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Muslim Schools in Australia: Development and Transition

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Islamic Schooling in the West

Abstract

Islamic education is underpinned by the inseparability of knowledge and the sacred. With this Islamic ethos, Muslim schools emerged in Australia to give Muslim children access to empowering forms of knowledge, to refine their religious identity and to inculcate in them Islamic moral and ethical comportment. However, the global pervasiveness of neo-liberalism as an economic philosophy brought about fundamental changes to the way Muslim schools operate and empower their students with knowledge. Muslim communities have seen schools transform and transition from a Utopian Muslim School Model to a Corporate Muslim School Model.

This chapter argues that this transformation and transition has made Muslim schools spaces for commercial activities and in the process rendered Islamic education itself a commercial transaction.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Peta Stephenson, Islam Dreaming: Indigenous Muslims in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010).

  2. 2.

    Bilal Cleland, “The History of Muslims in Australia,” in Muslim Communities in Australia, ed. Abdullah Saeed and Shahram Akbarzadeh (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001).

  3. 3.

    Abdallah Mograby, “Muslim Migration and Settlement: The Australian Experience,” in Islam in Australia (Sydney: Middle East Research and Information Section – New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board, 1985).

  4. 4.

    Shahram Akbarzadeh, “Unity or Fragmentation?,” in Muslim Communities in Australia, ed. Abdullah Saeed and Shahram Akbarzadeh (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001).

  5. 5.

    Qazi Ahmad, “Islam and Muslims in Australia,” in Islam, Muslims and the Modern State: Case – Studies of Muslims in Thirteen Countries, ed. Hussin Mutalib and Taj ul-Islam Hashmi (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994).

  6. 6.

    Ahmad, “Islam and Muslims in Australia,” 317–338.

  7. 7.

    Stephen Castles and Mark Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (New York: Guilford Books, 1993).

  8. 8.

    Harry Field, Citizen or Resident?: Australian Social Security Provision to Immigrants (Doctoral Dissertation, University of New South Wales, 2000).

  9. 9.

    Wafia Omar, and Kirsty Allen, The Muslims in Australia (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997); A point to note is that between 1947 and 1971, a period when the ‘White Australia’ policy was very much alive, the Muslim population grew from 2704 to 22,311. This might seem like a substantial increase in the Muslim population, but when the length of this period, which is twenty-four years, is taken into consideration, the average annual growth of the Muslim population is only 930 people.

  10. 10.

    Commonwealth of Australia, 1991 Census of Population and Housing, Catalogue No. 2722.0 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1991).

  11. 11.

    Commonwealth of Australia, 1996 Census of Population and Housing, Catalogue No. 2901.0 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1997).

  12. 12.

    Commonwealth of Australia, 2001 Census of Population and Housing, Catalogue No. 2015.0 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2002).

  13. 13.

    Commonwealth of Australia, 2006 Census of Population and Housing, Catalogue No. 2068.0 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007), 23.

  14. 14.

    Riaz Hassan, Australian Muslims: A Demographic, Social and Economic Profile of Muslims in Australia 2015, International Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding (Adelaide: University of South Australia, 2015); and in 2016 there were 604,200, constituting 2.6% of the population.

  15. 15.

    Riaz Hassan, “Australian Muslims”; Commonwealth of Australia, “2016 Census of Population and Housing”, Catalogue No. 2071.0 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017).

  16. 16.

    Abdullah Saeed, Islam in Australia (Crows Nest: George Allen and Unwin, 2003).

  17. 17.

    Saeed, Islam in Australia.

  18. 18.

    Michael Humphrey, “An Australian Islam? Religion in the Multicultural City,” in Muslim Communities in Australia, ed. Abdullah Saeed and Shahram Akbarzadeh (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001).

  19. 19.

    Humphrey, “An Australian Islam? Religion in the Multicultural City.”

  20. 20.

    Peter Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” The La Trobe Journal 89 (2012): 38.

  21. 21.

    Aminah Mah, Counselling and Wellbeing Support Services in Australian Muslim Schools (Doctoral Dissertation, The University of Western Australia, 2015).

  22. 22.

    Irene Donohoue Clyne, “Educating Muslim Children in Australia,” in Muslim Communities in Australia, ed. Abdullah Saeed and Shahram Akbarzadeh (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001); Mahmoud Eid, Public Schools or Islamic Colleges? Factors Impacting on Parental Choice of Schooling for Muslim Children (Doctoral Dissertation, Edith Cowan University, 2008).

  23. 23.

    Irene Donohoue Clyne, “Seeking Education for Muslim Children in Australia,” Muslim Education Quarterly, 14 (3) (1997): 4–18.

  24. 24.

    Manar Chelebi, The Australian Muslim Student (Sydney: David Barlow Publishing, 2008).

  25. 25.

    Silma Ihram, “Director at Diversity Skills Training Pty Ltd.” Accessed 4 February 2017. https://au.linkedin.com/in/diversityskillstraining.

  26. 26.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 61.

  27. 27.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” 40.

  28. 28.

    Mahmoud Eid, Public Schools or Islamic Colleges? Factors Impacting on Parental Choice of Schooling for Muslim Children (Doctoral Dissertation, Edith Cowan University, 2008).

  29. 29.

    Chelebi, “The Australian Muslim Student.”

  30. 30.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” 42.

  31. 31.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” 42.

  32. 32.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing.”

  33. 33.

    Jones,“Islamic Schools in Australia,” 40.

  34. 34.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing.”

  35. 35.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia.”

  36. 36.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing.”

  37. 37.

    Michael Merry and G. Driessen, “Islamic Schools in Three Western Countries: Policy and Procedure,” Comparative Education 41 (4) (2005): 426.

  38. 38.

    Peter Jones, Islamic Schools in Australia: Muslims in Australia or Australian Muslims? (Doctoral Dissertation, University of New England, 2012).

  39. 39.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 169.

  40. 40.

    Donohoue Clyne, “Educating Muslim Children in Australia,” 117.

  41. 41.

    Linda Morris, “Islam Leads in Rush to Faith Education.” Accessed 4 February 2017. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/22/1056220477178.html.

  42. 42.

    Peter Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” The La Trobe Journal 89 (2012): 36.

  43. 43.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” 36.

  44. 44.

    Michael Merry, Culture, Identity, and Islamic Schooling: A Philosophical Approach (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 20.

  45. 45.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” 36.

  46. 46.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 88.

  47. 47.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 169.

  48. 48.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 119–120.

  49. 49.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 77.

  50. 50.

    Ian Li and Alfred Dockery, Socio-Economic Status of Schools and University Academic Performance: Implications for Australia’s Higher Education Expansion, National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (Perth: Curtin University, 2014), 7.

  51. 51.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 79.

  52. 52.

    Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 1.

  53. 53.

    Manfred Steger and Ravi Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 14.

  54. 54.

    Tejaswini Ganti, “Neoliberalism ,” The Annual Review of Anthropology 43 (2014): 89–104.

  55. 55.

    Philip Mirowski, “Postface: Defining Neoliberalism,” in The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, ed. Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).

  56. 56.

    Mirowski, “Postface.”

  57. 57.

    Ganti, “Neoliberalism ,” 89–104.

  58. 58.

    Steger and Roy, Neoliberalism, 11.

  59. 59.

    Steger and Roy, Neoliberalism.

  60. 60.

    David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2 & 3.

  61. 61.

    Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

  62. 62.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 90.

  63. 63.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” 45.

  64. 64.

    Eid, “Public Schools or Islamic Colleges?,” 80–81.

  65. 65.

    Andrew Wilkins, “School Choice and the Commodification of Education: A visual Approach to School Brochures and Websites,” Critical Social Policy 32 (2012): 69–85.

  66. 66.

    Department for Children, Schools and Families, Children’s Services: Improvement Support for Local Authorities and Children’s Trusts, A National Prospectus 2009–10 (Nottingham: DCSF Publications, 2009).

  67. 67.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 120.

  68. 68.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing,” 91.

  69. 69.

    Greg Fealy, “Consuming Islam: Commodified Religion and Aspirational Pietism in Contemporary Indonesia,” in Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Greg Fealy and Sally White (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), 2008).

  70. 70.

    Noorhaidi Hasan, “Islam in Provincial Indonesia: Middle Class, Lifestyle and Democracy,” Al-Jami’ah Journal of Islamic Studies 49, no. 1 (2011): 119–158.

  71. 71.

    Faegheh Shirazi, Brand Islam: The Marketing and Commodification of Piety (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016).

  72. 72.

    For detailed analysis of the ‘Corporate School Model’ see Paul Bennett, 2012 “The ‘Corporate’ School Board: What Can Be Done to Restore Responsible Trusteeship?” Accessed 4 February 2017. https://educhatter.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/the-corporate-school-board-what-can-be-done-to-restore-responsible-trusteeship/; Andrew Wilkins, “School Choice and the Commodification of Education: A Visual Approach to School Brochures and Websites,” Critical Social Policy 32 (2012): 69–85.

  73. 73.

    Eryk Bagshaw, 2016, Malek Fahd: Hundreds call for sacking of school board at protest meeting. Accessed 4 February 2017. http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/3730155/malek-fahd-hundreds-call-for-sacking-of-school-board-at-protest-meeting/?cs=7.

  74. 74.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia: Muslims in Australia or Australian Muslims?”

  75. 75.

    Peter Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” The La Trobe Journal 89 (2012): 41.

  76. 76.

    Jones, “Islamic Schools in Australia,” 39.

  77. 77.

    Wilkins, “School Choice and the Commodification of Education.”

  78. 78.

    Mah, “Counselling and Wellbeing.”

  79. 79.

    Bagshaw, “Malek Fahd.”

  80. 80.

    Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books, 2009): 17.

  81. 81.

    John Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

  82. 82.

    Tariq Ramadan, Islam, the West and the Challenges of Modernity (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2001).

  83. 83.

    Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Western Sydney University, Penrith, NSW, Australia

    Jan A. Ali

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  1. University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Mohamad Abdalla

  2. University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Dylan Chown

  3. University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Muhammad Abdullah

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Ali, J.A. (2018). Muslim Schools in Australia: Development and Transition. In: Abdalla, M., Chown, D., Abdullah, M. (eds) Islamic Schooling in the West. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73612-9_3

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