Decolonising Education in Islamic West Africa

Anneke Newman is an anthropologist of development and Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, University of Ghent, Belgium.

"Based on rich ethnography and reflexive theoretical engagement, Decolonising Education in Islamic West Africa makes important interventions in the fields of Comparative and International Education, Education and International Development, decolonial theory, and African Studies. It demonstrates the imbrications of coloniality and racism in the assumed religious-secular binary, and the related biases, omissions, and distortions that result in scholarship and policy. Moving beyond a critique of the discourse and praxis around the Development-Education-Religion nexus, Newman develops a detailed, sensitive, and pluralistic auto-ethnography of education in the Futa Tooro in northern Senegal, attempting to think with the people and traditions being studied, not just about them. The result is a profound study that exemplifies the advantages and benefits of a truly decolonial approach. A welcome breath of fresh air, one hopes that this work will be followed by many more like it that reckon with and attempt to redress the continuing and damaging colonial legacies in the field of Education and International Development."Oludamini Ogunnaike, Associate Professor of African Religious Thought, The University of Virginia, USA"Anneke Newman’s Decolonising Education in Islamic West Africa offers a fascinating critique of the dominance of secular perspectives in the field of comparative and international education (CIE). Newman shows how other-than-secular cosmologies and knowledges are systematically excluded from academic and policy literature in education, and how stereotypes, silences and secular biases are steeped in assertions of colonial and racial hierarchies. In response, Newman offers counter-narratives of Qur’anic schools from parents’ and students’ own cosmological perspectives. In doing so, Newman brilliantly shows what expanding, pluralising and challenging the epistemic frame of CIE scholarship can achieve, arguing that this is essential to decolonial struggles in education."Arathi Sriprakash, Professor of Sociology and Education, University of Oxford, UK"This book comes to a critical juncture. It represents a major intervention into scholarship on religion, politics and education that was waiting for fresh and critical insights. It bridges important ongoing conversations and should leave a significant imprint on the debates on coloniality, decolonization, secularity, Islamic education and development in Africa, but also beyond."Abdoulaye Sounaye, Associate Professor of Religion, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany"Decolonising Education in Islamic West Africa offers a lucid, well-researched, and scholarly account of Qur’anic schools in Senegal, presenting a powerful narrative of the role of religion in education. Through a theoretically rich exploration of Islamic education and schooling in West Africa, the book challenges stereotypical views of Islam and Islamic education. It throws into sharp relief the urgent need for informed engagement to counter the rise of Islamophobia, racism, and the colonial logics that influence research, scholarship, and educational practices. As such, it serves as an important resource for those committed to a decolonial approach to education scholarship, policy, and practice. The book is a clarion call for scholars and practitioners in the fields of Comparative and International Education and Education and International Development to reassess critically their epistemic orientation, relevance, and meaning in the current global context."Yusuf Sayed, Professor of Education, University of Cambridge, UK

• Chapter 1: Rethinking development, education and religion: A challenging nexus Stereotypes, silences and secular bias in policy and academic scholarshipColoniality and the development-education-religion nexusAbout us without us: Studying the ‘religious Other’Structure of the bookChapter 2: A postsecular decolonial approach: Breaking the binariesIntroducing decolonial theoryOntology and epistemology: ‘With these threads, we weave the world’Decolonial perspectives on the study of religionStories and senses: A postsecular approach to educational engagement in Islamic West AfricaConclusionPART I: SECULAR BIAS IN EDUCATION POLICIES: FROM COLONISATION TO EDUCATION FOR ALL Chapter 3: The evolution of Islam and education in West AfricaContent and pedagogy of classical Qur’anic schoolsRace, religion, capitalist extraction: Colonial schools and education policyIslamic modernities and education reformConclusionChapter 4: Coloniality of secularity and Education For AllThe ‘talibé problem’: Development critiques of child beggingAssumptions about Qur’anic schools and ‘quality education’The instrumentalisation of Islamic education under EFAConclusionPART II: PATTERNS OF EDUCATIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN NORTHERN SENEGALChapter 5: Understanding Qur’anic school preference Coloniality of secularity in frameworks for understanding educational decision-makingResearching education in Medina Diallobé villageExplaining Qur’anic school preferenceChoosing the Qur’anic school: An increasingly complex decisionConclusionChapter 6: Racial hierarchies and Islamic education: From exclusion to resistance Understanding descent-based inequalities in Islamic West AfricaKnowledge-power, education and social mobility: An evolving relationshipIslamic education in the Futa Tooro region: The ‘final frontier’Using Islamic knowledge to resist racialised exclusionConclusionChapter 7: Islamic knowledge and women’s agencyColoniality in discussions about African Muslim women’s agencySituating female Islamic education in northern SenegalWomen mobilising Islamic knowledge in Medina DiallobéIslamic education and women’s empowerment: Implications for policyConclusionChapter 8: Pursuing Islamic and state school knowledges: ‘You need both’Social inequalities, onto-epistemologies and temporalities in young people’s trajectories‘Hierarchical complementarity’: Islamic and state school knowledgesMixed trajectories: Common concerns, diverse strategiesBarriers to educational pluralism in SenegalConclusionPART III: DECOLONISING EDUCATION IN ISLAMIC WEST AFRICA: FROM RESEARCH TO POLICYChapter 9: Embracing African Islamic knowledge traditions: From critique to ‘border praxis’Overcoming coloniality in education and development scholarshipDecolonial research methodologies in comparative educationTowards pluralistic education policy and programming