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ABSTRACT
An increasing number of studies are concerned with the ways in which the religious practices of Europe's minority populations are accommodated on the political, national and local levels. In this article, I present a case study of Muslim practices in Danish schools. The study is an investigation of how and why six selected practices are governed in Danish schools: halal food, fasting, prayer, head scarves, holidays and mosques. The results underline the importance of the specific practice in question for the way in which it is governed: some practices are easily accommodated, while others are rejected outright by the schools. Furthermore, the study demonstrates how governance of Muslim practices is developed in the absence of national regulation and against the prevailing ideals in the Danish public debate. In fact, the governance developed seems to be a direct response to the number of Muslim children in school and in line with general school ideals of inclusion. However, the results also indicate that more direct involvement by local or national authorities might push schools to be more exclusive with regard to Muslim practices.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. There has been a growing use of the Foucault-inspired concept of governmentality, understood as the conduct of conduct or the mentalities of government, in studies of power structures in modern society (Dean Citation2010).
2. As mentioned above, the study of Rath et al. (Citation2001) demonstrates great variation in governance policies between two Dutch municipalities.
3. In a study of newspaper articles and parliamentary debates in Denmark, Kühle (Citation2015) describes how especially politicians from the Danish People's Party (a right-wing party promoting cultural assimilation) object to the idea that schools should change their traditions and practices in order to accommodate Muslims and other religious minorities. See also Riis (Citation2011) for a more general discussion of the responses to religious pluralism in Denmark.
4. The questionnaire contained the following categories of questions: examples of governance of Muslim practices, actors/organisations involved in the governance of Muslim practices, examples of governance of majority Christian practices, attitudes towards Islam, Christianity and religion in general, and background information about the school and the head teacher.
5. Three different types of schools were selected in order to (i) to validate the survey results, (ii) to explore the different types of governance identified in the survey and (iii) to explore the connection between the number of Muslim pupils in the school and the type of governance identified in the survey:
Type 1: Schools with relatively large groups of Muslim pupils. Seven schools in this category. (Objectives i and iii)
Type 2: Schools with the same percentage of Muslims but with different types of governance. Two schools with less than 5% Muslims and two schools with 21–30% Muslims in this category. (Objectives i and ii)
Type 3: Schools with high levels of either types of governance. Five schools in this category. (Objectives i and ii)
6. The schools have been given fictive names to preserve anonymity.
7. Principal component analysis with oblimin rotation. The analysis revealed three underlying dimensions (with Eigenvalue >1) in the material. The scree plot indicates that there are only two systematic factors. The first factor (inclusive governance) accounts for 27.33% of the variance and the second factor (exclusive governance) accounts for 13.70% of the variance.
8. The consistency of the scale is acceptable. Chronbach's alpha is 0.708 and inter-item correlations vary from 0.339 to 0.451.
9. The term ‘bilingual’ is commonly used in schools to refer to migrant pupils who do not speak Danish at home.
10. The scale does not have a high degree of internal consistency. Chronbach's alpha is 0.600 and the inter-item correlations range from 0.174 to 0.423. This is connected to the fact that the communalities of two of the included items are rather low, 0.419 for fasting and 0.443 for room for prayer, illustrating that more than 50% of the variation on these individual items should be ascribed to something else than the exclusive factor.
11. These statements and the variation between them were shaped primarily by concepts put forward by Casanova (Citation2009) and Beyer (Citation2003). The statements are:
Islam/religion creates conflict.
Islam/religion counteracts independent thinking.
Islam/religion creates cohesion.
Islam/religion is a source of good morality.
Islam should have no influence on the state of the school.
Islam/religion is a private matter that has nothing to do with school.
Conflicts about religion are really about something else.
The school should be religiously neutral.
The school should treat all religions equally.
The school should support the pupils’ freedom to practice their religion.
The school should take the religious practices of the pupils into account.
Religion and school should be completely separated.
Discussions about religion do not belong in school.
Religion is not something the school teachers or administration attend to.
12. Thirty-four per cent of the survey schools with Muslim pupils have experienced claims regarding Muslim holidays, 22% regarding fasting, 20% regarding the headscarf, 10% regarding halal food and 0% have experienced claims regarding prayer and contact with an Imam.
13. Some municipalities have developed actual regulation especially regarding the number of days of absence allowed in connection with Muslim holidays.
14. Juchtmans and Nicaise (Citation2010) write in a report on religious education in multicultural schools that European Muslim parents consider religion or faith formation largely as a private matter.