Political discourses on educational justice and Muslims in the UK

In the volatile context created by Islamist attacks, counter-terrorism policies and anti-Islam populism, the education of Muslims has gained increasing prominence in UK political discourses. This report examines how different stakeholders (Muslim and non-Muslim civil society organisations, activists, school representatives or administrators, state agencies, politicians, think tanks and teachers) understand related problems and solutions through various dimensions and scales of educational justice. It shows that disagreements on the adequacy of specific policies or practices are often linked to the relative emphasis placed on redistribution, recognition, representation and other dimensions of justice, all of which can be upheld or undermined by social relations taking place at family, local, regional, national and other scales.

The report builds on qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis of 46 documents written between 2007 and 2018 as well as four semi-structured interviews. Documents were identified through snowballing from recent academic literature addressing Muslim education, with a view to covering the widest possible range of actors involved in political debates. Interviews lasted approximately an hour and served to delve into recurring themes. They were conducted in person, audio-recorded and fully transcribed. All sources were then imported into NVivo and iteratively coded into three discursive frames (‘social cohesion’, ‘culture’ and ‘values’) and sub-sections (definition of the frame, problems and solutions).

Findings suggest that Muslim education is most frequently interpreted through the lens of recognition. This is particularly evident in the discursive frames of social cohesion, promoting inter-group respect and the fight against prejudice, and values, which insist on the centrality of anti-discrimination in the British ethos. Redistribution and representation play a more significant role in the frame of culture, where student poverty and insufficient school funding are portrayed as important obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge that is necessary to participate in paid work and democratic politics. However, these dimensions are overshadowed by aesthetic considerations that revolve around the subjective aspirations of Muslim families and may be characterised as concerns of socio-cultural reproduction. Despite the acknowledgment of a link between Muslim poverty, area-based admissions and school segregation, few stakeholders explicitly link Muslim education to issues of class and economic policy. Across all frames, the perceived scale of social processes generating injustice is blurry and contested. Social cohesion discourses sometimes inadvertently shift from the national to the local, and the value discourse mobilises global principles but characterises them as British. Scale-related discrepancies are especially salient in the frame of culture, where the aspiration to provide all students with a ‘broad and balanced curriculum’ nationwide is tempered by the willingness to give Muslim families an education that caters to their specific preferences. Beyond references to international migration, European and global processes are seldom mentioned in UK educational debates. Sex-specific policies and practices frequently constitute a flashpoint of conflict between various dimensions and scales of justice, situating female Muslim students at the centre of an ideological battlefield where the advocates of gender, national and religious recognition/reproduction seek to assert moral and political authority.