Session 4a: Democracy in Practice I
1st Global Conference
Friday 30th April – Sunday 2nd May 2010
Prague, Czech Republic
The Controversy about Muslim Education in Austrian Democracy
Cornelia Caseau
Language and Culture Department, ESC Dijon/ France
At the beginning of 2009, a Lebanese researcher living in Vienna, Mouhanad Khorchide, published a dissertation which caused a scandal. Khorchide revealed, that 21,9% of Islamic teachers in Austria refuse to teach democratic values because of their incompatibility with Islam. This exposure was very shocking, because for nearly one century, Austria has been proud to maintain a privileged relationship with its Muslim community. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had accorded special rights to the Bosnian elite soldiers fighting in its army during World War I. (Bosnia-Herzegovina had been occupied by the Habsburg Empire in 1879 and annexed in 1908). In 1912 the ‘Islamgesetz’, the law concerning Islam, was adopted, recognizing it as a religious community and guaranteeing Muslims their right to self-determination. In 1979, some years after the arrival of immigrant workers from Turkey and the Balkans, the rights of the Islamic community were confirmed by the creation of the official representation for Muslims in a democratic Austria, the IGGiÖ. Especially through education (Austria is the first European country to have introduced Islamic religious instruction in public schools in 1982-83), the government wanted to show its openness towards the Muslim immigrants. The content of Islamic teaching was the affair only of the IGGiÖ, in which the Austrian government had entire confidence.
In my paper, I will analyze the role of Muslim education in the Austrian democracy and Khorchide’s revelation of certain points of incompatibility. Then I will show Austria’s conception of democracy today and the place taken by the Muslim minority. My last point will treat the reactions and solutions adopted with regard to undemocratic thinking in Islamic education.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Democratic Citizens: How Young People Talk about Democracy and Diversity
Isolde de Groot
University for Humanistics, The Netherlands
When people talk about democracy, they often display different ideas of what democracy means, both in theory and in practice. The visions on democracy that people hold, have a huge impact on the way in which different democracies are shaped and nurtured. A growing number of people for instance, understand democracy in a rather limited sense: as a political system with as most important characteristic, that the people can vote, and that the majority wins. In line with this, they understand their own role as a citizen is ‘not to harm others’ and ‘to vote, if we feel like it’.
Researchers on democratic citizenship have warned that this limited understanding of both democracy and democratic citizenship, will not enable people to maintain and develop the democratic character of their society. They therefore stress for more attention to democratic citizenship in educational settings. They also stress that living in a ‘truly’ democratic way, means that people have to be able to appreciate diversity.
This paper addresses both theoretical studies and the preliminary results of an empirical study on the development of ‘true’ democratic citizens in a pluralist country. The paper therefore starts discussing different ideas on how citizens in a democratic and pluralist county should be able and willing to participate, in order for a democracy in a pluralist country to be able to develop (Putnam 2000; Young 2000; Gutmann 2003; Parker 2003; De Winter 2004; Westheimer and Kahne 2004; Mouffe 2005; Veugelers 2007; Thayer-Bacon 2008). Next we will discuss the current democratic citizenship development of students in the Netherland, from the analysis of interviews with sixteen year old students in the city Utrecht.
Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)
Democracy as a Collection/Society of Porcupines
Nil Simsek
Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey
We are all aware that a contract is a prerequisite in order to protect citizens from each other, to make agreements with each other and to construct a social/political structure within human society. Citizen’s relationships with each other and thus with any kind of political power require a deeper analysis of the issue. The problem surely is to be considered with various dimensions (legal, political, sociological); however, with regard to ensuring sound and constant fundamentals, a theoretical/philosophical examination of notions is essential in order to develop a more refined point of view.
Where the extent of freedom/liberty/equality in-between a citizen and other citizens begins and ends and whether it is necessary to prioritize those concepts will be our subject of debate. Unlike what history suggests, today, the term, “citizen of a nation” equally represents men, women and even children from various ethnic identities and dozens of religious beliefs. This contemporary citizen profile seems to provide a homogeneous unity of citizens but it also carries congregativeness/ghettoization and may be illusion of freedom/liberty/equality. Thus, every individual may be considered as a citizen of the world, or the situation of each citizen may be reviewed by focusing on the local/regional bonds. In any case, the social contracts will require a community in which the citizens look out for each others’ benefits.
Accordingly, what kind of presuppositions, for example, is the relationship between a citizen and another citizen based upon? What should the environment be like in order to develop norms in accordance with people’s common perceptions/sensations and thoughts and so how can it be assured that the values targeted by those norms do not conflict with the starting perceptions/sensations and thoughts? Furthermore, how will the freedom/liberty/equality of the citizens become a reality? We will address such questions by using the metaphor of a “citizen as a porcupine” (Schopenhauer, Grimm Brothers, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida) as a base. We think their answers will cover the possibility of the restructuring of relations between current citizens over the examination of equality (not sameness) and inequality, and freedom/liberty as continuing concepts of democracy.
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