Islamic Education in the United States and Canada: Conception and Practice of the Islamic Belief System

Copyright 1991, Oxford University Press. This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited book The Muslims of America following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through Oxford University Press: http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/ReligionTheology/Islam/?view=usa&ci=9780195085594. See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#4This study examines the way immigrant Muslim parents and their offspring perceive Islam and view its practice in the context of the Societies of the United States and Canada. Historically and at present, the worldview of North American Muslims has generally differed from that of other groups who are either natives of or immigrants to North America. Yet not until recently has any substantial research been done on the presence of Muslims in North America let alone on their learning patterns or the role of differing worldviews in the education of their children. Muslims may not be considered a minority ethnic group because they neither have the characteristics of the term minority ethnic nor Constitute a single linguistic, cultural, or socioeconomic group. Study of Muslims simply as minority ethnics or national groups will not help in understanding the variations in their attempts to maintain their Islamic identity. That is because, as Abdo A. Elkholy notes, "As Muslims in America are being assimilated, as Arabs, Turks, and other ethnic groups, many do not see the religious wrong in mixed marriage." Elkholy's observation relates to communicating Islam in North America on two levels. The first level is the way Muslims perceive themselves and hence identify with (a) Islam as a way of life, (b) Muslims as a religious group with which one may affiliate, or (c) nationality/ethnicity as an identity given to the Muslim subcultures by Western colonizers. The Muslim's perception of his/her own identity is the cornerstone in his/her ability to adjust to the new environment while maintaining the basics of the Islamic belief system and to transmit that system to the next generation in an integrative manner. This perception of identity determines whether one's response is assimilation, integration, or withdrawal. The second level pertains to the realities of the North American pluralistic societies and their implicit and explicit demands for individual conformity to societal "norms." North American societies are established on a secular value system. They may allow for different religious practices, in the narrow sense of the word, but may not allow for ideological and epistemological differences. Therefore, Muslims will be assimilated as subcultural groups (Arabs, Turks, etc.) despite vigorous attempts by Muslim leaders and organizations to maintain the Islamic identity. These leaders have failed to recognize that assimilation will persist as long as people's identity is in a state of confusion between ideological (Islamic), religious (Muslim), and ethnic (Arab, Turks, etc.) attachments. The clarity or confusion of one's identity is the key to the variation in Muslims' assimilation. The degree of Muslims' religiosity, as suggested by Elkholy, is only a part in the question of identification. The effort of any Muslim community in North America to formulate an educational program that will transmit the Islamic cultural and ideological heritage to its children is viewed here more as a conceptual than a socio-anthropological problem

Educational Reform

Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press. This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through Oxford University Press: http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0212#e0212-s0004. See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#1The dynamic relationship between political, social and educational changes is central to determining whether educational reform occurred in the Muslim world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Changes in curricular and instructional policies and their implications for intellectual and cultural development are discussed in relation to four major issues. The Muslim world initially rejected as irrelevant changes introduced from Europe in the early nineteenth century. Changes in technical, military, and vocational training dictated by local rulers and elites did not conform to the traditional educational practices that were the remnants of Islamic education. Comparing these practices with recent changes runs the risk of overstating where and how educational reform has taken place. Available literature indicates that old practices were not reformed and changes resulted in no significant attitudinal or cultural development. Setting the European utilitarian and the Muslim altruistic modes against each other resulted in centralized state-controlled educational institutions and a complete departure from Islamic education. The intellectual stagnation that characterized the Muslim world since the early fourteenth century remained despite mass and compulsory schooling in the postcolonial era. Recent reports indicate school and teacher shortages, low educational quality, lack of planning and of curricular and instructional compatibility, and disparity in access to and completion of all types and levels of education between the sexes and between rich and poor and rural and urban populations

Parents and Youth: Perceiving and Practicing Islam in North America

Copyright 1996, Temple University Press. This is a reprint of a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited book Muslim Families in North America following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through Alberta University Press: http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?lid=41&bookid=162. This article was reprinted with permission by Temple University Press: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1255_reg.html See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#2This chapter examines how some Arab Muslim youth and families in North America perceive themselves both as Arabs and as Muslims in the context of Canadian and United States societies. Parents are concerned with how best to transmit the Islamic ideological and Arab cultural heritage to their children. One of their problems derives from differences among Arab Muslims, who come from varied national origins and hold several interpretations of the Islamic view, not all of which are based on the Qur'an; as a result they also have different nationalistic attachments to their understanding of Arab heritage. A second problem arises between immigrant parents and their American-reared children. The children may participate in American culture to a greater extent than their parents, and they are constantly faced with the conceptual need to accommodate potentially conflicting points of view. Effective identity transmission requires the determination of the nature and extent of the different interpretations held by parents and their children and of the way these interpretations are reflected in their practice of Islam and association with the Arabic heritage

Is Language the Object of Literacy among United States Female Adult Learners?

Copyright 1999, Language and Literacy Spectrum, Journal of The New York State Reading Association. This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited journal Language and Literacy Spectrum, a Journal of The New York State Reading Association, following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through The New York State Reading Association: http://www.nysreading.org/Publications/index.html. See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#5We present a case-study of adult females becoming "literate." Low income female learners in Adult Basic Education (ABE) and recent immigrant learners in English as a Second Language (ESL), and their teachers in Central New York State were involved in a Participatory Action Research (PAR). The goal is to present conceptual and attitudinal issues of adult literacy in the United States (US), including ESL and feminist pedagogy. The results suggest that language literacy by itself may not lead to a sustainable autonomous individual and group development. We discuss literacy within attitudinal change about female learner's self-realization vis-a-vis her productivity and social mobility

Arabic translation under the title: Da`una Natakalam: Mufakirat Amerikiyat Yaftahn Nawafidh Al-Iman (Dar Al-Fikr, 2002)

Copyright 2000, Syracuse University Press. This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited book Windows of Faith:Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through Syracuse University Press: http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/books-in-print-series/women-religion.html. See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#2Limited access to Islamic higher learning is argued to be the basis for the Muslim woman's inability to emancipate and to self-identity as a Khalifa (trustee)--a Qur'anic mandate (or potential) of human existence. Muslim woman's reliance solely on others' interpretations to guide her spiritual and intellectual needs, be it those of Muslim or of non-Muslim men and women, is by itself an evidence that Muslim woman's right to understand, to consciously choose, and to actively act on her choice of Islam is being compromised. Full access to the Diin, the Islamic belief system, calls for the Muslim woman to take part in the interpretation of Islamic teachings of the Qur'an and the Hadith and to maintain the pedagogical dynamics of Islam, rather than being limited to maintaining the human re-production, the Muslim family structure, or the individual human rights as suggested by others. My understanding of woman's gender justice vis-a-vis "liberation" within the Islamic worldview is based on epistemological reading (the philosophy of knowledge) of the Qur'an. The rationale behind the demand for woman's access to knowledge is derived from the Islamic framework. The methodologies of the discipline of education and learning and the struggle for human dignity that define the parameters for Muslim woman's emancipation are grounded in that framework. To examine her role as a human entity in the Qur'an does not merely concern the Muslim woman's "freedom of expression;" it concerns the woman as an autonomous spiritual and intellectual human being who can effect a change in history. The intent of this chapter and of my overall research is to make a contribution towards an educational and pedagogical interpretation of the Qur'an for women living in the post-modern era and thereby to produce an action plan for the Muslim woman to regain her identification with Islam. My analysis of empirical data concerning Muslim women's perception of Islam, the contemporary North American Muslim woman, in a historical context serves to clarify the meaning and the implications of Islamic higher learning regardless of these women's educational level. Preliminary observations suggest that the majority of Muslim women's movements do not aim to eliminate the tension between the two sexes by claiming sameness in the struggle for equality. Rather, their goal is Taqwa (to balance) the tensionback in favor of woman, as the Qur'an intends in the first place when human beings, male and female, were entrusted with individual rights and responsibilities toward themselves, each other, and the universe. I will argue that one of the basic principles of Islamic justice is gender justice. The interpretations of these "equal" rights and responsibilities, however, stem from different perspectives of Islam. Muslim women groups are scattered on a continuum from the idealized polemic Muslim to the idealized static Western perspectives. Few are those who are making efforts to exact the balance between these perspectives. The pedagogical implications of this research lies in : (1) intervening among Muslim men by coaching them to rethink and to act within the balanced perspective of Islam and its first source, the Qur'an, away from both the many layers of Muslim "taqlid " (following precedence) and from Western interpretations of Islam, (2) facilitating for Muslim women the environment and the means to realize their identity as autonomous spiritual and intellectual beings, and to realize the vastness of their task in educating themselves and others in Islam--encluding changing the entrenched paradigm of understanding Islam studies and its practice, and (3) integrating human-rights activists' concerns within the Qur'anic concerns for a just human society, where justice means the balance and fair play in the ideals and realities among all humans

La autoidentidad de la mujer musulmana

Este texto quiere ser una investigación pedagógica estructurada históricamente sobre la condición de la mujer árabe y musulmana, y tiene como objetivo el de explicar cómo las primeras mujeres musulmanas y las contemporáneas están lejos de la operación de interpretar el texto coránico, aunque la mayor parte de este texto sugiere el desarrollo de las relaciones entre géneros, en las sociedades musulmanas, para la realización de la justicia y la equidad entre hombre y mujer

Parents and Youth: Perceiving and Practicing Islam in North America

Copyright 1991, Alberta University Press. This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited book Muslim Familes in North America following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through Alberta University Press: http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?lid=41&bookid=162. See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#4This chapter examines how some Arab Muslim youth and families in North America perceive themselves both as Arabs and as Muslims in the context of Canadian and United States societies. Parents are concerned with how best to transmit the Islamic ideological and Arab cultural heritage to their children. One of their problems derives from differences among Arab Muslims, who come from varied national origins and hold several interpretations of the Islamic view, not all of which are based on the Qur'an; as a result they also have different nationalistic attachments to their understanding of Arab heritage. A second problem arises between immigrant parents and their American-reared children. The children may participate in American culture to a greater extent than their parents, and they are constantly faced with the conceptual need to accommodate potentially conflicting points of view. Effective identity transmission requires the determination of the nature and extent of the different interpretations held by parents and their children and of the way these interpretations are reflected in their practice of Islam and association with the Arabic heritage

La autoidentidad de la mujer musulmana

Texto original: Barazangi, Nimat Hafez (2002). Al-huwiyya aḏ-ḏatiyya li-l-mar’a almuslima. En Al-Mar'a wa-taḥawwalāt al-‘aṣr al-ğadīd (pp. 232-245), Bayrūt: Dār Al-Fikr

Woman's Identity and the Qur'an: A New Reading

Copyright 2004, University Press of Florida. For the Cornell Community: http://racereligion.library.cornell.edu/religion/ebook_profile028.php. A Paperback edition (2006): http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=BARAZF04. See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#1An original and uncompromising study of the Qur'anic foundations of women's identity and agency, this book is a bold call to Muslim women and men to reread and reinterpret the Qur'an, Islam's most authoritative source, and to discover within its revelations an inherent affirmation of gender equality. Nimat Hafez Barazangi asserts that Muslim women have been generally excluded from equal agency, from full participation in Islamic society, and thus from full and equal Islamic identity, primarily because of patriarchal readings of the Qur'an and the entire range of early Qur'anic literature. Based on her pedagogical study of the sacred text, she argues that Islamic higher learning is a basic human right, that women have equal authority to participate in the interpretation of Islamic primary sources, and that women will realize their just role in society and their potential as human beings only when they are involved in the interpretation of the Qur'an. Consequently, a Muslim woman's relationship with God must not be dependent on her husband's or father's moral agency. Barazangi, an American Muslim of Syrian origin, is a scholar, an activist, and a concerned feminist. Her analysis of the complex interaction of gender, religion, and the power of knowledge for self-identity offers a paradigm shift in Islamic studies. She documents the historical development of Islamic thought and describes how Muslim males have arrived at the prevailing exclusionary positions. She considers the issues of dependent morality and of modesty, especially in attire--a polarizing subject for many Muslim women. She integrates her analysis with interviews she conducted with Muslim women in the United States and Canada, comparing that data with information from a parallel group in Syria and with historical cases. She concludes that the majority of Muslim women today are not educated even for a complementary role in society. The book offers a curricular framework for self-learning that could prepare Muslim women for an active role in citizenship and policy making in a pluralistic society and may serve as a guideline for moving toward a "gender revolution." Her main thesis, if carried out in the lives of Muslims in America or elsewhere, would be so radical and liberating that her discourse is more powerful than those of many Muslim feminists. She writes, "I intend this book to affirm the self-identity of the Muslim woman as an autonomous spiritual and intellectual human being.

The Legacy of a Remarkable Muslim Woman: Sharifa Alkhateeb

Copyright 2004, Association for Middle East Women's Studies, Indiana University Press. This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited journal The Review, Newsletter/Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through Indiana University Press: http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/catalog/index.php?cPath=519_832. See also: http://www.eself-learning-arabic.cornell.edu/publications.htm#4American Muslim intellectual, activist, journalist, writer, and friend to all Muslim women, Sharifa Alkhateeb, passed away Wednesday, October 21, 2004 AD/7 Ramadhan, 1425 AH. Sharifa has been an advocate for Muslims and more specifically Muslim women nationally and internationally for the last 35 years. She was the creator, co-founder, and president of the North American Council of Muslim Women (NACMW)