The connection between education and political activism has been contested most acutely in recent years by scholarship on madrassahs, which can be defined in the context of South Asian Islam as Muslim seminaries. Faithful Education is a nuanced contribution to the literature, which is otherwise often polarized by selective empiricism or opinionated journalism. The regional perspective offered by Riaz is appropriate in the context of South Asia (particularly Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan), since there is considerable epistemic crossover between the ulama (religious scholars) of this region. While earlier works such as Muhammad Qasim Zaman's The Ulama in Contemporary Islam (2002) have provided cogent analyses of theological debates, this book offers a comparative political ethnography of contemporary controversies about madrassas.

Riaz is just as concerned with the perception of madrassas in the West and the impact this can have on policy drivers in the East. He uses content analysis of journalistic sources as a vital tool for his research and also ventures into online conversations and comments on blogs and news stories about madrassahs. This approach animates the narrative, particularly in the first chapter of the book, but also opens him up for methodological criticism for being selective. For example, Riaz's conclusion that these “characterizations were colored with the dominant perspectives on the perceived nexus between terrorism and Islam” (p. 50) can be questioned even within the news sources that he examines. Although madrassas were frequently implicated in conflict causality right after 9/11, there were numerous revisionist accounts published in the same newspapers as well. For example, Peter Bergen and Swati Pandey's article “The Madrassah Myth,” which countered concerns about madrassas, was published by the New York Times in 14 June, 2005. Much publicity was also given to a controversial World Bank–funded study (Tahir Andrabi et al., Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan, 2005) that essentially dismissed the madrassa issue as a problem by arguing that only a small percentage of children in the country attend these schools. Indeed, the dominant narrative in the US policy discourse and among think tanks has now shifted to marginalizing any alarm about madrassahs, as exemplified by several recent studies (see Rebecca Winthrop and Corinne Graff, Beyond Madrassas, 2010). Given Riaz's acknowledgement that madrassas do propagate an orthodox mindset, which is “inimical to the mental development of the students and a key obstacle to any productive role of these institutions in modern society” (p. 4), such revisionism should be just as much a cause for concern.

Furthermore, if the Occidental media content is to be analyzed regarding perceptions, the popular media in the Islamic world, particularly the vernacular press, also deserves consideration. A review of such sources also reveals bias in favor of madrassas that is not addressed. The review of writings in madrassa newsletters and news publications need to be considered, as well as other approaches to understanding the linkage between madrassas and violence, such as the incidents of sectarian attacks (Saleem Ali, Islam and Education: Conflict and Conformity in Pakistan's Madrassas, 2009). The connection between sectarianism and global strife cannot be underestimated, given the current conflict in Iraq between Shias and Sunnis and its global implications, as well as the larger geostrategic conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Riaz admits that this is an age-old struggle that has been played out in the context of educational institutions, going back to at least 1120, when the ruler of Aleppo founded a college to combat Shi'ism. Having provided such context, it is surprising that he then goes on to diminish the salience of such conflict in world affairs.

From a political theory perspective, the book's stance is clear when it comes to the connection between knowledge and power that has been theorized by Foucault (p. 9). Evidence is presented suggesting that Islamist ideologies have understood the importance of education as a source of power that can be wielded for evangelism (da'wa) and enforcing moral order. Riaz carefully documents how the wider perspective of knowledge acquisition as a continuing learning process is disavowed by most Islamists. Despite the protestations by contemporary Muslims about being stigmatized, the evidence regarding absolutism in several contemporary Islamist traditions harkens back to the political ideology of Fascism. Deobandi Islam, which has gained prominence among the madrassas of South Asia, follows such an uncritical path of taqlid (unquestioning adherence to scripture) rather than the pluralistic tradition of ijtihad (reflexive thought). A revealing quotation from one of the most influential Deobandi ulama in South Asia, Maulana Maududi, is presented where this founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami focuses on one-party rule and states that “the Islamic state bears a kind of resemblance to the Fascist and Communist states” (p. 7).

The three case analyses presented in the book of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are somewhat asymmetric in the level of detail provided. The analysis of Bangladesh is the most detailed and original from a political science perspective. The author may have chosen to focus on Bangladesh, based on personal familiarity with this case or because of a range of existing scholarship on Indian and Pakistani madrassas (such as Yoginder Sikand, Bastions of Believers, 2005; or Tariq Rahman, Denizens of Alien Worlds, 2004). Of particular interest are the political explanations presented for the rise in the number of madrassas in Bangladesh by an astounding 731 percent between 1972 and 2004. The direct involvement of the state in the development of Aaliya madrassas in parallel with the growth of private and more orthodox Qaumi madrassas shows the shortcomings of policy arguments that suggest that the support of government capacity alone can “drain the swamp” of extremist institutions.

The role of the South Asian diaspora in the Arab Gulf states is also presented in the context of Bangladesh as a cause for greater puritanical strains among religious institutions as a novel idea. The expulsion of Burmese Muslims by the military junta that led to a rise in refugees in Bangladesh echoes the far more widely studied phenomenon of Afghan refugees that came into Pakistan and were some of the earliest recruits for Pashtun madrassas. Riaz also presents a compelling case for how Islamic charities have played a role in helping such disenfranchised migrant populations and gained their sympathies. The cooptation of deprived and marginalized ethnic groups by their transitory benefactors deserves far greater attention. Madrassas in South Asia played an important role in the struggle against British colonialism and still see themselves as standing up against perceived oppression from the West or from other dominant religious groups (in the case of India). The transformation of this distrust of external agents will be a generational struggle, and Riaz argues that “to suggest that reforming madrassahs is a new or externally induced idea is a dangerous proposition, and grossly inaccurate” (p. 224). The evidence presented in the book convincingly supports the importance of engaging with endogenous reformers within madrassas that are emerging rather than acting exogenously as agents of change. Yet, the book leaves the question of structural factors that may prevent such endogenous reform unanswered. Why has an “Islamic reformation” often faltered even when internally driven, as Riaz has documented in his historical analysis? What factors may be needed to finally overcome such inertia given the current state of geopolitics? Despite the lack of more deliberate attention to such questions, Faithful Education is an admirable effort to provide clarity and nuance to the study of religious education and politics in South Asia.