From speech act to security regime: critiquing the securitization of madrassah question in Pakistan

This study reverses the conventional binary of madrassah (in)security by critically investigating how (in)security has defined and shaped the madrassah question in Pakistan in the post-9/11 era. It argues that the state’s policy vis-a-vis madrassahs has been highly securitized in two stages since the inception of the ‘war on terrorism.’ From 2001 to 2013, madrassahs and their reforms agenda were set in a predominantly security (threat) frame through speeches, narratives, and policy initiatives of the Pakistani as well as the US government officials, thus performing a discursive function. The second and more forceful shift, however, transpired around 2014, when the state started building a potent and ineluctable security apparatus – termed a security regime—to regulate seminaries by incorporating madrassah reforms in successive security policy documents and strategies and employing various security techniques such as geo -tagging/geo-mapping, monitoring/surveillance, investigations, crack down, etc. The broader analysis of this study is premised on the reasoning of securitization theory and ‘speech act’ methods/strategies of discourse analysis/production. At a subsidiary level, the article makes a case for the desecuritization of madrassah reforms. This study seeks to contribute to the literature on madrassahs and offer some insights to policymakers.