Every Muslim parent faces the same crossroads: public school, Islamic school, or homeschool — and the stakes are far higher than grades or extracurriculars. This episode of The Deen Show brings together host Eddie and guest Zohra Sarwari — author, entrepreneur, Muslim life coach, and mother of three homeschooled children — to tackle the question that shapes the next generation of believers: where should we send our children, and what are we really sending them into? With her MBA, her personal experience as a refugee child navigating American public schools from age six, and years coaching women and families in the Islamic principles of purposeful living, Zohra offers something rare: lived testimony fused with practical guidance rooted in tawakkul — trusting Allah (SWT) while acting with full responsibility for the amanah He has placed in our hands.
What the Data — and Personal Experience — Reveal About Public Schooling and Faith
Zohra spent her entire childhood in the American public school system and was thirty years old before she truly found her way back to Islam — a delay shaped by an environment where faith had no place and peer pressure filled the vacuum. That personal journey sits behind her most urgent warning for Muslim parents today: approximately 80% of children who attend public school lose their religion, regardless of whether they are Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or Hindu. The moral atmosphere of many public institutions, shaped by media saturation, the institutional separation of God from daily life, and unchecked peer influence — bullying, promiscuity, profanity, and in extreme cases drugs and gang violence as early as third grade — creates a steady current pulling children away from the guidance Allah has given us. Zohra also trialled an Islamic private school for her daughter and found it structurally sound — quality teachers, an Islamic framework — but observed that children whose parents were not living the deen at home were importing harmful behaviours and media influences into the school, affecting families who were doing everything right. The conclusion was inescapable: the school is never the only variable, and no institution can substitute for a home grounded in Islam. Scholars such as Dr. Bilal Philips and Sheikh Yusuf Estes have used stark language to describe what is lost when Muslim children are raised without spiritual grounding — language meant not to shame parents but to awaken the urgency this decision deserves.
“Eighty percent of children who go to public school lose their religion — it doesn’t matter if they’re Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Hindu. They lose their religion. And so going into that thinking, basically if you’re sending your child, you already know that 80% of them will not have their deen.” — Zohra Sarwari
Homeschooling, Righteous Parenting, and Raising Children as Sadaqah Jariyah
The homeschooling movement is no fringe pursuit — roughly 10% of American families now educate their children at home, making it a rapidly growing billion-dollar sector, and the trend spans every faith tradition as parents of all backgrounds recognise that schools are no longer producing the character they need. From an Islamic standpoint, the motivations run deeper still. The very first word revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was Iqra — Read — and Zohra has taken that command seriously: her five-year-old has read over 1,100 books, her six-year-old over 16,700, and her ten-year-old over 2,400. History validates the model: Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and James Madison were all homeschooled. Edison’s own teacher dismissed him as ineducable — his mother refused to accept that verdict and changed the world. Practical takeaways from Zohra’s approach that any family can begin implementing include:
- Begin with sincere intention (niyyah): The decision to protect and educate your child starts with the genuine resolve to give them the best moral, intellectual, and spiritual foundation available.
- Fill your own gaps honestly: If Arabic or Quranic studies are outside your expertise, hire a qualified teacher to come into your home — you still control the environment and the curriculum.
- Replace screens with books: Reading builds creativity, empathy, and critical thinking in ways passive media never can. Curated, purposeful books — including stories of the Prophets — connect children to faith in a visceral, emotional way no screen matches.
- Live the deen 24 hours a day: Islamic school, private school, or homeschool — none of it compensates for a home where parents are not actively practising. Children absorb what they live, not what they are occasionally told.
- Think in terms of the Hereafter: A righteous child who continues to pray, recite Quran, and serve humanity after your death is one of three deeds that outlast this life — a continuous charity, sadaqah jariyah.
- Prevention is the Islamic imperative: Waiting until problems emerge at sixteen or eighteen means paying an enormous cure for a wound that did not have to exist. Early, intentional investment in character is the surest protection — as the wisdom goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
“When my child turns 18, what do I want from them? They are an investment — in this world and for the Hereafter. If we want that benefit when we die, we need to raise them to be able to pray, to recite Quran, to be pious and humble, and to be a servant to Allah and to help all of mankind.” — Zohra Sarwari
The choice between public school, private school, Islamic school, and homeschooling is ultimately a question of tarbiyah — the comprehensive, spiritually grounded upbringing that Islam calls every parent to provide. No institution, however excellent, can substitute for a home saturated with the remembrance of Allah, purposeful reading, honest conversation, and parents who model the faith they wish to pass on. As Zohra’s own journey illustrates — from a refugee child who quietly lost her deen in the American school system to a mother raising children who instinctively lower their gaze and catch themselves before backbiting — the transformation is entirely possible, but it begins with us, not with the school we choose. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) taught that every child is born in a state of fitrah, a natural inclination toward truth and goodness; it is the environment we create that determines what that fitrah becomes. May Allah (SWT) grant every Muslim parent the wisdom, the will, and the tawfiq to raise a generation that carries the light of Islam — not just through adulthood, but into eternity.
