Muslim Schools in Britain: Challenging mobilisations or logical developments?

Abstract

There are currently over 100 independent and seven state-funded Muslim schools in Britain yet their place within the British education system remains a hotly debated issue. This article argues that Muslim mobilisations for the institutional and financial incorporation of more Muslim schools into the national framework are best understood as an addition to—or continuation of—a historical settlement between earlier religious minorities, the established church, and the state. To this end the article begins by assessing the relationship between governmental policy and the nature of Muslim identities that are presently informing Muslim mobilisations. It then addresses the arguments against Muslim schooling found in some of the broader philosophical, political, and sociological literature. Particular attention is afforded to the issue of autonomy, the role of civic assimilation in the remaking of British-Muslim constituencies as well as Muslim curriculum objectives and their implications for social cohesion. The article concludes that Muslim schools can herald a constructive addition to the educational landscape and serve as an effective method of integrating religious minorities into a matrix of British citizenship.

Acknowledgements

This article was first presented to the Islam in West Study Group, Centre for European Studies, Harvard University. I would like to thank the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for granting my visiting fellowship, and the Economic and Social Research Council for funding my visit. I am grateful to Tariq Modood, Katherine E. Smith, and Simon J. Weaver for their helpful comments on earlier arguments. I accept sole responsibility for the final version.

Notes

1. None of the bombers had ever attended a Muslim school and it is argued elsewhere that this reaction should be understood as part of a broader tendency, evident in public and media discourse, to conflate and reify radically different issues involving Muslims (see Meer, 2006; Meer & Noorani, forthcoming).

2. There exists no national survey systematically examining Muslim parents' desires on this issue but according to one source, 50% of South Asian Muslim parents are in favour, which contrasts with 80% suggested by the Muslim Educational Trust (see Shaikh & Kelly, 1989). Interestingly, in their Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities, Modood and Bertroud (1997, p. 323) found that the ethnic composition of a school was more important for White respondents than it was for ethnic minorities, whilst preference for religious composition ranged from the desire of Catholics, who were much more inclined to desire faith-based schools, to Hindus, who were the least inclined for faith-based schooling, with Muslims and Protestants falling somewhere in the middle.

3. The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is the standard qualification for students enrolled in compulsory schooling until the age of 16 years.

4. In the National Curriculum each subject has a target that the child should have reached in terms of skills, knowledge and understanding at a particular level for that subject. Key Stage Two refers to the target to be met at age 11.

5. The second has two parts to it and begins by contesting the assumption that non-religious schools can circumvent issues of indoctrination. Grace (2002), for example, laments the degree of bad faith central to the charge of indoctrination against religious faith schools, specifically because secular schools are not themselves ideologically free zones: “Secularism has its own ideological assumptions about the human person, the ideal society, the ideal system of schooling and the meaning of human existence. While these assumptions may not be formally codified into a curriculum subject designated ‘secular education’ as an alternative to ‘religious education’, they characteristically permeate the ethos and culture of state-provided secular schools and form a crucial part of the ‘hidden curriculum’” (p. 14). The further objection highlights the contradiction between espousing a radical autonomy argument whilst simultaneously encouraging the inculcation of civic and democratic functionary norms and values (see Ahdar & Leigh, 2005, p. 231).