Muslim Schools
Reader comment on item: Does Learning Arabic Prevent Moral Decay?

Submitted by Iftikhar Ahmad (United Kingdom), Sep 5, 2007 at 18:03

Salaam

The first wave of Migrant Muslims in the West arrived with cultures, language and a faith. The young generations have been deprived of their cultures, languages and faith by the state schools as wll as by non-Muslim monolingual teachers. Bilingual Muslim Children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models. Bilingualism is an asset and not a proble but the schools with monlingual teachers do not encourage bilingualism. The result is that Muslim children find themselves cut off from their cultural roots and suffer from Identity Crises.

Muslim parents would like their children to be well versed in Standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. But state schools with monolingual teachers are not capable of teaching English to bilingual Muslim children. This is the main reason why majority of Muslim children leave schools with low grades.

Muslim parents would like their children to be well versed in Arabic as a religious language because the Holy Quran is in Arabic. They also would like their children to be well versed in Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.

According to the law of the land, it is the parents who will decide how their children should be educated.

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