NY Times: Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling

Posted by Kendall Harmon

Like dozens of other Pakistani-American girls here, Hajra Bibi stopped attending the local public school when she reached puberty, and began studying at home.

Her family wanted her to clean and cook for her male relatives, and had also worried that other American children would mock both her Muslim religion and her traditional clothes.

“Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes — they don’t think it is a good thing for girls,” said Miss Bibi, 17, now studying at the 12th-grade level in this agricultural center some 70 miles east of San Francisco. “You have to be respectable.”

Across the United States, Muslims who find that a public school education clashes with their religious or cultural traditions have turned to home schooling. That choice is intended partly as a way to build a solid Muslim identity away from the prejudices that their children, boys and girls alike, can face in schoolyards. But in some cases, as in Ms. Bibi’s, the intent is also to isolate their adolescent and teenage daughters from the corrupting influences that they see in much of American life.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Marriage & Family • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

5 Comments
Posted March 27, 2008 at 7:50 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Helen wrote:

I can sympathize with parents who want to protect their children and preserve their culture by home schooling.  But why only girls?

March 27, 11:24 am | [comment link]
2. Carol R wrote:

A Muslim father allegedly murdered his two beautiful teenage daughters in the Dallas area b/c he thought they were essentially too Americanized.  In my opinion he shouldn’t have blamed the girls he should blame himself.  If he did’nt want them Americanized, then WHY did he raise them here?

March 27, 1:13 pm | [comment link]
3. RevK wrote:

“There is a tendency to make home-schoolers look like antisocial fanatics who don’t want their kids in the system,” said Nabila Hanson..

Isn’t that exactly how Christian home-schoolers are often portrayed in the media?

March 27, 1:36 pm | [comment link]
4. Sue Martinez wrote:

It should be interesting to see if the new California ruling that requires that teachers of homeschooled children be credentialed will be selectively enforced.  Will it be OK for Muslim girls, including this Lodi girl, and not OK for Christians?

March 27, 2:01 pm | [comment link]
5. Eutychus wrote:

After CA courts ruling, one only expect that the anti-homeschooling propaganda machine would be rolling out in the media.  What took them so long?  It’s funny all the studies I’ve seen show that education is the #1 reason why home schoolers school at home.  It funny that the propaganda machine always avoids a real result based educational analysis of homeschooling vs. public schooling.  Hmmm.  I wounder why?

Here something you probably wont see in the “news.”  Florida’s Governor has declared March 30 – April 6 as Home Education Week for the second year in a row.  Read his unedited declaration at:
http://www.hslda.org/hs/state/fl/FL_proclamation_08.pdf

March 28, 5:49 am | [comment link]
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