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Quebec educational system and the Muslim community: why do some muslim parents opt for islamic schools?

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Abstract

This inquiry investigates Muslim parents’ perceptions and experiences with public and Islamic education in Montreal. It examines how the public educational system is contributing, or not, to creating unity and harmony among future citizens. It also assesses parents’ rights to educate their children at the schools of their choice. A number of previous studies have covered Muslim students’ experiences with both the public and the Islamic school (Zine 2001, 2008; Memon 2009; McDonough et al. 2012; Tremblay 2014; McAndrew 2010). None of these studies, however, looked specifically at Muslim parents’ experiences and perceptions with both sectors. This paper aims (1) to shed light on the history of public schooling in Quebec, (2) to assess the factors behind the choice of the school, and (3) to contribute to debates on questions related to public and religious education in Quebec. We will show that important questions related to reasonable accommodations, to neutrality in public schools, and to the politics of harmonization in education need to be addressed.

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Notes

  1. For more on the Quiet Revolution, see: Behiels (1985) and Gagnon and Montcalm (1990).

  2. For the official introduction of the ERC course, see: http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/programme-ethique-et-culture-religieuse/.

  3. For more on the “noble” goal of religious education from an Islamic perspective, see: Al-Attas (1979).

  4. With the exception of Loyola College, a Montreal Catholic school that fought for the right to teach ethics and religious culture in its own Jesuit style, which they claimed they were already doing for years. On March 19, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its decision in favor of the college. For more on this case see: http://www.loyola.ca/index.php/news-and-calendar/468-ethics-and-religious-culture-in-court.

  5. In these circumstances, it can be surmised that many of these students may not have strong background knowledge in religions (Rymarz 2012).

  6. While Braley (2011) emphasizes the parents’ rights to the education of their children, he pushes for exposing children to other, opposing, worldviews.

  7. ibid.

  8. Québec (Province). (2008). Ethics and religious culture: Secondary. Queébec: Ministéré de léducation, du loisir et du sport, Direction générale de la formation des jeunes, Direction des programmes.

  9. For more on reasonable accommodations, see: Bouchard and Charles (2008). “Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation. http://www.accommodements.qc.ca/index-en.html.

  10. For example, the word “moral instruction” was replaced by “ethics” apparently for the purpose of avoiding the connotation of “proposing or imposing moral rules” (Fujiwara 2011).

  11. One way of envisioning the new ERC course is to describe it as a typological approach emerging from a particular phenomenological framework” (Rymarz 2012).

  12. According to Memon (2009, p. 94), immigrant Islamic schools are not anticolonial by nature as they are simply copying the colonial system. Here, Memon believes that most of the founders of Islamic schools in North America came from Muslim countries that were previously colonized; the education system in these countries is no more than a duplicate of what we have in the West. In a case study by Kelly (2000), one informant compared public schools in his country of birth to military academies; in contrast, the public system in Montreal (and equally, elsewhere in North America) seemed dangerous and chaotic to them.

  13. ibid.

  14. Kelly (2000).

  15. ibid. p. 98.

  16. For more details see: Khan (1999).

  17. Another example is the omission of non-Christian science from history courses, for instance, the period from Rome’s glory to the Renaissance was often portrayed as though human intellect and creativity had taken an extended vacation until Europeans miraculously rediscovered the classical arts and sciences.

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  1. Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada

    Hicham Tiflati

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Tiflati, H. Quebec educational system and the Muslim community: why do some muslim parents opt for islamic schools?. j. relig. educ. 64, 59–71 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-016-0029-x

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