Canadian Islamic Schools Unravelling the Politics of Faith, Gender, Knowledge, and Identity by Jasmin Zine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 369 pages.)

Abstract

Over the last two to three decades, a number of factors have ensured that
western Muslims and Islam have become socially and politically far more
embedded and visible in western liberal democracies. For example, a large
segment of new (post-1965) immigrant religious minority communities settling
in western liberal democracies, including Canada, are of the Muslim
faith. Moreover, an increasing number of educated, professional westernborn
Muslims consider, unlike their immigrant parents, their countries of
birth as their “home.” Furthermore, the politicization of Islam and the nature
of the current state of international affairs, in which issues pertaining to
Muslims and Islam often take central place, have highlighted the public
prominence of Islam and its adherents in theWest.
This situation has problematized and generated a number of debates
relating to the philosophical, religious, cultural, political, and social underpinnings
of western liberal societies vis-à-vis their Muslim community
constituency. In addition, it has induced several profound identity-related
questions pertaining to what it means to be “western” or “a westernMuslim”
or, for some, a “Muslim” in theWest. One aspect of this overall dynamic is
the question of the role and the function of faith-based Islamic schools
operating in western liberal democracies, as their numbers have mushroomed
over the last two decades ...