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The old project of modernizing madrasas has acquired a new zeal in South Asia after September 2011, whereby madrasa reform programmes became an acknowledged soft tactic of the war on terror. With 9000 Aliya (reformed) madrasas, the Bangladesh madrasa modernization programme has been identified as a potentially useful model for the neighbouring states of Pakistan and India who have made slower progress in implementing similar programmes. In this paper I argue that, although the Aliya madrasa system in Bangladesh has succeeded in integrating secular subjects in the madrasa curriculum, in reality this modernization project has failed in its underlying ambition to generate a ‘modern discourse’ on Islam—a discourse that is compatible with the demands of western modernity. The right to speak for Islam is still primarily exercised by the ‘ulama and graduates of the Qoumi (unreformed) madrasas. Aliya madrasas today compete with the secular schools not with Qoumi madrasas. The growth of the Aliya madrasa system in Bangladesh, instead of bearing testimony to the popular appeal of the modernization agenda, demonstrates the preference of Muslim parents for increased Islamic content in the school curriculum [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With Italy's entry into the Second World War, Anglo-Egyptian authorities repatriated Italian diplomats from Egypt, arrested around 5,000 Italians, and sequestered both personal and business accounts. Italian institutions were indefinitely closed, including the Italian state schools. Hope for a future in Egypt among the roughly 60,000 Italian residents faded. The Salesian missionary schools, whose goal since the late nineteenth century had been to inculcate nationalist-religious sentiment in Italy's emigrants, remained the only active Italian educational institution by claiming Vatican protection. As such, the missionary schools assumed a central role in the lives of many young Italians. After the war, these same young Italians began to depart Egypt en masse, in part driven by the possibilities opened up by their vocational training. Building on diplomatic, institutional and private archives, this article demonstrates how the Salesian missionary schools attempted and failed to integrate Italian immigrants into the Egyptian labour force through vocational training. This failure combined with socio-economic and geopolitical changes to propel Italian departures from Egypt, making emigrants out of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1990s, efforts were launched in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the Russian Federation to support the revival of Sakha (Yakut) language education. This interdisciplinary study examines the evolution of school-based Sakha language education in the city of Yakutsk over a 25-year period beginning with the launching of the first reforms in the 1990s. Language education reform in the capital city has been shaped by a dynamic interplay between federal, regional, and local factors. Grassroots social and cultural activism continues to play a key role in school-based language revitalization in Yakutsk, influencing how policies have been received and implemented at the local level. Local community stakeholders are working together to counteract federal education policies, which direct school resources away from minority language education. This case study shows that the Sakha (Yakut) language revival has taken root in the capital city, and it provides important evidence that civic activism continues to develop in urban areas of the republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]