Forming Muslim-American citizens

Private schools with an Islamic character and mission are a recent phenomenon in North America, though with fore-runners in the Sister Clara Muhammad schools established by the Afri-can-American religious movement the Nation of Islam, starting in 1932 in Detroit. The focus of our study was not on these but on the Islamic schools established by immigrants from South Asia and the Middle East, mostly over the last 30 years. These immigrant schools have not been extensively researched. While several case studies, to be discussed below, have been very helpful, it has been necessary to draw on research on Islamic schools in other countries, both in Muslim-majority societies such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia, and also in the European Union, where the Muslim immigrant presence has been of longer standing and proportionately greater (and more controversial) than in North America and where, most notably in Britain and the Netherlands,7Islamic schools are publicly funded and subject to government oversight