Al-Huda’s Intellectual Foundations

Chapter 7 explores the intellectual foundations of Farhat Hashmi and Idrees Zubair. Zubair was raised in a family with Ahl-i Hadith affiliations, while Hashmi’s father had ties with the Jama‘at-i Islami. However, Hashmi gradually 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 scientific findings into her classes, and what can one infer from the above about Al-Huda’s politics, are some of the questions that this chapter addresses.

Al-Huda International

Chapter 6 begins a new section, one which emphasizes daw‘a rather than adab. Against the backdrop of Pakistani politics 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. It takes the reader into the online classroom of the Al-Huda Qur’an class in which I was a student from 2009 to 2013. 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 simultaneously gives them voice and a sense of empowerment, thereby challenging both traditional Islamic authority structures and Western representations of Muslim women.

Conclusion

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 ethnographies 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 comparative focus of this book, I argue, encourages us to discard unhelpful binaries such as ‘Sufi’ and ‘Wahhabi’, and to think of the efforts of Muslims across different ideological and class categories as shared, albeit different, responses to the precarious conditions of modernity.

Student Narratives

In Chapter 9 I focus on the students of Al-Huda classes, both onsite and online. Most of the students who spoke to me were young adults—some married with children, some college students, and some professionals. Whether living in North America, Europe, or South Asia, they were drawn to Al-Huda for a variety of reasons, and all of them reported deriving strength from deepening their 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 of them had chosen to live a more orthoprax lifestyle in accordance with what they learned in the 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 gendered Islamophobia as articulated by Attiya Ahmad and Jasmin Zine, respectively.

Al-Huda Onsite and Online

In Chapter 8 I discuss how concretely social change occurs at the level of the everyday among a geographically dispersed set of Muslim women studying the Qur’an. I closely analyse 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 in terms of ‘cultural translation’, I try to understand how she makes the seventh century context of the Qur’an relevant to the lives of twenty-first-century Pakistani women in the diaspora. The chapter also examines both 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 the Testing Center in Hurst, Texas, without which the online classes would not be possible.

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

In Chapter 3 I enter the classroom with the teachers and students. This chapter presents an ‘ethnography’ of two different 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 skillfully present the material in a way that students find meaningful. It also discusses the role of memorization and peer learning in madrasa education. An appendix of the madrasa syllabus at the end of the chapter allows me to highlight the commonalities between ‘traditionalist’ Barelwis and Deobandis/Tablighis.

Introduction

The ‘Introduction’ sets out the framework for this comparative study of different kinds of religious education for South Asian Muslim women. The study is divided into two parts. The term adab encapsulates what the madrasa is trying to achieve. Adab is a classical term often translated as ‘etiquette’ in English, though it carries a complex resonance of meanings that go much deeper. In part 2, in contrast, I use the term da‘wa to characterize Al-Huda. The Arabic term Da‘wa (also referred to as tabligh, from balagha, discourse) means ‘call’ or ‘invitation’. Today’s da‘wa movements are no longer confined 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. These two Arabic terms frame my discussion of the two case studies in the book. The ‘Introduction’ also examines what unites the two ethnographies, which seem at first sight to be so different as to share no common ground.

Life after the Madrasa

Chapter 5 examines the lives of six madrasa students who graduated from Jami‘a Nur. This chapter was written collaboratively with Sumbul Farah, an anthropologist, who interviewed the students extensively. The overall conclusion of the chapter (a modified version of which appeared as an article in Modern Asian Studies) 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 affective ties for students, as it seeks to inculcate values congruent with those of the home and community at large. The chapter reflects 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.

Attachment to School

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 different 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 program of Qur’an recitation, praise poems in honor of the Prophet (na‘t), and speeches (taqrir). The level of student and teacher engagement in the secular Barelwi school is markedly lower, for reasons I spell out in the chapter. These include: students’ lack of interest in the subjects taught at the secular school; a lax disciplinary 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 offering them religious instruction, although not required by the state.

Muslim Girls’ Education in North India in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

This chapter lays out the historical background of Muslim women’s education in British India and post-Independence India, including statistical data on UP education history and the Sachar Commission Report. The chapter then explores girls’ madrasa education, in north India specifically, with a focus on a Rampur madrasa (of Jama‘at-i Islami affiliation) for girls and compares this madrasa with the Tablighi madrasa for girls studied by Winkelmann. 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 differences. This shows us how much the second madrasa has in common with the Barelwi madrasa portrayed in this book, despite differences in their denominational (maslaki) identities.