What are children being taught in the mosque? Turkish mosque education in the Netherlands

Abstract

Mosque education in Western countries has been a source of anxiety and speculations in the public debates about youth radicalization and the teaching practices of foreign imams. This research aims to contribute to this understudied field by presenting findings on the organization, objective of provision, learning goals, and curriculum content of mosque education provided by the largest Turkish Islamic communities in the Netherlands: Diyanet, Milli Görüş, and Süleymanlıs. The analysis is based on a diverse data: fieldwork notes, classroom observations at two of the mosques, interviews with imams, hocas (mosque teachers), and key stake-holders. The findings indicate that there is to a great extent overlap between objectives and the curriculum content of the mosque classes. The respondents underline the importance of teaching the children the five pillars of Islam, the life and teachings of the prophet Mohammad, and Islamic rules of behavioral conduct so that they learn “how to be a good Muslim”. However, besides providing education, mosque classes in all communities also aim at Islamic and Turkish identity building and advancement of the Turkish language skills of the students. The research discusses the implications of the findings and offers potential directions for future research.

Introduction

This paper seeks to explore a very scarcely studied academic area: mosque education followed by students with Muslim immigrant background in non-Muslim majority countries. Mosque education, also known in the literature as madrasa education, mosque schooling and Qur'an schooling, is the Islamic education provided by imams and mosque teachers to school-age children outside of their school time. The international literature on Islamic education mostly focuses either on challenges about mainstream Islamic education in Muslim-majority countries (e.g. Asadullah & Chadhurry, 2016; Aşlamacı & Kaymakcan, 2017; Bano, 2017; Boyle, 2006), or on the debates around the relatively recent arrangements for Islamic primary and secondary schools within the public education systems of Western countries (e.g. Abdallah, Chown, & Abdullah, 2018; Bourget, 2019; García, 2018; Merry & Driessen, 2005; Zine, 2008). The first line of research falls outside the scope of this study as it deals with the experiences of Muslims in their native context. The second line of research also falls outside of the scope of the present study as it deals with the issues of accommodation of the Islamic schools within the formal mainstream schooling. Usually Islamic primary and secondary schools in non-Muslim countries follow the national curriculum with limited inclusion of Islamic subjects, and in cases of irregularities, the authorities in the respective country are known to withdraw subsidies and school permits (Daun & Arjmand, 2005). As such, they constitute a better-known case of Islamic education in non-Muslim contexts.

In many Western countries, however, there is a lot of anxiety and speculations with regard to the teaching practices within the mosques. This field of non-formal or supplementary Islamic education differs from formal Islamic primary and secondary schools as it remains outside of the mechanisms for state supervision. Some of the concerns are related to claims about Muslim youth radicalization and the contested role of foreign imams in the integration of immigrant children (Cherti & Bradley, 2011). Despite the interest by policy-makers and the wider public, mosque education followed by Muslim children is an understudied area both in education research and in migration studies (Berger, 2014; Moore, 2012). The scarcity of scholarly attention to the subject is partially due to difficulty in obtaining access to the field as researchers are often met with suspicion and distrust with regard to their intentions (Bolognani, 2007; Gent, 2011; Scourfield, Gilliat-Ray, Khan, & Otri, 2013). These feelings of distrust and the defensive attitudes of the Islamic communities are caused to some extent by the negative portrayal of Muslims and mosque education in the media (Cherti, Glennie, & Bradley, 2011; Sözeri, Altinyelken, & Volman, 2017). Nevertheless, the field of supplementary Islamic education in non-Muslim contexts is emerging. Some noticeable contributions include a research by Cherti and Bradley (2011) reporting on the organization of British madrassas and their influence on social cohesion and radicalization; an ethnographic account by Gent (2011) who provides insights on student experiences based on interviews and observations at a boys' hifz class in London mosque; a study by Berglund (2018) who, based on student interviews in London and Stockholm, analyzes the different construction of the notions “reading”, “understanding and “meaning” by secular mainstream and supplementary mosque education; a research paper by Alkouatli and Vadeboncoeur (2018) who, based on classroom observations and interviews with the educators in a mosque in Canada, present mosque educators' views on learning and child development; and a study by Isik (2018) who explores whether mosques and mainstream educational institutions in Germany can learn from each other's experience with Islamic education. A common denominator for all these studies is the attempt for unveiling the links between the student experiences at school and in the mosque by recognizing that the mosque constitutes a significant part of Muslim children's learning environment.

In this regard, this exploratory study has the aim to contribute to the expansion of the research on mosque education in the Netherlands and beyond. To do so, it uses the Dutch country case and based on a diverse body of data, it provides a comparative overview of the mosque education offered by the three largest Turkish Islamic communities in the Netherlands; Diyanet, Milli Görüş, and Süleymanlıs. In the following sections, this article starts with an overview of the Turkish Islamic communities in the Netherlands which are also the main providers of mosque education. It continues by mapping the theoretical underpinnings – the main concepts – which it employs for examining mosque education. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the way mosque education is organized by the Turkish Islamic communities in the Netherlands. The main analytical lenses are organization, curriculum, including learning objectives and content of the teaching materials, and language policies. The last section presents a discussion of the findings and their implications, and ends by offering potential directions for further research on Islamic education in non-Muslim majority countries.