Music Education and Muslims By Diana Harris (Stoke on Trent, UK and Sterling, USA: Trentham Books, 2006. 149 pages.)

Abstract

Diana Harris presents her research on teaching music to Muslim students in
the United Kingdom. She argues that music educators have to take into
account that music is a sensitive issue formanyMuslims. The fact that music
education is compulsory for British pupils until the age of fourteen presents
an ethical dilemma for those who, for religious reasons, do not feel comfortable
participating in music classes.With this book, the author intends to help state schoolteachers understand the history and position of music in Islamand
help teachers in state and independent Islamic schools provide music classes
that their students might find more acceptable.
Harris has drawn upon her extensive experience as a music educator in
the United Kingdom at schools where the pupils have been predominantly
Muslim. Her other sources include interviews conducted between 1999-
2005; participant-observation fieldwork undertaken at schools in the United
Kingdom, Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey; and scholarly sources concerning
music and Islam. Harris stresses that she has tried to approach this topic as
delicately as possible, and that in her capacity as a music teacher, she would
never force her pupils to participate in activities that run counter to their personal
beliefs. How the musical components of the national curriculum (performing,
composing, listening, and appraising) are to be achieved depends
upon the individual teacher, who can, therefore, tailor classes to the needs of
specific pupils ...