This paper considers the ways in which Arab education systems have responded to the challenges of modernity alongside framing structures of religion. Focusing mainly on the tertiary education sector, it offers a critical overview of the way in which Arab education authorities have sought, collectively and individually, to address both secular and religious fundamentalist demands. It analyses policy and culture in response to econopolitical change, and to shifting perceptions of the functions of education. Engaging with ideas about the relationship between secularism and modernity, it argues that regional patterns of infrastructural engagement with religion have more to do with politics and power than with ideological foundations of culture and society, and challenges, as others have done, the essentialist association of modernity and secularism.