The Muslim Community and Education in Quebec: Controversies and Mutual Adaptation

In this article, the author first deals with an overview of the socio-demographic characteristics of the Muslim community in Canada, especially in Quebec, and of its educational experiences in Quebec schools. She then analyzes in more depth three important controversies that have targeted the Muslim community in the last 20 years, respectively, regarding the teaching of Arabic at the end of the 1980s, the wearing of the Muslim veil in the mid-1990s and the wider reasonable accommodation debate, which did not specifically target it, in 2007–2008. In the third part based on a major survey of Quebec schools, she, nevertheless, argues that to some extent, these controversies have permitted to foster, to a certain degree, the adaptation of public schools to Muslim students’ needs.