The notorious Neil MacFarquhar recently wrote an article in the NYT about Muslims turning to homeschooling - with the now-typical negative slant, making it seem as though the only reasons for which Muslim parents choose to homeschool their children is to prepare their daughters for a lifetime of servanthood in their husbands’ households or to protect them from ever reading books about pigs.

As someone who has been homeschooled for years (since grade 6), along with my brothers, MacFarquhar’s article irritated me quite a bit - first there’s the obvious insulting insinuations against Muslims (making us seem isolationist, oppressive against women, etc.); and then there’s the total disregard for how homeschooling is a viable education option for not just Muslims, but many nonMuslims as well, for both moral/ religious and academic reasons. In fact, it’s been recorded and reported that homeschooled students do just as well as, if not better than, those who attend public or private schools. Colleges covet homeschoolers; this report from the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education mentions that homeschooled students have parents with higher education, achieve high grades and are more likely to be enrolled in a grade or two above the rest of their public/ privately-schooled peers.

AlHamdulillaah, one of the sisters interviewed in the article has responded strongly and eloquently, pointing out the obvious distortions, manipulations, and outright lies evident in Mr. Farquhar’s piece of trash (as well as answering some questions people may have about homeschooling, like the whole “socialization” issue). (Hijab flutter to UmmZaid.) (more…)

“Study after study shows that better educated women have fewer children. They tend to marry later and bear children later. A World Bank report found that in places where women do not recieve a secondary education, the average number of children was seven. When women have secondary school education, the figure drops to three. Because they are literate they have a better understanding of contraception, and may be able to resist family pressures to have more children.”

This is an excerpt from my Social Studies textbook, where we’re learning about poverty and how it affects women and children. One message being conveyed is that to break the cycle of poverty, poor people should have less kids. Formal education is touted as the key to enlightenment (which subsequently results in you being smart enough to have fewer children).

I find it an interesting attitude in the West, that the more children you have, the less “educated” or “enlightened” you must be. Women are pushed to pursue higher levels of education and to establish careers for themselves, in order to be “fulfilled.” (more…)

Tuesday, 9/4/07, was an exciting day for my family… especially for my 10 year old daughter Reem. After being home-schooled for the last several years, it was the beginning of the “trial” period at an Islamic school in the area. So, we sat down to talk about her first day, and I was able to commit to memory at least some details, esp. her new “best” friend’s name who “always” sticks to her.

On Monday, there was a buzz in the house about getting Reem’s school supplies, the “rush” that my wife and I had never faced in all of our parental lives. Why did we finally decide to send Reem to “real” school, (I placed the quotation marks because home-school is no less than real in my mind and the minds of many home-schoolers)? Well, first let me tell you the “not-reasons”: (more…)

Watch the video.

Here is a transcript of the poem: (more…)

Take for example this situation: In my province there’s an Islamic boarding school/ madrasah, set up and run by Pakistanis in the model of Pakistani madrasahs. Quite a few people have sent their children there, usually for around a year or so – but those we know, parents of students at our own Madrasah, have inevitably pulled their kids out of the school within the space of a few months. Why? Because the place is, to put it bluntly, a hellhole.

According to several parents, and to my own dad

who went there once to check it out, the place is squalid and filthy. There is a rigorous, perhaps even cruel, system in place; and when it comes to discipline, the stories are awful. One mother (whose sons now attends our Madrasah) relates how teachers would literally beat the kids senseless for the most trivial of errors – stumbling over the pronounciation of Qur’an would merit being boxed in the ears; students would be screamed at rather than spoken to; major discipline came in the form of being whipped by belts until

(more…)

Studying the Holocaust.

That terrible, terrible series of events – the rise of Hitler and his government, the proliferation of racist policies, the stirring of hateful feelings against ‘the Others’, the xenophobia rising to such a level that it resulted in Kristallnacht (Crystal Night/The Night of Broken Glass)… and finally, the concentration camps: torture and brutal death, ending in mass graves of rotting bodies, not a single honourable funeral performed.

I’d like to know how Muslim parents tell their children about the Holocaust, or if they do at all. (more…)