Yahiya Emerick writes an interesting article in IslamAmerica concerning the attitudes and beliefs of average American Muslims about raising their children in America and the attitudes of the children themselves. Thanks to Designut.
“Most parents send their kids here for reasons other than Islam,” lamented the principal of a large Muslim school.
“A lot of our students have older brothers and sisters who have gone out of control. They smoke, use drugs, sleep around and disobey their parents.”
I knew from my own experience that what he was saying was true. In my first year of teaching I had met the families of many of my students in the Muslim school.
What I saw shocked me.
The older siblings were completely and thoroughly non-Muslim in their behavior and demeanor. One girl had an older brother with an arm full of tattoos! The girl, who had seven older siblings that went through an urban public school told me that her parents were sending her to the Muslim school because they wanted “at least one good one.”
On another occasion, I happened to be standing in the school office talking to the secretary when a middle-aged, Indo-Pak couple came in with their teenage daughter.
She was wearing tight jeans, no Hijab and a lot of make-up.
Her face said it all: she’s been around. Her parents, as it turned out, wanted to enroll her in the Muslim school because they didn’t want her to become “Christian.” Oh… the parents also mentioned that she had a boyfriend and that they didn’t want her to “get into trouble.”
She was enrolled in the ninth grade and therefore would be in my Islamic Studies class. As it happened, she didn’t know how to pray, she never made Wudu in her life and she knew nothing of Islamic teachings. She was, for all practical purposes, a non-Muslim with a Muslim sounding name.
Do you see a pattern emerging here? After having been involved with Muslim education for the last seven years as a teacher in Sunday schools, summer schools and full-time Muslim schools, I have had the chance to observe the immigrant Muslim community very closely. I wish I could say the indigenous Muslim community, but the immigrants have not seen fit to spread Islam to native-born Americans, but that’s another story…
We recommend you read it all. Emerick continues to be shocked by America, shocked!