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This book analyzes the ideas of a prominent twentieth century reformer, Haji Abdullah Malik Abdul Karim Amrullah, more commonly known as Hamka. It employs the term “cosmopolitan reform” to describe Hamka’s attempts at harmonizing the many streams of Islamic and Western thought and his diagnoses as well as solutions to the various challenges facing Muslims in the Malay world. Among the major themes explored in this book are questions concerning reason and revelation, moderation and extremism, social justice, the state of women in society, Sufism in the modern age as well as the importance of history in reforming the minds of modern Muslims. This book shows that Hamka demonstrated intellectual openness and inclusiveness towards a whole range of thoughts and philosophies to develop his own imaginary and vocabulary of reform. This attests to his cosmopolitan outlook and his unique ability to function as a conduit for varying Islamic and secular groups that were opposing one another in his lifetime.

Islamic schools, or madrasas, have been accused of radicalizing Muslims and participating, either actively or passively, in terrorist networks since the events of 9/11. In Pakistan, the 2007 siege by government forces of Islamabad's Red Mosque and its madrasa complex, whose imam and students staged an armed resistance against the state for its support of the “war on terror,” reinforced concerns about madrasas' role in regional and global jihad. By 2006 madrasas registered with Pakistan's five regulatory boards for religious schools enrolled over one million male and 200,000 female students. This book explores the network of Pakistani madrasas. It maps the choices and decisions confronted by students, teachers, parents, and clerics and explains why available choices make participation in jihad appear at times a viable course of action. The book shows that beliefs are rational and that religious believers look to maximize utility in ways not captured by classical rational choice. The book applies analytical tools from the New Institutional Economics to explain apparent contradictions in the madrasa system—for example, how thousands of young Pakistani women now demand the national adoption of traditional sharia law, despite its highly restrictive limits on female agency, and do so from their location in Islamic schools for girls that were founded only a generation ago.