Islamic Religious Education in Muslim Schools: A Translation of Islam to the Swedish School System

Abstract

In the literature about Islamic religious education (IRE), the process of teaching Islam to the younger generation is often referred to as “transmitting Islam”. Obviously, there are certain “facts” that often are transmitted from one generation to another, such as names of prophets, the five pillars of Islam and the words of the Quran. But what significance and meaning these persons and concepts have is not necessarily “transmitted”. In this paper, I argue that using the concept of “transmitting” brings about several problems, such as giving a static view of the process of Islamic education, thereby neglecting the contextualisation that is an important part of all teaching. Drawing on Homi Bhabha, I instead suggest that the concept of translation is more accurate to what teachers of Islamic religious education do, since translation includes notions of interpretation and thereby shows the power teachers have when they make educational choices. The empirical material used in the chapter stems from fieldwork in Swedish Muslim schools.