Introduction: Understanding Tradition, Modernity, and Class in Islamic Education

Abstract

The expertise involved in making chat, a South Asian snack mix of dumplings, sauce, and crackers, lies in how perfectly one blends all the ingredients. In the summer of 2005, I visited a madrasa (religious seminary) to collect information for a pilot study on different school systems in Karachi. The school’s administrator, Qari Mohammed Asghar, informed me that, in addition to working in the madrasa, he owned and ran a private school in another area. I asked him what courses were offered at that school. He said that his school offered a blend of all the government-approved secular subjects in a prestigious, private school environment, alongside Quranic memorization (hifz) and Quranic exegesis (tafsir) courses offered at the low-prestige madrasas. I asked him why he didn’t open a madrasa instead of blending different curricula in a new type of private school. He replied, “Because people want chat!”¹