Dr Louis Cristillo

Columbia University

Private Muslim schools in the USA: increasing engagement

Abstract

More than the mosque in America, the Muslim day school is the most widely misunderstood institution in American Muslim communities today. Purportedly numbering about 235, Muslim schools have attracted the curiosity of the news media far more than the discerning analysis of scholars.

Research to date has tended to focus on the all too familiar theme of conflicted identity and the struggle to be “Muslim” and “American,” with the unintended consequence of fetishizing an imagined “Immigrant Muslim Other.”

By examining the Muslim school beyond the conventional boundaries of curriculum and classroom, this paper challenges the widely held assumption that the Muslim school marginalizes youth into an ethno-religious ghetto.

The analysis examines how the day school becomes a key player in a nexus of institutions—the mosque, the local professional and business sector, the family, and the state—to produce overlapping social networks that empower Muslim youth and adults toward greater involvement in American civic life and participatory democracy.

Bio

Louis Cristillo earned his Ph.D. in anthropology and education at Teachers College Columbia University in 2004, and is presently a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies. Before coming to Teachers College, he spent nearly two decades in Morocco as an educator, first with the Ministry of National Education and later at an American overseas school in the capital, Rabat. At Teachers College, Dr. Cristillo teaches courses on education and development in the Middle East and Muslim world. He is also the principal investigator of a three-year study funded by the Ford Foundation to explore the impact of schooling on religiosity and civic identity of Muslim teens in NYC public schools. Dr. Cristillo is editing a forthcoming volume on Muslims in New York City.