On a chilly afternoon in western Loudoun County, a group of children used tweezers to extract rodent bones from a regurgitated owl pellet. A boy built a Lego projectile launcher. A girl practiced her penmanship. On the wall, placards read, "I fast in Ramadan," "I pay zakat" and "I will go on hajj."
Welcome to Priscilla Martinez's home -- and her children's school, where Martinez is teacher, principal and guidance counselor, and where the credo "Allah created everything" is taught alongside math, grammar and science.
Martinez and her six children, ages 2 to 12, are part of a growing number of Muslims' home schools. In the Washington area, Martinez says, the extent of Muslim home schooling has exploded in the past five years.
Although three-quarters of the nation's estimated 2 million home schoolers identify themselves as Christian, the number of Muslims is expanding "relatively quickly," compared with other groups, said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute.
They do so, he said, for the same reasons as non-Muslims: "Stronger academics, more family time, they want to guide social interaction, provide a safe place to learn and . . . teach them [their] values, beliefs and worldview."
Parents say it is an attractive alternative to public schools, with whose traditions and values they are not always comfortable, and Islamic schools, which might be too far away, cost too much or lack academic rigor.
If Muslims have come to embrace home schooling later than others, it might be in part because so many Muslims in the United States are immigrants who might not be aware of the option. In fact, for many immigrants, the idea of home schooling runs counter to their reasons for coming to America, which frequently include better educational opportunities for their children. And public school has long been seen as a key portal to assimilation.
When Sanober Yacoob arrived from Pakistan 13 years ago and began to home school her three children, she was the only immigrant she who was doing so. Others from Muslim countries "thought I was weird. One of them said to me, 'I hope you're not going to destroy yourself, and they will grow up ignorant.' "
Now, more are following in her footsteps, and many use the highly regarded Calvert curriculum for home-schoolers.
Maqsood and Zakia Khan of Sterling, who emigrated from Pakistan two decades ago, say home schooling has allowed them to enhance and internationalize their children's curriculum. Now, in addition to the standard subjects, their children, ages 15, 14 and 9, study the Koran for half an hour a day, one-on-one, with a female teacher who teaches them online from Pakistan.
