Introducing Islam to children with special need

Children with special need have similar right to get the opportunity to participate in religious education, to understand Islam as their faith. The religious education is applied in either inclusive class, special school or homeschooling. The choice of schooling depends on several factors such as the academic level, economic and family background. However, the problem is not related to where they can get the religious education but how to make their learning effective. It is due to the fact that they require teacher’s competence and experience to understand their individual needs and abilities. The children especially those with autistic spectrum disorder demand for careful teaching preparation, various techniques and effective assessment method. This paper elaborates the complexities and some alternatives to handle the religious education for children with special need by referring to their special way of learning. This is because they are not merely disable, but they have special feature requiring special condition to encourage their learning success. The condition covers the strategies such as consistent structure, visual aids representing abstract ideas, reliance on literal interpretations of religious concepts and using familiar images to introduce Islam. These strategies are matched with their learning characteristics as visual spatial learners