Kamal Ali

This article, which I intend to be one of a series, will provide analysis of major issues and problems arising out of attempts to implement Islamic educational alternatives to American public schooling. The discussion begins by offering a brief overview of the current dilemma - a triumvirate of historical, theoretical and practical enigmas confronting Muslim schoolmen. A primary question that is common to Muslim-American school planners is scrutinized through a sub-set analysis focussing on some relevant and critical concerns to Muslim educators. From this starting point, future installments in this series will look at  practical cases that are representative of contemporary &orb in alternative Muslim school planning, design and implementation.

Conservative estimates of the number of Muslims in North America use one million as an approximate figure, two-thirds of whom reside in or near the major urban areas of the United States.1 Within this multiethnic population—800,000 being immigrants, the remainder a rapidly growing number of indigenous converts-there is a strong cultural commonality and identity: It is Islam. Islam is a comprehensive code of life that is expressed in the cultural, economic and social organization of  its followers. The tenacity with which Muslims tend to cling to their Islamic culture in the face of adverse cultural influences is reflected in its survival, even revival, under colonialism. This steadfast adherence to Islam is, likewise, a tendency of the faithful in America.

Education has a vital connection with the maintenance of culture and it is natural that Muslim schoolmen should concern themselves with the role of education in perpetuating Islamic culture in this country. Issues that have surfaced in response to this concern pose a serious challenge to those relatively few Muslim schoolmen charged with the responsibility to resolve them. It seems certain that the creative input of Muslim planners and administrators, provided they are given the proper tools to ply their crafts, will dramatically influence the future status of Islam in America.

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