Introduction

The complexity of the task of teaching about Islam in Poland is exacerbated by the Polish socio-political context that comprises an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, a right-wing government since 2015, the growing influence of far-right movements and the unmitigated dominance of the Roman Catholic Church (henceforth RCC) in the public sphere. All these factors not only create an environment in which Islamophobia thrives; they actively fuel it. For the purpose of this chapter, we ask: how can teaching against Islamophobia (involving transformation of attitudes and fact-checking) be delivered hand in hand with teaching about Islam in Polish educational contexts?

Given the lack of any religious education beyond Catholic instruction in 95 per cent of Polish schools (Balsamska et al. 2012), any sporadic references to Islam are made in the course of general education where it is framed in terms of conflict rather than dialogue between faiths (Górak-Sosnowska 2006). Post-secondary education is the first opportunity for Polish students to receive more detailed and systematic education about Islam and Muslims. Despite the hostile climate for Muslims (both indigenous and immigrant) and refugees, in Poland there is a marked interest in university humanities and social science courses and programmes that may have a partial focus on Islam, such as political science, sociology, anthropology and security studies. However, these disciplines (as taught in Poland) do not traditionally have a focus on the MENA region or south Asia (which might facilitate some familiarity with Islam as a cognate topic). In addition, post-colonial, ethnic, critical race or indigenous studies are fairly marginal in Poland in terms of theoretical influence. This set of intersecting issues may prevent advisers from being able to successfully teach against Islamophobia in the classroom while advising on Islam-related projects.

While we recognise that ‘Islamophobia’ is a highly contested term (Cesari 2011), it is, nevertheless, useful in providing a coherent descriptor for ‘experiences of discrimination, dehumanization, and misrepresentation of Muslims, those of Muslim heritage, and a systemic miseducation about Islam itself’ (Kincheloe et al. 2010: x, emphasis added). There is a growing body of literature pertaining to Islamophobia recently exploring, notably, the process of racialisation of Islam as a part of the Islamophobic logic (Selod and Embrick 2013; Garner and Selod 2015; Selod 2015; Husain 2019).

I start in the middle of a recurring dream. There is a viscous substance stuck on my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Perhaps it is the soft mixture of stone, sand and water that hardens into concrete. Perhaps it is the sticky contents of two chewed packets of chewing gum. I am trying to grasp and grab and pull the viscous substance out. Sometimes, it is unmoveable. Other times, it loosens and surges and doesn't stop – like some endless handkerchief pulled from a magician's coat sleeve. When this happens, it feels like my intestines are evacuating through my open mouth.

To speak – to ‘give voice’ – involves muscles and guts of the speaker: air flowing through larynx, vocal cords shaping and tensing, vibration, cartilage, stomach muscles, tongue, lips. Voices are physical and material, issuing from bodies and felt by bodies. Lines of breath rendered resonant by the vibrations of vocal cords become speech in material and social configurations. To speak implies (though not always) a listener – a living, breathing interlocutor – whose facial expressions, raised eyebrow, encouraging nod, whisper, laugh, groan can spur the speaker on or somehow move the speaker to close their mouth. Voices respond and intermingle with their sonic and social environments: pitch levels of speakers may align when the speakers are in agreement, or escalate in volume in situations of conflict, or mimic the contours of other voices when power relations are asymmetrical. Sometimes, in the moment of speech, something else surges forth, breaking the boundaries of bodies and skin and guts: a blush springs to the surface, tears spill out, rage burns up, laughter escapes. The spoken voice is also inextricably bound up with silence – not the opposite of speech but entangled with it. The physicality of a voice can alter the material environment – the force of a cry can enliven an object to vibrate, or combine with other proximate frequencies to compose a soundscape.

The term ‘voice’ is also used for the written, authorial voice – the I that writes what they have thought-felt and are thinking-feeling. Crafting an authorial voice is fraught, particularly when the authorial I is preoccupied with the problem of how to think-feel-relate-act with the voices-bodies of (human and more-than-human) others that are inextricable from themselves.

It has become common sense that educational reform interventions (such as student voice) must be evaluated to know if they have worked or not. The data-driven school sets (or is given) targets to meet through reform interventions; for example, to reduce suspension rates by a certain percentage, or improve attendance rates by a certain percentage, or improve the percentage of students attaining a particular standard of academic performance. As I foregrounded in Chapter 3, Stephen Ball (2003) has written about how data come to ‘stand for, encapsulate or represent the worth, quality or value of an individual or organisation within a field of judgement’ (216). It is taken for granted that reducing suspension rates is right, because a reduction in suspension is supposed to signify that bodies are speaking, feeling and behaving in a manner that is morally agreeable to others and that is right according to the principles of morality. It is taken for granted, in reporting the outcomes of particular reform interventions, that these outcomes are true – that reported outcomes correspond with the intervention. It is taken for granted that reported outcomes stick to bodies and sediment and congeal in schools: that a reduction in suspensions manifests an improved school, and that the school can continue to progress and build on these outcomes in future reform efforts. According to this common sense, collecting data as evidence of whether or not an intervention has worked enables the school to be accountable and transparent to funding bodies. Data thus become desired (Thompson and Sellar 2018) – particularly data that will demonstrate positive growth over linear time, as judged against predetermined normative standards of what particular reform interventions were intended to achieve.

These straight lines between problem, intervention, data and evaluation begin to crack when a reform produces perplexing affects and effects. Things don't always turn out the way we would prefer them to turn out. Voices may say things that some may not like to hear; the experience of ‘having a voice’ may not feel ‘empowering’; students having a voice may not engender the changes that are desired, and different changes may be desired by differentially positioned bodies.

Introduction

Just over ten years ago in 2010, the first institutes for Islamic theological studies at public German universities opened their doors to students. In the background, a whole society was awaiting something between complete failure and absolute fulfilment of prevailing high expectations. Scholars of Oriental and Islamic studies both welcomed the establishment of a theological neighbouring discipline and warned against a confessionalisation of research on Islam. The state had high expectations of successfully integrating migrant Muslims into German society, and addressing complex issues such as de-radicalisation. Muslim organisations saw the emerging academic field as an opportunity to make progress on their way to official recognition by the state, on the one hand, while fearing state influence on their religion, on the other. Muslim students had vast expectations and projections about a new academic discipline that teaches their religion. Ten years on, where do Islamic theological studies in Germany stand against these expectations? How did it establish itself as an academic discipline, and what future challenges and prospects await it?

In this chapter, we will first present the backdrop of the establishment and the ideas that led to the science policy decision to introduce departments of Islamic theological studies at public universities. We will argue that this process did not take place in a linear form, but was determined by different actors, different expectations and fears. We will give an insight into the first decade of experience and we will present discussions around and within the discipline, its academic staff, the students, the impact of and on the Muslim community and the relationship to Islamic studies. We will also sketch out how the departments are integrated within the larger university setting vis-à-vis other disciplines that take Islam as an object of study, and how far the assumption of a confessional perspective on Islam is valid in this context. Here, we will argue that a closer look at the practices of knowledge-production at universities shows that boundaries between confessional and non-confessional studies are clearer to define in theory than to find in practice. It is worth looking at the epistemic challenges the canon of an Islamic theological tradition receives from being engaged with an interdisciplinary setting and practical demands.

Introduction

After completing the darsi-i nizami, a classical form of Islamic education at a dar al-ulum in modern Britain, I enrolled at a university to complete a BA in Economics and Social studies. A few years later, an opportunity arose to pioneer a partnership with a university in offering the first two years of a BA in Islamic studies at the dar al-ulum. At the time, I saw the partnership as the beginning of a broader project to address the educational needs of future Muslim scholars, or the ulama, in Britain. I wanted to be part of the discourse that improved the understanding of dar al-ulums, and Islam more generally. As a young British-born Muslim, I was a student, or taalib, when 9/11 happened. I went on to complete a doctoral thesis, which was the first-ever ethnographic account of a Deobandi dar al-ulum in Britain.

As we will see, the ulama were not only ‘religious’ but were open to and engaged with various epistemologies. With colonial modernity, this horizon became narrow. Deoband, as it emerged in 1866, was in response to and with modernity (Ingram 2018: 33). However, what we are observing in modern Britain is the early signs of an epistemic openness. This presents an opportunity for dar al-ulums and some of their taalibs to work with(in) British universities. The universities can also benefit from this rich tradition, though the challenge will be whether they are open to such overtures in advancing the quest of providing a public good and exploring alternative paradigms of knowledge-production.

Over the past thirty years, student voice has become a popular educational reform strategy, particularly across education systems in Western liberal democracies. The term ‘student voice’ is frequently used to describe a range of initiatives where students contribute to decision making about matters affecting them, including on classroom- or school-wide practices, curricula and pedagogies, educational governance and policy and educational research. Student voice is argued to play a pivotal role in crafting relations of respect, understanding, empowerment and trust in educational institutions.

Proponents of student voice draw on international rights to advocate for the active participation of students in school decision making. Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC; United Nations 1989) declared the ‘right’ for children and young people to ‘express’ their views ‘in all matters affecting them’. The UNCRC became ‘the most ratified human rights treaty in history’ (UNICEF 2021), though it is still not ratified by the USA. Following the UNCRC, the term ‘voice’ has been used to describe ‘the enactment of the child's participatory rights to express an opinion, remain silent, access information and be included in the decision-making processes on matters affecting them’ (Gillett-Swan and Sargeant 2019: 400). In multi-medial worlds, voice also takes many more-than-linguistic and more-than verbal forms – including gaze, facial expressions, silence, stance, gestures, touch, adornment, body art, clothes, drawings, emojis and digital/arts creation in spatial-material arrangements of power (Mannion 2007; McGregor 2004; Thomson 2011: 23). An expansive definition of voice is ‘any expression of any student, anywhere, anytime about anything related to learning, schools or education’ (SoundOut 2021: para. 1).

Student voice can take myriad forms, with multiple political trajectories and consequences. From the early years of student voice research, Michael Fielding (1999a) has advocated for ‘radical collegiality’ between students and teachers as a ‘rupture of the ordinary’ in schools (Fielding 2004: 296). Yet, as Fielding maps, there are many ways in which students can be positioned in student voice endeavours – from ‘data sources’, ‘active respondents’, ‘co-inquirers’, ‘knowledge creators’, ‘joint authors’, to being part of collective processes of ‘intergenerational learning as lived democracy’ (Fielding 2011: 12).

One of the challenges facing the attempts at establishing public higher education in Islamic theology in Europe has been the forging of Islamic religious authority. Creating viable cooperation between universities and Muslim stakeholders (including potential students as well as subsequent employers for graduates) and finding the right teachers who can meet the requirements for academic positions at a European public university as well as present a convincing religious habitus, have not always been easy. One of the available frameworks for understanding and debating these challenges has been the insider–outsider distinction. In the context of Islamic theology this distinction seems to indicate both a distinction between confessional and non-confessional teaching, between Islamic and non-Islamic, and between inside and outside the epistemic domain of the public university. Across the board, insider–outsider discussions here largely draw upon what we could call a secular discursive repertoire, for example, assumptions about the category religion and its position vis-à-vis domains of publicly sanctioned knowledge. In neighbouring areas of European academia, a different conversation has intensified during the last decade, legitimising certain forms of insider positionality as more insightful, knowing and authentic. This conversation has been launched mainly by students in the humanities and the social sciences, it focuses on the role of power in knowledge production, and it is driven by a critique of claims to universality and the exclusion of non-Western knowledge traditions from university curricula. In many respects, this mobilisation continues debates from the 1970–90s about black history, feminist epistemology, post-colonialism and Eurocentrism, and it is articulated not through a distinction between confessional and non-confessional, but rather through the binary of oppressor– oppressed, lodging the discussion within a struggle for justice and equality.

Both Islamic theology and what I in the remainder of this chapter will call newer social justice mobilisation in the academy represent attempts to open up the public European universities to new and potentially challenging forms of knowledge. As such, they elicit various forms of boundary work (Gieryn 1983; McCutcheon 2003; Johansen 2006; also Dreier, Chapter 6, this volume) that in different ways contribute to the conflictual reproduction of a European academic field. My aim in this chapter is to unpack and compare these two forms of boundary work in order to discuss their different ramifications and consider what they tell us about the epistemic underpinnings of European (secular) universities.

Introduction

Debates about the relationship between Islamic seminaries and institutions of higher education often distinguish these two sectors by reference to their pedagogical and epistemological approaches as being either ‘confessional’ or ‘non-confessional’. This is likely to reflect a discourse and vocabulary that has shaped the world of religious education in schools for many years (Thompson 2004), and to some extent the respective approaches of ‘theology’ and ‘religious studies’ in the academy. Over the last decade or so, this vocabulary seems to have grafted itself onto discussions about the relationship between Islamic seminaries and universities as well, but often with little critique.

Given the changed landscape of advanced teaching and learning about Islam and Muslims in Britain over the last twenty-five years (Scott-Baumann and Cheruvallil-Contractor 2015), this chapter questions whether the terminology ‘confessional’ and ‘non-confessional’ remains helpful (at all – to anyone). Influenced by the way in which the binaries of ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ have come to be regarded as problematic in relation to ethnographic social scientific fieldwork (for an example in British Muslim studies, see Abbas 2010), I propose that the assumed binary of confessional/non-confessional presents similar difficulties, and is arguably outdated. Influenced by social scientific perspectives which argue that identities and positionalities (in relation to more or less anything) are contextually dependent, negotiated, socially constructed and performed, I suggest that it may be helpful to move beyond the assumptions that seem to be inherent in the terms ‘confessional’ and ‘non-confessional’.

But this exploration is necessarily interdisciplinary, as well as being informed by social scientific perspectives. It will involve reference to developments in religious studies, philosophy of religion and religious education. Traversing through these various disciplines, I hope to argue that concepts and vocabulary, and people and institutions, are far more complex, untidy and confused than any simplistic notions of ‘confessional’ and ‘non-confessional’ seem to suggest. In the last part of this chapter, I want to present some ideas about enabling criteria and opportunities for supporting partnership between Islamic seminaries and universities in the teaching of the Islamic tradition.

Breathing – absorbing oxygen, releasing carbon dioxide – can be dangerous, for some more than others. In Australia, the ‘unprecedented’ Black Summer bushfires in southeastern Australia in late 2019 and early 2020 burned up to 24 to 40 million hectares across multiple states and territories (Commonwealth of Australia 2020a: 1.12, 1.14). Smoke infiltrated borders of the skin, of fur, of steel and brick and mortar, killing nearly 3 billion vertebrates by incineration, asphyxiation and starvation (World Wildlife Fund 2020). The fires were the direct cause of thirty-three human deaths; their respiratory effects contributed to over 400 other human deaths (Borchers Arriagada et al. 2020). Blanche Verlie (2022a) writes about these fires: ‘In breathing the smoke, we inhaled incinerated ecosystems, and the tiny particles of charred multispecies bodies made their way into our lungs, our blood, our organs, our brains’ (297). These fires, and their effects on breath, fuelled further mass climate justice activism that had already been happening in Australia and across the world.

Before climate justice activism amidst the Black Summer fires in Australia, there had already been other protests against climate inaction in the midst of poor air quality and pollution, and other protests met with respiratory assault; asphyxiation and suffocation were no new phenomena. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a protester at the September 2019 global strike for climate held a cardboard placard declaring, ‘We can't breathe money’ (Tee 2019). On the same day, in Delhi, India, a young protester said:

Aman Sharma's eloquent words reverberated later, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when philosopher Achille Mbembe (2020) proposed a ‘universal right to breathe’ for ‘all life’, including and exceeding humans (61–2).

Introduction: Power, Intersectional Identity and the Study of Islam

This important volume explores the tensions and opportunities that emerge from the intellectual encounter in Europe between what are perceived as ‘confessional’ and ‘academic’ approaches to the study of Islam and Muslims. As indicated in a number of chapters in this volume, this dichotomy positions as ‘confessional’ the study of Islam by believing Muslims (e.g., Jones, Chapter 1; Johansen, Chapter 3; Gilliat-Ray, Chapter 4; Dreier, Chapter 6). Islamic studies as undertaken in European universities is usually positioned or labelled as ‘academic’. A dichotomy on its own would be unproblematic. However, key to this dichotomy in approaches to the study of Islam is a power dynamic that, at least in Western intellectual contexts, posits ‘academic approaches’ to Islamic studies as more critical, more rigorous, more desirable and somehow as being superior to what are termed as ‘confessional approaches’. This can be contrasted to preferences within diverse Muslim communities that continue to valorise traditional forms of Islamic learning, especially in relation to positions of religious authority and leadership within Muslim communities. However, as a young alimah (traditionally trained female Muslim scholar) stated to me in a discussion about Islamic scholars in Britain, ‘Alims and alimahs need jobs and for these we need university degrees’. And so even in Muslim contexts, traditional forms of Islamic studies are devalued in liberal and marketised contexts that privilege employability. It is these power dynamics that determine how we produce knowledge, and why and how new knowledge is disseminated and shared.

These power dynamics are gendered. In wider Western/European society female Muslim scholars suffer multiple penalties in relation to their minority-ness (visible or not), Muslim-ness and their woman-ness. Enduring patriarchies in Muslim and wider Western contexts can devalue their scholarship and their societal authority. These power dynamics are also racialised and/or ethnicised with particular ethnic voices being allocated more authority (Nurein and Iqbal 2021). They are determined by intra-Muslim relations – for example, a Shia scholar who participated in the ‘Islam on Campus’ research project, underlined the criticality of the course he taught by emphasising the fact that he did not include books that were published in Saudi Arabia (Scott-Baumann et al. 2020).

Introduction

Over a decade ago, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research attracted headline attention when it announced that it was going to spend around €18 million over five years on the establishment of programmes of Islamic theology in five universities. Albrecht Fuess optimistically suggested that:

The academic and research posts being funded in this manner have been filled (see Agai and Engelhardt and Dreier, Chapters 5 and 6, respectively, this volume), but it is still much too early to judge whether Prof. Fuess’ dreams are likely to become anything approaching reality.

In this chapter I provide an overview of the development of Islamic studies in Europe till the end of the twentieth century, and then look at recent developments in the subject in universities and in interaction with Muslim students and organisations. First, I shall briefly indicate some of the heritage of the Islamic studies which have been opened to question in the latter half of the twentieth century. Britain was one of the countries where change first took place, so a closer look at the process in the field over recent decades follows. Given that a major driver of change has been the settlement of Muslim communities, a survey of responses to pressures for training imams and teachers comes next. Finally, I shall sketch some reflections on the implications of all this for Islamic studies as a European university subject.

It makes sense at this stage to briefly sketch where we have come from, in other words, how Islamic studies entered European universities and what it meant in practice. There is an extensive history of European intellectual responses to Islam virtually as old as Islam itself (Daniel 1960; Rodinson 1988; Irwin 2006; Thomas 2009–13).

Introduction

Religion in education, from religious classes in primary and secondary schools to theology faculties in universities and even to religious symbols in classrooms, has always been a controversial issue in Turkey, a laïc (secular) state with a Muslim-majority population. This chapter seeks to map the development of theology faculties in Turkey. It argues that theology faculties have navigated between the confessional and the non-confessional since their establishment, and this has been closely related to the context of Turkish state policy, particularly the politics of religion. The development of the theology faculties will be explored through their history, their core purpose and curriculum, the employment areas to which their graduates progress and their distance-learning programmes. However, first, the religious landscape and politics of religion in Turkey will be provided as a background to the discussion, followed by a brief section on the key terms used in this discussion, namely, ‘confessional’ and ‘non-confessional’.

The Politics of Religion in Turkey

A frequently cited estimate suggests that about 99 per cent of the Turkish population follows Islamic teachings (Minority Rights Group International 2018). Even though Islam, like any other religion, has different denominations, sects and interpretations, the majority of Muslims in Turkey are believed to observe Sunni Islam. There are also Alevis, who are recognised as followers of Islam, and it is estimated that between 10 and 15 per cent of the population follows Alevism (Minority Rights Group International 2018). It is estimated that non-Muslim religious minorities comprise less than 1 per cent of the population (Minority Rights Group International 2018). Moreover, Turkey has never experienced any significant waves of non-Muslim immigration, nor has it experienced a secularisation of society as some Western countries have. In other words, the vast majority of the population has historically remained Muslim. It is likely that because of this, theology faculties have historically been seen and imagined as Islam-centric institutions. However, the issue has always been a question of ‘whose’ or ‘which’ Islam, which has been inextricably linked with the politics of religion.