Islamic education within the Muslim minority-context of Europe : pedagogy, politics and future directions

This paper examines the pedagogy-politics intersection framing the perceptions, expectations and organisation of Islamic Education (IE) within the Muslim-minority context of Europe. It is structured around, a) a conceptual analysis of education, and b) the exploration of socio-political dynamics informing IE in Europe. IE is often defined with contradictory depictions. In the broadest sense, IE means Islam’s transformative vision of education (tarbiya) facilitating human flourishing. As a curriculum subject, IE refers to how Islam is taught within diverse European educational systems. This includes publicly funded RE models in Europe that range from confessional (Germany), non-confessional (UK) and a combination of both (Nordic countries). There are new initiatives to make RE relevant in mainstream European educational systems. In the UK there are proposals to replace RE with a new subject ‘Religion and Worldviews’. However, closely examined the link between ‘worldviews’ and ‘pedagogy’ remains underdeveloped and the stress on ‘hermeneutics’ appears to facilitate ‘suspicion’ towards the living faith traditions rather than helping children of faith and with no-faith backgrounds achieve religious literacy or interreligious understanding. State-sponsored IE in continental Europe has emerged as a convenient tool to enact the official security policies in educational spaces and manufacture politically correct Muslim identities. The community-based traditional IE is utilised to reproduce identity narratives borrowed from parental heritage of European Muslim children.The ‘educational good’ in both approaches largely excludes the lived reality and interest of the learners. The paper concludes by stressing the significance of an inclusive IE provision, in Muslim and mainstream education, that facilitates contextual, reflective teaching and learning of Islam and empowers learners to understand, respect and navigate the plurality informing their lives. Key Words: Islamic Education, Tarbiya, Transformative Islamic pedagogies, Inclusive RE, Foreclosed identities, Educational good, Islamic nurture, Education and politics