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Madrassas as a Provider of Informal Social Protection in Pakistan

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Informal Social Protection and Poverty

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Abstract

The chapter traces a brief history of madrassas in Pakistan from the medieval Islamic period to current times. It employs the results of collected data to categorize madrassas as providers of informal social protection. Firstly, the chapter briefly explains the evolution and contributions of early madrassas. Secondly, the chapter analyzes the role of madrassas during the Mughal era in India and how the colonization of India affected them. Thirdly, the chapter presents a short history of the development of the madrassas in Pakistan and the impact on them of various events in Pakistani history, followed by a brief overview of the literature on the topic of madrassas to place this study in the body of scholarship. Lastly, the chapter utilizes the survey results and semi-structured interview data to classify the madrassas in Pakistan as providers of all three components of informal social protection.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This study does not aim to analyze the works of Muslim scholars because much work has already been written on the subject. See, for example, Cohen (2013), Al-Daffa (2020), etc.

  2. 2.

    It is not the aim of this study to contest or accept any of these claims.

  3. 3.

    Waqf is a private possession or asset in any form that has been put under an injunction from any form of the transaction, including sale, inheritance, grant, or will, while its physical source remains intact and unchanged. In Islam, endowment ownership is non-permanent because it has been entitled to GOD to benefit all Muslims (Masruki & Shafii, 2013).

  4. 4.

    A detailed account of the conquest of Sind by Muhammad Ibn Qasim is provided by Gabrieli (1965).

  5. 5.

    Jamat-i-Islami and the Islamicist political party followed the Deobandi sect, and their madrassa students took an active part in the Soviet Jihad.

  6. 6.

    In 1986, the Zia Government passed the Blasphemy law, with the death penalty as punishment, for anyone (Muslim or non-Muslim) who insulted the Prophet Mohammad (Peace Be Upon Him), the last prophet. In 1991, the Federal Shariat Court declared blasphemy as an offence punishable by death with no possibility of pardon or mitigation of sentence. Since 1990, 62 people have been murdered on unproved blasphemy allegations.

  7. 7.

    For this and the next chapter, the results are presented in aggregate. Chapters 7 and 8 present the results in clusters to answer the second research question.

  8. 8.

    The next chapter provides details about formal and informal welfare sources other than madrassas received by the households.

  9. 9.

    The information was gathered during a visit to Jamia Ashrafia during fieldwork for the study.

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  1. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Zahid Mumtaz

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Mumtaz, Z. (2022). Madrassas as a Provider of Informal Social Protection in Pakistan. In: Informal Social Protection and Poverty. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6474-9_5

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