Migration, Diaspora, Muslim Transnational communities and Education

Abstract

The Western World (especially Europe) is struggling to cope with one of the largest waves of human migration ever. Majority of the migrants are Muslims with traumatic experiences as a result of enduring wars, violence, and various forms of suffrage. The unique feature of this migration is the number of unac- companied minor Muslim migrants with an unprecedented rate in human history. All these pose new challenges to European societies not least to accommodate the needs and meet the demands of Muslims for moral and religious education. While European education systems fundamentally rest on a rather monolithic world- view, inspired by Christianity and based on secularism, they need to adapt to the realities of the postmigration era. The Muslim transnational communities inWest complicate the matter even further as they pose new challenges in the notions of identity and belonging of the younger generation of Muslims in diaspora. The new mode of policy-making in the face of the migration and multiple transna- tional communities is to create and foster an education system to respond to the needs of Muslims in the West while enhancing the process of integration and teaching the western-style notion of citizenship. Sex education, religious extrem- ism, terrorism, and pluralistic values are among the challenges that education systems in the West need to alter both in policy and practice.