Framing in the Classroom.
By: Lot Brouwer
Tags: Bias, Education, Terrorism, Islam, Religion

This week, commotion arose on social media around a writing exercise that had been given during a Religious Education lesson at a school in the Netherlands. The short-sighted questions (to put it mildly) were as follows:

Write a newspaper article of around 500 words about freedom of religion and Islam. The following questions need to be addressed, all under a separate header: 1. What does freedom of religion mean to Muslims committing terrorist attacks? 2. How can we protect ourselves from fundamentalism? 3. Why are attacks committed in the name of Islam? 4. Why do people believe in a religion that produces so much violence? 5. Why are there so many Muslim-terrorists?

Of course, to a certain extent, these are questions that can be discussed. It’s a mystery to me, however, how they could end up a Religious Education lesson in this particular form — unless this was a class about bias, framing, and stigmatisation. Rather than teaching us about or learning from Islam, or engaging with Islam, these questions present an outsiders view of the Islamic religion as unfree and violent.

Had this really been about writing an article about freedom of religion and Islam, there would have been two possible angles: 1. What does Islam say about freedom of religion, or; 2. What does Dutch freedom of religion say about Islam? To answer to the first question, we would have to look at the Islamic scriptures and traditions — either in the Netherlands or elsewhere. The answer to the second question is simple: Muslims and Islam fall under the Dutch right to exercise one’s religion freely within the limitations of the law (Article 6 of our constitution).

Depending on the chosen angle, we would also need to adjust the subquestions. If we want to know what freedom of religion means to Muslim terrorists, we will, once again, need to consult the relevant sources. But something tells me this teacher was not planning to have a conversation with said terrorists. Another option would be to look at how these attacks relate to the Islamic idea of freedom of religion (angle 1) — are they legitimate? If we chose the second angle, we could be very brief again. Question: How do terrorists relate to the Dutch principle of freedom of religion? Answer: They do not exercise their religion within the limitations of the law, so they fall don’t fall under this freedom.

Question two, then: How can we protect ourselves against fundamentalism? First, who are ‘we’? And secondly, what is ‘fundamentalism’? Fundamentalism in itself — namely, the strict and literal adherence to the basic (‘fundamental’) principles of one’s beliefs — is not illegal as long as it moves within the boundaries of the law. In fact, this also falls under freedom of religion, meaning we cannot really ‘protect’ ourselves against it. If the question is ‘how can Islam protect itself from fundamentalist violence’, in the context of angle 1, then we should (once again) turn to the correct sources and look at the Islamic religion and community from the inside. If the question is ‘what can Dutch society do to prevent fundamentalist violence’, then we should also look inwards: what are the factors that generally lead towards fundamentalist violence in the Netherlands, and how can we address these without limiting our freedom of religion?

These questions are in strong relation to question three: Why are attacks committed in the name of Islam? In itself a legitimate question, if it weren’t for the fact that the next question already suggests an answer: the Islamic religion is generally violent. In reality, violence is committed in the name of many ideologies, both religious and secular. If we want to study the causes of violence in the name of Islam specifically, then we should look at both ideological aspects (is Islam really more violent in its essence than other religions? Spoiler alert: no, it is not) and at social elements (what, for example, are the circumstances under which Dutch terrorists radicalise). Valuable questions, but we won’t be able to answer them under a subheading in a 500-word newspaper article.

I don’t want to dignify question four with any further attention, other than saying that I think ‘believing in a religion’ is ugly phrasing. Question five is equally suggestive as the one before it. What does the teacher mean with ‘so many’? What are the numbers? Are we talking about Dutch Muslims, or about Muslims in general? And how does the percentile of Muslim terrorists relate to the percentile of Muslims who aren’t terrorists? We can safely say that, in terms of percentages, the Islamic religion is not a ‘religion of terrorism’. The question that remains, then, is why an article about ‘freedom of religion and Islam’ should focus entirely on a negligible percentage of Muslims. By taking this perspective, the teacher is guilty of the same kind of framing that we see in the media and in politics. With all its harmful consequences.

One of the things that I’m really concerned with in our society — and why I will start my teacher training for Religious Education in February — is not just the lack of knowledge about religion, but especially the excessive framing and stereotyping. This leads to a kind of wilful and persistent misunderstanding that is self-reinforcing, and that endangers social cohesion and individual safety. You would expect a Religious Education teacher to acknowledge this problem, and to share the mission to contribute to a better understanding of religion in society — and thus to actively analyse, deconstruct and challenge such framing and stereotyping. The optimist in me still hopes that this teacher in Leiden was secretly trying to do this by putting together such a provoking exercise, although the public statement by the school, shared in response to the commotion, already proves that this was not the case. What the event and the noise around it have accomplished, is that they have shown me how much-needed my profession is — especially today. And when the time comes I will happily use this example in a lesson about framing and bias, so that we can all learn something from my colleague after all.