Tara Bahrampour
The Washington Post
2/21/2010
…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 a half an hour a day, one-on-one, with a woman who teaches them online from Pakistan.
“If they were going to school, we could never do that,” Maqsood Khan said. “You spend any number of hours at school, you’re tired, your brain is full and you don’t want to spend hours with Islamic studies. But now it’s part of their curriculum; we made it part of their time.”
The food incident
The Khans decided to home-school four years ago after a kindergarten teacher, unaware of the religious issues, told their son that he could not refuse school food in favor of the Islamic-sanctioned food he had brought from home. The food incident was small, but it highlighted the issues many Muslims say their children face every day as minorities who don’t celebrate Christmas, Halloween or birthday parties, who don’t eat pork and who fast during Ramadan…
The entire article is at the Washington Post.
