U.S. Islamic Schools’ Promotion of Physical Education and Physical Activity

Abstract

Among Muslims, the states of spiritual well-being and physical health complement each other and should be developed in youth. Regular physical activity (PA) in childhood is associated with multiple health benefits immediately and persisting into adulthood. Schools are ideal venues for children to be physically active owing to curricular (i.e., physical education [PE]), co-curricular (i.e., recess, classroom activity breaks), and extracurricular (i.e., intramural and interscholastic sports) opportunities. Most schools utilize websites to convey and promote information about what they feel is important
for website visitors to know. Previous studies on how PE/PA are promoted on school websites excluded U.S. Islamic schools. Therefore, we conducted a content analysis of 222 U.S. Islamic schools’ websites to determine the prevalence of images and verbiage promoting PE/PA and associated characteristics. Our descriptive findings suggest that PE/PA are emphasized less compared with other subject matter: PE was mentioned on 53% of websites, intramurals on 29%, and interscholastic sports on 21%. Thus, the holistic education of children in the Islamic tradition may be compromised.