Masooda Bano
Biographic Data
| ID | 3697534 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Masooda Bano |
| GIVEN NAMES | Masooda |
| FAMILY NAME | Bano |
| SIGNATURE | BANO M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3684-8022 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 85 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Islamic Authority and Centres of Knowledge Production in Europe
The centrality of the Qurʾan and Hadith (reports describing the words, actions, or habits of the Prophet Muhammad) in Islamic teachings has resulted in a rich tradition of textual scholarship. Scholars trained in the major Islamic sciences at the leading centres of Islamic learning command a high degree of influence over how Muslims understand their faith. Yet the authority exercised by Islamic scholars is not only contingent on their demonstrati…
Caricaturing the prophet: Pushing the right to free speech too far
Despite growing evidence that production of cartoons and caricatures of Muhammad causes deep hurt to Muslims across the world, European leaders are refusing to restrict their publication in the name of free speech. This article questions this position on three counts: one, the hurt these cartoons cause to the Muslims and the resulting frictions between Europe and leaders of the Muslim countries; two, the harm they cause to European societies by i…
Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe, written by Abdal Hakim Murad
Abdal Hakim Murad. Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe. Cambridge: The Quilliam Press, 2020. Pp. 321. ISBN: 978-1-872038-20-9.At a time when integrating Muslim communities into mainstream society remains a top policy concern for European politicians, Abdal Hakim Murad’s Travelling Home presents a very timely, insightful and balanced perspective on how Muslim communities can build bridges with the majority community despite rising populist …
The Revival of Islamic Rationalism: Logic, Metaphysics and Mysticism in Modern Muslim Societies
In this book, Masooda Bano presents an in-depth analysis of a new movement that is transforming the way that young Muslims engage with their religion. Led by a network of Islamic scholars in the West, this movement seeks to revive the tradition of Islamic rationalism. Bano explains how, during the period of colonial rule, the exit of Muslim elites from madrasas, the Islamic scholarly establishments, resulted in a stagnation of Islamic scholarship…
Religion and female empowerment: Evidence from Pakistan and northern Nigeria
Development theory and practice identify religious conviction as a challenge to female empowerment. Drawing on a new dataset on girls from madrasas and secular schools in Pakistan and northern Nigeria, and on ethnographic fieldwork, this article problematises this assumption. The data show various levels of commitment to pursuing a professional career among Muslim girls with equally high levels of religious conviction. Further, stronger career co…
Official al-Azhar versus al-Azhar Imagined: The Arab Spring and the Revival of Religious Imagination
While the impact of the Arab Spring on the political imagination of the Egyptian youth has been well documented, scholars have largely ignored how the revolutionary fervour of the time also sparked the imagination of religiously inclined young people, especially the young scholars and graduates of al-Azhar. Spurred by the revolutionary spirit of the moment, these young Azharis not only questioned the official Azhari establishment, they also estab…
Modern Islamic Authority and Social Change, Volume 2: Evolving Debates in the West
Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations
First under the Millennium Development Goals and now under the Sustainable Development Goals, partnerships for development, especially between state and NGOs, remain a valued goal. Partnerships are argued to improve provision of basic social services to the poor: the state is viewed as providing scale, with NGOs ensuring good governance. Close study of three leading partnership arrangements in Pakistan (privatization of basic health units, an ‘ad…
Family versus school effect on individual religiosity: Evidence from Pakistan
Barriers to primary completion and transition in Northern Nigeria: Evidence from a non-formal schooling intervention
It is often claimed that the one-teacher, one-room, non-formal school model is more effective than the formal school in enrolling hard-to-reach children. This model is, however, not immune to the two-fold challenges of primary completion and transition. This article draws on data from three rounds of surveys with children from Tsangaya (traditional Quranic schools) in northern Nigeria who took part in a non-formal school programme. The article re…
Regulating religious authority for political gains: Al-Sisi’s manipulation of al-Azhar in Egypt
The shedding of blood is a serious matter in Islamic law; disregard for human life negates the very essence of just rule. By standing by General al-Sisi as he suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, the popular legitimacy of al-Azhar – the oldest seat of Islamic learning – was called into question. This article shows how the al-Sisi government skilfully deployed the two other state-controlled religious establishments, the Ministry of Awqaf (Religious …
At the Tipping Point? Al-Azhar’s Growing Crisis of Moral Authority
Routinely required to lend religious legitimacy to contentious state policies, al-Azhar's moral authority has been under pressure since its nationalization in 1961. This article outlines how Shaykh al-Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib's recent alliance with President ʿAbd al-Fattah al-Sisi has, however, exposed al-Azhar's moral authority to unprecedented risks. This is for three reasons. First, the tactics used by al-Sisi's government to quell the Muslim Bro…
Buying Consent: The Achilles’ Heel of Aid-induced Community Participation
Community participation remains central to development policy; but so do concerns that negotiations to achieve it have become a drill devoid of real meaning. Repeatedly, development interventions fail to unlock its presumed benefits: low-cost innovation, good governance and sustainability. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) in Pakistan, a well-known case of organic community participation, this article demonstra…
Skills Development and International Development Agenda Setting: Lessons from an Intervention in Northern Nigeria
Madrasa Reforms and Islamic Modernism in Bangladesh
The old project of modernizing madrasas has acquired a new zeal in South Asia after September 2011, whereby madrasa reform programmes became an acknowledged soft tactic of the war on terror. With 9000 Aliya (reformed) madrasas, the Bangladesh madrasa modernization programme has been identified as a potentially useful model for the neighbouring states of Pakistan and India who have made slower progress in implementing similar programmes. In this p…
Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority
The acceptance of female leadership in mosques and madrassas is a significant change from much historical practice, signalling the mainstream acceptance of some form of female Islamic authority in many places. This volume investigates the diverse range of female religious leadership present in contemporary Muslim communities in South, East and Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America, with chapters discussing its emergence…
Negotiating Collaboration in Pakistan: Expertise, Networks and Community Embeddedness
Despite growing emphasis within development policy on forging partnerships for development, very few development programmes designed to promote collaborative arrangements between state agencies and non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) to ensure the efficient service delivery of basic services to the poor succeed. Examining three cases of state–NGO collaboration in Pakistan, this article identified two NGO‐related factors as critical in helping c…
Transforming Faith: The Story of Al-Huda and Islamic Revivalism among Urban Pakistani Women * By Sadaf Ahmad
In recent years, there has been a surge in studies examining the emergence of female preachers within the sphere of formal religious authority in Islam, namely the mosque and madrasa. There are two primary drivers of this interest. First, the study of these movements offers insights into the changing nature of Islamic authority, which has traditionally been invested in male ulema. Second, the feminization of Islamic authority presents the complex…
Global security, religion and education development: A crisis for the field of comparative education
The article offers a brief profile of the participants to the forum on the connections between security, religion and education situating it as a crisis for comparative education. It states that the contributors come from varied backgrounds, and have different opinions concerning the topic. The participants include Lynn Davies, Mike Hardy, and Masooda Bano. It notes that their arguments can be seen as contentious, and understanding the role of th…
Co-Producing with FBOs: Lessons from state–madrasa engagement in the Middle East and South Asia
Forging partnerships for development is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. While faith-based organisations (fbos) are receiving growing attention within development policy as important non-state service providers, they are assumed to be less conducive to forging partnerships with governments or development organisations than secular ngos due to their allegiance to specific religious beliefs. Analysing the dynamic of engagement between…
Madrasas as partners in education provision: The South Asian experience
Madrasas, Islamic schools, are prominent non-state education providers in South Asia, especially for hard-to-reach children in Muslim communities. Recent attention on madrasas has, however, focused on their alleged links with militancy, overshadowing analysis of their role as education providers. Based on a comparative analysis of the state-led madrasa-modernisation programmes in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, which aimed to introduce secular s…
Religion in Development: Rewriting the Secular Script
Development practice is full of examples of the importance of religion in the lives of people in developing countries. However, religion has largely remained unexplored in development studies. This timely new book aims to fill that gap. The authors expertly review how religion has been treated in the evolution of development thought, how it has been conceptualised in the social sciences, and highlights the major deficiencies of the assumption of …
Contested Claims: Public Perceptions and the Decision to Join NGOs in Pakistan
While international development institutions continue to employ the notions of ‘social capital’ and ‘civil society’ to support their policy of channelling development aid through Southern NGOs, a growing number of studies record NGOs' inability to mobilise members. A countrywide survey of public perceptions of the term ‘NGO’ in Pakistan reveals two striking results: one, dependence on development aid is posing serious challenges to NGOs' public l…
Non‐profit education providers vis‐à‐vis the private sector: Comparative analysis of non‐governmental organizations and traditional voluntary organizations in Pakistan
Under the New Policy Agenda, international development institutions have promoted non‐profit organizations (NPOs) in developing countries, on a dual logic: firstly, they deliver social services more efficiently than the state; secondly, they mitigate equity concerns around privatization of basic social services by reaching out to the poor. Based on a survey of twenty prominent non‐profit education providers in Pakistan, this paper illustrates tha…
Dangerous Correlations: Aid’s Impact on NGOs’ Performance and Ability to Mobilize Members in Pakistan
Dangerous Correlations: Aid’s Impact on NGOs’ Performance and Ability to Mobilize Members in Pakistan
Madrasa Reforms and Islamic Modernism in Bangladesh
The old project of modernizing madrasas has acquired a new zeal in South Asia after September 2011, whereby madrasa reform programmes became an acknowledged soft tactic of the war on terror. With 9000 Aliya (reformed) madrasas, the Bangladesh madrasa modernization programme has been identified as a potentially useful model for the neighbouring states of Pakistan and India who have made slower progress in implementing similar programmes. In this p…
Beyond Politics: The Reality of a Deobandi Madrasa in Pakistan
All of the key policy reports on madrasas in Pakistan since September 11, while acknowledging that only a minute fraction of madrasas promote militancy, recommend reforming the entire madrasa system and argue that even ordinary madrasas produce bigoted individuals. They question the quality of education at the madrasa, the socio-economic relevance of this education, and the basis of the authority of the head or imām. This paper, based on an ethno…
Non‐profit education providers vis‐à‐vis the private sector: Comparative analysis of non‐governmental organizations and traditional voluntary organizations in Pakistan
Under the New Policy Agenda, international development institutions have promoted non‐profit organizations (NPOs) in developing countries, on a dual logic: firstly, they deliver social services more efficiently than the state; secondly, they mitigate equity concerns around privatization of basic social services by reaching out to the poor. Based on a survey of twenty prominent non‐profit education providers in Pakistan, this paper illustrates tha…
Islamic Authority and Centres of Knowledge Production in Europe
The centrality of the Qurʾan and Hadith (reports describing the words, actions, or habits of the Prophet Muhammad) in Islamic teachings has resulted in a rich tradition of textual scholarship. Scholars trained in the major Islamic sciences at the leading centres of Islamic learning command a high degree of influence over how Muslims understand their faith. Yet the authority exercised by Islamic scholars is not only contingent on their demonstrati…
At the Tipping Point? Al-Azhar’s Growing Crisis of Moral Authority
Routinely required to lend religious legitimacy to contentious state policies, al-Azhar's moral authority has been under pressure since its nationalization in 1961. This article outlines how Shaykh al-Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib's recent alliance with President ʿAbd al-Fattah al-Sisi has, however, exposed al-Azhar's moral authority to unprecedented risks. This is for three reasons. First, the tactics used by al-Sisi's government to quell the Muslim Bro…
Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations
First under the Millennium Development Goals and now under the Sustainable Development Goals, partnerships for development, especially between state and NGOs, remain a valued goal. Partnerships are argued to improve provision of basic social services to the poor: the state is viewed as providing scale, with NGOs ensuring good governance. Close study of three leading partnership arrangements in Pakistan (privatization of basic health units, an ‘ad…
Family versus school effect on individual religiosity: Evidence from Pakistan
Regulating religious authority for political gains: Al-Sisi’s manipulation of al-Azhar in Egypt
The shedding of blood is a serious matter in Islamic law; disregard for human life negates the very essence of just rule. By standing by General al-Sisi as he suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, the popular legitimacy of al-Azhar – the oldest seat of Islamic learning – was called into question. This article shows how the al-Sisi government skilfully deployed the two other state-controlled religious establishments, the Ministry of Awqaf (Religious …
Contested Claims: Public Perceptions and the Decision to Join NGOs in Pakistan
While international development institutions continue to employ the notions of ‘social capital’ and ‘civil society’ to support their policy of channelling development aid through Southern NGOs, a growing number of studies record NGOs' inability to mobilise members. A countrywide survey of public perceptions of the term ‘NGO’ in Pakistan reveals two striking results: one, dependence on development aid is posing serious challenges to NGOs' public l…
Madrasas as partners in education provision: The South Asian experience
Madrasas, Islamic schools, are prominent non-state education providers in South Asia, especially for hard-to-reach children in Muslim communities. Recent attention on madrasas has, however, focused on their alleged links with militancy, overshadowing analysis of their role as education providers. Based on a comparative analysis of the state-led madrasa-modernisation programmes in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, which aimed to introduce secular s…
Co-Producing with FBOs: Lessons from state–madrasa engagement in the Middle East and South Asia
Forging partnerships for development is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. While faith-based organisations (fbos) are receiving growing attention within development policy as important non-state service providers, they are assumed to be less conducive to forging partnerships with governments or development organisations than secular ngos due to their allegiance to specific religious beliefs. Analysing the dynamic of engagement between…
Skills Development and International Development Agenda Setting: Lessons from an Intervention in Northern Nigeria
Global security, religion and education development: A crisis for the field of comparative education
The article offers a brief profile of the participants to the forum on the connections between security, religion and education situating it as a crisis for comparative education. It states that the contributors come from varied backgrounds, and have different opinions concerning the topic. The participants include Lynn Davies, Mike Hardy, and Masooda Bano. It notes that their arguments can be seen as contentious, and understanding the role of th…
Beyond Politics: The Reality of a Deobandi Madrasa in Pakistan
All of the key policy reports on madrasas in Pakistan since September 11, while acknowledging that only a minute fraction of madrasas promote militancy, recommend reforming the entire madrasa system and argue that even ordinary madrasas produce bigoted individuals. They question the quality of education at the madrasa, the socio-economic relevance of this education, and the basis of the authority of the head or imām. This paper, based on an ethno…
Sustaining Gains in Poverty Reduction and Human Development in the Middle East and North Africa * By Farruk Iqbal
After establishing global development reports, most development institutions have encouraged their replication at regional levels. The UNDP Human Development Reports are even being produced at the country level. This book is better viewed as one such regional report, produced by the World Bank, as part of its Orientations in Development Series. It is primarily a compilation of poverty and human development data available to the World Bank for ten…
Contested Claims: Public Perceptions and the Decision to Join NGOs in Pakistan
While international development institutions continue to employ the notions of ‘social capital’ and ‘civil society’ to support their policy of channelling development aid through Southern NGOs, a growing number of studies record NGOs' inability to mobilise members. A countrywide survey of public perceptions of the term ‘NGO’ in Pakistan reveals two striking results: one, dependence on development aid is posing serious challenges to NGOs' public l…
Non‐profit education providers vis‐à‐vis the private sector: Comparative analysis of non‐governmental organizations and traditional voluntary organizations in Pakistan
Under the New Policy Agenda, international development institutions have promoted non‐profit organizations (NPOs) in developing countries, on a dual logic: firstly, they deliver social services more efficiently than the state; secondly, they mitigate equity concerns around privatization of basic social services by reaching out to the poor. Based on a survey of twenty prominent non‐profit education providers in Pakistan, this paper illustrates tha…
Dangerous Correlations: Aid’s Impact on NGOs’ Performance and Ability to Mobilize Members in Pakistan
Religion in Development: Rewriting the Secular Script
Development practice is full of examples of the importance of religion in the lives of people in developing countries. However, religion has largely remained unexplored in development studies. This timely new book aims to fill that gap. The authors expertly review how religion has been treated in the evolution of development thought, how it has been conceptualised in the social sciences, and highlights the major deficiencies of the assumption of …
Madrasas as partners in education provision: The South Asian experience
Madrasas, Islamic schools, are prominent non-state education providers in South Asia, especially for hard-to-reach children in Muslim communities. Recent attention on madrasas has, however, focused on their alleged links with militancy, overshadowing analysis of their role as education providers. Based on a comparative analysis of the state-led madrasa-modernisation programmes in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, which aimed to introduce secular s…
Negotiating Collaboration in Pakistan: Expertise, Networks and Community Embeddedness
Despite growing emphasis within development policy on forging partnerships for development, very few development programmes designed to promote collaborative arrangements between state agencies and non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) to ensure the efficient service delivery of basic services to the poor succeed. Examining three cases of state–NGO collaboration in Pakistan, this article identified two NGO‐related factors as critical in helping c…
Transforming Faith: The Story of Al-Huda and Islamic Revivalism among Urban Pakistani Women * By Sadaf Ahmad
In recent years, there has been a surge in studies examining the emergence of female preachers within the sphere of formal religious authority in Islam, namely the mosque and madrasa. There are two primary drivers of this interest. First, the study of these movements offers insights into the changing nature of Islamic authority, which has traditionally been invested in male ulema. Second, the feminization of Islamic authority presents the complex…
Global security, religion and education development: A crisis for the field of comparative education
The article offers a brief profile of the participants to the forum on the connections between security, religion and education situating it as a crisis for comparative education. It states that the contributors come from varied backgrounds, and have different opinions concerning the topic. The participants include Lynn Davies, Mike Hardy, and Masooda Bano. It notes that their arguments can be seen as contentious, and understanding the role of th…
Co-Producing with FBOs: Lessons from state–madrasa engagement in the Middle East and South Asia
Forging partnerships for development is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals. While faith-based organisations (fbos) are receiving growing attention within development policy as important non-state service providers, they are assumed to be less conducive to forging partnerships with governments or development organisations than secular ngos due to their allegiance to specific religious beliefs. Analysing the dynamic of engagement between…
Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority
The acceptance of female leadership in mosques and madrassas is a significant change from much historical practice, signalling the mainstream acceptance of some form of female Islamic authority in many places. This volume investigates the diverse range of female religious leadership present in contemporary Muslim communities in South, East and Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America, with chapters discussing its emergence…
Madrasa Reforms and Islamic Modernism in Bangladesh
The old project of modernizing madrasas has acquired a new zeal in South Asia after September 2011, whereby madrasa reform programmes became an acknowledged soft tactic of the war on terror. With 9000 Aliya (reformed) madrasas, the Bangladesh madrasa modernization programme has been identified as a potentially useful model for the neighbouring states of Pakistan and India who have made slower progress in implementing similar programmes. In this p…
Buying Consent: The Achilles’ Heel of Aid-induced Community Participation
Community participation remains central to development policy; but so do concerns that negotiations to achieve it have become a drill devoid of real meaning. Repeatedly, development interventions fail to unlock its presumed benefits: low-cost innovation, good governance and sustainability. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) in Pakistan, a well-known case of organic community participation, this article demonstra…
Skills Development and International Development Agenda Setting: Lessons from an Intervention in Northern Nigeria
Modern Islamic Authority and Social Change, Volume 2: Evolving Debates in the West
Partnerships and the Good-Governance Agenda: Improving Service Delivery Through State–NGO Collaborations
First under the Millennium Development Goals and now under the Sustainable Development Goals, partnerships for development, especially between state and NGOs, remain a valued goal. Partnerships are argued to improve provision of basic social services to the poor: the state is viewed as providing scale, with NGOs ensuring good governance. Close study of three leading partnership arrangements in Pakistan (privatization of basic health units, an ‘ad…
Family versus school effect on individual religiosity: Evidence from Pakistan
Barriers to primary completion and transition in Northern Nigeria: Evidence from a non-formal schooling intervention
It is often claimed that the one-teacher, one-room, non-formal school model is more effective than the formal school in enrolling hard-to-reach children. This model is, however, not immune to the two-fold challenges of primary completion and transition. This article draws on data from three rounds of surveys with children from Tsangaya (traditional Quranic schools) in northern Nigeria who took part in a non-formal school programme. The article re…
Regulating religious authority for political gains: Al-Sisi’s manipulation of al-Azhar in Egypt
The shedding of blood is a serious matter in Islamic law; disregard for human life negates the very essence of just rule. By standing by General al-Sisi as he suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, the popular legitimacy of al-Azhar – the oldest seat of Islamic learning – was called into question. This article shows how the al-Sisi government skilfully deployed the two other state-controlled religious establishments, the Ministry of Awqaf (Religious …
At the Tipping Point? Al-Azhar’s Growing Crisis of Moral Authority
Routinely required to lend religious legitimacy to contentious state policies, al-Azhar's moral authority has been under pressure since its nationalization in 1961. This article outlines how Shaykh al-Azhar Ahmad al-Tayyib's recent alliance with President ʿAbd al-Fattah al-Sisi has, however, exposed al-Azhar's moral authority to unprecedented risks. This is for three reasons. First, the tactics used by al-Sisi's government to quell the Muslim Bro…
The Revival of Islamic Rationalism: Logic, Metaphysics and Mysticism in Modern Muslim Societies
In this book, Masooda Bano presents an in-depth analysis of a new movement that is transforming the way that young Muslims engage with their religion. Led by a network of Islamic scholars in the West, this movement seeks to revive the tradition of Islamic rationalism. Bano explains how, during the period of colonial rule, the exit of Muslim elites from madrasas, the Islamic scholarly establishments, resulted in a stagnation of Islamic scholarship…
Religion and female empowerment: Evidence from Pakistan and northern Nigeria
Development theory and practice identify religious conviction as a challenge to female empowerment. Drawing on a new dataset on girls from madrasas and secular schools in Pakistan and northern Nigeria, and on ethnographic fieldwork, this article problematises this assumption. The data show various levels of commitment to pursuing a professional career among Muslim girls with equally high levels of religious conviction. Further, stronger career co…
Official al-Azhar versus al-Azhar Imagined: The Arab Spring and the Revival of Religious Imagination
While the impact of the Arab Spring on the political imagination of the Egyptian youth has been well documented, scholars have largely ignored how the revolutionary fervour of the time also sparked the imagination of religiously inclined young people, especially the young scholars and graduates of al-Azhar. Spurred by the revolutionary spirit of the moment, these young Azharis not only questioned the official Azhari establishment, they also estab…
Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe, written by Abdal Hakim Murad
Abdal Hakim Murad. Travelling Home: Essays on Islam in Europe. Cambridge: The Quilliam Press, 2020. Pp. 321. ISBN: 978-1-872038-20-9.At a time when integrating Muslim communities into mainstream society remains a top policy concern for European politicians, Abdal Hakim Murad’s Travelling Home presents a very timely, insightful and balanced perspective on how Muslim communities can build bridges with the majority community despite rising populist …
Political science (27 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Law (14 works) · Economic growth (13 works) · Economics (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Islam (12 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works)