To Ease Fears, US Muslim Schools Reach Out to Neighbors

TEHRAN (IQNA) – The Council of Islamic Schools in North America will ask its 78 accredited or member schools, located across 24 US states, to arrange meetings between their own students and those at other, non-Muslim schools.

Americans are more likely to view Muslims, who make up 1 percent of the US population, as extremists if they do not know one personally, according to a February poll by the Pew Research Center. 

The same survey found that 60 percent of Americans who know a Muslim believe there is little or no support among them for extremism but only 48 percent of those who do not know a Muslim believe that.

In an effort to overcome that perception, the Council of Islamic Schools in North America, the nation's only accrediting agency for Muslim schools, is changing its curriculum. It will ask its 78 accredited or member schools, located across 24 U.S. states, to arrange meetings between their own students and those at other, non-Muslim schools.

People in this country, they want to know about Muslims, they want to know what's going on inside Islamic schools," said CISNA Director Sufia Azmat, Reuters reported.

The Council is asking its educators to launch more volunteer projects outside the Muslim community, attend local government meetings and create a database of alumni to track their graduates' success.

The move comes at a time when Muslims are under intense scrutiny, largely the result of extremist attacks carried out in the name of Islam in the United States and abroad.

The details of the US Islamic schools' new curriculum are still being hammered out, but the purpose is clear, CISNA's Azmat said: "Be open to outsiders."