Border Thinking in the Training of Imams and Muslim Caregivers

1. Introduction

The training of imams is proving to be a key issue at the interface between Muslim communities and society in different European countries. However, it also plays a central role in the development of Islamic practical theology as an “interdisciplinary and action-oriented field”^[1] still under construction. When it comes to Muslim organisations, not only imams, but a broad range of positions commonly summarized as caregivers are relevant. These include teachers, youth workers, women’s group leaders, chaplains, coordinators, board members of associations, etc. They work mostly as volunteers, sometimes also as employees. Their activities partly overlap with those of the imam, who is particularly responsible for leading prayers, the Friday sermon, and teaching, although the range of tasks performed by imams in migratory contexts has expanded considerably. Therefore, Islamic practical theology should refer to the training of religious professionals in various functions.^[2]

This article is dedicated to how imams and caregivers are trained, taking as its basis a case study involving a unique approach to continuing education in Switzerland. It provides an insight into the social and political framework of the training course, as well as its content and interactive dynamics. Following a participant-oriented pedagogy, the imams and caregivers themselves play an active rather than a receptive role in the programme. Finally, this article is intended as a first step towards gaining insights from the training programme to develop further practical theological reflections.

We take the current state of research as our departure point, particularly concerning imam training, and present the theories and methods that are in use. Then we look at the framework of the case study and analyse the material in relation to two main topics: social participation and theological and religious issues. Finally, we present results and further perspectives.

2. Imam Training: Between Recognition and Regulation

Imam training has been a controversial issue in political and social debates in many European countries since 9/11.^[3] As imams play a key role as “a cultural symbol of the community”^[4] and are often seen “both as causes of problems and as possible solutions to them,”^[5] politicians have discovered that imams have the ability to build bridges between Muslim communities and the wider society. While in most countries the majority of imams have been trained abroad, the qualification and training of imams is becoming a focus for central European governments which directly contest “home state governance over Islam abroad,”^[6] e. g. by Turkey, as organisers of imam training. With increasing settlement of Muslims in European immigration countries, training programmes in the countries of origin are reaching their limits, as they are too far removed linguistically and socio-culturally from European imamship.^[7]

While it has been asserted there is a “severe lack of new training experiences,”^[8] the situation has changed in recent years, and various training programmes with different aims have been introduced in several European countries. Some of these are study programmes in Islamic theology, which were often initially presented as “modules in imam training programmes”^[9] or have only later begun offering “graduates of Islamic theological studies an imam training.”^[10] Others are continuing education programmes in various formats. Some training courses aim to exercise control over imams and, through them, the entire Muslim community, leading to its domestication.^[11] Others are concerned with the strengthening of the secular state, integration and the prevention of radicalisation.^[12] As some of these programmes were strongly politically motivated and not sufficiently anchored in Muslim communities, they failed due to “lack of trust”^[13] and collaboration, as was the case in the Netherlands. In state initiated or purely academic programmes there is the “difficulty of finding a balance between academic freedom and the exigencies of religious doctrine.”^[14] One area of conflict arises from the fact that some representatives of imam training see it solely as the responsibility of Muslim communities.^[15]

In response to these challenges, a movement away from state-dominated training towards a multi-stakeholder approach can be observed: “one witnesses various initiatives in Western Europe in which state, Muslim organizations and educational institutes (are willing to) collaborate to better prepare imams for their tasks in European secular countries.”^[16] These new attempts and projects are characterised by “cooperation across Muslim organisations and public education institutions,”^[17] with key basic ideas of “shared ownership”^[18] or “joint ownership.”^[19] Instead of a deficit-orientated approach, the aim is “strengthening the imams’ professional skills and competencies.”^[20] However, claims of “independent imam training” as “the result of cooperation”^[21] between Muslim communities and governments can be questioned: “Are these programmes as independent and free of power plays as is claimed?”^[22] It is therefore not a question of asserting an unrealistic independence, but rather of asking whether and how the multiple relations, claims, and interdependencies can be made a subject of the training. To what extent can the training itself function as a space for critical dialogue with different stakeholders?

Current research focuses more on study programmes for persons who want to become imams than on “continuous training programmes for already-working imams.”^[23] Research has mainly been focused on elements of the structural and institutional frameworks. As a result, content-related questions have remained something of a desideratum: “More research is needed to explore exactly how this works in the context of the imam training as a site of deliberative engagement.”^[24] This gap in research allows us to raise the following questions: What communication processes take place in the training programmes? What competencies are they geared towards? What content is included? What active part do imams and caregivers play in the training course?

While both political strategies and research on training primarily focus on (male) imams, “the diversity inherent in Islamic religious leadership”^[25] comprises chaplains, teachers, leaders of youth or women’s groups, and association board members. Unlike in the US context, in Europe there is no clear “shift to full-time paid professionals,”^[26] so volunteers also have to be considered as part of the target group. The professionalisation processes for imams are more diverse than is the case for Muslim chaplains, for whom a specific and standardized training is required.^[27] This situation raises the question of how different profiles perceive training and how they contribute to shaping it. An interesting aspect to consider is the interaction between imams and other caregivers in a training context.

To sum up, there is a strong desideratum to analyse the training of imams and Muslim caregivers with a wider focus, considering the reflective agency of the participants and the processes of exchange taking place within this framework. This focus will now be deepened theoretically and analysed empirically, using a case study.

3. Disrupting Binaries: Border Thinking in the Contact Zone

This analysis draws mainly on three postcolonial and strongly emancipatory concepts that emerged out of global and local challenges to the dynamics of hegemony, namely Borderlands, contact zones and border thinking. The term border thinking was based on Gloria Anzaldúa’s work^[28] and later developed by Walter Mignolo.^[29] In her work, Anzaldúa describes the Borderlands as a physical and metaphorical space “wherever two or more cultures edge each other,”^[30] characterized by a “constant state of transition” and inhabited by “those who cross over.”^[31] People who are marked as different by society, and are therefore seasoned in the crossing of physical and metaphorical borders, have to “become sensitive to a lot of different things in order to survive.”^[32] This (forced) sensitivity leads them to develop a perspective that is characterized by creatively breaking down, transcending and uprooting dualistic thinking and paradigms.^[33] Adopting an epistemological lens, Mignolo recognises the Borderlands as a space where hegemonial and peripheral epistemologies intersect, and subaltern perspectives are produced – in other words, where border thinking emerges.^[34] He describes border thinking as a “double critique” which attempts “to think from both traditions and, at the same time, from neither of them.”^[35] This complexity entails “thinking from dichotomous concepts rather than ordering the world in dichotomies.”^[36] The concept thus reconciles opposing perspectives by overcoming divisions and creating innovative ways of thinking.

Another term that is used for this space of friction where different worlds and perspectives meet is the contact zone, a phrase coined by Mary Louse Pratt in the context of transcultural pedagogy. For Pratt, contact zones are “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.”^[37] The marginalised parts of those contact zones are limited in their ability to control the dominant epistemology but are very much able to determine what is absorbed from it and how it is used. In spaces where people meet and communicate, there is often the expectation that all participants share the same rules and norms.^[38] Pratt argues that in the contact zone, this is not the case and therefore any communication that is produced will generate a “radically heterogenous” reception.^[39] The contact zone therefore allows for a multitude of perspectives and knowledges, and it is exactly the friction between these that enables disruptive ways of thinking.

Mignolo’s rendering of border thinking has been criticised as constructing a simplified dichotomy which reproduces essentialising and homogenizing perceptions of the global south and the global north.^[40] For this analysis, it is important to recognise that the concepts of borderlands, contact zones and border thinking are steeped in and emerged out of hegemonial and colonial power structures; therefore, we have to be wary about the reproduction of such notions when using them. At the same time, these concepts contain the potential for change and for disrupting the binary systems which created those liminal spaces and epistemologies in the first place. As such, they carry a disruptive and transformative energy which we attempt to transfer to our case study. To escape the binaries Mignolo was accused of reproducing, this analysis will examine the case of continuing education for imams and Muslim caregivers, seeing it as a contact zone and borderland where a multitude of perspectives, knowledges and practices meet, connect, and position themselves in relation to each other. Border thinking, then, is the product of this contact zone and is characterized by creative strategies which disrupt, transform, transcend, and subvert binary and hegemonial ways of thinking. We will especially focus on the multitudes of viewpoints from within the “marginal” as well as the “hegemonial” perspectives.

For our analysis, we consulted reflective material created by the participants, teaching material from the presenters and media coverage about the continuing education course. Most importantly, we closely examined protocols of the training days, which contain input from the presenters, summaries of discussions and direct quotes from participants, presenters and organisers of the programme. The protocols were written in an observatory manner by a member of the project team and intended partly for evaluation purposes, to assure the quality of the course, and partly for research purposes.^[41] Using qualitative content analysis methods, we sought evidence of the strategies described above.^[42] Categories were formed inductively, which in turn served to extract further significant examples from the material. The researchers of this study were, in cooperation with others, responsible for the planning and implementation of the continuing education course. Therefore, it represents an action-research approach, as described below.

4. “Zurich Competence”: Continuing Education as a Contact Zone

The starting point for this case study is the cooperative regime between the state and religious communities as it exists in almost all Swiss cantons.^[43] State support is granted to legally recognised churches and religious communities.^[44] Most Muslim communities in Switzerland are organised in associations which are not legally recognised.^[45] The lack of legal recognition also carries through to social recognition. Muslims in Switzerland are often perceived as an out-group^[46] requiring integration.^[47] Additionally, there is an ongoing dominant anti-Muslim discourse in media and politics, which in turn leads to further anti-Muslim racism within mainstream society. For example, some discourses of this nature were seen in the lead up to the state ban on minarets or on face veils.^[48] However, there are attempts from Muslim communities to influence the discourse by organising grassroot projects, and some authorities recognise their responsibility to create conditions for increased Muslim participation. One of these is the Canton of Zurich, which initially implemented the continuing education programme. The Canton of Zurich’s religious policy is characterised by the fact that it also takes into account non-recognised religious communities, values their contributions to society, and supports their activities wherever possible. As a result of a study that highlighted the need for Continuing training in Muslim communities,^[49] the project “Zurich Competence” was created. The project was conducted between April 2021 and December 2023. It comprised alternating phases of exploration, survey and preparation, as well as continuing education phases.

The project focused on the design and implementation of a continuing education programme for imams and Muslim caregivers in the Canton of Zurich. Based on the results of the conception phase and the needs assessment, an eight-day continuing education course was designed with the aim of strengthening the skills and social participation of imams and Muslim caregivers. The training course also included a short observation period in a public institution or (non-Muslim) NGO and an exchange of experiences, as well as the organisation, documentation, and presentation of a transfer project by each of the participants, in which insights from the programme were linked to a practical community activity. A total of thirty-five people completed the training course: sixteen women and nineteen men, eleven of whom were imams. Some of the participants were chaplains who had already completed a chaplaincy training course. In this sense, the continuing education course did not replace chaplaincy training but was focused on general skills relevant at the interface of communities and wider society.

This paper presents the results of the action-research, based on the principles of a relational self, wholeness and the primacy of practice.^[50] In a “practice-research engagement” study and practice, institutions collaborate in order to transform social challenges.^[51] The core of such an approach is mutual learning, with both researchers and practitioners producing knowledge which goes beyond that of the individual perspective.^[52] This approach was implemented in the Zurich Competence project: the project was characterised by structural cooperation between the cantonal government, the Muslim umbrella organisation VIOZ and the University of Fribourg’s Swiss Center for Islam and Society. The three partners worked together to design and implement the project. The first step was to carry out a needs assessment. Around fifty persons, half from Muslim communities and the other half from authorities, state, and civil society organisations, were interviewed to evaluate their needs, as well as important topics and skills for continuing education. In this way, the different educational backgrounds of the target groups were taken into account. The training course itself was also organised in a participatory manner and was jointly led by a person from the university and one from the Muslim umbrella organisation. In addition, people from the target group were involved as lecturers, with the work units encouraging active participation and serving as a space for reflection by the participants.

In this way, the project provided imams and Muslim caregivers with a qualification but also produced knowledge for future qualification measures and cooperative actions between the state and religious communities. After the project was completed, focus group discussions were held with participants to evaluate the project and to identify further needs.

In addition to multi-stakeholder cooperation, the lecturers in the continuing education course came from a wide variety of contexts: state organisations, Muslim communities, associations and academia, and a number represented an intersectionality of those contexts. The same was the case for the participants. They are active in a variety of ethno-linguistic communities and roles, are of different age groups, educational backgrounds and are first- or second-generation migrants. These many different perspectives and knowledges mean that the project, and especially the continuing education course, represents a contact zone, as described by Pratt.^[53] This notion of contact zone was accepted by the participants, at the beginning of the first day; they themselves set the ground rules for it, which included respect, diversity, and an inclusive attitude towards each other.^[54] One participant indicated that they would not “necessarily have to have the same opinions” and different opinions should be accepted.^[55] This shows that the participants themselves expected to see the wide variety of differing and opposing perspectives which characterise a contact zone. Observations and transfer projects created further contact zones for which the participants were the driving force, and which assumably also produced border thinking. Power relations during the programme became visible in the contrast between organisers and participants, presenters and participants, and between imams and caregivers. Despite these power relations, the people involved in the programme found unique ways to contest, engage, or reconcile different perspectives, as illustrated in the following analysis.

5. Border Thinking in the Contact Zone between Community and Society: Analysis of Two Examples

In this section, we will demonstrate how the programme as a contact zone shaped the border thinking exhibited within the continuing education course. Under analysis, two themes emerged as particularly suitable to illustrate this. At different points in the course, the participants reflected on the question of participation and on different theological topics related to tradition, innovation and authority. Those will serve as structural points for the analysis.

6. Conclusion and Further Perspectives

Corresponding to the tendency to actively involve different stakeholders, this training programme emerged from a need for cooperation between Muslim and non-Muslim actors in a social context which is often indifferent, mistrustful or even hostile to Muslims. Additionally, Zurich Competence was part of a wider policy of incorporation of non-recognised religion by the Canton of Zurich. The canton’s approach is to recognise and support the social contributions of these communities. At the same time, tendencies to “domesticate” Muslim communities emerged in the programme as well, such as making the prevention of radicalisation part of the course and the funding proposal. Nonetheless, the course was not primarily aimed at conveying knowledge but at strengthening skills in/through contact zones.

The aim to strengthen skills was evident in the proactive approach to social participation, which focused on empowerment, collaboration, solidarity and diversity. Throughout the programme, the content and approaches were not simply adopted, but questioned, criticised and adapted by the participants. Frictions between the different roles and hierarchies of the participants shaped discussions on social participation, as well as theological issues. Additionally, the perception of Muslims’ social participation in Switzerland influenced reflections on theological questions. Some references to religious authority, innovation and tradition or the institutionalisation of Islamic theology, evidently referred and reacted to broader societal perceptions of Muslims in Switzerland. Participants’ arguments in relation to those questions were therefore informed by their own perception of social participation. The fields of social participation and theological questions are strongly interconnected and both include binary structures: recognition vs. exclusion, trust vs. suspicion and tradition vs. innovation, which run the risk of being reinforced by each other. Border thinking in this analysis revealed ways to reconcile such structures and develop more symbiotic concepts, which can mutually enrich the fields of social participation and theological reflection. The fact that various stakeholders were involved ensures the widespread impact of such considerations and contributes to the development of new social, political and religious frameworks.

As we can see, encouraging border thinking in the training of imams and Muslim caregivers is not a process which is free of tensions. It will always be impacted by the multi-perspectivity of Muslim communities and wider society. It is also evident that, beyond the reflections of those involved in practice, further scientific considerations are required. Islamic practical theology can refer to such experiences and develop a “conversation between the lived experience and the Islamic faith.”^[105] In this way, Islamic practical theology can participate in a negotiation process at multiple contact zones in diverse societies. An in-depth exploration of the different approaches and concepts of practical theology in the continuing education of imams and caregivers may also help to overcome polarisation between an orientation towards tradition or an orientation towards innovation and give current challenges an appropriate place in theological reflection.