Muslim Youth in Canadian Schools: Education
and the Politics of Religious Identity
JASMIN ZINE
University of Toronto
This article provides ani etlhnographlic analysis of the schooling experiences of
Mu4slim youith in Canada who are committed to mnaintainzingan Islamic lifestyle
despite the pressures of conformity to the dominant ctulture. Little attention has
been paid to how religiouis identity intersects with otherforms of social difference, sucht as race andgender in the schoolinigexperiences of minoritized youth.
Usingacase stuidy of ten Muislim stuidents and parents, this articledemonstrates
how Muslim stuidents were able to negotiate and maintain their religious
identities within secularpublic schools. The participants'narrativesaddress the
challenges of peer pressure, racism, and Islamophobia. Their stories reveal how
Muislim stuidents are located at the nexuis of social difference based on their race,
gender, and religiouis identity. The discussion further explores the dyniamics
throuigh which these youth were able to negotiate the continuity of their Islamic
identity and practices within schools despite the challenges that they faced.
Building uipon existing theories of identity maintenance and construction, this
research demonstrates how the interplay of the corefactors of ambivalence, role
performance, and interaction and isolation are implicated in the way Muslim
stuidents negotiate the politics of religiousidentity in their schooling experiences.
Introduction: Staying on the "Straight Path"
The opening verse of the Holy Qur'an, known as Suira Fatiha,is recited
by Muslims at each of their five daily prayers. Within this suira, or prayer,
is the term SiratalMustaqeemtl-The Straight Path. This refers to "a path of
righteous guidance" that one Muslim student described as a way of "defying negativity."' The importance of staying on the "straight path" becomes particularly germane to Muslims who live in non-Muslim societies. Things such as dating and premarital sex, drug and alcohol use,
which are common practices among many youth in North America, are
strictly forbidden in Islam. As such, the religious values and lifestyles of
Muslims can be difficult to maintain in a society based on often contradictory secular norms.
This article provides an ethnographic analysis of the schooling experiences of Muslim youth in Canada who are committed to maintaining an
Islamic lifestyle despite the social pressures of conformity to the dominant culture. The narratives of seven Muslim students and three parents
who discuss the challenges of peer pressure, racism, and Islamophobia
Anft/tlulogy &Ed4ucation Quarterly32(4):399-423. CopYright © 2001, American Anthropological
Association.
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in schools are presented. The narratives reveal how Muslim students are
located at the nexus of social difference based on their race, gender, and
religious identity, and explores how they are able to negotiate the continuity of their Islamic identity and practices within Canadian schools.
Cultural and religious continuity are important factors for Muslims living in diaspora (see Berns McGown 1999; Murad 1986; Yousif 1993), yet
creating the necessary conditions for this to occur, particularly within institutional settings, is an ongoing struggle. Little attention has been paid
to how religious identity among Muslim youth informs their schooling
experiences. This article examines how religious identification is connected to other sites of oppression such as race and gender and how this
implicates the schooling experiences of Muslim youth as they struggle to
maintain their Islamic identities.
This article is based on a previous ethnographic study (Zine 1997) that
examined education and the politics of religious identity among Muslim
high school students. Eight students and five parents were interviewed
as case studies during six months of fieldwork in the Sunni Muslim community and local high schools in the greater Toronto area. Narratives of
ten of these 13 participants are presented in this article. Fieldwork consisted of observations in two schools, youth-sponsored activities and organizations such as the Muslim Students Association (MSA), as well as
interviews with individual students and parents. The data presented in
this article are primarily drawn from student and parent narrative accounts.
The high schools attended by the participants represent the multicultural demographics of the city of Toronto, one of the most multicultural
cities in the world. Thirty percent of all immigrants to Canada reside in
Toronto, a city comprised of people from 106 nations and in which more
than 100 languages are spoken (North York Board of Education 1996).
According to the 1991 Canadian census, there are 105, 970 Muslims living in Toronto.2 Despite these multiethnic, multilingual, and multiracial
demographics, public school education remains Eurocentric.
The students and parents interviewed represent a cross-section of the
Muslim community, and include individuals from South Asian, Caribbean, Arab, and Somali backgrounds. All participants had lived in Canada for more than 10 years and most of the students were Canadianborn from middle- and lower-income families. This article presents a
selection of the participants' narratives as they relate to identifying and
negotiating the social challenges of growing up Muslim in a non-Muslim society. The sample includes current high school students, recent
graduates, and university students who were able to bring a mature reflection upon their previous high school experiences. As case studies
they are not intended to generalize the experience of all Muslim youth in
Canada, but rather to provide insights into the complex social and cultural factors that were salient for these particular subjects.
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My point of entry into this research stems from my own schooling experiences as a Pakistani Muslim student growing up in Canada and
eventuallv dropping out of school due to the pressures of racism and social difference. I was intrigued and impressed by the fact that many
Muslim students were able to resist the social pressures of conformity
and maintain an openly Islamic lifestyle while in high school. My previous research has also shown that Muslim students were not only able
to negotiate their religious identities, but to use their identities as a
means of resistance to counteract their marginality within secular Eurocentric schools (see Zine 2000).
Discursive Frameworks
"Staying on the straight path" represents a struggle for Muslim youth
that is both spiritual and existential. The day-to-day lives and schooling
experiences of these youth are complicated by social pressures that are
contradictory to their faith, such as dating, premarital sex and alcohol
use (see Bems McGown 1999; Shamma 1999). Also present are the pressures, particularly for girls, to conform to less-modest Western dress
codes at the expense of the hijab or headscarf. Compounded by racism
and Islamophobia, these challenges fundamentally target the maintenance of Muslim youths' religious, racialized, ethnic, and gendered
identities.
Theoretical frameworks that help to contextualize the narratives that
follow address issues of cultural hybridity and religion, identity maintenance, and the regulation of social boundaries. In an empirically based
study, Jacobson (1998) examined the issue of religion and identity
among British Pakistani youth. She discovered a sense of ambivalence
among her participants as they not only attempted to negotiate a sense
of religious identity, but also to contend with cultural hybridity. 3 Jacobson argues that it is precisely within the complex and mutable social arrangements of identity formation that religious identity flourishes. She
found that the contradiction of adherence to a "clearly defined set of absolute universal values," (1998:104) and at the same time, varying degrees of ambivalence over their identity engendered by their social conditions and minoritized status, actually helped these youth anchor their
sense of religious identity. In Jacobson's study, religious identity was regarded as an "anchor" to help keep Muslim youth grounded amidst the
complex malleability of contemporary identity politics. In a study of Somali Muslims in Toronto and London, Berns McGown makes a similar
contention, also describing religion as an "anchor" that provided certainty during the tumultuous experience of displacement and integration into a new society:
It [Islam] provided an oasis of tranquility amid the dislocation of refugee
straits and the turmoil of adjusting to a new culture, trying to learn a new language, and attempting to find jobs.... What was valuable about it was the
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very ritual of stepping outside the daily struggle, five times over the course of
the day, to concentrate on the prayers that never alter, in rhythmic language
that linked them to a community of believers that was theirs no matter where
in the world they were. [1999:98]
Both studies point to the saliency of religious identification in diasporic
settings as a means to mediate the dissonance and challenge of living in
environments that were laced with conflicting cultural values and practices.
Other attempts to deal with minoritized group identities often view
assimilation as an inevitable process (see Gordon 1975; Isajiw 1990).4
However, in a study of the integration of Punjabi youth in American
schools, Gibson (1988) found that acculturation could occur without assimilation. She notes that although the Punjabi community was able to
accommodate to the changing cultural demands of a new society, this
fell short of adopting values or customs that would challenge the nature
of their identity as Punjabis and Sikhs (1988:24-25). Although assimilation is nevertheless an evident factor in the social integration of a racially, ethnically and religiously plural society, little attention has been
paid to how groups and individuals in the Muslim community have
come to resist assimilation.
Barth (1969) examined the maintenance of social-group boundaries
and cultural persistence that occurred as the result of the interaction
rather than isolation of groups in society. This process, he argues, allows
for the continuing dichotomization of "insiders" and "outsiders"
(1969:14). In contrast, Shaffir (1979) examined the regulation of group
boundaries and mechanisms for social control among Chassidic Jews
and found that the continuity of their distinctive religious identities and
lifestyle occurred through isolation and social distance from outsiders.
According to Shaffir, many religious communities assign a high priority
to insulation from the surrounding culture to prevent assimilation. Although insulation is sometimes spatial, it is more often social, aiming at
minimal contact with individuals whose behaviors and ideas are contrary to those of community members (1979:50). Gibson (1988) also notes
similar strategies among Punjabi Sikhs whereby they actively resisted
the influence of the dominant culture, fearing that this erodes values
they perceive as fundamental to Punjabi identity. Their resistance to
conformist pressures involved social separation and accommodating
only in public to the norms of the larger society while in private, observing a Punjabi way of life (1988:25). Similarly, among Somali refugees in
Toronto, Bems McGown (1999) notes that isolation and interaction
along with accommodation were all key factors operating within the
community:
For some, the process of being a good Muslim in the West involves building
walls around their community and finding relative isolation from mainstream
society. For most, however, the process involves a gradual accommodation of
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traditional customs to those of the society, without losing what they consider
to be essential to themselves as Muslims. [1999:233]
Negotiating the terms of inclusion and exclusion and accommodation
and resistance within the larger social-cultural milieu is integral to the
process of maintaining ethnic or religious group boundaries, particularly among minoritized groups.
Barth (1969) classifies this process as "role performance" and notes its
importance in determining intragroup membership. Role performance
refers to the internal criteria used by members of an ethnic/cultural
group to determine group membership through the enactment of behaviors that are based upon and judged by shared cultural knowledge,
value orientations and moral standards (1969:14). These criteria link the
individual with the group. For example, within the Muslim community
Khan (2000) notes:
Through various symbolic activities, like performing the salalt (prayer) on Fridays, fasting, celebrating festivals, wearing traditional garb, and frequenting
community places like the mosque, the restaurant, the parochial school, the
Muslim individual reproduces the community, and these distinct practices
give the community its meaning or identity. [1998:1071
It is important to note, however, that group boundaries, the nature of
identity and cultural practices are not static, and that these boundaries
within the Islamic context are continually being contested and negotiated (Brenner 1993; Khan 2000; Tibi 1991). Nevertheless, the paradigms
offered thus far provide some useful perspectives into the regulation
and the maintenance of social group boundaries and together provide
insights into the complex ways social groups resist assimilation.
The theoretical perspectives discussed here represent some of the current understandings and existing discourses on the notion of religion,
ethnicity, and identity that help contextualize the experiences of Muslim
youth in Canadian schools. Building on these conceptions of identity
maintenance, the narratives that follow show that it is the interplay between the core factors of ambivalence and role performance, and interaction and social distance that are salient in the experiences of the youth
in this study. Rather than positioning these core factors in a binary relationship, the analysis will demonstrate the ways in which they are mutually implicated in the process of identity construction and maintenance.
This allows for a more complex reading of the persistence of religious
identification among these youth.
Understanding Ambivalence, Role Performance, Interaction, and
Social Distance: The Cultural Dilemmas of Negotiating Islamic
Identity in Canadian Society
Many of the concerns identified by Muslim youth and parents relating to
the maintenance of Islamic identity centered around what they perceived
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to be negative social influences such as peer pressure, dating, drugs, and
alcohol, as well as racism and discrimination. As the narratives that follow show, schools were a focal point for these concerns.
Karima, a 22-year-old university student of Pakistani descent who
grew up attending schools in Canada, spoke of the struggle between
conformity and resistance as a part of the process of finally actualizing
one's identity:
There's lots of challenges because I think it's natural to want to be accepted
when you're growing up when you're young and you don't really have an
identity. Because first of all you're Indian and then you're living in a white society and you're also trying to be accepted, but at the same time you want to be
practicing Islam. It's a big struggle until you get a very strong identity as a
Muslim and it takes a lot of years to build up. Trying to fit in is a hard thing to
get over, but once you get over it you're very strong.
The need to gain acceptance, as Karima points out, is particularly important among minoritized youth. Muslim youth must struggle to negotiate
an identity within three often conflicting cultural frameworks: the dominant culture, their ethnic culture, and Islam. Karima did not construe
"being a Muslim" as an organic element of one's identity, but rather as
something that must be cultivated over a period of years. For Karima, resistance to cultural conformity and the actualization of an Islamic identity was a process that grew out of ambivalence and struggle, as Jacobson (1998) rightly points out. Negotiating the multiple aspects of her
identity around ethnicity, nationality, and religion was necessary for
Karima to become grounded in her identity as a Muslim. The strong convictions that Karima developed allowed her to resist the social pressures
of conformity she encountered in her schooling experiences.
Other cultural dilemmas also were evident in students' schooling experiences. Aisha, a convert to Islam originally from Britain and the
mother of two children in elementary school, expressed feeling frustrated by always having to "compromise" her sense of what was Islamically correct when it came to her children's schooling experiences. She
explained how the secular, Eurocentric nature of public schools meant
she was constantly negotiating parameters for her children's involvement in school activities. Un-Islamic practices related to mainstream cultural celebrations such as Halloween or Valentine's Day were common
examples.
As Barth (1969:18) suggests, maintaining the boundaries of Islamic religious praxis within the often conflicting cultural milieu of public
schools, further defines rather than eliminates those boundaries. Similarly, Berns McGown (1999) notes that in the Somali community, immigration to the West brought Islamic practice into fresh relief. What was
previously taken for granted in terms of faith and practice, had to be
adapted to accommodate their changed circumstances. Interaction
among other groups in a non-Muslim society led to increased religiosity
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405
and a constant need to demarcate and negotiate the boundaries of Islam
(Bems McGown 1999:96).
Peer Pressure
Examining the network of peer relationships experienced by the Muslim youth whom I interviewed, it became clear that peer pressure could
be either a positive or a negative force. Positive peer pressure was derived from the social networks that these youth were able to develop
within the Muslim community. In particular, Muslim Student Associations (MSAs) in high schools constituted a form of positive peer pressure
and were organized to provide peer support and guidance to Muslim
students in both religious and academic matters. This form of peer pressure was geared toward the maintenance of role performance or behaving in Islamically appropriate ways (Zine 2000).
Negative peer pressure, on the other hand, came from both Muslim
students who followed the cultural norms of the mainstream as well as
non-Muslim friends. Trying to "fit in" to the dominant social norms
within schools became a pitfall for some students. Iman, who was 22
years old and had immigrated from Somalia 12 years prior, had not
properly practiced Islam while in high school. She explained that although she was very religious in terms of her fundamental beliefs, she
had not yet fully committed to practicing them. Therefore, although she
avoided dating, drugs, and alcohol, she was very involved in school
sports, basketball, and swimming, as well as school productions in
which she sang. These activities led her to be less stringent with her manner of dress and casual in her interactions with males. Nevertheless, she
realized that her value system was often out of sync with that of her nonMuslim friends. Iman recalled a particular conversation about sex, in
which she felt compelled to try to "play along":
In one of my classes, these two girls they were discussing sex and they said
like, "Iman, you wouldn't know what that is," and I would say, "That's what
you think," and I didn't know what it was! But I'd still act like I knew what
was going on just to fit in. It's just so shameful to be a virgin!
As a Somali Muslim, Iman had two groups of friends: "the black
crowd and the Muslim crowd." Creating social ties on the basis of both
of her identities was often difficult. She often found it difficult to gain acceptance from her black friends who did not understand Islam:
It was really really hard because of my religion somehow they [the other black
students] wouldn't know how to react to me. For example, I didn't date, I
wouldn't take drugs. Even going out, I remember they would talk about going
to all these parties and I would feel so out of place. And you kind of feel vengeful to your parents, like, "Why can't I go out?" You want to do what everybody else is doing.
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Iman's experience demonstrates that the multiple social identities that
we inhabit often have conflicting parameters. For example, the requirements of "role performance" in the Islamic social sphere (no dating,
drinking, and so on) conflicted with the patterns of social interaction and
behavior among Iman's black friends. Trying to fit in both contexts often
results in what has been called the "split personality syndrome" (AlJabri 1995), where youth try to negotiate the conflicting cultural expectations of home and school. This can result in the development of a double
persona in which these youth are forced to develop one identity to deal
with peer pressure at school and another to conform to the conflicting
cultural demands of the home and community. This situation ultimately
leads to confusion and dissonance among these youth (see also Gibson
1988, for a similar discussion of Punjabi Sikh youth).
Positive Peer Pressure
In the narratives, creating systems of positive peer support was
viewed as essential to the maintenance of an Islamic identity and lifestyle. Positive peer influence and support from fellow Muslims was seen
as a means of reinforcing Islamic values and codes of behavior, as well as
developing camaraderie among other Muslims who confronted similar
challenges. In schools, Muslim Student Associations (MSAs) often serve
as primary agencies providing social and religious support to Muslim
students and the basis for developing an Islamic subculture within
schools (Zine 2000).
Amal, a 21-year-old student at a teacher's college, recalled how the instability of the MSA in her school caused certain students to band together and take on a more active role in their organization: "In grade 11
we made a big stand. We said we really need an association where the
students can come and come back to their own kind and discuss things.
So we really needed that support system." Coming back to "their own
kind" meant cultivating relationships with other Muslims on the basis of
affinity and mutual interest. This move represents the need for maintaining a degree of social distance from "outsiders" in order to develop
positive intragroup structures that would help Muslim students resist
the social pressures that threatened their distinctive religious identities.
For Sajjad, a 19-year-old Guyanese student, peer pressure in high
school shifted from drugs and alcohol to an emphasis on dating. By
shifting his social relationships from the high school to the mosque, Sajjad was able to create a network of friends that enabled him to resist
negative peer pressure. This social network included Islamic halaqas or
study circles at the mosque. These provide systems of affective support
as well as being a traditional means for the study of Islamic knowledge
within the Muslim community. The study circles are conducted separately for men and women, and some are geared specifically for youth.
According to Sajjad, some of the older, more knowledgeable brothers
who led the study circles also served as positive role models for young
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Muslims, particularly those who had been raised in the North American
context and could empathize with the dilemmas of Muslim youth.5
Mixing
Gender interaction was another area of challenge for Muslim students, as "mixing" between members of the opposite sex is limited
within Islamic tradition. Physical contact between males and females is
allowed only among close family members, or one's mahrem, the category of people one cannot marry. Social distance within the Islamic tradition is therefore also gendered and situations of casual physical contact between males and females violate Islamic moral codes.
The tensions around maintaining social distance between males and
females is exemplified in the following scenario related by Zeinab, a 17year-old high school student of Indian descent. She explains the reaction
of a fellow female Muslim student when she was inadvertently touched
by a male student:
There was one incident where a sister, she was just standing there and a guy
came and put his arns around her and she was just like, "Don't touch me!"
And she just kind of shook him away, and he was just like, "Oh my God, what
happened?" And the people around her they were really shocked, like,
"Why'd she do that?" Because it's kind of accepted that guys can come and
hug you and touch you and it doesn't really matter. But not all guys are like
that, some of them they really understand and even if they just see your hijab,
they wouldn't touch you, they wouldn't even really stand close to you that
much, so they're pretty good.
Islamic rules governing social interaction among males and females are,
therefore, particularly problematic to maintain because these rules conflict with the conventional norms of the dominant culture. Yet as Zeinab
notes, the hijab, although often misunderstood, can relay a message to
males that regulates social distance. It is not clear whether these males
who honor the rules of social distance do so out of a specific knowledge
of the meaning of hijab, or because of their tacit understanding and respect for the symbol of hijab as a physical barrier.
Karima felt the need to establish certain "ground rules" when she was
required to interact with males in either school or work situations:
I talk to them very seriously and very businesslike. I don't make my voice
feminine, I talk very matter-of-factly. So if you do that with any man, I feel
from my experience, they're on a different level with you. They don't try and
joke around extra, they don't try and flirt with you, they try and be intellectual
back. Because I think you are the one that dictates what ground you are going
to talk to them on. Either a ground where you are just flirting with each other,
or a ground where you're intellectual with each other. And if you're the one
that dictates it, then you should do it by keeping your voice very matter-offact, and no nonsense and jokes should be just jokes that are not making you
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just feminine and weak. And that's what the ground rules are for talking to
men, I feel.
For Karima, then, by taking the initiative and setting the tone for social
discourse with males, she was able to exercise a certain control over the
nature of the interaction that would take place. Acting in a proactive
fashion, she was able to exercise power over the dynamics of the interaction that would support her standards of Islamic conduct.
Personal standards also influenced and differentiated the way Islamic
prescriptions were taken up. Tahira, for example, stated she had male
friends whom she felt comfortable having lunch with at school or joking
around with, but she drew the line at any form of physical contact. According to her personal standards, Tahira felt comfortable engaging in
more casual relations with boys than did Karima, yet she also had a clear
notion of maintaining social boundaries that were in keeping with her
sense of Islamic propriety. Therefore, although social interaction allowed for the definition and reinforcement of Islamic boundaries, for
Karima and Tahira, the parameters were somewhat different.
Setting the boundaries for interaction with members of the opposite
sex was an issue dealt with more by the women interviewed than by the
men. The male students interviewed were equally conscious of the need
to maintain proper Islamic boundaries in their interaction. Yet because
males seem to initiate more of these interactions, they paid greater attention to simply avoiding situations of contact, than to developing strategies to deal with female advances.
Racism, Discrimination, and Schooling
One of the most salient experiences of Muslim students inside and
outside of school concerns racism, discrimination, and Islamophobia.
Although religious identification is the primary marker with which students in this study identified, Muslim students have multiple identities
based on their race, class, gender, and ethnicity that they must negotiate
within the context of their educational experiences. These multiple aspects of identity are connected to broader systems of oppression that are
interlocking and interrelated (Dei 1996; Razack 1998). Critically unpacking how these systems of oppression intersect and are mutually constitutive is part of an integrative approach to antiracism education (Dei
1996).
According to Anthias and Yuval Davis racism can be defined as:
a set of postulates, images, and practices which serve to differentiate and
dominate. These can use all kinds of signifiers and markers. They serve to
deny full participation in economic, social, political and cultural life by the essence that they posit. The supposed essence of difference is given a negative
evaluation. [1992:15]
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The practice of negative evaluation and differential treatment has been
evidenced in the schooling experiences of racial and ethnically minoritized youth (Dei et al. 1997; Gilbom 1990; Rezai-Rashti 1994). This section
further examines the issue of how certain unfounded "sets of postulates
and images" about Islam lead to specific, discriminating institutional
and social practices that inform the experiences of Muslim students in
the educational system. The narratives that follow speak of a lived experience of racial and religious discrimination as the by-product of negative racial stereotypes and Islamophobia. I examine the implications of
these negative social attitudes toward Muslims within the context of
Muslim students' educational experiences.
Negative Perceptions
Rezai-Rashti (1994) writes of her experience as an antiracist and gender-equity practitioner in a school board where she was able to witness
firsthand how negative stereotypes informed the way Muslim students
were perceived and treated. She notes that in her experience, the interactions of non-Muslim students, teachers, and administrators with Muslim students were based largely on stereotypes "reminiscent of the longgone colonial era" (1994:37). This is evident in the way students describe
their interactions with certain teachers. Although Zeinab felt that she
had been treated "pretty fairly" by her teachers, she still reported experiencing patronizing attitudes by teachers whom she felt clearly misunderstood Islam and her status as a Muslim woman. She explained how
some teachers have initially reacted toward her:
Basically, most of them, when they first see me like on the first day of school,
or maybe a supply [substitute] teacher or something, they just look at me and
their initial reaction is just shock, like, "My God you're allowed out of your
house." And then they tend to talk to me like in slow English and I just answer
back in proper English, and then they think, "OK fine, she's been born here,
she knows English."
Zeinab's statement reveals how she perceives the attitudes of certain
teachers toward her. These attitudes include a set of assumptions that
have been formulated prior to their encounter. The identification of difference as foreignness is an attitude that often frames the relationships
between Muslim students and teachers.
These attitudes can be understood as part of the hidden curriculum, a
tacit mode of relaying the implicit assumptions of teachers and other
school agents that silently structures social discourse and educational
praxis. The hidden curriculum serves to reproduce status quo relations
of power and authority (Anyon 1989). In Zeinab's case, she received
messages of inferiority, or, as she later explained, "looks" that she understood as: "Why is she wearing that? What is she doing? This is
Canada! When in Rome you should do what the Romans do."
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Being situated outside the boundaries of social acceptance can lead to
feelings of alienation and marginality. Moreover, it can compromise
one's ability to acquire the necessary "cultural capital" (Bourdieu and
Passeron 1977) required to achieve success in mainstream society. Negotiating the rules for participating in the "culture of power" demands
conformity with certain "ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of
dressing and ways of interacting" (Delpit 1988:283). Dominant social
rules are therefore culturally mediated within the context of power and
privilege. Negative attitudes that are ascribed to racialized, classed, and
religious forms of identification can be constructed into modes of differential treatment that can inforn the schooling experiences of students
from these social locations (Dei et al. 1997; Fordham 1988; Gillbom 1990;
Ogbu and Matute-Bianchi 1986).
Negative perceptions of difference are predicated on Eurocentric
norms and the dominance of white society. This represents a form of
domination that is manifest simultaneously in varying forms: political,
economic, and cultural, as well as hegemonic and symbolic (McIntosh
1990; Sleeter 1994). These sites provide multiple vantage points for positions of power and privilege that define normative standards in ways
that allow for dominance to be produced through the creation of abject
"difference." For Karima, the "white ideal" held a symbolic dominance
that structured how she felt others perceived her, as well as her sense of
self. In the following exchange, Karima explained how the symbolism of
color is constructed within dichotomous relations of power, and how
this is reflected in society and ultimately in her own sense of self:
Karima: Like even if you just look at the word "dark" it gives you images of
evil or witchcraft, of being not clean.... So it comes in every aspect of life,
white being clean, good, better, a white dress for weddings to symbolize vir-
ginity, and dark is like everything bad. So then when they look at white people
and dark people, that's the ideas that come with it, and those are the prevailing ideas in this society.
Jasmin: How did that make you feel growing up?
K: It made me feel that I could never be beautiful, because I wasn't born
white. I would never be able to be that beautiful woman, and being dark
was not a very attractive thing. And plus that's part of Indian culture too,
so I had a double whammie! One was being in this environment and then
also I'm darker than most Pakistanis in general and so, the thing is I wasn't
really feeling that good about the way that I looked. And then, I think I
stopped really caring about the way that I looked, because I thought,
what's the point, I'm never going to be able to be beautiful.
J: And has that changed now?
K: Oh yeah, as I've grown older like I've realized there are all types of beauty.
Just practicing Islam makes you respect yourself. It doesn't matter how
you look really, it's just how good of a person you are. And how hard you
try and become better.
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Being dark skinned, Karima felt a victim of racism in white society and
shadism in the Pakistani community. 6 Skin color, therefore, defined the
boundaries of privilege ir. both cultural contexts.
Saleha, a mother of four, originally from Pakistan, recounted an incident with two of her preteen daughters that revealed their perceptions
about their status in a racialized society. Saleha, who was a writer, had
her daughters accompany her to an informal social gathering with members of her writer's club. Saleha participated in the various literary discussions that took place while her daughters watched. She reported feeling as though her opinions were valued and respected by others in the
group. Afterward, her daughters asked, "They were white, right?" in
reference to the other members of the writer's club. When Saleha replied
"yes," her daughters continued with surprise: "But they were listening
to you! They really listened to what you said, and you're brown and you
wear hijab!" In seeing that a Muslim woman "of color" was able to garner respect for opinions among white peers, Saleha felt that her daughters had leamed something important from the experience. 7 She hoped
that this woulci empower her daughters in the future. However, I was
left to question and lament the fact that they had internalized such feelings of racial inferiority in the first place.
Other students also candidly discussed their experience with race and
religious difference. Sajjad's family, for example, moved to Canada from
Guyana when he was seven years old. Sajjad painfully recalled the dualalienation experiences trying to fit in, being both racially and religiously
minoritized, and thus separated from the mainstream on the basis of
skin color and a culturally divergent lifestyle. Later, in junior high
school, the pressures to drink and take illegal drugs further distanced
Sajjad from his peers. He formed a clique of friends from the Caribbean
while in junior high. Although they were not Muslim, Sajjad felt more of
a connection with them because of the similarity of their language and
culture. He held more positive feelings about his high school experience
because the school he attended had a large population of minorities and
Muslim students. He remarked, "It opened my mind to a lot. I mean, for
the first time you were the majority in the school because there were a
majority of colored people there." Sajjad felt that attitudes toward race
were deeply entrenched in society. He felt that certain stereotypes were
difficult to transcend, and he did not believe in wasting time over them:
See for me personally, I'd given up along time ago trying to impress other people, or trving to prove to other people that I'm a good black person, or I'm a
good Indian person. Because you just can't win that way. The world isn't that
way. People have their own ways and the way their mindset is, it's been set by
many events before. Even if I were to be a good person, like they have a certain
image of colored people, so it's like, "Well all colored people are bad, but he's
a good one,.. .he's an exception." I'm trying to do the best that I can as a Muslim,
so I don't have time to play those games with people.
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Sajjad's quote betrays a sense of fatalism about the way racial inequality
is so deeply inscribed within social and historical relations that it seems
impossible to transcend the negative constructions of difference.
Muslim women in particular have been negatively construed as the
result of Orientalist discourses on the veil (Bullock 1999, 2000; Hoodfar
1993; Kahf 1999). Veiled Muslim women have become a metaphor for
oppression. These negatively essentialized constructions of difference
continue to have currency, despite their origins as part of a colonialist
discourse that ascribes Muslims as "Other" (Kahf 1999) and despite the
fact that many Muslim women wear the veil as a symbol of religious
identification and modesty rather than coercion (Bullock 1999, 2000;
Ghazal Read and Bartkowski 2000). Gender therefore is intrinsically
linked to racial, ethnic and religious difference in the lives of Muslim
girls. For Amal, who is a light-skinned Arab, the hijab was the primary
source of discrimination in her school experiences. She believed this discrimination was bred by ignorance: "With public school in elementary, I
found that a lot of teachers were just very ignorant. It wasn't outright
discrimination but you'd get remarks like, 'Oh, do you have some kind
of head injury?' or 'Are you bald?' or 'Do you have some kind of disease?' "
Stories of such ignorance and more blatant anti-Islamic sentiments
within schools were chronicled in a recent article in an Islamic publication, Al Hilal, in which Muslim students across the greater Toronto area
were interviewed regarding discrimination they had encountered in
their schools (Haneef 1993). The student narratives revealed overt acts of
discrimination on the part of non-Muslim students, teachers, and administrators in various schools. For example, male students wearing
kufis or Islamic caps as well as female students in hijab were forced to remove them or leave the school at the direction of teachers and principals
(Haneef 1993:1). In another incident recounted in the article, groups of
Muslim and white students started to fight when the white students
made a derogatory statement insulting Allah (the name of God in Islam).
A grade 12 student referred to as "Imran" explained what happened:
After the fight, some brothers and I went looking for a white student but he
ran to the office and claimed that we were harassing him. The principal called
me into her office and told me that unless we Muslims can't behave like Christians and turn the other cheek, she would kick us out of school if this kind of
thing ever happened again. [Haneef 1993:1]
Discriminatory attitudes on the part of students are often supported
by teachers' lack of response or penalizing the victims. This can lead to
isolationist attitudes, as revealed in my interview with Tariq, a 23 year
old from Pakistan who had immigrated to Canada in early childhood.
When he spoke about interethnic relations in his high school, Tariq explained that," It was easier to just be with your own kind." The notion of
being with "your own kind" as a strategy of resistance often recurred in the
student narratives. This process was also evident in Shaffir's research,
Zine
Muslini Youttl in Canadian Schtools
413
where social distance and insularity acted as a buffer to help maintain
religious identification in Chassidic Jewish communities (1979: 50).
However, the need to "be with your own kind" is also produced by a
lack of inclusion and acceptance toward diversity in the social and cultural environment of schools. The institutional subordination of minoritized groups in schools further leads to the need for stronger group cohesion and insulation.
Three of the students interviewed-Tariq, Adam, and Tahira-attended fairly multiethnic and multiracial schools. They believed that although there was less overt discrimination in their schools, the student
culture and informal social life were segregated along racial and ethnic
group lines. Without strong Islamic subcultures within the schools,
Tariq, Adam, and Tahira primarily associated with other students on the
basis of ethnic and language-group affinities such as South Asian or Caribbean, stating that there was a higher level of comfort as well as greater
respect for religious lifestyles among students from similar backgrounds. Interacting with students who shared similar cultural experiences thus affirmed the boundaries associated with these students' religious practices.
Streaming and the Politics of Social Difference
Negative constructions of difference based on race have been identified as having decisive implications for academic placement in secondary schools through a system of "color-coded streaming" (Dei et al.
1997). Many of the Muslim students I interviewed reported being evalu-
ated and recommended for placement in lower academic streams or
tracks on the basis of what they perceived as the low expectations of
teachers and guidance counselors for Muslims and certain other racially
minoritized groups. This channeling of students from specific racial and
ethnic groups into lower noncollegiate streams reproduces social inequality by constructing a framework that systematically differentiates,
divides, and distributes individuals into positions of advantage or subordination based on race and class divisions (Bowles and Gintis 1976;
Gillbom 1990).
Previous to my interviews with her, I had seen Karima, along with
other high school students, on a television documentary, discussing
their experiences as being racially and ethnically minoritized in the Canadian school system. When I later interviewed Karima, I asked her
about the comments she made on the show in reference to low teacher
expectations, and the fact that minoritized students were not encouraged to achieve as were white students. When I asked her whether this
comment was also true for Muslim students, she replied:
It's not only Muslims, anybody colored. Like if a white kid doesn't do well
they'll say, "Oh, you know, what's wrong, why aren't you doing well? You're
supposed to do better." But if a colored person doesn't do well it's like, "OK,
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Anthropology & Education Quarterly
Volume 32, 2001
well try harder next time." When I didn't go to school, I wouldn't get phone
calls at home telling my parents. My parents didn't know that I didn't go to
school. But when one of my Greek friends would miss one day, their parents
would be called in like ten minutes if they were late. Just because they're supposed to be in school and I'm probably not even going to go anymore.
Karima believed she was often treated according to the misconception
that education is not valued for Muslimn women, and therefore her educational aspirations were not taken very seriously. When Karima left
school, she would often accompany her older sister to the university,
where she became part of the MSA circle. She felt more comfortable in
the university environment, which had a stronger Islamic subculture
and systems of social and spiritual support. This made Karima more determined to get through high school quickly and move on to university.
Anxious to finish high school ahead of schedule by condensing a fouryear program into three years, Karima had many encounters with school
counselors attempting to restructure her schedule. She found little support among the counselors, although she maintains she had always
proven herself to be a good and capable student:
So then, I was going to the guidance counselor to rearrange my schedule, and
they wouldn't listen to me. You have every right to get any course you want,
but when white friends that had wanted to do it they easily had no problem.
Then at the end when I actually finished-I did end up taking four years-a
guidance counselor that I had always been going to said, "Oh, you know you
really surprised me. I didn't really think that you were up to anything, but it
worked out and you're the most strong-headed woman I ever met in my life."
He didn't even realize he was cutting me up.
Karima found this to be a back-handed compliment because it was
predicated on the initial belief that she would not succeed, despite her
excellent academic record. She also recalled with a great deal of resentment how she had been discouraged from taking math and sciences and
was being directed toward general-level, nonacademic streams:
They kept on telling me, "You may not be able to handle it, you don't know
how hard it is," and like I've never failed a course in high school. And then my
junior high guidance counselor said, "You know maybe you should go for
general courses because you may not be able to take advanced," but not telling
me you can't go to university without taking advanced courses. They didn't
tell me that, and if I didn't have an older brother and sister I would have taken
general. You think guidance counselors are there to help you, but they're not.
Karima expressed a great deal of distrust and anger toward guidance
counselors whom she believed subverted the progress of minoritized
students. She stated: "They just put their own ideas into your head and
you go there trusting them." She believed that her aspiration of attending university was ignored, and that had she not sought advice from her
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Muslim Youth in CanadianSclhools
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older brother and sister, she would have been consigned to noncollegiate streams.
Sajjad, who was exceptionally bright and articulate, also explained
with a great deal of frustration how he had been placed in general-level
streams. He also considered himself to be a good student, but went
along with the general placement, not knowing that it would compromise his future goals for pursuing a university education. He eventually
discovered this when a group of university students who were part of an
African-Caribbean Association came to visit his high school and made
him aware that he was in a noncollegiate stream. Sajjad explained, "That
was the day I realized I've got to get out of this class!" He continued,
"Academically I had no problems in school, but I kept waiting for a long
time until I realized, 'Hey you don't have my interest in consideration.' "
He explained why his parents also felt disempowered to change his situation: "Parents, especially from the West Indies, they trust the teachers
so how can they question the teachers if they say this is where you
should be, even though you know better." According to Sajjad, had the
students from the African-Caribbean Association not understood his
circumstances, he would never have known how his life chances had
been so severely circumscribed through the process of streaming.
It took Sajjad an additional two years to complete the advanced-level
courses he needed. He noted that it was very difficult to make the transifion after being streamed into general-education courses, and that this
was a deterrent for many students who felt trapped in lower streams but
did not want to commit to the extra years of schooling they required to
move into a collegiate-level stream. At the time of my interview with Sa-
jjad, he had just completed his OACs and was preparing to start at the
university. He commented on the insight given to him by a school
teacher who had converted to Islam:
She said a lot of times when they see you, the black kids or the colored kids,
they already think that you cannot achieve. So the idea is to let you know very
early. They don't want you to go all the way to grade 12, OAC and then realize
that you're just not smart enough. So they'll do you a favor and push you that
direction by streaming you.
Amal and her sister had also been directed by guidance counselors to
take general-level courses despite having good academic records. Amal
recalled how the guidance counselor "flowered up" the idea of being in
general-level courses as being "less stressful," and that she would have a
"really good time." Ironically, when another guidance counselor examined Amal's academic profile, she was identified as an advanced student
and recommended for an enrichment school. Amal explained her confusion and eventual understanding of the two different assessments:
So I looked at both counselors and I thought, "Why is one saying one thing
and the other something else?" And I concluded that it wasn't my grades that
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Volume 32, 2001
the one who told me to go into general was looking at, she was looking at my
whole outer appearance, and that meant "dumb," "ignorant," "Oh, we don't
want them to succeed." That's what I felt.
Low teacher expectations of racial and ethnic minoritized youth can
lead to negative evaluation and bias in assessment as well as underachievement (Gibson 1988; Parker-Jenkins 1991; see also Dei et al. 1997,
for a discussion on race, streaming, and student disengagement). That
these low expectations are informed by negative racialized stereotypes
and negative assumptions about Islam can be construed from Muslim
students' overall experiences within the school system. Although the intent is not to essentialize a negative understanding of all guidance coun-
selors or teachers, it is nevertheless necessary to deconstruct the ways in
which minoritized students come to be differentially evaluated and
treated within the school system.
According to Karima, ethnospecific counseling, in which students are
matched with counselors from the same background, would be ideal, so
long as the counselors have been enculturated in Canadian society. She
explains:
Also I think when you're not born here you're always trying to kiss up to
white people. So then you don't really try and do something against them.
Whereas, someone who has grown up here is comfortable enough with white
people to say, "You have to do this right," you know what I mean?
The intimidation felt by immigrants in dominant white society is, in
Karima's view, a mechanism that leads to greater compliance with certain rules, or an unwillingness to "rock the boat." She felt that minoritized people who grew up in Canada are more empowered to affect
change by challenging dominant institutional norms.
With respect to challenging dominant ideologies and engaging in
practices of resistance in schooling, Bernstein, in Giroux, reminds us
that, "Resistance also calls attention to modes of pedagogy that need to
unravel the ideological interests embedded in the various message systems of the school, particularly in the curriculum, modes of instruction
and evaluation procedures" (Giroux 1983:111). Overt classroom pedagogies as well the hidden curriculum are the modes of transmitting and
legitimizing the social organization and styles of learning that privilege
white, mainstream cultural knowledges and communication styles,
while simultaneously distancing minoritized students from the parameters of inclusion.
For example, cross-cultural differences in communication between
teachers and students can lead to negative evaluation of minoritized students who are not able to conform to the language styles privileged within
the dominant pedagogical framework (Au and Kawakami 1994; Heath
1983; Saville-Troike 1981). Miscommunication is often based on the disjuncture between the standardization of white middle-class communication
Zine
MuAslimn Youttlh in Canadian Sclhools
417
styles and the communicative styles of ethnic- and class-based minoritized groups. Cultural incongruities can exist between the "pedagogy of
the home," or the mode of transmitting cultural knowledge and social
and behavioral rules through culturally specific socialization practices
of the home, and the dominant classroom pedagogy. Gibson refers to
this as "cultural discontinuity theory" and argues that along with the social structural barriers that confront minoritized groups, cultural discontinuity can create inequality in educational outcomes (1988:29-30). Gibson notes that Punjabi students were uncomfortable with the dominant
participation structures in mainstream American classrooms such as the
technique of "brainstorming" ideas, and were often reticent in expressing their views within this cultural context (1988:157). Cultural incongruity with dominant pedagogical practices often leads to a "resocialization process" for those students who lack the cultural capital required to
succeed in mainstream society (King 1994). Consequences of the mismatch between dominant cultural communicative styles and those of
other groups can result in the misplacement of minoritized students in
special language-based remedial programs.
Faryal, who was born in Pakistan but raised in Canada, was a mother
of two elementary school children. She reported being shocked to learn
that her eight-year-old son Idrees had been placed in an English-as-aSecond-Language (ESL) class. Both her children had been born and
raised in Canada and she herself had lived in Canada for more than 25
years and had been educated in Canadian schools. She recalls being confused, hurt, and angry over her son's placement in an ESL program:
The worst thing that the school did which finally hurt me the most was they
put him in ESL. English is the only language he speaks! So they put him into
ESL, and didn't notify me and as I understood it, parents have to be notified
before children go into the program. And Idrees one day was just talking and I
asked him "Did you get extra help at this time?" and he said, "I can't, I have to
go to a special class." I said, "What special class?!" I was just totally shocked
and he goes, "ESL, mom, I have to go to ESL." And I said, "Why do you have
to go to ESL?" The next morning I was at the school. I was hopping mad! You
know, I was really, really angry! And they told me he was there because he has
difficulty understanding instructions and understanding directions. And I
asked him and he said, "But mom, she doesn't make any sense, she says this
and she means something else."
Heath (1983) found that black children did not respond to white teachers' questions or directives because these styles of communication were
qualitatively different than those used in students' homes. Miscommunication and misunderstanding due to cultural variations of sociolinguistic style often are attributed to presumed language deficits. Students
such as Idrees are penalized and required to become "resocialized" to
accept the teachers' dominant communicative styles through programs
such as ESL and ESD (English Skills Development).
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Anthropology & Education Quarterly
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Although English was his first language, Sajjad also had been placed
in ESL. Speaking of how he felt betrayed by the educational system,
Sajjad reflected with great frustration upon his placement in an ESL
class, despite being proficient in English:
I mean throughout my entire school career, they did it to me. Like, when I first
came here and I was put in an ESL class. I mean I came from an English-speaking country! I mean ESL man, ESL messed up a lot of people. I mean I'm sure
it's helped, but the process, the mechanism of selecting people and then merging them into a regular program when they get out of ESL are what create
problems.
Sajjad recalled feeling stigmatized and academically disadvantaged
by being relocated to an ESL class. I asked him why he had been assigned to an ESL class in the first place, to which he replied:
Oh they'd say they couldn't understand me, this is the thing they say, they
couldn't understand or I couldn't articulate myself. They weren't understanding what I was trying to say .. .they forcefully took me out of math, science, French. So later on, when I missed three or four years of French and
you've got to pick it up and come out again, how can you do it? Because
you've missed those foundation years . . . but the whole program [ESL] is so
cumbersome that it takes away everything. It did a lot of damage to me, a lot
to my self-esteem.
For Sajjad, as a native English speaker, placement in ESL was humiliating and compromised both his academic progress and self-esteem.
The social, emotional, and academic costs of using ESL programs to
"resocialize" English-speaking students whose sociolinguistic patterns
lacked conformity with the dominant mode of instructional communication, were painfully recalled in these narratives. Saville-Troike writes
that, "When differences are understood, they form a base for learning;
when they are not, they create a barrier to learning" (1981:72). Misapprehensions of cultural, racial, and religious difference, therefore, can negatively impact minoritized student achievement through color-coded
streaming practices and differential evaluation and treatment. The narratives reveal that these processes compromise the self-esteem and emotional well-being of minoritized youth. Although the students in this
study were all able to overcome these barriers through strong family
and peer support, many minoritized youth become disengaged from
schooling (Dei et al. 1997).
Conclusion
The narratives of Muslim students and parents speak powerfully and
poignantly about the ways in which they attempted to negotiate their religious identities within the context of a secular school system, despite
having to contend with peer pressure, racism, discrimination, and Islamophobia. This is important to our understanding of how religion is
Zine
Muslimii Youttl in Catnadian Scliools
419
connected to other sites of social difference, such as race, gender, and linguistic difference and how these variously implicate the way schooling
is experienced for minoritized youth. This speaks strongly to the need
for more inclusive schooling practices that address the concerns of minontized youth (see Dei et al. 2000). It is also significant that these students' struggles to maintain religious identities were based on the interplay of the core factors of ambivalence and role performance, as well as
strategies of interaction and isolation. These findings suggest a more
complex reading of how the politics of religious identity were negotiated by these youth.
Negotiating ambivalence, for example, and actively engaging in "role
performance" or the commitment to living an Islamic way of life, were
key to the continuity of students' Islamic identification. The contention
of Jacobson (1998) and Bems McGown (1999), that religious identification serves as an "anchor" amidst the contradictions and disjunctures
faced by religiously minoritized youth as they negotiate their identities
within a multiethnic/multiracial society, is evidenced by the importance Muslim youth placed upon maintaining their Islamic lifestyles.
The struggle to resist conformity occurred within the context of social
interaction in a public school setting, rather than in isolation, which allows for the continuing demarcation of social group boundaries and the
dichotomization of "insiders" and "outsiders" (Barth 1969:14). Through
their interaction in the arena of public education, the boundaries of religious practice were further marked and defined, though these boundaries
were more challenging to maintain given the influence of peer pressure
and social conformity.
Negative social pressures contributed to the need for students to also
stay grounded within the community and build systems of peer support
among fellow Muslims in their schools as mechanisms for solidarity and
resistance. This corresponds to Shaffir's (1979) findings relating to Chassidic Jews where insularity provided a buffer against assimilation. This
study also demonstrated that despite the interaction of Muslim students
in the social forum of public school, the process of maintaining a distinct
religious identity also relied upon the cohesion of group members and a
degree of social distance from "outsiders." According to Shaffir:
If any religious community is to persist, it must also resist the threat of assimilation into the larger society. Certain common conditions threaten and compromise any community's efforts to maintain its identity, and many of the
same features that help create the identity may also be used to resist assimilative influences from the surrounding society. [1979:70]
Resisting assimilation in this case was manifested by the maintenance of
strong links with fellow Muslims both inside and outside of school in order to develop a social network that supported the continuity of their religious practices. These students' strong engagement with Islamic religious practices and way of life provided the very strategies for negotiating
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Anthropology & Education Quarterly
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resistance. In this way, religious identification and the coalescence of
Muslim students within schools served to anchor their sense of identity
and provided a framework for resisting social pressures that threatened
to rupture their distinct lifestyles. The interplay between the strategies of
social interaction and social distance, as well as students' negotiations of
ambivalence and role performance for these students, helped to reinforce the boundaries of religious identification. These various strategies
were used by Muslim students to avoid assimilation and maintain their
religious identities as sites of spiritual praxis as well as resistance.
Jasmin Zine is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and Equity
Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto ([email protected]).
Notes
Acknowledgments. I gratefully acknowledge the comments of the editor and
anonymous reviewers that were very valuable in revising an earlier draft of this
article. Some portions of the analysis in this article appear in Zine 2000.
1. This quote is attributed to "Adam," one of the students who participated in
the study discussed in this article. All participants are referred to by pseudonyms.
2. Forthcoming census data in 2001 should yield a significantly higher
number of Muslims due to recent immigration patterns. A current estimate suggests the number will reach in excess of 600,000 (Siddiqui 2001: A-14).
3. Cultural hybridity refers to having dual identities based on ethnic origin or
descent and one's national identity. Beyond a simple social classification, cultural hybridity is an ontological reality or lived experience that relates to the
complex narratives that that people live within in an increasingly globalized, diasporic world.
4. I use the term minoritized as opposed to minority to denote the social, economic, political, and cultural factors that marginalize and categorize groups of
people.
5. It is customary to refer to fellow Muslims as either "brothers" or "sisters"
as a way to develop communal bonds and identify group membership.
6. Shadism is a term used to refer to skin color differentiation within racialized communities where there is a often a privileging of lighter skin tones.
7. I have used quotation marks around the phrase woman "of color" as indiscriminate use of this term centers whiteness as the norm (and erases whiteness
as a color).
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TITLE: Muslim youth in Canadian schools: education and the
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SOURCE: Anthropology & Education Quarterly 32 no4 D 2001
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