Muslim parental school choice and the negotiation of religious identity and social belonging in Muslim-minority societies: narratives from suburban Maryland, the United States

Previous literature on Muslim parents’ school choice has highlighted the challenge of balancing secular and religious education in Muslim-minority contexts. However, little attention has been paid to understanding these dynamics through the lens of school-choice systems themselves. This study examined factors influencing Muslim parents’ school choices in suburban Maryland. Interviews with 14 participants from a private Islamic school were analysed using the Social Ecological Model and thematic analysis. Twelve themes emerged, illustrating how choices were shaped by school characteristics, reputations, the pursuit of religious and social identity, and temporal contexts. Results demonstrated that school-choice decisions are better understood as contextually embedded navigational strategies, in which school characteristics are evaluated through the lens of macrosystemic values around religious identity and social belonging. Parents sought schools balancing Islamic and secular education, yet divergent visions of what Islamic education should represent—particularly around de-ethnicised versus culturally particularistic interpretations—may also generate divisions among Islamic schools, suggesting that school-choice systems have the potential to reconfigure boundaries not only between Muslims and secular society, but also within the Muslim community itself.