Two widespread illusions are handicapping the debate about whether Islam should be taught in schools, State or Church. Together, they are a formidable obstacle for anyone, in the State or Church school apparatus, wanting to reach clear-eyed decisions.
The first illusion is the idea that the very proposal to have Islam taught is itself a sign of a gradual Muslim takeover of our society and a corresponding appeasement on the part of the rest of us.
People who think this haven’t been paying enough attention. Malta has, yes, a growing Muslim population, a segment of which is very affluent. Despite the demographics, however, Imam Mohammed al-Sadi has been unable to secure either financing for the Mariam Al-Batool school or, indeed, entice Muslim parents who can afford school fees to send their children to Mariam Al-Batool. This, despite the fact that the school did not have a bad scholastic record.
Instead, many Muslim families prefer to send their children to fee-paying private schools. In numbers significant enough for some specialists in the education field to reckon that one or two private schools are being kept afloat by their Muslim, mainly Libyan, intake.
This is not the behaviour of a group acting as a disciplined army plotting a takeover. It’s the familiar behaviour of parents doing the best they can for their children. The best isn’t necessarily what the Imam thinks. If Islam can be taught to their children at school, that would be better. But it’s not a deal breaker.
There is more to this illusion. What the mainland European experience teaches us is that a hostile, alienated, hate-filled Islam is more likely to be taught when the State leaves the teaching of Islam unregulated and outside its schools.
In the past, cash-strapped mosques were more likely to bring over a preacher from a backwater of the Islamic world – the only kind of preacher who would work for that pittance. Or else a wealthy regime, like the Saudi monarchy, paid for the mosque and the preaching, with the main aim being to promote Saudi interests.
In both kinds of cases, despite appearances, the result was not a teaching of ‘Islam’ in the raw, so to speak. It was a teaching of Islam that reflected the prejudices and hidden agendas of a very particular kind of Muslim. Quite often, the Muslim children who were persuaded by such preachers shocked their own parents, who couldn’t recognise their own offspring.
European mosques are better monitored nowadays. It’s not strictly necessary to teach Islam at state schools to avoid ugly radicalisation. But the point helps us see that teaching Islam at state schools is not about doing ‘those others’ a favour. It’s about deciding whether state schools are going to embody the kind of civic ethos we want everyone to share.
The second illusion is that religion embodies an entire culture. It should be obvious to native Maltese that it doesn’t. As a Catholic I share the same religion as my parents. But it’s perfectly obvious that I was brought up in a different religious culture.
Some of my mother’s favourite childhood memories include teaching the family’s pet parrot how to squawk insults during the saying of the rosary, or rolling around in the dust while wearing the detested Latin teacher’s soutane.
By the time I was growing up, it wasn’t just Latin that had disappeared. So had soutanes and the rosary, at least in my kind of family. We didn’t consider ourselves any less Christian. But one advantage of being brought up in a society where religion is socially pervasive is that you are also given a daily tutorial in distinguishing between religion itself, the religiosity of a particular social class, and the neurosis of your aunt or neighbour (whom you nonetheless continue to love as yourself by humouring her).
I have lived in a Muslim society and I’ve worked with Muslims coming from various Muslim-majority countries. In their jokes, quips and irritations I can recognise the same ability to insist on a distinction between the demands of religion (as they understood it) and a religiosity that said as much about class, status and nationalism.
None of this should be surprising. Neither Christianity nor Islam are rooted in any single society. They can articulate both local culture as well as a counter-culture. Just consider how some of the harshest critics of our feasts are the bien-pensants of the middle class and a certain kind of parish priest.
To insist on a distinction between religion and culture is not to insist on an academic distinction. It is to insist that the relevant culture we should be focused on is the culture of the school.
In any given school, State or Church, Catholic children will represent different kinds of cultural religiosities. So would Muslim children. Some Catholic children will find more affinity with some Muslim children than other Catholics, and vice-versa.
Styles of religiosity, like political affinities, can matter more than the details of doctrine. Besides, religion isn’t something you learn once and for all at school. It’s more like a language. Classroom teaching helps but it is post-school practice and relevance that really matters.
What the school needs to provide – if it’s serious about the subject – therefore is the very opposite of what is sometimes demanded by a certain kind of multi-culturalist.
It is not the teaching of a complete, different set of values between which one has to choose. It’s a set of values that any religion, Islam included, will need to be explored, understood and reinterpreted over a lifetime.
At this point I anticipate some people piping up to say Islam is different. That it is inflexible and dogmatic. Its radical ‘Islamists’ certainly are. But what Islam says about marriage, and death, and serenity, isn’t something that ordinary Muslims understand only by attending Quran classes.
It’s something they learn by getting married, burying family members and going through lifecrises. Just like the rest of us.
For them, as for Catholics, religion is as much a surprising journey as it is a matter of wilful choice. The best school, State or Church, would be the one whose ethos and culture helps them embark upon the journey in which secular knowledge and faith can speak to each other.
ranierfsadni@europe.com