Muslims and Education in North America

Abstract

Although some research mentions the diversity of Muslims in terms of their religion, culture, and race—and the need to be aware of this diversity in order to understand Muslim students’ experiences—the focus is usually on the boundaries that exist between the social world of Muslims and that of non-Muslims . Specifically, most North American research that examines Muslims’ experiences in schools addresses the hidden practices that influence this diverse group to fit in among Canadian and American societies. Some of those hidden practices—which are internalized by individual acts toward minority Muslims or by institutional racism—are part of an ideology connected to historical settler colonization in which religion and race are interconnected and contribute to viewing other religions as inferior or to political agendas represented through the media. Notably, the Islamophobia discourses that have been occurring in light of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) attacks in the West influence the lives of Muslims and non-Muslims who live there. Given global Islamophobia and the increasing numbers of Muslim youth refugees due to ISIS, research and guidelines have emerged emphasizing the psychological impact of the political and social pressure on Muslim youth as evident in mental health issues related to trauma, anxiety, and depression affecting Muslim youth’s sense of belonging in their schools. In some discussionsrelated to the development of Muslim political identities, both internal and external factors contribute to placing Muslims in vulnerable positions and feeding us-versus-them binary discourse, which adds more injustice for, and discrimination against, minority groups. With such diverse discourses that tackle Muslim experiences within different spaces, there is a need to thoroughly investigate how Muslim educational experiences of everyday religion, with internal personal values and external societal values, are negotiated with the hope of eliminating the misunderstandings that may emerge due to the complex diversity of this group and their different levels of acculturation.