Muslim Mums Speak: Will Schools Listen?

In public debate, the Muslim mum is frequently spoken about, almost never listened to directly. When someone like Nilofer says, “I’m a Muslim and a mum … and there’s a responsibility of not just raising children but raising them in a certain way,” she is just describing daily life. Her words point to something schools often miss: when they talk about “parents”, they rarely think of a Muslim mum who carries responsibilities in this life and, from here perspective, also in the next.

The Preface, Introduction and Chapter 7 (“Narrative bridges”) of her book offer a rich starting point for anyone who wants real partnership with Muslim families. They show why Muslim mothers’ voices matter, how school–home communication really works, and what changes when we begin with lived experience instead of headlines and stereotypes.

Hearing from a Muslim mum

Din is very clear about where she stands. She writes as an adult educator, an English teacher, a member of a faith community and a mother of three children educated in the state sector. In other words, she writes as a professional and as a Muslim mum herself.

Instead of pretending these roles can be separated, she acknowledges that they overlap all the time – in staffrooms, in community projects, in her own kitchen. That overlap helped her notice how rarely Muslim mothers appear in research and policy on schooling, even in areas where most parents at the school gate are a Muslim mum juggling pushchairs, homework and dinner.

Years of Family Learning work in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and two decades in faith-based programmes with Muslim mothers and teenage girls, showed the same pattern: deep commitment to education from mothers whose perspectives were almost absent from public debate.

Her response is this book. Din describes it as an attempt to “open a window” on the thoughts, struggles and contributions of Muslim mothers, and to build a “vocal bridge” between those mothers and the school world. She starts with narrative – what each Muslim mum actually says – and only then brings in theory as a way of making sense of their words.

Meeting the school gate

One of Din’s most useful insights for practitioners is about where communication actually happens.

Schools tend to focus on official channels: newsletters, emails, parents’ evenings, formal meetings. But Din reminds us of the unnamed, “grey” spaces where a Muslim mum often feels safest to speak honestly:

a conversation at the classroom door
a quick word in the car park
a chat during a school fête
or even a chance meeting in the supermarket, when a worried Muslim mum stops someone she trusts and “tells all”.

These informal spaces grow when there are barriers – real or perceived – between home and school. They can become spaces of inclusion and trust, or of rumour and confusion. Which one they become depends on the wider climate around particular families.

Din shares striking examples. In one staff training, a teacher seriously asks whether Muslim children are allowed to touch vegetables – almost certainly based on a mistranslated instruction passed on by a child. In another story, a friend is introduced to a class simply as “the Muslim”, and children ask whether Muslims wear shoes, have sofas, eat chips or brush their teeth.

In both cases, the Muslim mum is framed as fundamentally “other” before she has said a word. For Din, this shows how easily a void of unfamiliarity around Islam and Muslim families gets filled with whatever is “in the air”: media stories, political rhetoric, casual comments. Her book tries to reduce that void so that a Muslim mum is no longer a mystery, but a recognisable partner.

Focussing on Muslim mothers

The mothers in Din’s study stand at the crossroads of several inequalities: they are women, they are visibly or invisibly identified as Muslim, many belong to racialised minorities, and a significant number live in socio-economically disadvantaged areas.

At the same time, Muslim children are the largest minority faith presence in schools in England and Wales. Yet the image of the Muslim mum in public debate often appears only in the context of risk – radicalisation, “integration problems”, honour-based violence – not in the context of everyday care and educational support.

Focusing on mothers rather than “parents” in general is also deliberate. Across cultures, it is usually a Muslim mum who:

does the school run
deals with homework and forgotten PE kits
talks to teachers
responds to behaviour concerns
and carries the emotional load of school life.

Fathers matter, but if we want to understand how home–school relationships actually work, we need to listen to the people who stand at the classroom door – and, in her particular context, that is overwhelmingly Muslim mums answering the end-of-day questions.

Din also refuses to treat “Muslim mothers” as one type. Her 53 participants differ sharply in education, work experience, migration histories, language and class. Some are highly educated professionals; others have had very little formal schooling. What they share is a concern for schooling and a willingness to talk about it.

An average week

Chapter 7, “Narrative bridges”, opens with a topic that appears again and again in interviews and focus groups: mosque and madrassah education.

When asked about “education” broadly, mothers naturally include:

after-school Qur’an classes
weekend madrassahs
informal lessons at home or in community centres.

For a Muslim mum, these are not peripheral extras. They are central spaces where children learn to read Qur’anic Arabic, memorise passages, absorb basic Islamic knowledge, form friendships and develop a sense of belonging.

The mothers talk about very practical issues:

How many evenings a week is realistic before exhaustion sets in?
How do we ensure children can still enjoy school trips that clash with madrassah?
What happens when a one-off enrichment activity requires flexibility from the mosque timetable?

Din notes that mosque education often has a different pedagogy – more emphasis on memorisation and recitation – and that safeguarding and teacher training vary widely. Yet she also shows a sector in change: more UK-educated teachers, clearer policies, DBS checks, and structured safeguarding in many settings.

Against this complex reality stand stubborn stereotypes. One participant, Parveen, describes colleagues who “hate the fact that kids go off to mosque” and talk as if madrassah time is automatically a barrier to homework or, worse, a risk for radicalisation – often on the basis of a brief “radicalisation” training.

To reframe this, Din uses the language of parental capital. For many families, a Muslim mum sends her children to mosque or madrassah as a way of investing in their spiritual and educational future, just as other parents pay for music lessons or tutoring. It is a form of cultural and social capital, not proof of disinterest in school.

For schools and parent organisations, this suggests a different question: not “How do we stop children going to mosque so they can do homework?”, but “How can we understand, and where possible connect with, the supplementary education that matters to the Muslim mum and her children?”

The parent – teacher partnership

When Din asks what would improve communication, some mothers move straight to behaviour. They are not calling for tougher sanctions, but for earlier, more honest conversations.

In one focus group, mothers with older children talk about sons who ended up “on the streets” or excluded from school. Looking back, they feel there were early signs in primary and lower secondary school that could have led to support – but concerns were only raised at parents’ evening, when it felt “too late”. For each Muslim mum in that group, the pain of hindsight is clear.

Zarah, who has worked in education for over twenty years, shares a different story from her work with newly arrived Somali families. Two boys were repeatedly removed from class as disruptive. After she visited their homes, talked to parents and listened carefully, she found that one child had never experienced formal schooling before and the other had a serious back injury. Once the school understood this and parents received more information about classroom routines, the “disruption” label no longer made sense.

Here, behaviour is not an isolated problem belonging to the child or the teacher. It is a shared concern located in relationships between families, schools and wider conditions such as war, migration, trauma and poverty. Communication that includes the Muslim mum as an expert on her own child, rather than as a problem to be managed, can prevent misunderstandings from hardening into permanent labels.

Community as cultural wealth

Towards the end of Chapter 7, Din connects these stories to the idea of “community cultural wealth”. Instead of asking who “lacks” capital, this approach asks whose knowledge, skills and networks are recognised as valuable.

For many Muslim families, schools fail to see the resources already present:

multilingual skills
transnational family networks
experience of navigating complex systems
strong faith-based commitments to learning and service.

Some of the schools in Din’s research are already tapping into this. She highlights examples of:

eco-projects where parents and children work together on gardening or recycling
arts and crafts activities that draw on traditions from different countries
celebrations around Eid and other festivals that move beyond “exotic food days” to shared stories, fashion, music and creativity.

These activities are not distractions from academic work. They create low-pressure spaces where a Muslim mum – or any parent who feels intimidated by formal curriculum sessions – can show up, contribute skills and be recognised as a partner.

What this means for schools and parents

So what could schools and individual practitioners learn from what each Muslim mum in this research has to say? Several messages stand out.

First, start with listening. Muslim mothers’ narratives are not sentimental extras; they are a form of evidence. Before we design policies or projects “for” them, we need to hear how school feels from their side of the gate.

Second, differentiate faith and culture. Many mothers insist that some difficulties in families are about poverty, violence or cultural expectations – not Islam as a religion. Staff training should help teachers make those distinctions, not collapse everything into “Muslim beliefs”.

Third, recognise mosque and madrassah as part of the educational ecosystem. A Muslim mum who sends her child to Qur’an class is not necessarily rejecting school; she is often seeking a complementary education. Where local conditions allow, respectful dialogue and practical coordination can turn potential tensions into partnership.

Fourth, value the “grey spaces” of everyday contact. The short chats in corridors, car parks and community rooms often carry the most honest questions and concerns. A teacher who takes five minutes to talk to a Muslim mum at the gate may prevent months of mistrust.

Finally, lighten the burden of “authenticating”. If every Muslim mum has to prove at every step that she is a good parent and a “safe” citizen, engagement will always be fragile. Clear signals – in language, images, policies and everyday behaviour – that Muslim parents are recognised and respected part of the of the school community can make a profound difference.

The last pages of Din’s chapter describe Amaal, a Somali mother whose life has been shaped by war, migration, gender expectations and a powerful commitment to education. She has funded siblings through university across continents while cleaning, caring and raising children in London, and she still dreams of becoming a nurse herself.

Her story is a reminder that behind every label – “Muslim parent”, “refugee family”, “hard-to-reach community” – stands a Muslim mum or dad with a complex history, sacrifices and hopes. If we want more equitable and humane schools, we cannot treat those lives as background noise. They are part of the curriculum of democracy.

Suma Din’s work is an invitation to cross the “narrative bridges” that mothers are already building, to meet each Muslim mum halfway, and to re-imagine parent–school partnerships not as a checklist, but as a shared journey built on stories, respect and trust.