U.S. Muslim Schools Juxtapose Politics, Fear and Hope

Eleventh-graders at the elite Islamic Saudi Academy study energy and matter in physics, and read stories about slavery and the Puritans.

Then they file into their Islamic studies class, where textbooks tell them the Day of Judgment can’t come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews.

Seventh-graders at Al-Qalam All-Girls School learn about the American Revolution and about respecting other people’s beliefs. But students also talk about the taunts they face outside school--being called “terrorist” and “bomber”--and ask whether Osama bin Laden is simply the victim of such prejudice. Maps of the Middle East, minus Israel, hang in classrooms.

Schools Reflect Society

Such tensions within Muslim day schools in many ways symbolize the U.S. Muslim community’s political concerns, fears, biases and hopes, all brought into sharp focus since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

These schools--and Muslims in this country--are at a crucial juncture, with some working to stay true to their religion while trying to adapt to the U.S. experience, as Catholics and Jews did before them. At stake, educators acknowledge, is how the next generation of Muslims coming of age in the United States will participate in the country they live in.

The fall attacks could serve as the catalyst in determining whether these schools and their students focus on the culture and politics of faraway Muslim lands or find within Islamic tradition those ideals consistent with U.S. democracy and religious liberty.

“This is going to get us out of the cocoon, out of our little comfort zone that is more of an isolation from the community at large,” said Shabbir Mansuri, founding director of the California-based Council on Islamic Education. “And it is going to put us into a position where we are going to have to put our own feet to the fire.”

Most Muslim children in the United States attend public schools, but the growth of the Muslim population in the past two decades has prompted a proliferation of day schools: 200 to 600 nationally, with at least 30,000 students. Thousands of others attend Islamic weekend schools.

Some schools face the same prejudices that Catholics and their schools did beginning in the 1800s, when their loyalty to the pope was seen as inherently anti-American.

“We put Catholics through that, Jews through that, Mormons through that and many other groups,” Mansuri said. “It is the Muslims’ turn . . . and if Muslims are not living up to the ideas of Islam, then we certainly should take them to task.”

To that end, some Muslim educators are writing a new curriculum that infuses Islamic tenets in every lesson while providing a broad-minded worldview. Textbooks, often from overseas and rife with anti-American rhetoric, are being replaced in some schools. Some parents are forming PTAs and seeking a curriculum that teaches the civic virtues of tolerance and pluralism.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some teachers are sometimes anti-American or anti-Semitic,” said Abdulwahab Alkebsi, whose 12-year-old daughter attends the Islamic Saudi Academy in suburban Springfield, Va. “But I don’t want it to be that way.

“I choose the school because of the same reason why all American parents choose private schools--it’s a better environment and no peer pressure of drugs and being a sex symbol at too young an age. But there are other American values, like freedom of speech and assembly, that we should be teaching our kids to respect.”

Fourth-grader Ali Alkhafaji, 9, poses a question for classmates at the Washington Islamic Academy, also in Springfield, echoing a lesson from their teacher:

“Is it better to be a fashion star or to listen to Allah?”

The youngsters agreed it was better to listen to God, though wide-eyed India Abdullah, 8, said: “It’s hard to be a good Muslim. But if we do the right deeds and stuff, the devil is locked up and the door of heaven is unlocked.”

Yet the pictures of Britney Spears and the Islamic holy city of Mecca adorning lockers and notebooks attest to the challenge of providing an Islamic education amid the beckoning popular culture.

In fact, Muslims consider many such schools not truly “Islamic” because there isn’t yet a curriculum that teaches all subjects through an Islamic prism, nor is there an Americanized curriculum for Islamic studies, said Hamed El-Ghazali, head of the Muslim American Society’s Council on Islamic Schools.

Instead, they use public school curriculum and add classes in Islamic studies, Arabic language and the study of the Koran.

The schools “do have a lot of growing to do,” said Sharifa Al-Khateeb, president of the Muslim Education Council and the North American Council for Muslim Women. “They are still working out the exact curriculum. They are still working out how much readiness they would like to see in the children for taking mainstream exams. They are still going through the throes of rewriting materials that would be more appropriate for kids here in the U.S.”

Most Muslim schools, with the exception of one network of schools for African American Muslims, develop their own approach.

At the coeducational New Horizon School in Los Angeles, Principal Shahida Alikhan said the school is “on the progressive side,” with teachers stressing tolerance and students feeling connected to the outside world.

Teacher Majida Zeiter described a different role for the Washington Islamic Academy, which serves kindergarten through fourth-grade students.

“We want it to be a place where they don’t have to assimilate, where they can practice their religion. It’s like any other religious school,” said Zeiter, who teaches Islamic studies. “We teach them the history and good values and what it takes to be a good Muslim.”

Still, Zeiter said, she takes pains to present balanced lessons to students, piecing together a curriculum from books published both in the United States and overseas.

When she feels she must use material in a popular Pakistani textbook, she said, she photocopies certain pages and never uses those calling Christian beliefs “nonsense” or portraying Jews as treacherous people who financially “oppress” others. Yahiya Emerick, author of “What Islam Is All About,” said he will soon release a new edition for U.S. audiences that eliminates the tendentious parts.

Political views, though, pervade the school.

Third-graders spent one recent morning learning how volcanoes work and where the Great Smoky Mountains and Yosemite National Park are.

But on world maps that hang every day in the classrooms, Israel is missing. At Al-Qalam girls school, housed upstairs at the academy, the word is blackened out with marker, with “Palestine” written in its place.

Officials at both schools defended the maps, noting that some students are Palestinian refugees and want their heritage represented.

They said that the schools have no anti-Israeli policy, nor any policy teaching students to be disrespectful of others, and that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. If teachers are slipping opinions into lessons, they say, it is because they lack proper qualifications. The average salary at Muslim schools nationwide is about $16,000.

Foreign-Policy Focus

In a history class at Al-Qalam, Jill Fawzy teaches events from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. But even before Sept. 11, a major topic had been what Muslims consider the U.S. government’s unfair treatment of Muslims abroad, particularly in the West Bank and Iraq. Some students question the government’s claim that Bin Laden is responsible for the terrorist attacks.

Fawzy, 19, who will graduate from college in 2003, said she wonders whether the United States simply needed someone to blame and picked a Muslim.

“A lot of the students can’t make up their minds if he is a good guy or a bad guy,” Fawzy said. “. . . We don’t have any real proof either way.”

Scholars say the schools may legally teach whatever they want, as long as they meet state requirements, but have a responsibility to be accurate.

“As a matter of educational policy, no, it’s not a good idea to cross a nation off the map or to in any way misrepresent history,” said Charles Haynes, of the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va. “It is a civic responsibility of all schools, religious and secular, to do the best job of educating students to a variety of perspectives.”