Perspectives of Immigrant Muslim Parents: Advocating for Religious Diversity in Canadian Schools.

cal multiculturalism and minority group rights. The term multiculturalism includes a plurality of meanings and definitions. According to Kincheloe and Steinberg (1997), there are five prevailing philosophical positions that inform multicultural policies and practices: conservative, liberal, pluralist, radical, and critical. The conservative approach presumes the superiority of Eurocentric values and beliefs and Christianity, devalues immigrants’ native cultures and religions, and places uneven expectations on immigrants to conform over time to the norms, values, and religious traditions of the receiving society (Li, 2003). The liberal position acknowledges diversity, but has a low level of tolerance of non-Christian faiths. It superficially focuses on the neutrality of secularism, a separation of church and state. In reality such separation does not exist in Canada as we see the residual influence of Christianity in the national anthem, statutory holidays, currency, architecture, textbooks, and so on (Biles & Ibrahim, 2005). An alternative form of liberal multiculturalism is pluralist multiculturalism, which sees differences in cultures and religions. However, the cultural and religious differences are often trivialized, exoticized, and essentialized as Immigration is now the primary source of population growth in Canada. For the year 2006, the Canadian Census reported that almost 20 percent of the population was born outside of Canada (Statistics Canada, 2007). Between the years 1991 and 2001 specifically, the number of non-Christians, such as Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Hindus, had more than doubled in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2003). It is estimated that by the year 2017 more than 10 percent of Canadians will be non-Christians (Statistics Canada, 2005). These demographic changes have profound implications for Canadian public school systems. While Canada promotes many ways of recognizing diversity, it seems to demonstrate however an aversion to utilizing the word “religion.” The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for example, enshrines the right to practice one’s own religion, which can be viewed as a means of accommodating the needs of religious minorities within a multicultural society. Yet public education in Canada follows a fundamentalist Christian curriculum with its calendar specifically fitting the needs of Christians (Karmani & Pennycook, 2005; Spinner-Halev, 2000), a trend also prevalent in the neighboring United States. The Eurocentric nature of public schools in general means that religious minority parents need to constantly negotiate parameters for their children’s involvement in school curricula and activities (Zine, 2001). This negotiation is particularly challenging for Muslim immigrant parents. Islam is often portrayed as an inherently violent religion and Muslims are seen as threatening the peace and security of Western nations (McDonough & Hoodfar, 2005), particularly after the events of September 11, 2001. Yet little attention has been paid to how minority parents negotiate their religious practices within public schools. Given these concerns, data were collected through in-depth interviews with immigrant parents who had recently arrived in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Algeria, Somalia, and Suriname. This study examines how these Muslim immigrant parents struggle within the public schools to negotiate the continuity of their Islamic practices and how they counteract their own marginality as immigrants, a marginality often connected with other sites of oppression such as race and gender.

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