Muslim diversity, religious formation and Islamic religious education. Everyday practical insights into Muslim parents’ concepts of religious education in Austria

ABSTRACT

Since its establishment, Islamic religious pedagogy at German-speaking universities has primarily faced basic questions like: What kind of methodological and didactic approaches can be employed in Islamic Religious Education (IRE) and how should the structural framework be designed? Analyses concerning these questions are often drafted via top-down approaches, which neither hypothesise from practice nor consider the perspectives of Muslim populations and parents. This paper gives a hearing to those voices from a practice-theoretical research perspective, which is built upon an evidence-based empirical analysis of everyday practical realities. The study of these realities was conducted in Austria, where IRE has been taught within the public education system nationwide since 1982/1983. This article evaluates the importance Muslim parents assign to religious questions among different concepts of education, and also deals with the question of which pedagogical approach they favour. Furthermore, the paper analyses the parents’ position concerning religious formation in mosques and schools, and points out their related expectations, aspirations and worries. Consequently, the paper breaks new ground by profoundly illuminating the realms of experience of Muslim students and by providing the basis for pupils to be systematically taken into account in religious pedagogical and religious didactic approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamic religious education (IRE)
• Muslim parents
• religious formation
• Muslim diversity

Introduction

During the last decades, Islamic-theological studies have been set up in the German-speaking world. On the one hand, Islamic-theological organisational units are often responsible for the university education of Islamic teachers of religion. On the other hand, they have the task of establishing Islamic religious pedagogy as a university discipline. Scientific debates on IRE in the German-speaking world have already advanced considerably since its inception; these mainly involve structural conditions and legal foundations, and also take teaching personnel and their education into account. Another field of current debate deals with concrete types and modes of teaching. In this area, various components ought to be mentioned: the religious-pedagogical alignment and initial position of IRE (Ourghi 2017); methodological-didactic questions (Schröter 2018; Sarikaya, Ermert, and Öger-Tunc 2019); dialogic and interreligious elements (Sejdini 2015); course material (Kiefer 2010); handling of theological sources (Müller 2016; Sarikaya 2016); and discussions on professionalising Islamic teachers of religion (Tuna 2019) and the competence orientation in IRE (Klement, Shakir, and Topalovic 2019).

Such analyses are frequently developed in a deductive manner in religious-pedagogical concepts that neither come from a practical point of view nor consider the perspectives, expectations, fears and aspirations of Muslim populations and parents. Instead, the approaches are often drafted within the university framework with a top-down approach that does not take into account the experiences of those involved. In terms of the theory of structuration by Anthony Giddens (1984), the structural perspective (the ‘top’) is mostly in the foreground, whereas Muslim adolescents and parents (the ‘bottom’) as affected actors are considered subordinate.

While the perspectives of Muslim parents have already been reflected in a few studies in Germany (e.g. Uslucan 2011; Holzberger 2014; Uslucan and Yalcin 2018; Tufan-Destanoglu 2019), no such efforts have been made in Austria to date. Nevertheless, the current assumption in Austria is that Muslims would uniformly advocate religious pedagogy based on the principles of imitation, memorisation and instructional teaching and learning principles. For this reason, this paper aims to question these conjectures on the basis of an evidence-based investigation. Moreover, it secures a hearing for those voices which have not been heard enough, or even have not been heard at all, in previous debates in Austria. In this way, the article aims to contribute to current Islamic religious-pedagogical debates and reconcile structure and agency in the sense of Giddens’ theory of structuration (Giddens 1984, 25).

The analysis is built upon an empirical study of everyday-life realities conducted in Austria, where IRE has been taught within the public education system nationwide since 1982/1983. For this reason, the involved parties are able to speak from a perspective of experience. The orientation of the study has to be practice-theoretical, by focusing on everyday routines, interaction and practical behaviour (Schatzki 1996; Reckwitz 2003; Hillebrandt 2012). This approach promises fruitful insights regarding the question of which different concepts of education, pedagogical approach and purposes of religious formation Muslim parents favour, and it may also answer the question of how Muslim parents deal with religious formation in their daily practice.

Expectations, fears and wishes of Muslim parents are important factors that shape the realm of experience of Muslim students attending Islamic religious education at school. Religious perspectives of children and adolescents are moulded crucially by their parents. Accordingly, the added value of the analysis of parental ideas for current debates is that experiences of pupils are thoroughly examined. These can then be taken into account systematically in religious pedagogical and religious didactic approaches.

Prior to discussing the empirical analysis, I will outline the current scientific discourse on IRE on the one hand, and, on the other hand, address the main issues regarding religious formation. Following this, I will depict the current situation in Austria, take a closer look at various existing places of religious formation and then reflect on selected studies in this research area. Afterwards, the empirical material on which the article is based will be introduced. It opens up an evidence-based spectrum of Muslim parents’ everyday perspectives regarding religious formation and pedagogical approach, which also includes their handling of religious everyday practice. Finally, observations concerning implied results on content-related alignment of IRE will be considered.

Discourses on IRE and theoretical perspectives

In the past several decades, the term ‘education’ has taken root as a guiding category in religious pedagogy (Rothgangel 2013, 32). Generally, education, unlike parenting, is characterised by actively engaged subjects, who are enabled to pass through such educational processes leading to maturity autonomously (Schweitzer 2014; Boschki 2017, 78 f.). Thereby, religious formation is seen as a part of a holistic educational process, which also includes other fields such as professional, cultural or moral formation. Within this holistic process, the actual value of religious formation may vary from person to person.

There are different opinions on how to carry out the educational process: while material-educational theories concentrate on wide knowledge sharing, in formal educational theories the mastery of methods and competences is paramount (Jank and Meyer 2011, 209 f.). The concept of categorical education (Klafki 1959), which mainly relates to teaching-learning constellations, entails dealing with such content that qualifies young people to build fundamental forms of recognition and understanding.

These various concepts of education also correspond with various types of pedagogic-didactic approach. On the one hand, there are authoritarian methods, including the apparently steady and immutable learning of content in line with religion classes based on instructional principles. In this approach, religious classes are conducted in the form of lecturing or religious instruction, whereby the person who educates herself acts in a merely passive way. Instructional principles are often accompanied by reciting or memorisation, which is geared mainly towards the material-educational framework. These methods and techniques have been of great importance in the varied history of Islamic pedagogical traditions (Hussain 2013), for example in the Hafiz training. This pedagogic-didactic approach is usually applied in religious education in mosques (Ceylan 2014, 353–359). The focus here is on the acquisition of the learning content without questioning or reflecting (Ceylan 2010).

On the other hand, there are approaches that emphasise the freedom and self-determination of the persons educating themselves. These concepts follow the theory of freely understanding or constructivist learning principles, according to which the learners should be able to shape the educational process actively; thus, these concepts refer to formal or categorical educational theories (Stein 2017, 57ff.). While religious education in German-speaking countries generally follows constructivist principles, Islamic religious education is frequently accused of being overly characterised by authoritarian learning methods (Author 2020, 133).

Accordingly, the objectives of IRE have to be diversified. Harry Harun Behr (2005) proposes a distinction between ‘information’ and ‘instruction’ in the specific religious system, and a ‘formation’¹ within the realms of the specific religious system. His distinction observes the differentiation between learning about religion, learning in religion and learning from religion (Grimmitt and Read 1975). While ‘information’ on the specific religious system aligns content in a non-confessional way with sharing knowledge about Islam (learning about religion) (Behr 2005, 469 f.), ‘instruction’ in the specific religious system should enable learners to position themselves on Islamic doctrine, and to put these positions into practice (learning in religion) (ibid., 471 f.). Finally, as Behr also mentions, ‘formation’ within the realms of the specific religious system, in turn, focuses on learners learning from religion for their own life (learning from religion) by enabling them to communicate topics of religion with Muslim and non-Muslim people (ibid., 472 f.).

The current situation in Austria and places of religious formation

Due to the recognition of the Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGÖ) in 1979, the community was granted the ability to provide confessional religious teaching. IRE is now provided in each public primary and secondary school as a compulsory subject in Austria (Strobl 2005, 524). At the same time, it is possible to unsubscribe from IRE. The responsibility for teacher designation, teaching visits, school curricula and schoolbooks, as well as for the content-related and methodological design of IRE, lies with the IGGÖ (Khorchide 2009, 43–49).

Due to the presence of confessional religious teaching in schools, family contexts and mosque associations forfeit their exclusive function regarding the religious formation of young Muslim people and, instead, are challenged by public education. The relationship between these different places of religious formation (family, mosque and school) is rarely free of conflicts. While mosques and families as religious places of education have been well studied (e.g. Ceylan 2014; Uygun-Altunbas 2017), there is a lack of reflection on IRE in public schools against the backdrop of other places of religious formation so far.

Partial insights are given by Werner Schiffauer’s (2015) study regarding the interaction of schools, mosques and parental homes in Berlin. In detail, he analyses the various perspectives of Muslim parents concerning public schools and their children’s school activities (Ucan 2015). As IRE is not a compulsory subject at public schools in Berlin, there is however no discussion on concepts of religious-education or related parental ideas.

According to Michael Kiefer (2005), in regions where such classes are offered, Muslim parents are generally pleased by the fact that there is IRE at public schools. This is notably the case when IRE has been implemented within school trials recently. At the same time, there can be different understandings and requests from Muslim parents, for example regarding the language of IRE (Khalfaoui 2010). Irka-Christin Mohr, on the basis of interviews with teachers of IRE, indicates that Muslim parents are able to unsubscribe their children from religious teaching due to religious reasons entirely (Mohr 2009, 136 f.).

Studies, in which an evaluation of school trials regarding IRE in Germany were conducted, deliver further insights (Holzberger 2014; Uslucan and Yalcin 2018; Tufan-Destanoglu 2019). In those studies, groups of people who are involved in the school trials were interviewed. It turned out that Muslim parents are very satisfied, that their children can learn something about their religion at school (Holzberger 2014, 20; Uslucan and Yalcin 2018, 52). However, their satisfaction with the educational content and the German language in which IRE lessons are conducted is lower (Holzberger 2014, 21). In addition, the findings showed that the IRE in about a quarter of cases does not meet the parents’ ideas of religious education (Uslucan and Yalcin 2018, 55). Occasionally, parents voice criticism regarding the didactic design of the IRE (Uslucan 2011, 164 f.). In this connection, the empirical data indicates an ambivalence, insofar as Muslim parents in principle want modern teaching, but in some cases still expect classic teaching and learning techniques (e.g. reciting, memorisation, etc.) in IRE (Tufan-Destanoglu 2019, 166).

With the exception of the studies described, however, too little is known about the spectrum of Muslim parents’ perspectives on religious education and expectations on Islamic religious education at school up to now. For an IRE that strives for meeting the standards of contemporary pedagogy, it is not appropriate that it is measured by the needs, expectations and aspirations of Muslim parents. However, it is essential that religious pedagogical concepts in IRE are familiar with these ideas in order to take them into account systematically. There is hardly any insight to date as to which motives prompt the parents to criticise the didactic design of the IRE and to what extent the religiousness of the parents plays a role in this context. Beyond that, taken as a whole, views and perspectives of Muslim parents are generally understudied in the research on IRE in Austria.

Data and analysis

The data applied here has been accumulated within the framework of a research project² whose central results were published within the study ‘Muslimische Diversität’ (Muslim Diversity) (Author 2017). Inspired by the concept of lived religion (Ammerman 2007; McGuire 2008; Nielsen 2013), the analysis of the religious everyday practice of Muslims in Austria was paramount to the practice-theoretical study.

The empirical study was characterised by a mixed-methods design, entailing a qualitative and quantitative investigation and following the logic of exploratory designs as developed in John W. Creswell’s terminology (Creswell and Plano Clark 2007, 75). 71 persons were interviewed in qualitative guided interviews throughout Austria. 700 Muslims participated in the quantitative part of the study (Author 2017, 50–58).

In the sampling, everyone who identifies as Muslim was a potential interviewee, regardless the strength or weakness of their faith and religiosity. The aim was that organised Muslims as well as those who do not have close ties to mosque associations and rarely or never visit prayer rooms for religious purposes are included in the sampling. Thus, the mixed-methods study strived for representing the diversity of the Muslim population in Austria. The prerequisite for participation was that the interviewee would identify himself or herself as a Muslim in connection.

On the one hand, this solved the problem that the question of who is considered a Muslim or not is by no means clear and unambiguous (Jeldtoft 2009; Spielhaus 2011). On the other hand, this strategy also prevented an unintended pre-selection of the respondents. With this approach, this study was able to reproduce the degree of organisation of the Muslim population, since the overwhelming majority (approx. 80%) belongs to the segment of the so-called ‘non-organised’ Muslims, who have no close ties to religious associations (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge 2009, 167, 170; Heine, Lohlker, and Potz 2012, 65; Author 2020).

After the analysis of the qualitative data – based on the procedures of the Grounded Theory– and the statistical analysis of the quantitative data, both methodological approaches were linked (Strauss and Corbin 1990, 61–194). During the process of analysis, a typology has been developed to distinguish between varying forms of religious practices within everyday life, the characteristics of which have been depicted in detail elsewhere (e.g. Author 2017, 66–447, 2017, 2019). The typology is based on two dimensions of comparison: intensity of religiosity in everyday life and social value priorities. Intensity of religiosity in everyday life has been ascertained by Stefan Huber’s (2003) centrality scale (Zentralitätsskala) and encompasses religious convictions and experiences, theological knowledge, the practical performance of religious rituals and regulations, as well as orienting and shaping everyday life in accord with religious rules. Whereas, social value orientations, as based on the Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ) of Shalom H. Schwartz (Schwartz et al. 2001), move in a continuum between the extremes of openness for change and the preservation of what exists. While an openness to change prevails when self-determination, hedonism and stimulation are advocated, a preference for the preservation of what exists becomes apparent when there is a tendency towards security, conformity and traditionality (Author 2017, 60).

The evaluation of the empirical data revealed diversity and dissimilarities with regards to educational ideas and everyday practical behaviour concerning religious formation. Four different types became apparent within the empirical data: a) the supreme status of the religious; b) pragmatic compromises; c) the pleading for an open-minded worldview and against blinders; and d) preferences for non-confessional and interreligious formation.

Various aspects distinguish positions regarding religious formation. Thus, it is of particular relevance which concept of education and which pedagogical style is preferred. Furthermore, the general role of religious formation seems to be pivotal, and objectives of religious formation and IRE are analysed. Moreover, it is of interest which expectations, requests and fears Muslim parents have regarding religious formation, just as it poses the question of how they deal with these aspects in their everyday life. The issues mentioned here are covered to a varying extent depending on the actual data.

The analysis of the four different concepts of education, religious pedagogical expectations and handling of religious formation shows how widespread the views are among the Muslim population in Austria. The statistical data is based on the analysis carried out in the context of the publication ‘Muslim Diversity’ (Author 2017, 62). The description, as well as the analysis, uses primarily the data from qualitative interviews, which were conducted as part of the empirical research project mentioned above.

The spectrum of Muslim parents’ concepts of education, religious pedagogical expectations and everyday practical handling of religious formation

Supreme status of the religious

The first type of religious-educational concept found among the Muslim faithful is characterised by an absolute supremacy of the religious in all educational realms. This type is held by highly religious³ and – in a social sense – value-conservative Muslims with a preference for the preservation of what exists.

This segment is usually close to mosque associations. The primary objective of these Austrian Muslims is to ensure their children’s religious formation via the internalising of the five Pillars of Islam. This is reflected, for example, by Zehra, who is 39 years old and works in a Vienna Kindergarten. In an exemplary interview excerpt, she says the following:

“Islamic values obviously are paramount to me. (…) Well, the main thing is that you pray five times and really practice Islam. I only regard a person as a strong character, if he or she practices Islam. Because I mean, this is a really strong act, especially within this society. If you truly follow the rules of Islam, you are orderly. (…) And I want my children to also have this kind of orientation and way of living. This is why I already started to teach them the basics.” (Zehra, 39, Vienna)

Zehra provides religious formation to her children, as she wants to support their learning of discipline, which as a virtue is very important to her. However, as she emphasises elsewhere in the interview, Zehra bears scepticism towards IRE at public schools, which is why her children attend an Arabic-speaking Islamic school in Vienna, where she wants them to gain a profound religious formation. Her ideas, wishes and expectations of the IRE at school are shaped by the principles of religious instruction at mosques.

Mustafa, who is a 35-year-old father of two with a Turkish migration background working as an installer, also centres religious formation. Although it is primarily up to his wife, he participates in parenting, as he says. In particular, he deals with providing religious knowledge after work:

“Every day I read one book about religion, not various. But I do read books every day. Sometimes about history, sometimes religious books. Sometimes books that deal with the life of our prophet. Yes. Well, I pay attention to the fact that my son is also learning and reading. From time to time I say: ‘Do you want to pray on your interest?’ From time to time I say so. Well, he is little yet, just ten years old, but from time to time, so he gets used to it. In that respect, I am paying attention.” (Mustafa, 35, Vienna)

To Mustafa, broad education requires not only IRE at school, but also Qur’an lessons at the mosque association with which he is affiliated. For him, this guarantees a sustainable acquisition of religious knowledge and traditional values, as he explains elsewhere in the interview. Furthermore, he considers it his own duty to work towards these goals of education within the family’s everyday life – although he still considers his younger son to be underage by a few years. When it comes to religious formation, Mustafa, like Zehra, prefers concepts that have an instructional character, are oriented towards material-educational ideas and are characterised partially by memorisation.⁴ In addition, his statements referring to respect and discipline exhibit certain authoritarian characteristics.

These impressions are underlined by some remarks from a Tyrolian Islamic religion teacher, Gizem, who describes some Muslim parents’ expectations as follows:

“That way I found out about parents having a certain understanding of IRE. Parents do have expectations, for example those concerning memorization of Sura. Being the teaching person, you can say: ‘I renounce it.’ But soon you will realize that the parents aren’t pleased, or they will send their children to mosque, or they will say: ‘I just unsubscribe my child.’” (Gizem, 31, Tyrol)

Based on her longstanding work experience, Gizem reports that Islamic religion teachers are under considerable pressure. Muslim parents having certain ideas about IRE plays a non-neglectable role in the challenges of being an Islamic religion teacher. Thus, the views of parents repeatedly show a similarity to instructional forms of religious formation, which actually originate in the traditional religious educational practice of mosque associations. Gizem states that she has to comply with such expectations at least partially.

To this part of the Muslim population (14.1% of the Muslim population in Austria) religious formation has a supreme status, which supersedes other fields of education. Their expressed religious-pedagogical expectations are related to material-educational concepts, instructional methods and to the learning concept of memorisation. Muslim parents very frequently ensure that their children attend IRE at public schools; more specifically, this applies to 75.0% of Austrian Muslim school-age children. Unsubscription occurs in some cases, when IRE does not comply with the parental ideal of instructional religious education, which typically aims for instruction in the specific religious system, in the sense of Behr’s differentiation of IRE objectives. Adolescents frequently attend confessional Islamic schools, and almost all children participate in religious education within a mosque community. Usually, parents take care of their children’s religious formation on their own by organising their family’s everyday life accordingly.

Pragmatic compromises

Besides the supreme status of the religious mentioned above, there is a second type of religious-educational concept among the Muslim faithful, which is characterised by its pragmatism. This type, which accounts for 26.9% of the Austrian Muslim population, is supported by highly religious Muslims who can be categorised as value-conservative in a moderate way, or even as liberal-minded according to Portrait Value Questionnaire (PVQ).

Despite the central priority of religious conventions, this part of the Muslim population does not align its whole everyday life on religious principles. Islam shapes and guides many of its daily actions by affording a frame and an orientation, but it also interacts with numerous other spheres (such as work) that have an impact on or may even partially disagree with religious actions. This also leads to a religiously conditioned adjustment to concepts of education. Emre, a 39-year-old father of four children working as a caretaker in Vienna, wishes for his offspring,

“that the children receive good education. That’s important to me. Of course, with good character traits, yes. That they will have good traits and that the children will receive good education and that they may start a family. Everything else, they have to decide on their own.” (Emre, 39, Vienna)

His statement reflects a striving for educational attainment and employment opportunities, which is an important characteristic of this pragmatically orientated segment of highly religious Muslims. Compared to his primary objective (good education and good character traits) the question of religious formation is subordinate for Emre, even though all his children attend IRE at school. While the family holds ethical questions in general dear, as well as the preservation of culture, language, tradition and family ties, religious formation does not play a superior role within their everyday life.

Due to his working hours Emre hardly has time to take an active role in education, so common activities are restricted to the weekend. However, those common activities tend to be taking trips or visiting family rather than reading religious texts or discussing religious topics. None of his children attends Qur’an school or religious formation at a mosque. Since Emre is characterised as highly religious in accordance to performing ritual duties and – for example – participating in Friday prayer, his opinion regarding the religious formation of his children contrasts with his religious views in general.

Other Muslim parents who make a pragmatic compromise regarding religious formation put emphasis on the fact that their children attend IRE at their local mosque. To parents, teaching at mosques often serves to offset IRE at public schools, for two different reasons: either there simply is no IRE at the local public school since the number of Islamic pupils is too small, or the offered teaching does not meet the parent’s standards of quality. This applies, inter alia, to provincial or rural areas.

As mentioned above, striving for educational attainment and qualifications, as well as being successful with a view to the labour market, is considered to be more important than religious questions when it comes to the educational ideal. The example of this group already shows, that the assumption that all Muslim parents endorse pedagogical principles of imitation, memorisation and instructional teaching and learning techniques is not tenable. Preferences regarding instructional methods, material-educational concepts or memorisation are not mentioned explicitly by pragmatically orientated parents. However, it is important to these parents that their children receive religious formation in school, since 76.9% of the school-age children within this section of the Muslim population attend IRE. In many cases the children also participate in religious education at local mosque associations.

Pleading for an open-minded worldview and against blinders

Furthermore, there is a third alternative regarding concepts of education and religious-pedagogical expectations, which is characterised by the pleading for an open-minded worldview, for emancipated, self-reliant approaches, and against blinders. This kind of attitude is adopted by highly religious Muslim parents with an openness to change and liberal-minded value orientation (according to the PVQ), which concurrently has an effect on their ideas of religious formation and pedagogical expectations.

To 27-year-old Senad, who works as an electrician in Vienna, it is highly important that his children develop a liberal and open religiosity by dealing with different perspectives in a self-confident and emancipated way within their process of socialisation:

“Regarding parenting I attach great importance to an open-minded worldview. I don’t want them to go through life wearing blinders, but trying to see the big picture, the greater good.” (Senad, 27, Vienna)

Senad strives to equip his children with an education that grants a role to religion, that clarifies its importance, while at the same time not overshadowing everything else. Within this framework Senad wants them to develop a worldview of their own free will and to decide on their own how to deal with religion in their daily life. He neither considers it his duty to teach his children about the rights and wrongs of a religious life nor endorses that they be orientated towards religious rules merely through a sense of duty.

Senad himself acquired his knowledge about Islam by attending Qur’an school. However, he is now critical of mosques as places for religious formation and acquiring religious knowledge:

“Well, at least there are religious classes for children on Saturdays and Sundays in mosques. (…) And you go there, I also went there, down there in Bosnia at that time. (…) Well you get the Qur’an to memorize the suras and the creed and so on. You have to know it by heart. But you don’t get to know the spirit, the spirit of Islam.” (Senad, 27, Vienna)

This young man does not criticise the fact that there is religious education at mosques in general, but he disagrees with the pedagogical and didactic principles of the classes; he considers it to be mere rote memorisation, in the sense of instructional education. In his opinion, this form of teaching practical, religious or theological knowledge does not engage with the actual spirit of Islam:

“Islam isn’t about memorization, okay. Islam means living together, I mean, being on good terms with other people, and it’s about how to behave oneself. But this isn’t what Bosnian Qur’an schools are doing at the moment. I think this is a pity, because you can give the children more love for Islam, because, there are many people going to Islam schools, well schools, well to class, where they are using memorization. (…) But that isn’t the actual intention.” (Senad, 27, Vienna)

The young craftsman opines that religious education as it is taught in Austrian mosques does not comply with the spirit of Islam. In his opinion, religious formation is not about learning by rote (in the sense of material-educational theories), but about transferring knowledge of religious norms into religious everyday practice (in the sense of formal or categorical educational theories). To employ the differentiation of Behr’s IRE objectives, according to Senad, the critically important area is that of education within the realms of religious systems, since it matters to him that pupils learn, by the means of religious education, lessons for their own, self-reliant lives.

Pleading for an open-minded worldview and self-determination is also evinced in other parents, as, for example, in 27-year-old student Naida. As her educational ideal shows, she gives top priority to maturity and independence, while not attaching high value to religious formation.

“I want to give my children a certain kind of understanding of Islam, because it is important to believe. And it is very important to me to really sit down and go through the Qur’an with them, especially those verses that are very important for life, well, and I want to teach them in a way, that they understand. (…) It is not a matter of memorizing numerous Qur’anic verses obsessively, but to really understand, what they mean.” (Naida, 27, Vienna)

Going through the Qur’anic verses with her children is important to the young mother. In this way, she does not want her children to memorise suras of the Qur’an, but to understand their meaning and to learn from them in order to get their bearings in life. Her idea of religious formation is orientated towards formal or categorical concepts of education, while she rejects material approaches or forced learning under pressure.

Religious questions have a significant importance to this portion of the Muslim population (14.8% in Austria), but on a different level than for the previous types. It is about the spirit of Islam and an open-minded view of the world. It is more important for these parents that their children go through life without blinders, which is to be achieved through religious education, using methods other than those of mosques. This segment asks for IRE at school to be based on the standards of contemporary pedagogy and to be characterised by age-appropriate, activating or creative teaching and learning techniques.

It also becomes clear that these Muslim parents are sceptical about the educational offers of mosques, since they seem to be orientated towards instructional methods, material-educational concepts and memorisation. As they emphasise, it does not seem to be possible for young people to conceive the spirit of Islam when they are taught under these religious-pedagogical and didactic principles. Accordingly, children of these parents do not usually participate in religious classes at mosque associations, although the predominant part (70.8%) of school-age children attend IRE at public schools.

Preferences for non-confessional and interreligious formation

This final view on religious formation and religious-pedagogical principles is mainly supported by religiously unaffiliated or non-religious Muslims, and accounts for 41.6% of the Austrian Muslim population. In this part of the Muslim population social value orientations in any shape or form are represented. Within this segment the common ground is that the religious formation of children is seen as a rather subordinated objective, and concepts of religious education are mostly characterised by non-confessional or interreligious matters, as for example in the case of Tarek, a 50-year-old Viennese man with a Turkish migration background who works in a travel agency. Due to the quality of its teaching, Tarek and his wife very deliberately chose a Catholic secondary school in Vienna for their daughter. Catholic rites and practices imparted at this school, such as daily grace or singing in the church choir, do not bother the family’s father. Indeed, he is elated that his daughter can receive an open-minded and religiously pluralistic attitude, as can be seen in the following exemplary interview excerpt:

“My daughter told me: ‘Dad, in school, in dining hall, they do it like this [Tarek crosses on his chest (authors note)], before they start eating the meal. I then also do it like that [Tarek repeats crossing on his chest (authors note)] and I say: I thank my God for all he has given to me.’ She is happy about it. And I’m also happy about my daughter knowing that her tribe tolerates the merging of different cultures and religions.” (Tarek, 50, Vienna)

Tarek is apparently glad that his daughter’s attendance of a Catholic school is leading her to adopt Catholic practices and combine them with Muslim belief, as he considers this merging of cultures and religions an enrichment to his daughter’s identity. At the same time, he pays attention to her accumulation of knowledge about Islam which he emphasises elsewhere in the interview. To this end, Tarek picks his daughter up at school once a week to take her to another secondary school where she attends IRE. Afterwards, he takes her back to her own Catholic secondary school. It is important to him that his daughter self-reliantly learns how to deal with religious questions within a process of constructive learning. Furthermore, he wants her to decide on her own how she integrates religious norms into her everyday life. He strictly rejects pedagogical principles that are orientated towards instructional methods or memorisation.

Likewise, 41-year-old mother Leyla, who holds Turkish citizenship and has worked in Vienna’s cultural sector for many years, feels attraction to non-confessional religious and interreligious concepts of education.

“Of course, our son is now at a certain age where he starts to ask: ‘What are Christians? What are Muslims?’ (…) He really did ask: ‘Islam and Christianity, what makes the difference?’ To us, it was important to answer: ‘These are only two different religions, but those people all believe in the same God.’ That is very important, and it doesn’t really matter, how you believe. Not at all. There is this prophet or that one. I’m concerned about our child getting to know exactly this, so that he’s able to pick out the best things later on. (…) I reject religious education at mosques. It’s not only because of children having to memorize merely or teacher-centered teaching. But I think it’s a place for political propaganda. Humans are getting manipulated over there.” (Leyla, 41, Vienna)

Generally, religious formation is not of high importance to Leyla. Despite her own alienation from religion, which is also expressed by her non-religious everyday life, she wants her son to acquire thorough religious knowledge throughout his educational career. However, she requires constructive learning approaches instead of lecturing and other instructional methods. Furthermore, she thinks that schooling on religious topics should also include non-confessional and interreligious approaches. Despite the fact that she has doubts about the religious-pedagogical and didactic principles of IRE at mosques, her son still attends IRE– unlike religious education at mosques, which she rejects completely.

Generally, religious formation occupies a subordinate position to this portion of the Muslim population in Austria. Yet it became clear that these parents prefer constructive learning approaches and interreligious and non-confessional types of religious formation. Instructional methods and memorisation or learning by rote are strictly rejected. Whilst only 56.4% of their school-age children attend IRE at public schools, virtually none of these parents send their children to religious education at mosques. Religious formation of children may matter in family everyday life within the limits of interreligious or non-confessional approaches. To employ the differentiation of Behr’s IRE objectives, according to these parents religious education at school should aim at informing children about the specific religious system and sharing knowledge about Islam. Such positions, expectations, fears and wishes are mainly expressed by non-religious Muslims. Their perspective is relevant, since they nonetheless attach importance to their children’s religious formation. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that their offspring will disavow religion in the same way as their parents once did, for their positioning may change through biographical processes (Author 2017, 84).

Conclusions

In general, the empirical analysis has shown that the assumption that Muslim parents would uniformly advocate religious pedagogy based on imitation, memorisation and instructional teaching and learning methods is by no means appropriate, but that the empirical reality is much more diverse. Furthermore, the paper revealed that striving for good educational attainment seems to be a common phenomenon within the Austrian Muslim population, which does not distinguish them from other social minorities.

In this context, findings from earlier studies have been confirmed that Muslim parents welcome IRE in principle, but voice criticism from time to time with regard to teaching and learning techniques (Holzberger 2014; Uslucan and Yalcin 2018; Tufan-Destanoglu 2019). In addition, the analysis unveiled which parents express criticism, how the criticism is justified, and what role the religiousness of the parents plays. Hence, the present paper enables the realms of experiences of Muslim pupils and the perspectives of their parents to be systematically reflected in current religious pedagogical and religious didactic debates.

The empirical analysis provides insights into the multilayered spectrum of interpretations about the importance and objectives of religious formation, and of the question regarding pedagogical approaches within school settings. To one camp of Muslim parents, religious formation occupies a subordinate position. This group hopes that there is only such IRE at public schools that includes non-confessional and interreligious elements. They want teaching content to consist of a combination of information about the specific religious system on the one hand, and of knowledge about religion (learning about religion) on the other. At the same time, they reject religious teaching in the sense of instructional teaching-learning processes, and they refuse methods such as teacher-centred teaching or memorisation. Concepts of education that take persons to be religiously ‘formed’ if they know material by heart (in the sense of material-educational theories) are badly received by these parents. Instead, they favour constructive learning approaches, like the concept of free comprehension, or (more generally) models that are based on freedom, emancipation, openness and self-determination. Such positions are represented by those parents who are non-religiously orientated and often reject mosque associations.

To Muslim parents with highly religious traits, religious education is an essential part of identity formation. This formation not only has to take place within family contexts or mosque associations, but also at public schools in the form of confessional and denominational IRE. The highly religious camp is inconsistent in its approaches: on the one hand, it includes those who voice support for material-educational concepts, and methods like memorisation and teacher-centred teaching, and who insist on a duty-bound approach stemming from religiosity. On the other hand, this camp includes perspectives which favour constructivist manners and principles of self-determined learning. What they all share is the opinion that religious education should include all three parts: information on religious questions (learning about religion); learners learning from religion for their own life (learning from religion); and particularly an instruction in the specific religious system (learning in religion).

It turns out that there is a connection between social value priorities and notions of education in the highly religious segment. Devout Muslim parents, who have a tendency to the preservation of what exists and advocate value orientations like security, conformity and traditionality, have a disposition to a material understanding of education and instructionist teaching-learning models. By contrast, highly religious parents that espouse an openness for change advocate a notion of education, that allows learners more self-determined freedom and takes place in the sense of constructivist learning approaches. In this context, it becomes apparent that social value orientations have significant implications for religious pedagogical expectations.

For these reasons, Islamic religious pedagogy faces the challenge of complying with the expectations and aspirations of non-religious Muslim parents as well as considering the ideas and religious needs of the heterogenous group of highly religious Muslim parents. Islamic religious pedagogy is called upon to transgress borders by combining the different expectations, learning principles and didactic approaches with the varying importance of religious formation, all to the standard of contemporary pedagogy. Considering the rate of unsubscriptions (only 69.6% of Muslim parents’ school-age children attend IRE in Austria [Author 2017, 439]), there is a need for action.

Since IRE is a form of religious formation that is government-funded and takes place at public schools, consideration of the broad spectrum of the Muslim population’s needs, expectations and fears is said to be a standard on which the quality of IRE is judged. IRE that only complies with the expectations of those Muslim parents who are close to mosque associations, who prefer instructional approaches or who claim supreme status for the religious does not meet this criterion.

In conclusion, it should be underlined that a practice-theoretical-instructed empirical analysis allows insights into the question of how Muslims deal with religious formation in relation to their families’ everyday lives, as well as taking into account how parents formulate their expectations. In the sense of the theory of structuration, such an approach ensures the connection of structure and agency. Thus, the affected actors, i.e. Muslim adolescents and their parents can be included in religious pedagogical considerations. By taking their views seriously, this research strategy relates religious pedagogical concepts to the living environments of those for whom such concepts have been developed; it is an approach that has been neglected within previous debates.

This paper has illustrated the range of expectations, requests and fears regarding IRE, as well as the various ways of dealing with religious formation in everyday family practice, that are common among Muslim parents. However, a more in-depth analysis, that concerns religious pedagogical concepts and religious didactic approaches related to religious educational organisations (in this case schools, families and mosques), and does not disregard the perspectives of affected persons, requires further research. Finally, this article also pleads for the fostering of an explicit reference to practice-theoretical perspectives in research on methodological-didactic and religious pedagogical issues within Islamic theology.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonas Kolb

Dr. Jonas Kolb is an assistant professor at the Department of Islamic Theology and Religious Education at the University of Innsbruck.

Notes

1. Regarding the distinction, Behr uses the term ‘education’ (in German: ‘Erziehung’). To emphasise the principle of autonomy and maturity, in this article the objective is referred to as ‘formation’ (in German: ‘Bildung’).

2. The research project with the title ‘Muslimische Milieus in Österreich’ (Muslim Milieus in Austria) headed by Ednan Aslan and Erol Yildiz has been carried out between 2012 and 2016.

3. To measure religiosity, the centrality scale (Huber 2003) was used. The scale ranges from a minimum value of 0 to a maximum value of 5. Those faithful whose religiosity has a value between 4 and 5 can be described as highly religious.

4. It should be pointed out that memorisation is not an outmoded didactic method per se. Especially within Islamic religious formation, the method is important, since the faithful have to know the preparation, procedure, bodily movements and recitation parts of prayers by heart to practice religious rituals such as obligatory prayers (five times a day, salat). Likewise, the memorisation of suras of the Qur’an is seen as a basic competence of Islamic formation within IRE in schools (Dafir 2015).