The Abandoned Foundation-Building Immersion Arabic Programs from Pre-School to Islamic Schools
The Abandoned Foundation — Early Childhood Education and the Resource Crisis
Educators know that early childhood education represents perhaps the most critical years in preparing children for success, yet Muslim communities across the United States face a devastating resource gap in these foundational years. Between birth and age five, children’s brains are in their most flexible state, uniquely suited to learn languages, develop executive function, and establish the neural pathways that will shape their entire lives. This is when neuroplasticity is at its peak, when exposure to multiple languages literally changes brain structure, increasing grey matter in areas responsible for memory, attention, and cognitive control.
Spanish immersion preschools (representing 80% of all dual language immersion programs) continue to expand across the US having grown from 300 programs in 2005 to more than 3000 schools today. Mandarin immersion programs (nearly 400 schools nationwide), and French immersion options (173 programs across 34 states), it is almost impossible to find an Arabic immersion daycare, let alone a bilingual Islamic preschool.
Despite Arabic becoming the fastest-growing language in the United States, with Arabic-speaking English learners rising to become the second-largest group in K-12 schools nationwide—their numbers increasing 75 percent to reach 122,000 students by 2017 and 130,900 by 2021—there are virtually no Arabic dual language immersion programs in the country. The first Arabic dual immersion program, New York City’s Khalil Gibran International Academy, opened in 2007 but was systematically destroyed through coordinated Islamophobic attacks that forced the founding principal to resign and led to the dismantling of its dual-language curriculum. Eight years later, when Houston’s Arabic Immersion Magnet School opened in 2015 as one of the few Arabic dual immersion programs to survive, the principal was met by protesters waving American flags and Islamophobic signs.
Meanwhile, research demonstrates that bilingual children consistently outperform monolingual peers on tasks related to executive functioning including attention control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Studies at Cornell’s Language Acquisition Lab show that children who learn a second language can maintain attention despite outside stimuli better than children who know only one language. A 2004 Michigan State University study found that bilingual youth were more successful at complex problem-solving tasks, suggesting the bilingual experience strengthens the brain’s command center. Learning a second language can even protect against Alzheimer’s, delaying the disease by an average of four years compared to monolinguals.
Yet Muslim families have almost no access to these scientifically-proven early childhood models. We lack Arabic immersion daycares. We lack halal food options in existing childcare centers. We lack early childhood programs rooted in the worldview of Islam. We are forced to choose between secular programs that ignore our values or underfunded, makeshift arrangements that barely survive.
The Rose Garden: Bridging Islamic Pedagogy and Arabic Immersion in the Bay Area
In Fremont, California, The Rose Garden represents a quietly revolutionary approach to early childhood Islamic education—one that understands what mainstream American educational institutions refuse to acknowledge: that language acquisition happens most naturally in the first years of life, and that Arabic immersion for Muslim children is not a luxury but a necessity for accessing their own spiritual and intellectual heritage.
Founded by Sana Jalili, who was trained in both Western progressive methodologies and classical Islamic pedagogical traditions, The Rose Garden operates as an urban farm preschool where “the classroom is an urban farm and falling in love with Allah leads the way.” This is not the sterile, factory-model Islamic school copied from public education. Instead, it represents a return to an older, more holistic vision, one where children learn Arabic not as a foreign language class squeezed between math and science, but as the living language of their faith, taught outdoors among Allah’s signs in creation.
The founder’s credentials reveal a deliberate synthesis of East and West. As shown in their curriculum overview, the program integrates training from the Muslim world—including Prophetic Tarbiyyah studied in Syria and Jordan, the An-Nur curriculum by Maha Shahada, and critically, the Hud Hud Arabic immersion curriculum, with Western progressive education models including Waldorf training, AMS Montessori certification, and Islamic pedagogy frameworks developed by scholars like Recep Senturk.
The Global Arabic Immersion Model
What makes The Rose Garden’s approach significant is its connection to a broader global movement of Arabic immersion education that has flourished in places like Turkey and Syria, even as it has been systematically suppressed in the United States. While American Muslim communities struggle with virtually no Arabic dual language immersion programs, educators in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and other parts of the Muslim world have developed sophisticated Arabic immersion models specifically designed for young children.
The Hud Hud curriculum, which The Rose Garden’s founder studied directly with its developers, represents one of these models. The Hud Hud immersion model is a part of a tradition of Arabic immersion pedagogy that has been refined in places like Damascus, Amman, and Istanbul, cities where Arabic language education for children has never been seen as controversial or threatening, but rather as natural and necessary.
In Turkey, even amid the Syrian refugee crisis, educators recognized the importance of maintaining Arabic language instruction for children. Temporary education centers established for Syrian refugee children utilized Arabic as the medium of instruction while also teaching Turkish, understanding that bilingualism strengthens rather than weakens children’s cognitive development. These programs, documented by UNICEF and Turkish education authorities, demonstrated that it is entirely possible to create thriving Arabic immersion environments even in non-Arabic speaking countries.
Qatar Foundation International: The Only Lifeline for Arabic Education in America
In a landscape where Arabic-speaking students represent the second-largest English learner population in U.S. K-12 schools, 130,900 students as of 2021, yet have access to fewer than 10 dual language immersion programs nationwide, one organization has emerged as virtually the sole institutional force working to expand Arabic language education: Qatar Foundation International (QFI).
Founded in 2009, QFI began Arabic language programs at partner high schools in Boston and Washington, D.C., expanding to support 22 schools in North America and 8 in Brazil by 2015, reaching over 2,100 students, with programs in 29 jurisdictions across the United States and Canada. Based in Washington, DC, QFI is an educational organization committed to advancing Arabic language teaching and learning, supporting innovative, research-based Arabic language programs in state-funded primary and secondary schools to increase access to Arabic instruction for educators and students around the world, currently operating in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This support extends beyond funding to include comprehensive infrastructure development for Arabic education: teacher training and certification programs, classroom enrichment grants, professional development workshops, Arabic teacher councils in major cities, and student exchanges to Qatar. QFI’s support proved critical in helping establish some of the few Arabic dual language immersion programs that have survived, including programs in New York City and Houston—coming years after the nation’s first Arabic dual language program, Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy, was destroyed through coordinated Islamophobic attacks in 2007.
The Houston Model: QFI’s Flagship Investment
QFI contributed $85,000 to Houston Independent School District to help train teachers and develop curriculum for the Arabic Immersion Magnet School, which opened in 2015, having previously provided funding to HISD for Arabic programs at Lee High School and Bellaire High School. The school represented a critical milestone, one of the first Arabic dual language immersion programs to survive in a post-Khalil Gibran era.
According to QFI Executive Director Maggie Mitchell Salem, the foundation’s mission aligns with HISD’s goal: “to prepare students as global citizens,” arguing that “this isn’t just a nice thing to do. It’s a necessary thing to do. To be internationally competitive, students have to understand how to work in different environments.” She pointed out that Arabic is the fourth most popular language in the world and the third most common language in HISD after English and Spanish.
Learning from Indigenous Resilience: The Hummingbird Model
To understand what a values-rooted, community-centered approach to supporting families during these critical early years looks like, we can learn from Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services in Seattle. Founded in 2018 by clinical social worker and Indigenous doula Camie Jae Goldhammer, Hummingbird launched “The Nest” in August 2023—the first guaranteed income program in the United States specifically serving Native communities.
The program provides 150 pregnant Indigenous people (American Indian, Indigenous of the Americas, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander) with $1,250 per month, no strings attached, from pregnancy through their child’s third birthday. Families may receive as much as $45,000 by the time they exit the program. But The Nest is not just about money, it’s about restoring dignity, abundance, and traditional values in the face of genocidal policies.
“Abundance is a traditional cultural value that has been lost due to relocation and genocide,” explains Tia Yazzie, Abundance Auntie with Hummingbird. “The Nest supports families in reclaiming abundance for Indigenous families. Our relatives know that they are cherished, supported and entitled to a future filled with health and well-being. By providing guaranteed income, we are telling them that they are enough, that they are valuable by their very nature.”
The program exists because of stark realities: American Indian and Alaska Natives in Washington experience a maternal mortality rate seven to eight times greater than white people, with 80% of these deaths preventable. Six percent of King County’s Native population is homeless. Native infants die at rates more than three times the county average.
Hummingbird’s approach combines guaranteed income with doula services, home visits, lactation counseling, and community events that promote critical bonding time, all rooted in Indigenous culture, healing practices, and the spirit of abundance. This is structural intervention based on values, not just broken models of charity.
For Muslim communities, the lesson is clear, we need comprehensive support systems for families during pregnancy and the first three years of life. We need guaranteed income pilots for Muslim families. We need Arabic immersion preschools with halal food and Islamic values integration. We need doula services rooted in Islamic tradition. We need to stop accepting scraps and start building institutions that reflect the principle that every child is born in a state of fitrah and deserves to be nurtured in an environment that honors that sacred trust.
