Muslim schools in Australia : development and transition

As a minority religious group in Australia, Muslims, since first arriving in the country, have been concerned about the education and future of their children. As new arrivals, Muslims placed a priority on securing employment for themselves, but at the same time held grave concerns about the preservation of religious identity and culture. The project of building Muslim schools in Australia has been driven by Muslim enthusiasm for a refined religious identity and the need to preserve Islamic cultural traditions in a plural secular society. The philosophical underpinnings of this nascent approach were to make Muslim schools places for Islamic practices, the nurturing of an Islamic ethos, the inculcation of Islamic moral and ethical behaviour, the preservation of Islamic culture, the Islamisation of knowledge and the production of "good" Muslims in whom rested the representation and the future of Islam in Australia. This chapter argues that this transformation and transition has made Muslim schools spaces for commercial activities and in the process rendered Islamic education itself a commercial transaction.