In light of the growing phenomenon of Islamic schools in the United States and Europe, this compelling study outlines whether these schools share similar traits with other religious schools, while posing new challenges to education policy. Merry elaborates an ideal type of Islamic philosophy of education in order to examine the specific challenges that Islamic schools face, comparing the different educational realities facing Muslim populations in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States.

This volume represents a rich multi-disciplinary contribution to an expanding literature on citizenship, identity, and education in a variety of majority and minority Muslim communities. Among its aims is to establish the theoretical possibility of a philosophically and doctrinally plausible overlapping consensus between Islam and democracy, to identify respect for difference as one critical component of that
overlapping consensus, and to examine a range of Islamic educational practices in various socio-historical contexts. Accordingly, each of these essays offers important insights into the various ways one may identify with, and participate in, different democratic and democratizing societies to which Muslims belong.

There is much evidence to suggest that segregation creates and sustains inequality, and undermines the social trust necessary for shared citizenship. Yet in this highly original study the idea that integration is the only or even the best remedy for these ills is forthrightly challenged. Carefully framing his analysis using the political principles of liberty, equality and citizenship, and attentive to the contextual realities for minority groups on both sides of the Atlantic, Michael Merry challenges many of our most cherished and time-honored beliefs in integration. Defending a circumscribed notion of 'voluntary separation', Merry argues that for many stigmatized groups it is not 'integration' but rather an imaginative, pragmatic and organized response to the terms of one's segregated experience that may facilitate possibilities to pursue important forms of equality and to cultivate civic virtues that promote the good of one's community.

In light of the growing phenomenon of Islamic schools in the United States and Europe, this compelling study outlines whether these schools share similar traits with other religious schools, while posing new challenges to education policy. Merry elaborates an ideal type of Islamic philosophy of education in order to examine the specific challenges that Islamic schools face, comparing the different educational realities facing Muslim populations in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United States.

Merry argues that most voluntary separation experiments in education are not driven by a sense of racial, cultural or religious superiority. Rather, they are driven among other things by a desire for quality education, not to mention community membership and self respect.