Muslims in English Schools

Abstract

It is evident in both Britain and the rest of Europe that the education of children has been at the centre of a series of controversies. Local tensions have arisen from or focused on educational policy generally, or issues related to one particular school or educational organization or campaign group. In between, other issues may arise creating temporary tensions and debates, such as legal recognition, political participation, responses to particular foreign policy issues, or matters of rite such as access to burial and permission for mosques. But education and schools are an arena which runs on continuously. The reasons for this centrality of education are to be found in underlying, long-term socio-cultural as well as ideological contexts. On the one hand, the demographic shift from the immigrant generation to that of the grandchildren, i.e. those who have been brought up by parents who have themselves grown up in Europe, is one that by definition takes several decades, and in contemporary society formal education is central to the upbringing and socialization of that next generation. On the other hand, the encounter of communities from differing cultures whose main traditional religious and cultural pillars have accorded centrality to education (in terms of purpose and philosophy as well as institutions) inevitably places educational ideas and processes at the centre of the encounter.