Madrassa Education System and Associated Discourses: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Education Policies of Pakistan (Joining virtually)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the power structures (re)producing religious/madrassa education system in Pakistan, as reflected through policy text using the framework and method of Jager’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).

Pakistan being one of the few countries founded on the basis of religion, has a dialectical relation between religion and other social institutes. The nature, magnitude, and modalities of these relations vary across institutes, geographies, and time. The relation between religion and schooling/education is a critical one, for both have been trying to develop a functioning equilibrium since the inception of Pakistan. Embedded within the very fabric of society, Islam features heavily in politics of Pakistan, which is evident from constitutional provisions and faith-based political parties. Islam being an integral component of all political agendas, features in political slogans/campaigns, and is used as a legitimation tool for any and every social action from individual to national level. This overarching nature of religion/Islam, and its influence over politics, has implications for education policy making in Pakistan, as policy making, and education are inherently political activities.

This paper uses Jager’s framework, which draws upon Foucault’s work, by incorporating Leonet’ev’s activity theory. Jager’s methodology mediates Foucault’s method by introducing social actors as a missing link between discourse and reality, subject and object, and discursive and non-discursive practices. This approach uses Laclau’s social constructivism to introduce a dualism of discourse and reality, therefore, denying existence of any social reality outside discourse. Jager’s framework, thus, allows us to analyze policy text as a social action which is reflective of power structures that (re)produces the madrassa education system in Pakistan.

Through an in depth structural, detailed, and synoptic analysis, policy texts around madrassa education system reveal temporal and spatial trends in power of, and over, madrassa education system in Pakistan. The analysis also reveals differences across various democratic and military regimes, along with shifts in power structures as a result of geopolitical shifts. Other findings include, argumentation shifts across policies and assuming a coherent version of Islam. There are generic prescriptions about Islamic education which circumvents, legitimizes, and problematizes the sectarian differences within Islamic education.

Furthermore, the philosophical and practical dissonance between modern/worldly and Islamic education is a common feature within policy texts. Both are clearly demarcated as different, and almost all policies try to present a unifying link and coherence between the two. These mitigation attempts almost always use the rhetoric of Quran and Hadith for legitimation purposes. This is indicative of the strength of the discourse, which imbues the madrassa education system with its power. This paper is an attempt to develop a holistic understanding of the madrassa education system in Pakistan, unlike most scholarship, which look at the economic and social ramifications of the phenomenon. This paper ends with a few recommendations to better understand and address the dissonance between the public and madrassa education systems.

Moaaz Hamid is a PhD student in History, Philosophy, and Policy in Education, specializing in Education Policy Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests, stemming from his work in the education development sector in Pakistan, are global education policy, policy transfer, non-state actors in education, and knowledge utilization in the education policy sphere.

Tahreem Fatima, Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant with a demonstrated history of working in the higher education industry with the aim of building teacher leadership in K-12 setting. Skilled in Project Management, Research, Course Designing, Leadership, Mentoring, and Teamwork. Strong education development and research professional with an ongoing PhD degree in Leadership, Culture, and Curriculum (Miami University, OH, USA) and a qualified past one in Master of Philosophy (MPhil) focused on Education Leadership and Management (ELM) from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan.