Islam, Democracy, and Citizenship Education: An Examination of the Social Studies Curriculum in Pakistan

Abstract

Since the 1980s the mission of the national citizenship education curriculum in Pakistan has been the Islamization of society. The government curriculum guidelines require textbooks to emphasize Islam as the national ideology of the state of Pakistan. Recognizing the deleterious effect of an exclusivist curriculum on the civic unity of the nation, some stakeholders propose a liberal-democratic reform agenda for social studies. The main goal of the proposed agenda is to use the curriculum for creating a tolerant, moderate, and enlightened citizenry. However, proponents of a theocratic vision of good citizenship, which currently dominates the curriculum, vehemently oppose these reform efforts. Introduction In the Pakistani national school system, citizenship education is imparted through a prescribed social studies curriculum, the main thrust of which has been the Islamization of society since the 1980s. A recent government proposal for curricular reform has stirred vociferous debate from competing stakeholders, whose visions of citizenship and citizenship education have clashed in the nation's mass media, and in organized street rallies causing disruptions to civic life (Gillani, 2004a). The main opposition to the government's curricular reform agenda is driven by religious parties, whose ideology dominates the current social studies curriculum. Religious parties and their conservative allies play a decisive role in determining the ideological core of Pakistan 's national education curriculum policy. Over the last twenty years, they have succeeded in promoting a political agenda marked by a distinctive Islamic ideology (Haque, 1987). Their purpose in presenting Islam as a national ideology has been to: (a) sanctify their political role in society; (b) galvanize social forces in Pakistan against India and the West; and (c) unify the Muslim world. To achieve their political goals, they have revised history, advanced a manufactured heritage of the state of Pakistan, and promoted an Islamic paradigm of citizenship education in the nation's schools through the social studies curriculum (Mustafa, 2004). This paper makes three arguments. First, it argues that the current ideological conflict over the mission of social studies in Pakistan is essentially related to the question of relationship between religion and the state. Second, it posits that Pakistan 's present national policy on the social studies curriculum makes no distinction between religious education and citizenship education in that it seeks to create practicing Muslims rather than democratic citizens. And third, based on my findings of the content analysis of the government-approved secondary school social studies textbooks, the paper maintains that those textbooks adhere to the national policy of promoting Islam as a political ideology for the purpose of strengthening an Islamic state.