In Search of Dignity: Discursive Practices at an Islamic Saturday School

• In Event: Reenvisioning Educational Experiences: Lessons From (Im)migrant Communities

Abstract

Scholarly discussions around (im)migrants’ education have often conceptualized education and learning as a gateway to integration. This emblematic association often ignores the violence hidden within pedagogical approaches whose end goals are often the erasure of native and ethnic conceptions of learning, education, and even the very existence of the learners themselves. Stripping individuals off of their traditions, languages, and values often impacts their sense of dignity. Diminished senses of dignity has been a common narrative within the history of the United States especially within language policies that have advocated for English as the official language of education (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Hartman, 2003; Macedo, 2000). Yet, constrained realization of dignity does not always take place within educational spaces. It is often initiated within the public sphere through various anti-immigrant rhetoric leading to jeopardizing immigrant communities’ sense of dignity and social belonging. As education scholars we’ve often examined these processes within public school settings (Abu El-haj, 2015; Garcia-Sanchez, 2014; Sarroub, 2005). Yet, immigrant communities’ educational involvement, especially as it relates to their cultural preservation, as a response to such rhetoric have often been understudied. I address this gap by examining how a community of young Muslim Americans in an Islamic ethics class attempt engage in discursive practice of debating to confront challenges of being misrepresented.

Muslim Americans have long been a target of anti-immigration and Islamophobic propaganda. Scholars have examined effects of such rhetoric on young Muslim Americans’ sense of belonging and participation within the larger society (Abu El-Haj, 2015; Sarroub, 2005). Yet a close examination of their communities’ responses, as embedded within cultural and religious education, have been left out (Read & Hussain, 2018). In this paper I argue that sociocultural marginalization of American Muslims have resulted in a diminished sense of dignity. I build on social interactional and discourse analytic frameworks in order to advance my argument and examine how these young Muslims make sense of their place within the larger American society, and prepare to respond to attacks on their ways of knowing and being.

The paper draws on ethnographic data collected through a multi-year fieldwork at an Islamic cultural center in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. More specifically, I use ethnographic microanalysis (Erickson, 1992) to examine the potential of debating as a discursive practice where students develop a new sense of self-awareness. Findings from this study encourages us to rethink our educational practices and pay particular attention to both the context where our students are learning and the potential lessons we can learn from immigrant communities.

Author

• Maryam Moeini Meybodi, University of California , Berkeley