[first - 42] st/suntimes/page ... 30/11/14
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Small Students community society something big Swedish Being Muslim Hariz Baharudin I t is the eve of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival known in Sin- gapore as Hari Raya Haji that involves 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 the special day. When I got there, however, I was surprised to find that there would be no slaughter of sheep. Instead, balloons were being blown up and tied to the ceiling, alongside colourful streamers. Small plastic bags were being packed with candy and chocolate, and children were laughing as they tried to keep some of the treats for themselves. I had never seen Eid celebrated this way before. By ushering in the special day with the Swedish tradition of pre- paring sweets and holding a party, the Khadijah centre, which opened in August, hoped to promote this as- pect of Swedish culture. It is charac- teristic of the centre’s aim to help Muslim immigrants find a middle ground between their faith and Swedish culture, and to establish a sense of community for people to draw support from. The centre used to be a public li- brary, and its activity rooms are now used for religious classes and community events. Those facing difficulties in settling down in Swe- den come here to seek advice from Muslims who have been in the country longer. “When you are a small commu- nity in a big country, you always need to be part of the wider society. What we hope to do here is to wel- come people into our community and reconcile between a Muslim identity and a Swedish identity,” said Mr Imadur Rahman, a member of the centre’s board of manage- ment. Although many people use Khadijah as a place of worship, its aim of being a community centre is slowly being realised, and people visit to interact with others. “We used to pray in the base- ment of a restaurant and it was not comfortable. But to me the best thing is how Khadijah has a com- munity spirit, and everyone is help- ful. Whenever you need someone to talk to, you can go there,” said Mr Usman Berg, 42, a researcher. He is from Pakistan. About 5 per cent of Sweden’s population of 9.7 million are Mus- lim and most are immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. The number of Muslim immi- grants is growing fast as awareness spreads of Sweden’s welfare state, with its comprehensive, low-cost health care and free Swedish-lan- guage classes for all newcomers. Ac- cording to the Swedish Statistical Board, the top four largest growing groups of foreign-born residents last year were people from Syria, So- malia, Afghanistan and Eritrea. Also, people born in Iraq, Iran, Somalia and Turkey were among the 10 largest groups of foreign- born persons in the Swedish civil registry last year. Muslims have been moving to Sweden in recent decades and, like many other immigrants, tend to live 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, from Bangladesh, from Sudan,” said Mr Rahman from the Khadijah centre. The 30-year-old arrived from Bang- ladesh when he was 23, and works as a researcher at the telecommuni- cations giant Ericsson. With people from so many dif- ferent countries, yet sharing the same faith, he said, it is important to establish a sense of community spirit for immigrants making a new life in an unfamiliar new country. “Our job is to come up with strat- egies and find activities for people to bond over. Especially young peo- ple, at some point of their lives they could become isolated from so- ciety,” he added, referring to the challenges of practising Islam in Sweden. The centre has its work cut out for it, even if its officials prefer not to discuss more sensitive aspects of the growing Muslim presence in Sweden. Just recently, Agence France- Presse reported Sweden’s head of in- telligence services Anders Thorn- berg as saying that as many as 300 Swedes could have joined the Islam- ic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) mili- tant group, whose barbarous tactics in the name of Islam have been con- demned by Muslims everywhere. “A hundred cases of people who have left to join the fighting have been confirmed, then there are the presumed cases, and there are those that have not been counted, which brings the total to between 250 and 300,” he was quoted as saying. Expressing concern about the ris- ing number of young Swedish men becoming militants in Syria, Mr Thornberg said: “They're going be- yond the limits of human behav- iour. They’re fighting and killing other people.” In October, Sweden passed a law banning its citizens from taking part in foreign-armed conflicts. My attempt to ask people at the Khadijah centre to discuss what it means when Swedish Muslims join a group like ISIS were unsuccessful, as they preferred not to comment. They stressed that their focus is community building, and that they want their centre to be not only a place where Muslims can perform their prayers but also meet and bond. They want to help new arrivals to dispel doubts about settling in Sweden, and encourage them to work hard at school or at their jobs. “Many Muslims who come here are nervous and get advice that is not good. They think they do not have to work because they will not be taken seriously, and end up just depending 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 upon you”), they hear something famil- iar in this very unfamiliar place. They open up their hearts and they start listening and working. They take the first steps to living their life in Sweden.” [email protected] Swedish and else Muslim part of are Celebrating the way Muslim Swedish festival sweet Swedish The reports and photographs on these pages are by journalism students (from left) Tan Pei Lin, Hariz Baharudin and Seow Bei Yi of Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. They were part of a group selected to visit Sweden last month for Go-Far, the school’s overseas reporting programme. the Ms Simet Sager is 26 and living the life she always dreamed of. After graduating with a degree in nurs- ing, she moved 500km from her family home in the southern Swed- ish city of Lund to the capital Stock- holm, where she landed a job at a children’s hospital. The ethnic Iraqi’s life would have been quite different if her fam- ily had not emigrated to Sweden when she was seven. The move meant she was educat- ed all the way to university and could choose her career. For daugh- ters of immigrants from conserva- tive societies, living in Sweden has opened up opportunities they might never have otherwise had. These girls are not only thriving, but also outperforming immigrant boys. Still, many struggle to reconcile their ethnic identity and Swedish nationality. Ms Sager recalls how she had dreaded telling her mother that she wanted to be a nurse. To some in Iraq, she said, nurses were regarded as “bad girls” because they worked long, late hours. Her parents surprised her by be- ing supportive, but her mother had friends who would ask: “Are you happy she’s a nurse?” And when she left home for Stockholm, it raised relatives’ eye- brows. “They were like, ‘You’re not married. Why are you on your own? You should be with your parents’,” she said. Life is always a balancing act. “My relatives are a part of this socie- ty but, at the same time, they don’t want us to forget where we came from,” she said. “You are always in between.” Immigration to Sweden has changed over the decades. While there was an influx from Nordic countries in the 1950s and 1960s, the early 1970s saw more refugee immigration and family reunifica- tions from countries in the Middle East and Latin America. In 2000, about 11 per cent of the Swedish population was for- eign-born. That has risen to around 16 per cent of its 9.7 million people now. Sweden has received more than 70,000 asylum requests so far this year, with Syrians making up the 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, adding a twist to social tensions. As the immigrants settle in and their children go to school, the girls outshine the boys. According to Statistics Sweden, 28 per cent of foreign-born women aged between 25 and 64 have three or more years of post-secondary ed- ucation, compared to 23 per cent of the men. More girls with foreign back- grounds apply for places in tertiary institutions than their male coun- terparts too. There are many reasons tossed up 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 the boys, the girls are spared the possi- bility of mixing with bad company. And although immigrant par- ents push their children to do well in school, researchers say the girls are more motivated to succeed. “It’s a reaction, a compensation mechanism,” said Professor Mehr- dad Darvishpour, 54, a senior lec- turer at Malarden University, refer- ring to immigrant women. “You have to gain more education before you can find a good position in soci- ety. You are in a lower position compared to both other immigrant men and the (ethnic) Swedish.” But as immigrant women end up empowered by better education, Sweden’s equal rights and the more liberal culture, the immigrant men struggle with a loss of status at home and in society. “Women’s situations become better than in their home countries and, for men, it’s the opposite,” said Professor Darvishpour. In more patriarchal societies, men have a higher status and are the breadwinners of the family. As immigrant men struggle with unemployment or with doing low- er-level jobs than before and their womenfolk go to work, traditional gender roles are affected. The wom- en become more confident and less dependent on their husbands and expect more from life. In some immigrant groups like Chileans and Iranians, the rate of divorce is considerably higher than for ethnic Swedes. Often, it is the women who initiate the break-up. Conflicts arise especially in fami- lies that are not financially secure and have problems integrating into Swedish society. Ms Diana Waruhiu, a 33-year-old new immigrant from Kenya, says even having to share household responsibilities when women go out to work could be a challenge 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 face some discrimination, he said the prejudice is amplified for men be- cause they are overrepresented in crime statistics. “You’re not only discriminated against, you’re also feared. People don’t want to sit next to you, peo- ple don’t want to look you in the eye; you become intimidating to the majority,” said the Swedish lan- guage teacher at an adult education institute. “Being a man and an immi- grant, it’s like you’re being judged both ways.” Seow Bei Yi way GOING THE DISTANCE Seow Bei Yi It is a Monday morning in Tensta, a suburb north-west of Stockholm. All is quiet but for merchants set- ting up the fruit market, and a stream of students making their way to school. They tread across the gravel courtyard, wearing windbreakers, jackets and, for some girls, Islamic headscarves. Blond, blue-eyed Swedes are nowhere to be seen. The Ross Tensta Gymnasium is a multicultural high school which adopted American-inspired teach- ing methods more than 10 years ago. It is no stranger to change but grapples with an image problem for being in an immigrant-heavy area. Ethnicity is not usually men- tioned in Swedish schools, but prin- cipal Sofie Abrahamsson does not shirk from the topic if it crops up. The 40-year-old recalls a recent conversation with a student. It was not about homework or the school’s programmes, but identity. He had told her: “I’m a Turk.” Like many of his schoolmates, the teenager was born and raised in Sweden and speaks Swedish fluent- ly. Yet, when asked his nationality, he said he considered himself to be both Turkish and Swedish. It underscores Ross Tensta Gymnasium’s challenge in trying to be a good school. Almost 90 per cent of Tensta’s 18,800 residents have immigrant roots. The school is therefore often per- ceived as non-Swedish, despite most of its students having lived all their lives in Sweden. There are about 700 students, aged 16 to 18, of almost 50 ethnicities with roots in Somalia, Turkey and Iran, among others. As it is the main high school in the area, its reputation is closely tied to the social issues of its neigh- bourhood and it is not all rosy in Tensta. The suburb has thrice the unemployment rate of Stockholm, and almost five times as many resi- dents on financial assistance. In 2011, there were almost twice as many reported muggings and snatch thefts as in the capital. These are among factors that put off 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’t change. 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 a wider worldview and allows them to learn to communicate better with people of different back- grounds. Every student has a teacher-men- tor. The staff look out for those with learning difficulties or behav- ioural issues in relating to teachers or peers. “Apart from grades, we want the students to have a sense of identity and the belief that they can be- come who they want to become,” said Ms Abrahamsson. Students and alumni inter- viewed say they appreciate that their teachers go the extra mile to offer support, especially as many have parents who cannot help them with schoolwork and cannot afford private tuition. Mr Rani Alhallak remembers how his parents could not help him with learning Swedish because they are from Lebanon and know little of the language themselves. “In Tensta, the students need more help, more people to talk to, and a person to look up to,” said the 25-year-old, who now works as a bank manager. His teachers were a big help to him. “It felt like your teacher was your friend,” he said. “This didn’t have to do only with your studies. If you had problems, you could just go to your teacher and talk to him.” When he was in school, about half his class of about 28 were eth- nic Swedes. They came from out- side Tensta, attracted to the natural science programme that the school runs in collaboration with the pres- tigious Karolinska Institute. But that has changed. Since free school choice was introduced in the early 1990s, students no longer have to go to schools near their homes. More middle-class students are choosing city centre schools in- stead. Mr Alhallak thinks that having the word “Tensta” in the school name is probably turning off some students. Being in an immigrant-heavy suburb means the school has to bat- tle the perception that it has poor teachers, produces poor results and, above all, that its students are not “Swedish”. It has not been able to shrug off these notions despite drastic chang- es more than 10 years ago when it adapted teaching methods of an American private school. The Ross School was started in East Hampton, New York, in 1991 by Mrs Courtney Ross and her late husband, former Time Warner chairman Stephen Ross. It has children from pre-nursery to grade 12, and prides itself on hav- ing an interdisciplinary curriculum with a strong emphasis on history and culture. In 2002, the Stockholm supervi- sor of secondary schools suggested that Tensta Gymnasium adopt the Ross teaching model as a way to combat falling enrolment. The re- vamp started in 2003 with 30 mil- lion kronor (S$5.3 million) set aside for it. Class size was reduced from an average of 32 to 20, with every stu- dent given a laptop for research and presentations. In the staff room, teachers were grouped into inter-disciplinary teams so they could come up with project work and extra teaching materials using knowledge from their respective subjects. The premises were renovated to provide more open study areas and encourage interaction between stu- dents and teachers, and between teachers and administrators. The result is a cosy environment with open discussion spaces, dis- play cases for student projects and natural lighting indoors. It is a con- trast to the drab uniformity of Ten- sta, with its apartment blocks from the 1960s. The school, originally called Tensta Gymnasium, added the “Ross” brand in 2009. “It wasn’t easy, but it was very, very fun,” recalled former principal Inger Nyrell of the long process. “I’ve always believed in the devel- opment of education and I think it’s good for teachers to develop and to change. Otherwise, you lose your passion for teaching.” Although many younger teach- ers supported the changes, some older ones believed that a public school should be free from “foreign influence”. After their retirement, in 2012, they published a strongly worded letter protesting against the Ross model. Ms Nyrell, who is retired, main- tains that the change was a success overall. “A lot of municipal schools in Stockholm have closed,” she pointed out. “But this school, de- spite being in a suburb and having a large immigrant population, has survived and maintained its number of students.” Alumni like Mr Alhallak say the Ross name has increased interest in the school, and people do ask about its programmes. But it re- mains a neighbourhood school with students who enter with low academic scores. Still, students who thrive there speak up strongly against its nega- tive stereotypes. Zaynab Gohari, 17, was hesitant about applying un- til a teacher adviser at her previous school told her Ross Tensta Gymna- sium produced many students who had gone on to find success. “Everyone else said not to go there, that the teachers were not good,” said Zaynab, who had better grades than most of her peers when she joined. She found the school better than she expected. “The teachers are very good, but there are students who don’t want to get educated, and don’t have the interest to get educated,” she said. “That’s what destroys the reputa- tion of the school. Our school has a low entry point, everyone can come in.” Alumnus Ahmed Abdirahman, 28, shares her view. Now a research- er at a broadcasting corporation, he was at Tensta Gymnasium when it first picked up the Ross concept and still maintains close ties with his alma mater. “It’s a beautiful school,” he says. “It’s modern, it’s multicultural, and there are great teachers. But not many choose to go there because of how it is labelled.” As long as Tensta’s socio-eco- nomic problems persist, efforts to change the school’s reputation are likely to have limited success. “No matter how much invest- ment the school has done, from buying a new education model, to travelling the world and rebuilding the whole space, it will all come back. That means the grades of in- coming students remain low,” he said. Principal Abrahamsson remains steadfast in believing in her school’s potential. Of its battle against negative perceptions, she said: “The whole world is in our school. But we’re in Stockholm, in Sweden. Unfortunately, in Sweden, the name still matters.” Now in the midst of planning its vision for the next five years, she said: “It’s not easy to transform a school into something new, but in that, we have succeeded.” [email protected] Centre aims to help immigrants adapt to local culture while practising their faith PHOTO: HARIZ BAHARUDIN Mr Abdul Kadir Habib, an administrator at the Khadijah centre, helps his sons – Yusuf, seven, and Ibrahim, nine – inflate balloons for the Eid al-Adha celebrations. PHOTOS: HARIZ BAHARUDINN The Khadijah Islamic Centre in Stockholm aims to be more than just a place for Muslims to come together and pray. It is also where people like Mr Imadur Rahman and his wife Ailin Abdullah (below) can take some time off to play with their friends’ children. By ushering in the special day with the Swedish tradition of preparing sweets and holding a party, the Khadijah centre hoped to promote this aspect of 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 small community in a big country, you always need to be part of the wider society. What we hope to do here is to welcome people into our community and reconcile between a Muslim identity and a Swedish identity.” MR IMADUR RAHMAN, a member of the Khadijah centre’s board of management PHOTO: TAN PEI LIN the other face of sweden ] For many immigrants, learning Swedish is the first and most important step to integration. The country provides free Swedish-language classes for all newcomers. Here, a teacher uses actions and songs to help her students remember Swedish words. PHOTO: TAN PEI LIN Ross Tensta English teacher Elisabeth Braconier says the ethnicity of her students does not make a difference to her. The school, located in an immigrant-heavy suburb in Stockholm, is generally perceived to be “non-Swedish”. “Most of our students are Swedish, but they identify with something else.” MS SOFIE ABRAHAMSSON, Ross Tensta Gymnasium 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 courses in the school, many students transfer out of the course. 42 think thesundaytimes November 30, 2014 43 think November 30, 2014 thesundaytimes
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Small
Students
community
society
something
big
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.”
Swedish
andelse
Muslim part of
are
Celebrating
the
way
Muslim
Swedish
festivalsweet
Swedish
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.”
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
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