Pant Leg Pedagogy: Context and Conflict at Tafsīr Islamic Academy

ABSTRACT

Hermeneutical religious positions among Muslim educators vary in flexibility and openness to critical thought. Those within a school community may disagree on how Islam should be interpreted and practiced. In the light of this, who determines which expressions of the faith are acceptable in particular locations, and how? And what messages do these processes send to students? Based on 18 months of ethnographic research at a K-12 Islamic school in the midwestern United States, this paper describes conflict-ridden instances in which school faculty subtly communicated interpretive norms through implication or example. These demonstrate select ways that distinct approaches to Islam were constructed and contested within the community.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamic school
• muslim education
• ethnography
• hidden curriculum
• hermeneutics
• interpretation

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the Tafsīr community members for their enduring hospitality. Thank you also to my anonymous reviewers, whose comments helped to greatly improve the organization, focus, and content of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Though this reference is male-centred, there are several reasons for its inclusion. One is its aesthetic and potentially memorable (and therefore itself pedagogical) quality. Another is that the topic emerged from my participants, among whom I encountered no equivalent focus on female attire. Lastly, while copious attention has been paid in western media and academic literature to Muslim women’s clothing – enough to be termed a ‘Western obsession’ (Alexander 2016, 8) – Muslim men’s clothing has remained relatively unexamined.

2. Such rulings are based on Qawl, Muhammad’s words, Fi’l, his actions, and Taqrir, his ‘tacit approvals’, which can include actions performed in his presence that he did not condemn (Duderija 2011, 317).

3. While most of my interviewees were female (N=13), males are disproportionately represented in the study. This was not intentional, nor do I presume that hermeneutical conflict has an intrinsically gendered dimension. My attempts to account for this imbalance are speculative. While at Tafsīr, I prayed in the men’s section of the mosque, was most often approached in conversation by men, and as a matter of adab (etiquette) socialised primarily with male participants. Despite formally having interviewed more women than men, I spent much more time with the latter.

4. This adds up to 21 because one of the full-time teachers was also a former student, and so is listed twice.

5. The TIC is an organisation closely affiliated with TIA dedicated to fostering a sense of belonging and providing support to the local Muslim population. The boundaries between TIA and the TIC are porous and at times seemed non-existent, such that the two organisations were often referred to collectively as ‘Tafsīr.’ Their buildings are connected, they share a common mosque and parking lot, and the leaders of each exhibited unmistakable influence over the norms and activities of the other. A line sharply differentiating the two would be artificially imposed.

6. We can add to this list the TIA male students whose school uniforms cover their ankles. This includes practically all of them, save the very few who cut or roll their pant legs.