Since the beginning of their settlement in Britain, Muslims have had to face the challenges of adapting to a new social, cultural and economic environment, and also that of responding to the opportunities provided by the new environment. A particularly sticking challenge facing the Muslim community in Britain is in the eld of education. Over the last four decades, a group of Muslim voluntary organizations has emerged which is characterised by its keen interest in the public education system of this country. Muslim voluntary organizations have been playing a key role in the educational debate pertaining to the nature of religious education, and the scope of moral and spiritual development in the school curriculum. In addition, these organizations have been active, through a process of consultation and collaboration, in providing educational services to state schools, local education authorities and government departments. This paper examines the development of such voluntary organizations and attempts to discern their role and impact on the public education system in Britain.The settlement of Muslims in Britain dates back to the second half of the nineteenth century, when Indians, Yemeni Arabs and Somalis who were recruited to work on-board British merchant ships nally came to settle down, though in small numbers, in the British Isles. London, Liverpool, Cardiff and Tyneside became centres for people from a wide variety of Muslim background s (Halliday, 1992;Lawless, 1995). Those early immigrants established places of Muslim worship; the rst purpose-built mosque was opened in Working in 1889, followed by a second in Liverpool in 1891 (Ahmed, 1999).The main in ux of Muslim immigrants in the 1950s and 1960s was from the Indian subcontinent. Initially, the majority arrived as individuals with no intention of settling down. Those who eventually did brought their families to join them in their adopted country. Given this immigration trend, Muslims have a different age structure compared with the majority indigenous population: a large proportion of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis living in Britain are under the age of 16. The Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities has shown that 42% of Pakistanis and 48% of Bangladeshis are in the 0-15 age category (Modood et al., 1997).One of the rst priorities for the new immigrants was the establishment of places of Muslim worship; the number of registered mosques in Britain increased from 18 in 1966 to 452 in 1990452 in (Nielsen, 1995. Mosques are ful lling a social function, apart from being a place of worship. The majority of mosques in the country are being used to provide supplementary classes for the teaching of Qur'an and religious instruction to children. In major cities, purpose-built mosques have made provisions for women to
