Muslims craft their own curriculum

For religiously motivated homeschoolers of many faiths, conflicts between secular education and religious beliefs often surface during high school. Science classes emphasize evolution over creationism. Health classes highlight safe sex.

"[Religious students'] special needs are not addressed in public school systems," says Ibrahim Hooper, media director for The Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington. "[Their parents] want to keep them away from negative influences, negative peer pressure."

Saleem says home-schooling became even more attractive after Sept. 11 as Muslim friends and new home schoolers told stories about children having their scarves pulled off in classrooms or encountering hostile teachers.

The risk at private Islamic schools is that teachers may impart ideas that run contrary to her own view of Islam. "You don't want to get caught up in the political issues," Saleem says.

Cynthia Sulaiman of Attleboro, Mass., says she felt comfortable letting her kids learn outside the home as they grew older. Ms. Sulaiman, who converted to Islam after marriage, has home-schooled each of her four children. But her 16-year-old son, who wanted to play football, now attends a public high school, and her middle-school-age child is enrolled in a public charter school.

"We do what's best at the time," Ms. Sulaiman says. Only her youngest son, Imran, is still home-schooled - with academic instruction interspersed with visits to a zoo at a nearby park.

With so few Muslim home schoolers, parents say it can be an isolating and time-consuming experience. Publishers don't yet produce texts or curriculum designed specifically for the Muslim homeschool audience. So parents must develop their own lesson plans, often adapting materials designed for Christian home schoolers.

Muslim home schooling is in the early stages - comparable to the experience of Evangelical Christian home schoolers in the 1970s, says Patricia Lines, a former US Education Department researcher and current fellow at the Discovery Institute think tank in Seattle.

Parents are just starting to network and help each other design curricula, parents say.

Both Sulaiman and Saleem, for instance, started websites where they share lesson plans with other parents.

Saleem posts Arabic calligraphy lessons on her Palmetto Muslim Homeschool Resource Network (http://www.geocities.com/pmhrn_2000/PMHRN.html). Sulaiman's similarly named Muslim Home School Network and Resource (http://www.muslimhomeschool.com) provides a workbook for students entitled "Proud to be a Muslim." She also offers art projects - how to create, for instance, a craft box for the holiday of Ramadan.

Sulaiman says traffic to the website has increased significantly since Sept. 11. But in addition to attracting other Muslim home schoolers, the site is drawing more anti-Muslim hate mail.

Where e-mails once questioned the wisdom of depriving children of the opportunity to socialize with other types of students, now the stinging comments laud her for keeping "undesirable" children out of public schools.

• E-mail sterns@csps.com

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