A recent New York Times piece by Neil MacFarquhar titled “Resolute or Fearful, Many Muslims Turn to Homeschooling,” while not exactly educational research, does offer some hard-to-come-by data on homeschooling among Muslims. It also raises important questions for the broader homeschooling movement. Until more substantive research on homeschooling among American Muslims is produced, we will have to make do with journalism.
In his article, MacFarquhar focuses mostly on Muslim immigrants in Lodi, California. The area is home to about 2,500 Muslims, 80 percent of whom are “interrelated” Pakistani villagers trying to “recreate the conservative social atmosphere back home.” One way of doing this is to shield their girls from American culture, especially once they hit puberty. Of the 90 South Asian girls in the district, 38 are homeschooled (in contrast to only 7 of the 107 boys).
MacFarquhar interviews two of the homeschooled girls and finds that they are being kept home so they will be able to “cook and clean” for their “male relatives” and also to avoid being shunned by others in the community. One of the students remarked, “Some men don’t like it when you wear American clothes – they don’t think it’s a good thing for girls.” Eventually, the girls are “married off, often to cousins brought in from their families’ old villages.”
MacFarquhar does give a few examples of homeschooled boys in the Muslim community, but for them the motivation seems to be mostly academic and a response to the persecution Muslim children often face by classmates who mock their dress and call them terrorists. He mentions a Chinese muslim immigrant in the Phoenix area who pulled her children from a public school when she became aware of its poor test scores. Her eldest son is now applying to medical school.
Finally, MacFarquhar notes that Muslim homeschooling has an image problem because it is often associated with Islamic extremism, a perception fostered by the fact that “Adam Gadahn, an American-born spokesman for Al Qaeda, was home-schooled in rural California.” [MarFarquhar does not note, however, that Gadahn’s family were Christain homeschoolers.]
Let me begin my own comments on this piece by noting that it has elicited a wide range of reactions. Some Muslims accuse MacFarquhar of intentionally misrepresenting his sources to make Muslim homeschoolers look insular and sexist. Others see this articles as part of a subtle pro-Islamist conspiracy at the New York Times. My own interest, however, is to place the phenomenon of Muslim homeschooling in the context of the braoder homeschooling movement.
Muslim homeschooling raises several important issues. First, Muslims are able to take this route thanks largely to the longtime political activism of conservative Christians, many of whom are among the most prominent voices speaking out against radical Islam and terrorist threats. This irony puts Christian homeschoolers in a bit of a bind. The default position of HSLDA and other Christian organizations is to fight against any and all regulation of homeschooling. But what if homeschooling is being used as a mechanism for training militant Islamists? I’m not suggesting that it is, but absent any sort of government oversight, is there any way to be sure?
Second, there are uncanny parallels between the Muslims featured by MacFarquhar and many conservative Christian homeschoolers. Both react strongly against the secular public school system: against drugs, drink, sexual licentiousness, immodest dress, coarse language, and so forth. Both see homeschooling as a way of passing their religious and cultural heritage on to their children. Both celebrate motherhood and the domestic vocation for women. And, with the popularity among many conservative Christian homeschoolers of betrothal as a replacement to the culture of dating and even of courtship, there are increasing similarities with how marriage is conducted as well. In a previous post I discussed Kimberly Yuracko’s legal argument claiming that a family offering daughters an inferior education to that of its sons violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Yuracko focuses in her article only on conservative Christians, and I suggested there that despite the subordinationist rhetoric, Christian homeschooled girls are getting pretty much the same academic education as their brothers. But if MacFarquhar is accurate in his description of Muslim practices, Yuracko’s Constitutional argument may have more traction. One wonders if she would be willing to prosecute Muslim immigrants as aggressively as she would native white Protestants.
The key difference between these two groups, it seems to me, is that many conservative Christians are trying self-consciously to recapture a pre-modern mentality they have lost, whereas Muslim immigrants are just doing what comes naturally. The most intensely conservative wing of the Christian homeschooling movement has been gradually de-modernizing, working its way toward cultural patterns more consistent with the agrarian past, and it has not been easy. These Muslims never modernized in the first place. My guess is that this difference perhaps explains why, despite the rhetoric of female subordination to the male head, Christians still give their girls a rigorous education that equips them to run businesses from the home, write blogs, organize conferences, engage in political activism, and so forth while the Muslim girls just lower their heads and cook and clean. It also explains perhaps why, despite rhetoric about “taking the land” most homeschooled Christians are not really interested in taking out the U.S. government and replacing it with a Theocracy where the Bible plays the same role that the Koran does in an Islamic state.
But these are just personal reflections. The topic of Muslim homeschooling is ripe for some serious research that would tell us more about this cohort’s motivations, practices, and results. My hunch is that such research would reveal a much more complex tapestry of Muslim homeschooling than is revealed here by MacFarquhar.
A second, fully revised edition of my 2008 book Homeschool: An American History, was published in March of 2017. 
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Homeschooling Research Notes 
Hello Dr. Gaither,
Again, I would suggest you read more about the practice of Islam by Muslims and the true teachings of Islam. As for Muslims not undergoing modernization, as a Muslim, I have to say that that is so far from the truth. We are battling it just as the Christians are.
I really suggest you study, observe, get to know Muslims (not a few unrepresentative samplings) and learn more about their cultures (there are many cultures), their practice of Islam according to their cultural backgrounds, and then the true tenets of Islam.
As for Muslim homeschooling as a means to raise jihadist…sigh…again, as a Doctor of Philosophy, an educated person, (I say this because we have been in the university circle for about 11 years now and I have formed the opinion that educated people have more tendency towards less biased thinking and stereotyping), i think you have the resources to be objective about this and have an open perspective.
I can’t stress enough that how a Muslim of a specific cultural background practice Islam CANNOT be directly correlated with the true practice of Islam. Let’s just call all that ‘cultural baggage’ that does not necessarily go in accordance with what Islam is all about.
I have no intentions of being insulting, so I sincerely apologize if my comments (this and the other one) seems like they are. I merely want to bring to your attention the bigger picture of Muslim practices and Islam. In short, Muslims are not perfect, but Islam is.
Nadiaschooldays,
Thanks for your comments. Please note that I was not myself making any judgments about or even descriptions of Muslim homeschooling. I was only summarizing someone else’s article.
I am sure (as I said in my final sentence) that there is more to Muslim homeschooling than what MacFarquhar described in his piece. No doubt many Muslim homeschoolers are deliberately battling against modernization as are conservative Christians.
Please note that my comments really didn’t say anything one way or another about the value of Islam or the degree to which South Asian immigrants accurately or inaccurately reflect Islam. It is not my job as a researcher of homeschooling to make pronouncements one way or another on the relative merits of various religious systems. That many Muslims believe Islam to be the one true faith is interesting to me inasmuch as it likely impacts the way they teach that faith to their children and the way they interact with others in the public square. I am not, however, interested in discussing whether or not it is true.
If you do have any information about or know of any studies of the “bigger picture of Muslim practices” in terms of homeschooing, please share them and I will be delighted to review them on this website. Thanks again.
Hello,
I would say the article is more a representation of South Asian culture. No scientific proof but as a Muslim mother in New York who is currently looking for an Islamic school to put my daughter in. If one is to look at the Arabic sponsored, or Persian sponsored Islamic schools they are simply like a regular school co-ed (Although somewhat seperated)with Qur’anic studies and Islamic studies. And then in Highschool they might have a year class of Home ec.thats it. But in many of the south asian backed schools they are either all boys or all girls schools, and the girls schools will have regular studies, but will also have religious studies and a focus on Domestic type things. Whereas the boys will focus on Hafiz and Islamic studies more. South asians in my observances have been more focused on Religious education for boys, and Domestic for girls with secular education being somwhat secondary. Whereas Arabs, are more concerned with School and Religion for both Boys and girls. And it’s expected that at least in my community that they would learn to do these domestic things at home anyways from there parents whom they should be learning it from in the first place. The same I would Imagine would go for Homeschools. I have friends who, are Muslim homeschoolers and they teach there children the same amount but, when it comes to extra activities, the girls will go to Sewing and Volleyball, and the boys will go to Soccer and a trade class. but I have others who send the girls and boys to the same activities, except maybe just sewing for girls. I would hazard a guess that it depends on where one is from. And, Social norms wherever they are from. The muslim world is very diverse From Morocco to Indonesia. So the homeschooling muslims ought to be very diverse as well.
Khadijah,
Thanks for these wonderful comments. Most Americans, myself included, know so little about the Muslim world that we are unable to make the subtle distinctions between regions and cultures that you describe here. Many of us tend to deal more in generalities and stereotypes. A more in-depth study of homeschooled Muslims performed by a researcher cognizant of these differences is desperately needed.
Hello Dr. Gaither,
It’s nice to have come across your blog after reading your article on history of homeschooling, which I have cited in my thesis. I’m currently a graduate student writing my theis on Muslim Homeschooling. Through my research, I also came across this article that you have critiqued.
I wasn’t very happy with how the article was written, especially how the author made the connection between females roles and homeschooling.
Anyhow, I’m almost done with my thesis and will be sharing it with you soon if you are interested.
Thank you and I hope your one year break ends sooner than anticipated.