passed

on to her by her mother, may or may not have been accurate because

her mother was from India (‘In India they say so many things. … I

do not know if this is written anywhere’), also illustrated the sense of

lit., odd number; voluntary prayer that should be done either last thing at

night or ﬁ rst thing in the morning, before the dawn prayer; tahajjud : volun-

tary night prayer oﬀ ered by the Prophet, for which he would wake up his wife

Ai‘sha. It is referred to in Qur’an 17:79 as a recommended practice.

11 Qunut : a supplication (du‘a) that can be oﬀ ered after the salah ; recom-

mended when a calamity has occurred.

344 Scholars of Faith

in-group solidarity among the students, resulting from their knowl-

edge of the Arabic Qur’an studied in Al-Huda classes.

Most importantly, as Saﬁ ya’s response to my question about the

prostration of forgetfulness showed, this short exchange provided evi-

dence of the students’ understanding that now that they were ‘people

of the Qur’an’ (ahl al-Qur’an), as their teacher put it, they had the

responsibility of putting their knowledge into practice in their per-

sonal lives. This was what made it so important that they understand

the rulings on prayer, fasting, and other matters. They had to learn

how to do everything correctly, teach their children to do likewise, and

become quiet agents of change in their families and communities.

What are the implications of such personal change? In this chap-

ter I relate the personal stories of diﬀ erent students to wider issues

of social change, particularly in the context of South Asian Muslim

diasporic immigration to the non-Muslim West.

Students Narrate Their Lives

Education and Employment in the United States

Sauda is in her mid-thirties. Both her parents are doctors—her father

a well-known paediatrician in a major South Indian city and her

mother a gynaecologist in the same hospital as her father. Her father

is a professor, so it’s a teaching hospital. When she was about six, her

father secured a job in Saudi Arabia and the three of them lived there

for seven years. They lived in Mecca. The family is not devout but

on weekends they would go to the Ka‘aba and pray. Those memories

made a deep impression on her.

Her parents wanted her to study in an Indian school. This was only

available in Jeddah, about 50 miles away. So every day for six or seven

years, she would travel in the school bus over 100 miles to go to school

and come back home. She left home at about 5 a.m.

Eventually, the family came back to India and Sauda went to a four-

year technical residential college, graduating with very high marks.

She is a very ambitious person, she said. She had set her heart on

going to the United States (US), and got admission to a graduate IT

programme at a major public university in the Midwest. She went

on her own, in the late 1990s. It was very hard at ﬁ rst. She had never

Student Narratives 345

been exposed to snow before and suﬀ ered physically from it. She got

eczema and her skin would peel and break out in painful sores. She

went to the doctor. They put her on steroids and eventually she got

better. But she was left with a huge medical bill of about USD 1,000

which she had to pay oﬀ through student teaching jobs. Her mother

pleaded with her to come back, but she wouldn’t give up.

She met a number of Muslim women from diﬀ erent parts of

the world when she was a graduate student, and it was this experi-

ence which ﬁ rst turned her towards greater orthopraxy. She lived

with several other Muslim women: two Palestinians, one Turk, and

one American convert, as well as one non-Muslim woman. What

impressed her was that they were educated and practicing. She had

previously associated religiosity with people who were not highly

educated.

She completed her master’s degree and got a series of high-paid

IT jobs in diﬀ erent US cities. She was working in California when

her parents arranged her marriage to a man from South India. She

continued her professional career for a while but decided to give it up

to join her husband in Ohio. It was then that she chanced upon the

online Al-Huda classes and began a new kind of education, starting

from scratch. She herself would not have used the word ‘chanced’,

though, as in her view nothing ever happens by chance. It is all part

of God’s plan for us.

Unlike Sauda, however, some Al-Huda students have chosen to

postpone college altogether in order to devote themselves full-time

to their religious studies and/or teaching. This was the case with two

women I know in Canada, both of whom have taken several Al-Huda

courses over the years and are now in leadership positions in the orga-

nization. One of them is married and has children, while the other,

who is younger, is unmarried. Both said they would like to pursue

college down the road. With mounting responsibilities at Al-Huda,

however, the older woman is unlikely to get the opportunity to pursue

undergraduate or graduate studies in the foreseeable future.

The Experience of Immigration from South Asia

Faiza was one of my online classmates whom I got to know quite

well, as we ‘met’ in a group setting fairly regularly via Skype for about

346 Scholars of Faith

two years. Faiza took a leadership role in our group when the regular

teacher was unable to lead the group, and she shared her experiences

with the group on a regular basis in the context of issues that arose in

relation to speciﬁ c lessons.

Faiza lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her family was originally from

Kanpur, India, but she grew up in Kuwait. When we were in the group

together, her parents were still in Kuwait. In Kuwait she studied at an

Indian school where there were children from many diﬀ erent nation-

alities. In fact, responding to my telling her that I was from Delhi and

a Hindu, she said she used to know how to read and write Hindi till

the seventh grade. During the ﬁ rst Gulf War (1991) when Faiza was

still in Kuwait with her parents, she happened to visit India. Due to

the war they couldn’t go back to Kuwait for a whole year. So she and

her family stayed in Kanpur all that time. It gave her an opportunity to

see what life was like in India. She did not seem to have had any prior

experience of living in India.

She came to the US to study, and got married in 2000. A year later,

she and her husband decided to go on hajj in order to get this religious

obligation ‘out of the way’, as it were. She decided to wear the hijab

before going on hajj. She is familiar with the pattern of women com-

ing back from hajj and deciding to wear the hijab after they return.

It’s something that gets commented on in the Muslim community—

‘Oh, she just came back from hajj, and that’s why she’s wearing the

hijab now’. She didn’t want that to be said of her, so she decided to

wear it before going. She has worn it regularly ever since, unlike her

mother in Kuwait who only wears it occasionally. Her parents had not

expected her to wear the hijab.

Another online classmate whom I got to know well lives in the

United Kingdom (UK). Later we were also in an Arabic grammar class

together. Since then she has taken a Hadith class while also working

in the evenings at Heathrow Airport and bringing up three children.

Layla was born in Pakistan in the late 1970s; when she was six or

seven her father got a business opportunity in Libya, so the whole

family went there. But because schools were not too good in Libya,

Layla’s father sent her and her four siblings to a boarding school in

Malta, where they were taught by nuns. A couple of years later their

father took them out of the boarding school, and the whole family

went on a two-month tour of London, Austria, Germany, and back to

Student Narratives 347

London. After that they went to Pakistan to visit relatives. Finally, they

returned to London, where they settled permanently. She was nine at

the time and has lived in the UK ever since. When I knew her she was

in her late forties and was married with three children.

Another classmate, who had settled in Canada, was an older stu-

dent with grown children. Hafsa came to Montreal in 1972 as a bride

just two weeks after her marriage. She was originally from Chennai,

India. Her husband died very young, at the age of 47, from renal

cancer. She had eight children, four boys and four girls. The young-

est, a daughter, was just ﬁ ve years old when her husband died. She

brought them up all by herself, and never worked outside the home.

She home schooled two of her children for eight years. She said the

schools caused children to go astray, especially when there was no

male authority ﬁ gure around. The three youngest children were still

living at home with her: two sons were in college (about 20–1 years

of age), and a daughter had ﬁ nished college. Hafsa wanted to have

her married soon. The sons were studying anaesthiology and English,

respectively. The one doing English would likely become a teacher.

The daughter was taking an online class at the Sharia Academy, run

by the American Open Academy. She would get a Sharia certiﬁ cate

when she ﬁ nished.

Family–Work Balance

Many of the young women I met or came to know at Al-Huda had

worked in IT-related jobs in the US; others had worked in the travel

industry or in healthcare. Over time, however, several chose to pri-

oritize their education or teaching at Al-Huda, ﬁ nding this more

meaningful and personally fulﬁ lling than their professional lives. As

I related in the previous chapter, one young woman I met in Dallas,

Texas, had been laid oﬀ from her IT job and was happy that she had,

as it allowed her to devote herself full-time to Al-Huda. Others opted

to balance the two and continued to work, either for ﬁ nancial reasons

or because they enjoyed what they saw as ways of serving and helping

others.

Sauda, whose educational career we followed earlier, was a highly

successful IT employee in the US prior to her marriage. She worked

with Intel and other companies, living in Michigan, California, and

348 Scholars of Faith

Kentucky in pursuit of her career. After she moved to Ohio to join her

husband, however, she stopped working. Once she was at home, she

wanted to pursue her interest in learning the Qur’an but she needed

a teacher she could relate to. There was only one other Muslim in that

Ohio town. Someone had told her about PalTalk, so she went online.

As she was about to log oﬀ , she saw that one of the PalTalk rooms had

80 students in it. So she went to check. When she entered the room,

she found that it was the ﬁ rst day of the Taleem al-Quran Morning

English class and that Farhat Hashmi was speaking live. The next day

she logged on again and heard Hashmi discuss the Fatiha. She says

this was how she found the teacher she had been looking for.

Thereafter, she completed the part-time Urdu Taleem al-Quran

course. In 2007, she also enrolled in the Taleem al-Quran English

class for eight months. She prepared very extensive notes for that,

which later helped her when she began to teach adult students.

Looking back in 2012 from her vantage point in India where she

was engaged in Al-Huda activities as an onsite and online teacher

much of the week, she had no regrets about having given up her pro-

fessional career. When it happened, though, it felt like a big letdown

to have worked so hard to get to that point and to have had to give it up

and become a homemaker. But now she saw all worldly accomplish-

ments as ultimately pointless. To me she said, ‘You will write books,

you will die, your eﬀ orts will be forgotten. What’s the point of working

for worldly purposes (the dunya )? The only thing that endures is the

afterlife (the akhira ).’ And that was what she had dedicated her life to

since she became an Al-Huda online student. The dunya had ceased

to have any meaning for her. She didn’t watch TV, go to the movies, or

go shopping for pleasure. None of that mattered. She took care of her

family, including obligations to extended family, but other than that

all that mattered was her work for the Taleem al-Quran classes and

the students she taught in the city in which she lived.

Family Relationships

The one story I want to tell in ending this section is that of Layla,

whom we read about earlier. As a child she and her siblings had lived

in Libya, studied in Malta, travelled throughout Europe, spent time

with relatives in Pakistan, and when she was about nine, settled in

Student Narratives 349

London, UK, with their parents. Since then she and her siblings had

made London their home, and now they were raising their families

there. Layla was in her late forties when I got to know her.

She had not been particularly religious as a child, she said, and did

not know very much about Islam. Both the constant travel when she

was young and the lack of Islamic schools in London had contributed

to this. Her interest grew gradually as she entered her twenties. After

she got married and had children, she felt that if she didn’t learn she

wouldn’t be able to teach her children.

12 She had a friend who was

part of a study circle and initially went along with her reluctantly. But

then, she said, ‘I became hooked into going regularly, it was like I

was thirsty for knowledge’. She enrolled her children in an Islamic

Saturday school, and studied with them as well: ‘They learned about

Islam, how to read and write Arabic and how to recite the Qur’an. I

too … started attending Saturday school as well as the circle once a

week.’ She went on hajj, which she described as ‘an absolutely bril-

liant experience though there were parts of it which were very hard’.

Professionally, she had a pharmacy degree and worked part-time at

the airport. She loved her work, as it brought her in touch with ‘lots

of diﬀ erent people’, and gave her a sense of satisfaction, knowing that

she was able to help someone who was worried or upset.

The Saturday classes and study circle made Layla eager to learn the

Qur’an in Arabic. She wanted to go deeper. This was how she came

to join Al-Huda’s Taleem al-Quran class, around 2010. The strenuous

study schedule, however, severely tested her, initially causing tension

with her husband and children:

My biggest struggle was balancing my time doing my studies and spending

time with my family and friends. It was very hard at times and my chil-

dren did suﬀ er, as I couldn’t spend that much time with them. Prior to the

course I spent time with them helping with their homework, helping them

study. …I must admit initially … my husband and my family weren’t that

understanding; they blamed me if anything went wrong. For example, when

I became really ill or when my middle daughter didn’t do so well in her

exams, I was blamed for not resting or spending time with the children.

12 On changing levels of religiosity as one moves through the lifecy-

cle, see David Kloos, Becoming Better Muslims: Religious Authority & Ethical

Improvement in Aceh, Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

350 Scholars of Faith

About halfway into the course, Layla had to undergo thyroid surgery,

‘which led to numerous complications’. She lost her voice for over six

months. Ever since her Qur’an recitation had suﬀ ered, as her voice

broke and she got breathless frequently.

Layla was a very dedicated student through all her troubles, and

gradually her husband and children became more supportive. Her

husband bought her all the technological aids she needed to study,

including an iPad, iPhone, and iPod, and cordless headphones so she

could listen to taped lectures while doing housework or cooking in

the kitchen. And he helped her with her chores and took care of her.

When we last spoke after the course was over, Layla was taking other

Al-Huda online classes: Sahih Bukhari (Hadith), Arabic grammar,

and Qur’an recitation ( hifz ). When I asked her what she thought were

the greatest lessons she had learned at Al-Huda, she said:

My biggest lesson during this course [has been] patience. … Allah espe-

cially tested me with patience during the course as my children suﬀ ered

with severe eczema, asthma and then my youngest daughter was diag-

nosed with diabetes. Soon after [that] I was very ill, such that [I] couldn’t

even type or write my lectures as my hands were so shaky. The next lesson

I learned is of gratitude to Allah as this course is the best thing that has

happened to me and I am truly grateful that now I can understand the

words of Allah (s.w.t.). … I am now a calmer, more patient person with a

desire to please my family and everyone else around me. I try to show my

Islam to those around me in the manner I carry myself, the way I walk,

the way I talk, the way I try to behave such that people know what Islam is

truly about, just by looking at me! (Don’t know if I am good at it.)

I had known Layla as a very conscientious student who took copious

notes on every lesson, and was always willing to share her knowledge

and answer any questions I had about the lessons at hand. At the

time I had no idea that it was so hard for her to write or to talk dur-

ing her illness and slow recovery. Our online communication hid this

aspect of her struggle from others in the class. Her story of personal

struggle, perseverance, family support, and increased involvement in

a life of piety was exemplary of what Al-Huda hopes to achieve.

Precarity and ‘Gendered Islamophobia’

In the ‘Introduction’, I noted that the two case studies in this book

are linked by the context of precarity, a notion articulated by Attiya

Student Narratives 351

Ahmad in her study of South Asian domestic workers in Kuwait and

secondarily in her observations of Al-Huda women who attended

study circles ( halaqa ). I found this analytical concept very helpful in

understanding the dynamics of the madrasa students in small-town

Shahjahanpur and of the immigrant diaspora in which Al-Huda

online classes take place. As Ahmad writes in her ethnography,

upper-middle-class women like Auntie Noor experienced precarity in

a diﬀ erent register from the domestic workers. For Auntie Noor, the

halaqa helped stem her anxieties arising from lifecycle changes in her

family, especially as her son pondered his options between seeking

employment in the US or in Malaysia.

13 As Auntie Noor put it, she

felt God would hold her accountable on Judgment Day for the advice

she gave to her son. She felt responsible. She ‘woke up … with such

a strong feeling [she] could hardly breathe. … Will Allah accept?’

Ahmad’s ethnography also shows that Auntie Noor distinguished her

‘reformist’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ religious practice from the ‘quietly tra-

ditional’ Suﬁ -inﬂ ected form of Islam practiced by her parents (which

she felt was ‘misguided and mistaken’).

In order to better understand the narratives of the Al-Huda students

presented in this chapter, I also take inspiration from Jasmin Zine’s

study of Islamic schools in Canada.

16 Zine uses the term ‘gendered

Islamophobia’ to characterize the environment in which her subjects

found themselves and to explain why many students and parents chose

to attend an Islamic school rather than the secular public school. When

she was young she had felt disengaged as a ‘minority student growing

up in the Canadian school system’, and had ‘experienced a sense of

invisibility by not being represented in the school culture or curricu-

lum’. 17 The parent of two school-age children, she had sent them to

an Islamic school at elementary-school level and later to public school.

13 See Attiya Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space: Foreign

Resident Muslim Women’s Halaqa in the Arabian Peninsula’, in Filippo

Osella and Caroline Osella, eds, Islamic Reform in South Asia (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2013).

14 Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space’, p. 423.

15 Ahmad, ‘Cosmopolitan Islam in a Diasporic Space’, pp. 425, 432.

16 Jasmin Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools: Unravelling the Politics of Faith,

Gender, Knowledge, and Identity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).

17 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 9.

352 Scholars of Faith

Zine’s work is an ethnography of four Islamic schools in the

Toronto area. She writes from a ‘critical faith-centred vantage point’,

which she spells out in terms of seven key principles.

18 Linking her

work to that of theorists of anti-colonialism, anti-racism, and post-

structural feminism, she examines the way Muslim girls’ identities are

constructed in response to pervasive Islamophobia in the post-9/11

environment in Canada. Her interviews with a number of Muslim

schoolgirls who wore the veil revealed their ‘experiences of racism,

xenophobia, and gendered Islamophobia [when] journeying to and

from school’, especially if they had to travel by public bus.

19 While ‘the

girls were at the nexus of multiple sites of oppression based on race,

ethnicity, gender, and religion, they felt that their Islamic identity

marked by their hijab was the most salient factor of discrimination’.

For these reasons they felt safer and more accepted in the Islamic

school. Boys too reported feeling more comfortable when they were

around other Muslim boys in the Islamic school. Contrariwise, Zine

observes that socialization patterns in Islamic schools do not permit

their students any choice in matters pertaining to dress and other

codes of conduct. She argues:

18 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , pp. 53–67 and passim. These principles

are: (1) a principle of holism, that is, spiritual aspects of identity are con-

nected to its physical and intellectual aspects; (2) historically and culturally

situated analyses of religion and spirituality must be incorporated into the

analysis of social, historical, and personal factors; (3) religious and spiritual

worldviews continue to shape social, cultural, and political development

today; (4) religion and spirituality should occupy a central place in the aca-

demic study of economics, politics, and other disciplines; (5) religious and

spiritual identities are sometimes sites of oppression, connected to discrimi-

nation based on race, class, gender, and so on; (6) religion and spirituality can

be sites of resistance to injustice; and (7) not all knowledge is socially con-

structed. Knowledge from divine sources must be incorporated into research

and knowledge production of a secular nature.

19 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , pp. 164–7.

20 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 167. The evidence for this lay in the

fact that the same girl who had been stared at and made to feel uncomfortable

when she wore an abaya was hardly noticed when she wore a salwar kameez ,

the South Asian tunic and loose trousers.

Student Narratives 353

The canonical discourse of what I term the ‘pious Muslim girl’ was a

salient archetype for young Muslim women to model themselves upon.

This discourse is rooted in largely conservative and patriarchal views of

Muslim women’s identity. The result is an overemphasis on extrinsic

shows of faith, such as the dress code, which is regulated more in accor-

dance with conservative cultural norms than with Islamic injunctions. 21

Zine also diﬀ ers from Mahmood’s argument that interiority is consti-

tuted after the adoption of outward piety: ‘we cannot underestimate

the way that socialization into religiously deﬁ ned notions of piety,

modesty, and appropriate gendered behaviors are inculcated at an

early age within the pedagogy of the home and school’.

22 In fact, Zine

goes further. She believes the overpolicing of boundaries between boys

and girls, the undue scrutiny of the whereabouts of girls at all times

(and less so in the case of boys), the ‘cloistering’ of girls in school,

and so on, have negative consequences for girls. They end up disem-

powering them and ‘hypersexualizing all gender interactions, which

is counter to Islamic ideals’.

24 As a result, Canadian Muslim girls

were caught between two paradigms: gendered Islamophobia on the

one hand and the narrow ‘dogmas espoused by certain sectors of [the

Muslim] community’ on the other.

Zine favours creating a diﬀ erent kind of space, one that ‘present[s]

students with alternative possibilities for resistance and change that

would decentre some of the patriarchal norms that were uncritically

accepted by the community’.

26 Zine believes that Muslim girls and

women can become positive agents of change by working from within

the Islamic discursive realm rather than by critiquing it from the out-

side. In her view, this is already happening in some communities where

female students are ‘seeking to transform the narrow and inequitable

parameters of the gendered social space available to them’ from the

perspective of a faith-centred and emancipatory epistemology.

21 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 190.

22 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 191.

23 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 214.

24 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 209.

25 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 226.

26 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 226.

27 Zine, Canadian Islamic Schools , p. 227.

354 Scholars of Faith

***

The Al-Huda students whose narratives I have presented in this chap-

ter, like the students described by Zine, are living in an environment

which subjects them to contrary pressures, many of them negative.

Being for the most part older than the school-goers Zine studied,

they are likely ﬁ rst-generation or second-generation immigrants to

Canada, North America, and Europe. As my interlocutors indicated,

they came to Al-Huda with anxieties and stress in their personal lives.

These included the loss of a husband and having to raise several chil-

dren by oneself, social isolation after a job loss in the IT industry and

having to adjust to living in a new city without any kin or friends, and

the experience of immigration to an environment where, especially

after 9/11, they were ‘outsiders’ in multiple senses of the word. Many

were searching for community and overall meaning.

Given the possibilities that opened up in the information age,

online classes oﬀ er an avenue for community building that could not

have been imagined even 20 years ago. Many of the people who told

me their stories learned of Al-Huda online classes through word of

mouth, through friends or family members. Once they had explored

the site and heard Farhat Hashmi’s lectures, they were captivated

by the new worlds that Al-Huda classes opened up to them. It gave

them knowledge of and pride in their religious tradition through

study of the Qur’an in an entirely new way, one that aﬃ rmed their

Muslim identities at a time when all around them, they were being

bombarded with negative, Islamophobic messages in the media and

in society at large. Al-Huda online classes challenged them to ﬁ nd

time for religious study in the midst of their busy lives taking care of

husbands and children, and in some cases paid jobs, and gave them a

sense of purpose that had been lacking before.

Yet, as some of the narratives clearly indicate, the students’ ortho-

prax lifestyles after joining Al-Huda created new problems. Many

found that their husbands or other family members were not sup-

portive. The task of personal transformation thus had to become a

community endeavour for it to be successful. As their teacher had told

them, it was not enough for them to become personally pious. They

had to take others along with them, starting with members of their

own families. They had to do da‘wa .

CONCLUSION

Why Now?

Since the phenomenon of new [religious] education for women derives

from the tension between the religious world and the modern secular

world, this education will not resolve that tension but will instead orga-

nize it in a new and diﬀ erent way.

—Tamar El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , p. 50

Women from non-Muslim religious traditions have been engaged

in goals of pious self-(trans)formation similar to the eﬀ orts of the

Barelwi girls at the Jami‘a Nur madrasa in Shahjahanpur, India, and

the young women taking the online classes oﬀ ered by Al-Huda in

Canada, the United States (US), and elsewhere. The picture I have

tried to paint here is not exclusive to the Muslim world. Tamar El-Or

describes the pursuit of intensive Judaic studies in the early 1990s by

some women of the religious Zionist movement in Israel.

1 Having

undertaken three years of participant observation at a women’s semi-

nary at Bar-Ilan University in the town of Ramat-Gan, Tel Aviv district,

El-Or believes the ‘demand to know, to know more, to discover new

texts, to attain the ability to read, decode, interpret, and criticize these

texts, and the less vocal desire to observe religious rituals such as

1 Tamar El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More: Literacy and Identity among

Young Orthodox Women in Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002).

356 Scholars of Faith

the public reading of the Torah and public prayer’ is ‘revolutionary’.

Although the students she observed would not have characterized

their pursuit of religious knowledge in this way, El-Or believes ‘[t]he

pursuit of Torah knowledge by religious women … actually establishes

a new and diﬀ erent social situation’. 2

El-Or examines the broader implications for change through a

variety of lenses, letting us hear the voices of students and teachers

inside the classroom and during after hours, in one-on-one conversa-

tions with them. Efrat, a student, tells El-Or that she does not want

to ‘change frameworks’, that ‘the boys are the rabbis, and the girls

can only be a rabbi’s wife—that’s the way it is’.

3 But that does not

prevent her from wanting to study Judaic texts, because doing so

allows her to be a ‘complex person. … [C]omplexity is succeeding in

being a religious woman all the way without being a fanatic, that is

what being modern is to me—combining it all…. In my study I ﬁ nd

the guidelines for what I do in the afternoon.’

4 What Efrat does in the

afternoon, that is, at home, where she performs the roles of a wife and

a mother, is thus intimately connected to her religious studies. In an

examination of gender issues, El-Or shows how the students reject

their teacher’s representation of essentialist motherhood, demanding

more: They demand expansion and sharing—an expansion of their

identity beyond the role of mother so that it can include the mother

as worker, believer, learner, and participant; and a parceling out of

the work of motherhood so that many others, who are not necessarily

childbearing mothers, can participate in it.’

5 Ideally, if not always in

practice, ‘the laundry can wait’,

6 and husbands should help them with

housework and child care.

Despite pushback—which El-Or demonstrates in students’ inter-

actions with diﬀ erent teachers (the ‘gatekeepers of participation’) in

the classroom—the key to El-Or’s analysis is the concept of widening

participation. In a section entitled ‘Literacy as Participation’, El-Or

explains that by using the concept of participation, the anthropologist

2 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , p. 50. All the quotations in this para-

graph are from p. 50.

3 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , p. 96.

4 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , pp. 98–9.

5 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , p. 199.

6 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , p. 97.

Conclusion 357

can sidestep the binaries of ‘those who know versus those who do not

know. … Learning as participation emphasizes the knowing person,

not knowledge itself’. 7 It also emphasizes the process rather than the

end result, and the local contexts in which the process unfolds, bit by

bit.

Furthermore, when women’s participation in religious learning

expanded beyond the classroom into the home with the creation of

women’s study groups, the public sphere itself is changed:

It is no longer a male public that leads a central religious activity in which

there are no roles for women, girls, or small children. Instead, a new pub-

lic has been created. There are, on the one hand, men who have been

abandoned by a public that cannot halachically [under Jewish religious

law] participate, and on the other hand a public of women that has chosen

to act on its own, surrounded by girls watching their mothers read from

the Torah, and thinking about their own bat mitzvah ceremonies. 8

This echoes Winkelmann’s point that by the very act of studying in a

madrasa and traversing public space in order to access the madrasa

from their homes, Muslim girls are participating in the public

sphere. 9 Winkelmann refers to the Habermasian notion of the public

sphere and to the madrasa she studied as a ‘counter-public’, a concept

she discusses in light of several studies. I do not refer to the madrasa

Jami`a Nur in these terms, given that it is not a site where opposi-

tional discourses are articulated, but rather one in which a habitus

of pious orthoprax behavior is inculcated in and nurtured by Muslim

girls whose agency is expressed, in Saba Mahmood’s felicitous term,

by a ‘willingness to be taught’.

Several scholars who write about South Asian Muslims and educa-

tion, particularly Jeﬀ ery, Jeﬀ rey, and Jeﬀ rey; Winkelmann; and most

recently, Borker 11 have noted that girls’ madrasas are becoming more

7 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , p. 280. The concept is based on Jean

Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

8 El-Or, Next Year I Will Know More , p. 265.

9 Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’ , pp. 100–2.

10 Mahmood, ‘Feminist Theory’, pp. 202–36.

11 Patricia Jeﬀ ery, Roger Jeﬀ ery, and Craig Jeﬀ ery, ‘Islamization,

Gentriﬁ cation and Domestication: “A Girls’ Islamic Course” and Rural

358 Scholars of Faith

popular while boys’ madrasas are shrinking in size and popularity.

Masooda Bano, who in 2007–8 studied madrasas in Pakistan at both

the macro and micro levels, comparing them with madrasas in India

and Bangladesh, argues that madrasa education is a ‘rational’ choice

for parents and students for a variety of reasons.

12 With regard to

girls’ madrasas, she believes female madrasa students have a ‘genuine

desire’ to learn about Islamic beliefs, and they are empowered by liv-

ing away from their families in a residential madrasa, meeting other

women from diﬀ erent parts of the country, and having an ‘authorita-

tive voice’ when they return to their homes and communities.

My analysis of Jami‘a Nur and its students has highlighted the

madrasa’s civilizing mission in terms of teaching its students adab

in religious and social terms. The madrasa caters to poor working-

class families in the west Uttar Pradesh (UP) region and is in many

respects a means of upward mobility for the student on account of

her education and knowledge of shari‘a. Its role is similar to that of

the madrasas studied by Winkelmann and Borker, despite the maslaki

diﬀ erences between them. (Jami‘a Nur is Barelwi in orientation, while

the other two are aﬃ liated with the Tablighi Jama‘at.) I have argued,

using the concept of being ‘naram’ delineated by Attiya Ahmad,

14 that

graduates have to balance their idealism and enthusiasm for teaching

others, including siblings, how to practice Islam ‘correctly’ in light

of their madrasa education, with the gendered expectation that they

will adjust to societal norms regarding age and gender. They have to

learn to balance their knowledge with their gendered duties towards

parents, in-laws, and husband. Thus, if their education gives them

agency on the one hand, this agency is circumscribed by social norms

on the other.

Muslims in Western Uttar Pradesh’, Modern Asian Studies (2004), 38(1):

1–53; Mareike Jule Winkelmann, ‘From Behind the Curtain’: A Study of a Girls’

Madrasa in India (Amsterdam: ISIM Press, 2005); Hem Borker, Madrasas and

the Making of Islamic Womanhood (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018).

12 Masooda Bano, The Rational Believer: Choices and Decisions in the

Madrasas of Pakistan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012).

13 Bano, The Rational Believer , p. 144.

14 Attiya Ahmad, Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work, and South

Asian Migrant Women in Kuwait (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017).

Conclusion 359

Al-Huda students in North America and elsewhere in the South

Asian diaspora occupy a place of social privilege compared to the

madrasa students at Jami‘a Nur. Nevertheless, they too have to

know how to balance societal expectations in order to be successful.

Al-Huda has attracted considerable media and scholarly attention, in

part due to its success in attracting upper-class Pakistani women in

the 1990s and middle-class women from the South Asian diaspora in

the West since the early 2000s. In Pakistan it has been the target of

both religious and secular critics. Religious scholars, the ‘ulama, have

questioned Al-Huda founder Farhat Hashmi’s authority to teach the

Qur’an and its exegesis in view of the fact that she is not a madrasa

graduate but has a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of

Glasgow. On the other hand, secular Pakistanis have been troubled

by the personal transformation of thousands of upper-class Pakistani

women who, after studying at Al-Huda schools, have become obser-

vant Muslims who wear the niqab in public and frown upon mixed-

gender parties and the consumption of alcohol, among other things.

Clearly, Al-Huda has created a new and controversial public space for

orthoprax Muslim women in Pakistan, especially in urban areas.

***

Why now? This is a question I asked myself at the beginning of this

study and it has stayed with me throughout my research. The answers

are multiple: the post-9/11 context in South Asia and the West created

a crisis for Muslims the world over. They were being held collectively

responsible for the actions of a few. But the trend had begun long

before, in the 1970s and 1980s, in the context of the geopolitics of

Egyptian Nasserism and the rise of Palestinian secular nationalism,

with their attendant failures, and the rise of religio-political Islamism

in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

As Zaman’s study of Islam in Pakistan makes clear,

15 the politi-

cal context in Pakistan between the 1970s and the early 2000s was

inﬂ uenced by both external and internal factors. In terms of devel-

opments in the wider Muslim world, the most important were the

15 Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2018).

360 Scholars of Faith

Iranian Revolution and the jihad against the Soviet occupation of

Afghanistan, which culminated in the Soviet withdrawal of 1989,

Taliban rule between 1996 and late 2001, and American-led political

interventions in Afghanistan which led to a massive inﬂ ux of Afghan

refugees in north-western Pakistan. Additionally, pressures came from

the domestic Pakistani politics of growing Islamization by the Bhutto

and Zia governments—evidenced in a number of state initiatives,

including the 1974 constitutional amendment deﬁ ning Ahmadis as

non-Muslims, the passing of the Hudood Ordinance in 1979, the col-

lection of zakat dues by the state (which angered the Pakistani Shi‘a

who renewed their demands for the application of Ja‘fari rather than

Hanaﬁ Sunni law to themselves), and the proposed Shariat Bill of

1990. Some have argued that collectively these forces led Pakistan to

deﬁ ne itself as being part of the Middle East rather than South Asia

in ways it had not done before, allying itself more closely to the Saudi

regime than in the past.

In this larger national context, we have to situate developments

pertaining to Pakistani women. Faiza Mushtaq shows the growth of a

leadership void between the ‘ulama on the one hand and westernized

middle-class Pakistanis on the other. Starting in the 1970s, the ‘ulama

responded to changes in Pakistani society, especially their percep-

tion of its growing secularization and Westernization, by increasing

their focus on girls’ education and founding new girls’ madrasas.

According to studies by Shaheed and Farooq, by the early 2000s, girls’

madrasas in Pakistan accounted for about 10 per cent of the total.

However, urban middle-class Pakistani women were not attracted to

16 S. Akbar Zaidi, ‘South Asia? West Asia? Pakistan: Location, Identity’,

Economic & Political Weekly (2009), XLIV(10): 36–9.

17 Farooq, Muhammad. ‘Disciplining the Feminism: Girls’ Madrasa

Education in Pakistan’. The Historian (2005), 3: 64–88; Shaheed, Farida.

Imagined Citizenship: Women, State & Politics in Pakistan (Lahore: Shirkat Gah

Women’s Resource Centre, 2002a); Shaheed, Farida. ‘Women’s Experiences

of Identity, Religion and Activism in Pakistan’, pp. 343–90, in S.M. Naseem

and Khalid Nadvi, eds, The Post-Colonial State and Social Transformation in

India and Pakistan , (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002b). Cited in Faiza

Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority: A Movement for Women’s

Islamic Education, Moral Reform and Innovative Traditionalism’ (PhD dis-

sertation, Northwestern University, 2010), p. 97.

Conclusion 361

this educational path. Nor were liberal Western-style feminist move-

ments such as the All-Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA) and the

Women’s Action Forum (WAF) able to ﬁ ll the leadership void, as they

had no following among women from Islamist organizations such as

the Jama‘at-i Islami or among rural women or poor urban women.

Mushtaq argues that the ‘legacy of the 1980s Zia era [had] created a

legitimate social space for a movement like Al-Huda to ﬂ ourish’, and

in the early 1990s Al-Huda stepped into this void and quickly became

a successful social movement by selectively utilizing elements from

state-led institutions, secular–liberal feminist women’s organizations,

and the vision of the reformist ‘ulama.

The Indian national context is, of course, quite diﬀ erent. In the

early 1990s, the socioeconomic conditions of Indian Muslims vis-

à-vis Hindus and other religious communities—which had already

been bad, as measured by a number of diﬀ erent metrics—worsened

due to the liberalization of the economy, when the government

withdrew its expenditures on public education and forced local com-

munities to invest private resources to make up for the shortfall.

Further, the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 set in motion

growing distrust and vicious, spiralling violence between Hindus

and Muslims nationwide, culminating in 2002 in the death of

thousands of Muslims in the Gujarat riots. Apart from the Sachar

Committee Report of 2006, which documented the Muslim plight in

India along multiple dimensions, other studies since then have given

us further corroborating data. Thus, Basant and Shariﬀ ’s Handbook

of Muslims in India notes the low literacy rates of Muslims, the low

workforce participation rates of Muslim women, and the stubbornly

high poverty rate of Muslims (27%), compared to Scheduled Castes

18 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. 101. Mushtaq cites

Ayesha Jalal. 1991. ‘The Convenience of Subservience: Women and the State

of Pakistan’, in Deniz Kandiyoti, ed., Women, Islam and the State , pp. 77–114

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press) in this context, agreeing with her that

the All-Pakistan Women’s Association and Women’s Action Forum women

were compromised by the ‘convenience of subservience’ to the state because

of their privileged social position under the prevailing system. See Mushtaq,

‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p. 102.

19 Mushtaq, ‘New Claimants to Religious Authority’, p.105.

362 Scholars of Faith

and Tribes (22%), with the least decline on all social parameters of

poverty of all the social categories.

Although national statistics such as these help us understand the

big picture, it is also helpful to attend to mobilization at the local level.

Jaﬀ relot’s study of Hindu nationalism gives us some useful clues to

the engagement of ordinary citizens in Hindu nationalist activities at

the local level. In the following quotations, reference is to the events

preceding the destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992:

Women played their part in the Rath Yatra, many of them donating their

mangalsutras (sacred marriage necklace) in the name of Ram. … women

often outnumbered men at BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] meetings, espe-

cially in Uttar Pradesh. … [According to Sarkar, participation in the wom-

en’s wing of the Hindu nationalist movement, the Rashtrasevika Samiti]

enable[d] a speciﬁ c and socially crucial group of middle class women in

moving out of their homebound existence, to reclaim public spaces and

even to acquire a political identity, and [gave] them access to serious intel-

lectual cogitation. 21

Furthermore, young men were attracted to the movement for diﬀ er-

ent reasons: ‘It is signiﬁ cant that the Ram of the Hindu nationalists

shares many things in common with stereotypical heroes of Hindi

popular cinema. For urban youths, these ﬁ lms often provide role

models which enable them to sublimate their daily lives. Most … such

youths are unemployed and … devoid of self-esteem.’

Mobilization of Hindus at a mass level in the 1990s led to the dis-

enfranchisement of Indian Muslims at multiple levels of national life,

as reported by the Sachar Committee. I noted in the ‘Introduction’, in

2016 a Barelwi Muslim writer lamented the new litmus test of Indian

nationalism, which required legislators to publicly proclaim the slo-

gan ‘Hail to Mother India’ ( Bharat mata ki jai ). 23

20 Rakesh Basant and Abusaleh Shariﬀ , eds, Handbook of Muslims in

India: Empirical and Policy Perspectives (New Delhi: Oxford University Press,

2014), Chapter 9.

21 Christophe Jaﬀ relot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New

York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 426–7.

22 Jaﬀ relot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India , p. 428.

23 Mufti Muhammad Salim Barelwi, ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai Bolne ka Qaziyya

Ashuddhi Tahrik ki ek Nai Shakal’, Mahnama A‘la Hazrat (June 2016): 17–23

Conclusion 363

This—together with rising rates of overall male and female literacy

not only in UP but throughout India since the 1970s

24 —is the context

for the contemporary ‘feminization of madrasa enrolments’ in India,

as reported by agencies of the Government of India.

25 Although we do

not have veriﬁ able data documenting the national upsurge in Muslim

girls’ education in India, whether secular or religious, a number of

qualitative studies at the local level suggest that this is indeed a trend.

In west UP, the Jeﬀ erys have shown that girls are more likely to attend

a madrasa than boys and to complete the course all the way through.

Hasan and Menon’s conversations with teachers in ﬁ ve Indian cit-

ies—Kolkata, Delhi, Aligarh, Hyderabad, and Calicut—show a growth

in interest in Muslim girls’ education in each of these cities, across the

class spectrum. 27 Justin Jones has recently written about all-women’s

shari‘a courts in a number of Indian cities, ranging from Mumbai to

Jaipur to Kolkata. 28 My data ﬁ t into this larger picture, as I observed

the diﬀ erence between the Barelwi boys’ madrasa, where enrolments

were either ﬂ at or falling, and the adjacent girls’ madrasa, where they

were rising every year.

In a related social dynamic, Darakhshan Khan’s research on

Tablighi women also points to changing domestic roles between hus-

bands and wives, with wives seeking to reduce the time they spend

in the kitchen and participate more actively in women’s study circles.

Although it is an uphill battle for women to create opportunities allow-

ing them to do so, given the demands on their time in the domestic

sphere, there has been a growth in such study circles among Tablighi

women. At the same time, Khan also examines the long-term trend

towards companionate marriage among South Asian Muslim fami-

lies starting in the nineteenth century.

29 Metcalf’s work on Tablighi

24 As shown in the statistics presented in Chapter 1.

25 Borker, Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood , p. 41.

26 Jeﬀ ery, Jeﬀ ery, and Jeﬀ rey, ‘Islamization, Gentriﬁ cation and Domestication’.

27 Zoya Hasan and Ritu Menon, Educating Muslim Girls: A Comparison of

Five Indian Cities (Delhi: Women Unlimited 2005).

28 Justin Jones, ‘“Where Only Women May Judge”: Developing Gender-

just Islamic Laws in India’s All-female “ Shari‘ah Courts”’, Islamic Law and

Society (2018): 1–30.

29 Darakshan Khan, ‘Fashioning the Pious Self: Middle Class Religiosity

in Colonial India’ (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2016);

364 Scholars of Faith

women highlights the domestic roles fulﬁ lled by Tablighi men when

the women are away from home on preaching tours.

What these qualitative studies have in common is that they docu-

ment local initiatives undertaken by Muslim citizens in their private

capacity to bring about social change. As Hasan and Menon write,

‘In all states, civil society initiatives have played a crucial role in edu-

cational expansion’. 31 Despite persistent problems, there has been a

shift in attitudes towards Muslim girls’ education, with parents being

more willing than before to educate their daughters, daughters show-

ing an eagerness to learn, and grooms favouring educated rather

than uneducated brides. Jones describes it as a trend in favour of the

‘democratization of religious knowledge’ among Indian Muslims.

***

What is the beneﬁ t of comparing ‘apples’ and ‘oranges’, as I charac-

terized the two very diﬀ erent South Asian case studies that are the

subject of this volume? By putting these two ethnographies side by

side, I have sought to highlight the many ways in which the goals

of the students of Al-Huda and the madrasa students at Jami‘a Nur

are more similar than diﬀ erent. The sources we—as students of

South Asian Islam—read and are guided by lead us to focus on inter-

denominational diﬀ erences and conﬂ icts rather than the commonali-

ties between them. This book by no means denies these realities, but

it urges us to consider what they have in common. While many of

the Al-Huda women I discuss are middle-class, college-educated, and

English-speaking women living in a Western diasporic context, and

the Barelwi madrasa students are from working-class Indian families

whose parents’ educational levels and standards of living are low,

Darakshan Khan, ‘In Good Company: Reformist Piety and Women’s Da‘wat

in the Tablighi Jamat’, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (2018), 35(3):

1–25.

30 Barbara D. Metcalf, ‘Tablighi Jama‘at and Women’, in Muhammad

Khalid Masud, ed., Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama‘at as a

Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal (Leiden: Brill, 2000).

31 Hasan and Menon, Educating Muslim Girls , p. 31.

32 Jones, ‘“Where Only Women May Judge”’, p. 17.

Conclusion 365

the goals the students have set for themselves, of learning about the

Islamic textual tradition and living orthoprax lives in light of this tradi-

tion, have much in common. As I noted at the outset, both groups of

women share a worldview grounded in the belief of an afterlife based

on moral choices made in the here and now. How one lives one’s life

today will lead ineluctably to reward or punishment in the hereafter;

the moral choices one makes in the course of one’s life therefore

assume an importance far beyond one’s immediate mundane context.

The central argument of this study is that both the madrasa and the

Al-Huda online Qur’an classes are very modern South Asian educa-

tional phenomena, outward diﬀ erences between them notwithstand-

ing. I use the term ‘modern’ in Hefner’s sense of being characterized

by the rationalization, functionalization, as well as the objectiﬁ cation

of Islam in the educational curriculum.

33 One sees these processes

at work in the way students absorb the lessons of the formal curricu-

lum, and beyond this, in the ways in which they imagine themselves

as moral agents of change, guided by the scriptural texts they study,

seeking to connect their growing knowledge of ‘Islam’ to the realities

of their families and local communities. The tension between these

realities, judged to be wanting in relation to the imagined life of the

Prophet Muhammad and the ﬁ rst generation of Muslims in seventh-

century Arabia, the ideal to which they aspire, animates their everyday

lives. 34 As Gade has noted, the sought-for transformation links the

individual with her community. Individual reform is visualized as a

starting point that will lead to community transformation.

35 While

the students of neither of my case studies sought to connect their

individual and community-level eﬀ orts to change at the national level,

33 Robert W. Hefner, ‘Introduction: The Culture, Politics, and Future of

Muslim Education’, in Robert W. Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman,

eds, Schooling Islam: The Culture and Politics of Modern Muslim Education

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

34 On the tensions between ‘modernity’ and ‘religion’, see David

Gilmartin, ‘Introduction’, in Civilization and Modernity: Narrating the Creation

of Pakistan (Delhi: Yoda Press, 2014).

35 Anna M. Gade, Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the

Recited Qur’an in Indonesia (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), p.

268, discussing the failure of the Foucauldian concept of ‘technology of the

self’ to take account of community-wide transformation.

366 Scholars of Faith

an acceleration of local initiatives of the kinds documented here has

the potential for wider political change at the national and global lev-

els in the future, in ways we cannot predict.

To return to the modernity of the educational institutions described

in this book, another aspect of their situation that merits comment is

not only their growing occupation of public space, but their creation

of a new kind of ‘intermediate’ space, partaking of both public and

private characteristics. Jami‘a Nur enabled students to meet girls from

other parts of India; while there, they also interacted with male teach-

ers, using intermediate forms of veiling such as the nose-piece. All this

enlarged their vision of the world, making them aware of the wider

Islamic community ( umma ) through the discipline of the madrasa.

The act of appropriation of the Islamic tradition, or simply of

‘Islam’, is yet another aspect of the modernity of the educational

institutions documented in this book. Once at the madrasa, students

learned of the rights they did not know they had as Muslim women.

Thus, a student told me that a Muslim girl had the right to refuse

a marriage proposal if she did not like it, even if she did no more

than shake her head in a ‘no’. This knowledge gave madrasa students

like her tremendous pride in being Muslim women. This sense of

ownership of the Islamic tradition validates, in my view, Mahmood’s

argument that Muslim women’s turn to ‘Islam’ in the contemporary

world is a source of empowerment.

Al-Huda students also expressed their pride of discovery of what

‘Islam’ is or says in ways that reﬂ ect their appropriation of the Islamic

tradition. Thus, an Al-Huda student told me that as a child her parents

had taught her that one should not open the door to one’s parents’

bedroom without knocking. It was a message she had assumed to be

based on Western notions of privacy. How surprised she was, she said,

that when she began to study the Qur’an, she learned that this mes-

sage was conveyed in a Qur’anic verse! This was an Islamic teaching

going back to the seventh century, she discovered, not a more recent

Western one. Likewise, Al-Huda students told me that the ritual of

wudu’ which must be performed before starting one’s prayer if one

has ‘broken wudu’’ since the previous prayer, is conducive to mental

health because at the heart of this ritual is the exposure of one’s face

and limbs to ﬂ owing water. The therapeutic qualities of ﬂ owing water,

they said, have been proven by Western scientiﬁ c research.

Conclusion 367

Perhaps we might view this turn towards appropriation as an act

of mirroring. Around the world many Muslim women are dealing

with ‘gendered Islamophobia’, to use the term coined by Zine, by

deliberately returning to their Islamic roots and re-interpreting the

Islamic tradition in ways that provide a counterargument to the image

of Islam as a misogynistic faith tradition. The act of appropriation

is a powerful means of self-aﬃ rmation and assertion of self-control,

both in relation to the wider non-Muslim environment in which they

live and also, more immediately, in relation to the westernized or ‘lax’

lifestyles of their own family members.

Whether we are talking about students at a small-town madrasa

like Jami`a Nur or a worldwide organization like Al-Huda, the impli-

cations of Muslim women’s religious education for social change have

to be understood through the nexus between women’s education and

the domestic realm. I hope that the comparative framework of this

study opens up new questions and encourages us to discard binaries

such as those between Suﬁ s and Wahhabis, or rural Muslims and

urban ones. I also hope that it allows us to see ﬂ uidities and connec-

tions in the way South Asian Muslims actually live out their lives in a

context characterized by interconnectedness, disjunctures, precarity,

and cultural constraints on Muslim women, regardless of social class

or geographical location.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Usha Sanyal is visiting assistant professor at Wingate University,

North Carolina, USA. Her previous research focused on the history of

the Barelwi or Ahl-i Sunnat wa Jama`at movement in British India.

She is the author of Devotional Islam and Politics in British India:

Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Movement, 1880–1920 (2010),

which has also been published in Urdu; Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi:

In the Path of the Prophet (2005); and numerous articles about South

Asian Muslims both in the past and contemporaneously.

Sanyal’s forthcoming book is titled Food, Faith and Gender in South

Asia: The Cultural Politics of Women’s Food Practices (co-edited with

Nita Kumar [2020]).

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ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.

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