Pedagogies of Turkish mosque education in the Netherlands

What is it about?

How does teaching and learning happen in the Turkish mosque classrooms in the Netherlands? And what do the mosque pedagogies tell us about the formation of the moral and political identities of the mosque students? We address these, by using classroom observations and interviews with imams and mosque teachers in two Turkish mosques affiliated with Milli Görüş and Diyanet. The findings show that teaching activities in both mosques contain messages pertaining to citizenship norms and values in areas like interaction between different genders, ideas of crime, justice and punishment, relationship to authority and the boundaries of individual autonomy. What sets the pedagogies of both mosques apart is primarily the pedagogy of national identity building observed in the Diyanet classrooms. There is a demand for pedagogical innovation in mosque education by mosque teachers and imams who realise that the mosque pedagogies imported from their countries of origin need to be adapted to the diaspora experiences of the children. Cooperation with primary schools might help achieve that: mosques have expressed desire for establishing pedagogical exchange programs to collaborate with schools for a shared pedagogical climate and creating a ‘pedagogy of the neighbourhood’. In this respect, our findings imply a need for further attention to the possibilities and challenges for mutually beneficial pedagogical exchange and collaborations between mosques and schools sharing a student population.

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Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings suggest that mosque classes play an important role in shaping the moral and political identities of Muslim youth with Turkish migrant background by teaching them not only Islamic knowledge and rules of conduct, but also citizenship norms and values from a Turkish and Islamic perspective. The findings have implications for the study of role of religion in the acculturation and integration of Turkish Muslim youth in Western countries.

Perspectives