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Swedish

Being Muslim

Hariz Baharudin

It is the eve of Eid al-Adha, theMuslim festival known in Sin-gapore as Hari Raya Haji thatinvolves korban or animal sac-rifice. As at many Islamic insti-

tutions all over the world, the Khad-ijah Islamic Centre in Kista, Stock-holm, was busy preparing for thespecial day.

When I got there, however, Iwas surprised to find that therewould be no slaughter of sheep.

Instead, balloons were beingblown up and tied to the ceiling,alongside colourful streamers.Small plastic bags were beingpacked with candy and chocolate,and children were laughing as theytried to keep some of the treats forthemselves.

I had never seen Eid celebratedthis way before.

By ushering in the special daywith the Swedish tradition of pre-paring sweets and holding a party,the Khadijah centre, which openedin August, hoped to promote this as-pect of Swedish culture. It is charac-teristic of the centre’s aim to helpMuslim immigrants find a middleground between their faith andSwedish culture, and to establish asense of community for people todraw support from.

The centre used to be a public li-brary, and its activity rooms are

now used for religious classes andcommunity events. Those facingdifficulties in settling down in Swe-den come here to seek advice fromMuslims who have been in thecountry longer.

“When you are a small commu-nity in a big country, you alwaysneed to be part of the wider society.What we hope to do here is to wel-come people into our communityand reconcile between a Muslimidentity and a Swedish identity,”said Mr Imadur Rahman, a memberof the centre’s board of manage-ment.

Although many people useKhadijah as a place of worship, itsaim of being a community centre isslowly being realised, and peoplevisit to interact with others.

“We used to pray in the base-ment of a restaurant and it was notcomfortable. But to me the bestthing is how Khadijah has a com-

munity spirit, and everyone is help-ful. Whenever you need someoneto talk to, you can go there,” saidMr Usman Berg, 42, a researcher.He is from Pakistan.

About 5 per cent of Sweden’spopulation of 9.7 million are Mus-lim and most are immigrants or thedescendants of immigrants.

The number of Muslim immi-grants is growing fast as awarenessspreads of Sweden’s welfare state,with its comprehensive, low-costhealth care and free Swedish-lan-guage classes for all newcomers. Ac-cording to the Swedish StatisticalBoard, the top four largest growinggroups of foreign-born residentslast year were people from Syria, So-malia, Afghanistan and Eritrea.

Also, people born in Iraq, Iran,Somalia and Turkey were amongthe 10 largest groups of foreign-born persons in the Swedish civilregistry last year.

Muslims have been moving toSweden in recent decades and, likemany other immigrants, tend tolive in immigrant-heavy enclaves.In the capital Stockholm, these are-as include the districts of Husby,Rinkeby and Kista.

“People come from all over,from Somalia, from Malaysia, fromBangladesh, from Sudan,” said MrRahman from the Khadijah centre.The 30-year-old arrived from Bang-ladesh when he was 23, and worksas a researcher at the telecommuni-cations giant Ericsson.

With people from so many dif-ferent countries, yet sharing thesame faith, he said, it is importantto establish a sense of communityspirit for immigrants making a newlife in an unfamiliar new country.

“Our job is to come up with strat-egies and find activities for peopleto bond over. Especially young peo-ple, at some point of their lives

they could become isolated from so-ciety,” he added, referring to thechallenges of practising Islam inSweden.

The centre has its work cut outfor it, even if its officials prefer notto discuss more sensitive aspects ofthe growing Muslim presence inSweden.

Just recently, Agence France-Presse reported Sweden’s head of in-telligence services Anders Thorn-berg as saying that as many as 300Swedes could have joined the Islam-ic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) mili-tant group, whose barbarous tacticsin the name of Islam have been con-demned by Muslims everywhere.

“A hundred cases of people whohave left to join the fighting havebeen confirmed, then there are thepresumed cases, and there are thosethat have not been counted, whichbrings the total to between 250 and300,” he was quoted as saying.

Expressing concern about the ris-ing number of young Swedish menbecoming militants in Syria, MrThornberg said: “They're going be-yond the limits of human behav-iour. They’re fighting and killingother people.”

In October, Sweden passed a lawbanning its citizens from takingpart in foreign-armed conflicts.

My attempt to ask people at theKhadijah centre to discuss what itmeans when Swedish Muslims joina group like ISIS were unsuccessful,as they preferred not to comment.

They stressed that their focus iscommunity building, and that theywant their centre to be not only aplace where Muslims can performtheir prayers but also meet andbond.

They want to help new arrivalsto dispel doubts about settling inSweden, and encourage them towork hard at school or at their jobs.

“Many Muslims who come hereare nervous and get advice that isnot good. They think they do nothave to work because they will notbe taken seriously, and end up justdepending on the welfare system,”said Mr Abdul Kadir Habib, 43, an-other Khadijah board member,who is from Eritrea.

“But then someone says to them‘Assalamualaikum’ (“peace be uponyou”), they hear something famil-iar in this very unfamiliar place.They open up their hearts and theystart listening and working. Theytake the first steps to living their lifein Sweden.”

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Swedish

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The reports and photographs on these pagesare by journalism students (from left) Tan PeiLin, Hariz Baharudin and Seow Bei Yi ofNanyang Technological University’s Wee KimWee School of Communication andInformation.

They were part of a group selected to visitSweden last month for Go-Far, the school’soverseas reporting programme.

the

Ms Simet Sager is 26 and living thelife she always dreamed of. Aftergraduating with a degree in nurs-ing, she moved 500km from herfamily home in the southern Swed-ish city of Lund to the capital Stock-holm, where she landed a job at achildren’s hospital.

The ethnic Iraqi’s life wouldhave been quite different if her fam-ily had not emigrated to Swedenwhen she was seven.

The move meant she was educat-ed all the way to university andcould choose her career. For daugh-ters of immigrants from conserva-tive societies, living in Sweden hasopened up opportunities theymight never have otherwise had.

These girls are not only thriving,but also outperforming immigrantboys.

Still, many struggle to reconciletheir ethnic identity and Swedishnationality.

Ms Sager recalls how she haddreaded telling her mother that shewanted to be a nurse. To some inIraq, she said, nurses were regardedas “bad girls” because they workedlong, late hours.

Her parents surprised her by be-ing supportive, but her mother hadfriends who would ask: “Are youhappy she’s a nurse?”

And when she left home forStockholm, it raised relatives’ eye-brows. “They were like, ‘You’re notmarried. Why are you on yourown? You should be with yourparents’,” she said.

Life is always a balancing act.“My relatives are a part of this socie-ty but, at the same time, they don’twant us to forget where we camefrom,” she said. “You are always inbetween.”

Immigration to Sweden haschanged over the decades. Whilethere was an influx from Nordiccountries in the 1950s and 1960s,the early 1970s saw more refugeeimmigration and family reunifica-

tions from countries in the MiddleEast and Latin America.

In 2000, about 11 per cent of theSwedish population was for-eign-born. That has risen to around16 per cent of its 9.7 million peoplenow. Sweden has received morethan 70,000 asylum requests so farthis year, with Syrians making upthe largest group.

Not everyone welcomes the new-comers. In recent elections, the Swe-den Democrats, a nationalist an-ti-immigrant party, gained a surpris-ing 13 per cent of the vote, addinga twist to social tensions.

As the immigrants settle in andtheir children go to school, the girlsoutshine the boys.

According to Statistics Sweden,28 per cent of foreign-born womenaged between 25 and 64 have threeor more years of post-secondary ed-ucation, compared to 23 per cent ofthe men.

More girls with foreign back-grounds apply for places in tertiaryinstitutions than their male coun-terparts too.

There are many reasons tossedup to explain why the girls outper-form the boys.

For one thing, conservative im-migrant parents expect their daugh-ters to stay indoors, so unlike theboys, the girls are spared the possi-bility of mixing with bad company.

And although immigrant par-ents push their children to do wellin school, researchers say the girlsare more motivated to succeed.

“It’s a reaction, a compensationmechanism,” said Professor Mehr-dad Darvishpour, 54, a senior lec-turer at Malarden University, refer-ring to immigrant women. “Youhave to gain more education beforeyou can find a good position in soci-ety. You are in a lower positioncompared to both other immigrantmen and the (ethnic) Swedish.”

But as immigrant women endup empowered by better education,

Sweden’s equal rights and the moreliberal culture, the immigrant menstruggle with a loss of status athome and in society.

“Women’s situations becomebetter than in their home countriesand, for men, it’s the opposite,”said Professor Darvishpour.

In more patriarchal societies,men have a higher status and arethe breadwinners of the family.

As immigrant men struggle withunemployment or with doing low-er-level jobs than before and theirwomenfolk go to work, traditionalgender roles are affected. The wom-en become more confident and lessdependent on their husbands andexpect more from life.

In some immigrant groups likeChileans and Iranians, the rate ofdivorce is considerably higher thanfor ethnic Swedes. Often, it is thewomen who initiate the break-up.

Conflicts arise especially in fami-lies that are not financially secureand have problems integrating intoSwedish society.

M s D i a n a W a r u h i u , a33-year-old new immigrant fromKenya, says even having to sharehousehold responsibilities whenwomen go out to work could be achallenge for the men.

Mr Arian Furi, a 25-year-old eth-nic Iranian, feels it can be hard be-ing an immigrant man in Sweden.While immigrants in general facesome discrimination, he said theprejudice is amplified for men be-cause they are overrepresented incrime statistics.

“You’re not only discriminatedagainst, you’re also feared. Peopledon’t want to sit next to you, peo-ple don’t want to look you in theeye; you become intimidating tothe majority,” said the Swedish lan-guage teacher at an adult educationinstitute.

“Being a man and an immi-grant, it’s like you’re being judgedboth ways.”Seow Bei Yi

way

GOING THE DISTANCE

Seow Bei Yi

It is a Monday morning in Tensta, asuburb north-west of Stockholm.All is quiet but for merchants set-ting up the fruit market, and astream of students making theirway to school.

They tread across the gravelcourtyard, wearing windbreakers,jackets and, for some girls, Islamicheadscarves. Blond, blue-eyedSwedes are nowhere to be seen.

The Ross Tensta Gymnasium is amulticultural high school whichadopted American-inspired teach-ing methods more than 10 yearsago. It is no stranger to change butgrapples with an image problem forbeing in an immigrant-heavy area.

Ethnicity is not usually men-tioned in Swedish schools, but prin-cipal Sofie Abrahamsson does notshirk from the topic if it crops up.

The 40-year-old recalls a recentconversation with a student. It wasnot about homework or theschool’s programmes, but identity.He had told her: “I’m a Turk.”

Like many of his schoolmates,the teenager was born and raised inSweden and speaks Swedish fluent-ly. Yet, when asked his nationality,he said he considered himself to beboth Turkish and Swedish.

It underscores Ross TenstaGymnasium’s challenge in tryingto be a good school. Almost 90 percent of Tensta’s 18,800 residentshave immigrant roots.

The school is therefore often per-ceived as non-Swedish, despitemost of its students having lived alltheir lives in Sweden. There areabout 700 students, aged 16 to 18,of almost 50 ethnicities with rootsin Somalia, Turkey and Iran,among others.

As it is the main high school inthe area, its reputation is closelytied to the social issues of its neigh-bourhood and it is not all rosy in

Tensta. The suburb has thrice theunemployment rate of Stockholm,and almost five times as many resi-dents on financial assistance.

In 2011, there were almost twiceas many reported muggings andsnatch thefts as in the capital.These are among factors that putoff students from outside the area.

“Most of our students are Swed-ish, but they identify with some-thing else,” said Ms Abrahamsson,one of the school’s two principals.“That is something we can’tchange. But we want to give our stu-dents something. We’re here to edu-cate them.”

She and the other head, Mr Ru-nar Krantz, 46, believe their multi-cultural school offers students awider worldview and allows themto learn to communicate betterwith people of different back-grounds.

Every student has a teacher-men-tor. The staff look out for thosewith learning difficulties or behav-ioural issues in relating to teachersor peers.

“Apart from grades, we want thestudents to have a sense of identityand the belief that they can be-come who they want to become,”said Ms Abrahamsson.

Students and alumni inter-viewed say they appreciate thattheir teachers go the extra mile tooffer support, especially as manyhave parents who cannot helpthem with schoolwork and cannotafford private tuition.

Mr Rani Alhallak remembershow his parents could not helphim with learning Swedish becausethey are from Lebanon and knowlittle of the language themselves.

“In Tensta, the students needmore help, more people to talk to,and a person to look up to,” saidthe 25-year-old, who now works asa bank manager.

His teachers were a big help tohim.

“It felt like your teacher wasyour friend,” he said. “This didn’thave to do only with your studies.If you had problems, you could justgo to your teacher and talk tohim.”

When he was in school, abouthalf his class of about 28 were eth-nic Swedes. They came from out-side Tensta, attracted to the naturalscience programme that the schoolruns in collaboration with the pres-tigious Karolinska Institute.

But that has changed. Since freeschool choice was introduced inthe early 1990s, students no longer

have to go to schools near theirhomes. More middle-class studentsare choosing city centre schools in-stead.

Mr Alhallak thinks that havingthe word “Tensta” in the schoolname is probably turning off somestudents.

Being in an immigrant-heavysuburb means the school has to bat-tle the perception that it has poorteachers, produces poor resultsand, above all, that its students arenot “Swedish”.

It has not been able to shrug offthese notions despite drastic chang-es more than 10 years ago when it

adapted teaching methods of anAmerican private school.

The Ross School was started inEast Hampton, New York, in 1991by Mrs Courtney Ross and her latehusband, former Time Warnerchairman Stephen Ross.

It has children from pre-nurseryto grade 12, and prides itself on hav-ing an interdisciplinary curriculumwith a strong emphasis on historyand culture.

In 2002, the Stockholm supervi-sor of secondary schools suggestedthat Tensta Gymnasium adopt theRoss teaching model as a way tocombat falling enrolment. The re-

vamp started in 2003 with 30 mil-lion kronor (S$5.3 million) setaside for it.

Class size was reduced from anaverage of 32 to 20, with every stu-dent given a laptop for researchand presentations. In the staffroom, teachers were grouped intointer-disciplinary teams so theycould come up with project workand extra teaching materials usingknowledge from their respectivesubjects.

The premises were renovated toprovide more open study areas andencourage interaction between stu-dents and teachers, and betweenteachers and administrators.

The result is a cosy environmentwith open discussion spaces, dis-play cases for student projects andnatural lighting indoors. It is a con-trast to the drab uniformity of Ten-sta, with its apartment blocks fromthe 1960s. The school, originallycalled Tensta Gymnasium, addedthe “Ross” brand in 2009.

“It wasn’t easy, but it was very,very fun,” recalled former principalInger Nyrell of the long process.“I’ve always believed in the devel-opment of education and I thinkit’s good for teachers to developand to change. Otherwise, you loseyour passion for teaching.”

Although many younger teach-ers supported the changes, someolder ones believed that a publicschool should be free from “foreigninfluence”. After their retirement,in 2012, they published a stronglyworded letter protesting against theRoss model.

Ms Nyrell, who is retired, main-tains that the change was a successoverall. “A lot of municipal schoolsin Stockholm have closed,” shepointed out. “But this school, de-spite being in a suburb and havinga large immigrant population, hassurvived and maintained itsnumber of students.”

Alumni like Mr Alhallak say theRoss name has increased interest inthe school, and people do askabout its programmes. But it re-mains a neighbourhood schoolwith students who enter with lowacademic scores.

Still, students who thrive therespeak up strongly against its nega-tive stereotypes. Zaynab Gohari,17, was hesitant about applying un-til a teacher adviser at her previousschool told her Ross Tensta Gymna-sium produced many students whohad gone on to find success.

“Everyone else said not to go

there, that the teachers were notgood,” said Zaynab, who had bettergrades than most of her peers whenshe joined.

She found the school betterthan she expected.

“The teachers are very good, butthere are students who don’t wantto get educated, and don’t have theinterest to get educated,” she said.“That’s what destroys the reputa-tion of the school. Our school has alow entry point, everyone cancome in.”

Alumnus Ahmed Abdirahman,28, shares her view. Now a research-er at a broadcasting corporation, hewas at Tensta Gymnasium when itfirst picked up the Ross conceptand still maintains close ties withhis alma mater.

“It’s a beautiful school,” he says.“It’s modern, it’s multicultural, andthere are great teachers. But notmany choose to go there because ofhow it is labelled.”

As long as Tensta’s socio-eco-nomic problems persist, efforts tochange the school’s reputation arelikely to have limited success.

“No matter how much invest-ment the school has done, frombuying a new education model, totravelling the world and rebuildingthe whole space, it will all comeback. That means the grades of in-coming students remain low,” hesaid.

Principal Abrahamsson remainssteadfast in believing in herschool’s potential. Of its battleagainst negative perceptions, shesaid: “The whole world is in ourschool. But we’re in Stockholm, inSweden. Unfortunately, in Sweden,the name still matters.”

Now in the midst of planning itsvision for the next five years, shesaid: “It’s not easy to transform aschool into something new, but inthat, we have succeeded.”

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Centre aims to helpimmigrants adapt tolocal culture whilepractising their faith

PHOTO: HARIZ BAHARUDIN

Mr Abdul Kadir Habib, an administrator at the Khadijah centre, helps his sons – Yusuf, seven, and Ibrahim, nine – inflateballoons for the Eid al-Adha celebrations.

PHOTOS: HARIZ BAHARUDINN

The Khadijah Islamic Centre in Stockholm aims to be more than just a place forMuslims to come together and pray. It is also where people like Mr ImadurRahman and his wife Ailin Abdullah (below) can take some time off to playwith their friends’ children.

By ushering in thespecial day with theSwedish tradition ofpreparing sweets andholding a party, theKhadijah centre hopedto promote this aspectof Swedish culture.

[ special report:

ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG

Immigrant women outperform men

School’s uphill battle to shake off reputation as a poor immigrant outfit

“When you are a smallcommunity in a bigcountry, you alwaysneed to be part of thewider society. What wehope to do here is towelcome people intoour community andreconcile between aMuslim identity and aSwedish identity.”MR IMADUR RAHMAN,a member of the Khadijah centre’sboard of management

PHOTO: TAN PEI LIN

the other face of sweden ]

For manyimmigrants,learning Swedishis the first andmost importantstep tointegration.The countryprovides freeSwedish-languageclasses for allnewcomers. Here,a teacher usesactions and songsto help herstudentsrememberSwedish words.

PHOTO: TAN PEI LIN

Ross Tensta English teacher Elisabeth Braconier says the ethnicity of her students does not make a difference to her. Theschool, located in an immigrant-heavy suburb in Stockholm, is generally perceived to be “non-Swedish”.

“Most of our students areSwedish, but they identify withsomething else.”MS SOFIE ABRAHAMSSON, Ross TenstaGymnasium principal

PHOTO: TAN PEI LIN

Chemistry and biology teacher Hazha Mohammed Fadhi, 44, teaching a class at Ross Tensta Gymnasium. With natural sciences being one of the hardest coursesin the school, many students transfer out of the course.

42 thinkthesundaytimes November 30, 2014

43thinkNovember 30, 2014 thesundaytimes