Скачать или смотреть Islamic Religious Education in Belgium (Caroline Sägesser)

Keynote by Caroline Sägesser (History, CRISP)

Belgium recognized Islam as early as 1974, and while implementing this decision proved quite difficult as far as mosques and imams were concerned, Islamic religious education was quickly organized in public schools, where pupils have a choice between religious education in one of the six recognized faiths or non-denominational ethics. In 1989, the federalization of Belgium transferred education to the Communities. Those federated entities have been facing similar problems for 30 years : Islamic RE curriculum is lacking in quality and most of the teachers do not have a suitable teaching degree. Meanwhile, IRE has become very popular in urban schools; in Brussels public schools, it is chosen by a majority of the pupils. In this contribution we explain the Belgian system of RE, detail the specific challenges posed by IRE and explore the solutions implemented or foreseen by public authorities to improve the situation.

Caroline Sägesser holds an MA from Brown University, Rhode Island and a PhD in History from Université Libre de Bruxelles. She is a senior researcher at CRISP (Centre de recherche et d’information socio-politiques / Brussels) where one of her fields of research is religion and public policy in Belgium.

This was one of the keynote lectures at the conference 'Education of Islam – Islam in Education in Europe' on 23-25 March 2022 at the University of Antwerp (Belgium).

More information on the conference:
https://www.ucsia.org/home-en/themes/...