This article argues that leaders of the Jamaat-i-Islami in Bangladesh regularly invoke women's privileged status as mothers to counter the claims of the largely secularist non-governmental organizations operating in the country today that Islam has been harmful to women and that the only route to progress is to discard the shackles of religion and tradition. The current Jamaat rhetoric marks a significant change from the original Jamaat position—elaborated by the party's founder Abul Ala Maududi—that women's divinely ordained place is in the home. Now, several decades later, Jamaat leaders in Bangladesh still enjoin women to fulfil domestic obligations; however, they also go to great lengths to highlight Islam's recognition of women as ‘individuals’ with ‘individual’ responsibilities to God and Islam as well as Islam's support for women's right to study, work and vote. I contend that the Jamaat in Bangladesh has been prompted to undertake these recent modifications by specific developments in local social and political contexts, specifically the twin pressures on the Jamaat of operating in a functioning, if often imperfect, democratic polity; and of competing with more secular organizations for the hearts, minds and votes of impoverished women.

Even before 9/11, madrasas in India were being vilified for teaching hatred against the majority Hindu community. Such an understanding of madrasas was not restricted to the Hindu Right alone but even among parties of the Left. This paper argues that such a notion, which is fast becoming common sense, is erroneous. Far from teaching hatred against other communities, madrasas are primarily concerned with the ideological reproduction of their own maslak. The paper describes processes and strategies within a madrasa in North India through which such ideological reproduction takes place. The paper contends that sites of ideological transmission are located outside the formal curriculum of the madrasa. It focuses on some key texts and debating forums that are important sites of ideological transmission and play a key role in constituting a particular identity of students. Through an understanding of such pedagogical processes, the paper has shown that for students of this madrasa, the ‘other’ is not a Hindu, but a Muslim from another maslak. It follows from the paper that Islam itself is a matter of fierce interpretative debate ‘within’ madrasas. While it is important to understand how madrasas relate to other religions, an analysis of madrasas from ‘within’ leads us to different results.