Anneke Newman is an anthropologist of development and Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, University of Ghent, Belgium.

Chapter 1: Rethinking development, education and religion: A challenging nexus

Stereotypes, silences and secular bias in policy and academic scholarship

Coloniality and the development-education-religion nexus

About us without us: Studying the 'religious Other'

Structure of the book

Chapter 2: A postsecular decolonial approach: Breaking the binaries

Introducing decolonial theory

Ontology and epistemology: 'With these threads, we weave the world'

Decolonial perspectives on the study of religion

Stories and senses: A postsecular approach to educational engagement in Islamic West Africa

Conclusion

PART I: SECULAR BIAS IN EDUCATION POLICIES: FROM COLONISATION TO EDUCATION FOR ALL

Chapter 3: The evolution of Islam and education in West Africa

Content and pedagogy of classical Qur'anic schools

Race, religion, capitalist extraction: Colonial schools and education policy

Islamic modernities and education reform

Conclusion

Chapter 4: Coloniality of secularity and Education For All

The 'talibé problem': Development critiques of child begging

Assumptions about Qur'anic schools and 'quality education'

The instrumentalisation of Islamic education under EFA

Conclusion

PART II: PATTERNS OF EDUCATIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN NORTHERN SENEGAL

Chapter 5: Understanding Qur'anic school preference

Coloniality of secularity in frameworks for understanding educational decision-making

Researching education in Medina Diallobé village

Explaining Qur'anic school preference

Choosing the Qur'anic school: An increasingly complex decision

Conclusion

Chapter 6: Racial hierarchies and Islamic education: From exclusion to resistance

Understanding descent-based inequalities in Islamic West Africa

Knowledge-power, education and social mobility: An evolving relationship

Islamic education in the Futa Tooro region: The 'final frontier'

Using Islamic knowledge to resist racialised exclusion

Conclusion

Chapter 7: Islamic knowledge and women's agency

Coloniality in discussions about African Muslim women's agency

Situating female Islamic education in northern Senegal

Women mobilising Islamic knowledge in Medina Diallobé

Islamic education and women's empowerment: Implications for policy

Conclusion

Chapter 8: Pursuing Islamic and state school knowledges: 'You need both'

Social inequalities, onto-epistemologies and temporalities in young people's trajectories

'Hierarchical complementarity': Islamic and state school knowledges

Mixed trajectories: Common concerns, diverse strategies

Barriers to educational pluralism in Senegal

Conclusion

PART III: DECOLONISING EDUCATION IN ISLAMIC WEST AFRICA: FROM RESEARCH TO POLICY

Chapter 9: Embracing African Islamic knowledge traditions: From critique to 'border praxis'

Overcoming coloniality in education and development scholarship

Decolonial research methodologies in comparative education

Towards pluralistic education policy and programming