Organizer and Chair: Jacqueline Armijo-Hussein, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates

Discussant: Gail Minault, University of Texas at Austin

Although educating girls is now considered one of the most effective ways of improving the overall quality of life of villagers in developing countries, it has been an ideal valued by Muslims from the earliest days of Islam.  However, over the centuries in communities influenced by cultural practices surrounding purdah (female seclusion) the education of girls has often suffered.  Although in some regions of the Muslim world the tradition of educating girls has been maintained, in others, it is only recently that Muslims have sought to establish educational opportunities, often in the face of local resistance, by appealing to both development needs and traditional Islamic values.  This panel brings together historians and anthropologists, as well as scholars of religious studies and education, to examine educational opportunities provided for girls from a wide range of Muslim communities found in China, India, Indonesia, and Canada.

In the case of China, the Muslim community studied is the Hui, a minority group that has survived for centuries despite periods of severe government persecution.  In Indonesia, the focus of the study is the Minangkabau, a minority group in West Sumatra that is considered to be the largest matrilineal society in the world.  In the Old City of Hyderabad, India an education project has been developed for impoverished Muslim, Hindu, and Dalit girls. And finally, there is the case of Ismaili women who have settled in Canada after living in East Africa, and the role education has played in their lives.

These studies, all based on fieldwork and qualitative research, focus on the influence of education on gender, ethnicity, and religious identity formation, and the role of Muslim communities in supporting and developing educational opportunities for girls.

Lucy Whalley, US Army Corps of Engineers

The study of curricula and experience in educational institutions is a means to understand representations of religion, culture, and gender in society.  In the late 1980s, I studied private and public Muslim girl's education in West Sumatra, Indonesia to understand how women engage in and reproduce their identity as Muslims and Minangkabau. 

As ethnic Minangkabau, women inherit property; descent follows the female line from mother to daughter; and a husband was traditionally a visitor in his wife's house.  I discovered a rich tradition of educating Muslim girls to be virtuous women and productive citizens that began in West Sumatra in 1923 with the founding of the Diniyah Putri, a Muslim school for girls.  This presentation will reflect on Minangkabau Muslims' rationale for educating girls, 1980s national ideals on the education of women, and women's perspectives on their educational experience and being Minangkabau Muslims.  I will address how educating women created Muslim and Indonesian citizens in the 1980s and reproduced religion, culture, and gender in Minangkabau society.

Jacqueline Armijo-Hussein, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates

This research project documents the active role played by Muslim girls and young women in the revival of Islamic education and Chinese Muslim identity in China today. Many of the young women who attend the Islamic schools and colleges set up in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1976), go on to become teachers themselves, either working in Islamic schools that are already established or helping to establish new schools in poor and remote regions. Several recent graduates have also established Islamic preschools and after-schools for Muslim children. In China, the state maintains complete control over the curricula of all primary and secondary schools, therefore the Islamic classes offered in preschools, after-school programs, and during school vacations, represent an important means by which Muslim communities are reviving their religious identity.

These women speak clearly and confidently about the importance of Islam in their lives, their commitment to Islamic education, and their determination to educate others. One spoke of the fundamental role women played in society and the importance of the role of education; for as she put it, "educate a man, educate an individual; educate a woman, educate a nation." Sitting in a small village in a remote part of China, she listed the various ways in which a young girl's
education could have a major impact on the health and social well-being of her future children and grandchildren and the community at large. This research project also examines the early history of Muslim girl education in southwest China, as well as the potential impact of a growing number of Chinese Muslim young women choosing to further their religious studies at international Islamic universities overseas.

Danielle W Abraham, Harvard Divinity School

New initiatives in girls' education are emerging in the context of modern Indian Muslim women's movements. How do feminist projects and questions of Muslim identity mutually shape each other? How does India's uneven economic development affect access to educational resources? And how do women and girls advocate for their rights in the face of caste and religious polarization?  This paper presents an ethnographic case study of a resource center for women and girls in the Old City of Hyderabad. Five years ago, Muslim feminist poets (both Urdu and Telugu speaking) united with Hindu feminist lawyers to establish the Shaheen Resource Center in a slum area marked by communal riots. The girl students and staff reflect the diverse composition of local Muslim, Hindu, and Dalit settlements. Shaheen offers a range of nonformal education classes to promote income generation, as well as coaching and tutoring to support girls in formal education. It is both an alternative and complement to government and religious schools.

Shaheen organizers understand the Center as a space that links feminist politics, religious pluralism/communal harmony, and poverty alleviation in promoting holistic education. Organizers see such space dwindling as the gendered politics of communalism spawned by globalization intensifies. This paper analyzes the familial language of 'mothering' used by organizers to describe their relationship to the girls, and the conceptualization of 'mobility' as an alternative to purdah, to explore how girls contest and support the feminist, religious, and pluralist projects of the women organizers while seeking to mitigate the effects of their own deprivations.

Equal education for girls and boys has been a strong political priority in Turkey since the founding of the modern secular Republic in 1924. In many ways Turkey has been highly successful in educating girls, especially in the primary grades. But problems persist: women's literacy rates lag behind men's, and in many village settings and in conservative urban neighborhoods, girls are consistently underrepresented in schools in all grades. This paper will discuss the complex array of factors that contribute to the lag in girls' education in modern Turkey. These factors include: gender and religious (Muslim) ideology, economic issues, ethnic distinctions between students and teachers, and kinship pressures. I will also address some efforts from both the Turkish government and private groups to promote the education of girls at least through the primary grades.