Religious Education in Non-Religious Schools: A Comparative Study of Pakistan and Bangladesh

Abstract

In both Pakistan and Bangladesh, most parents seek to provide their children with a ‘hybrid’ education, combining both religious and non-religious components (simultaneously). In Pakistan, however, the so-called ‘non-religious’ side of this education – for example, in government and non-elite private schools – tends to be associated with a particular understanding of religion, one that remains persistently apprehensive about the treatment of and, in many ways, even the acknowledgement of, religious, sectarian, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Keeping this in mind, scholars and policy makers with an interest in the relationship between education and citizenship – particularly insofar as this relationship is tied to the challenge of cultural diversity – would do well to focus more of their attention on competing expressions of ‘religion’ in the context of (ostensibly) ‘non-religious’ schools.