Setting up institutes for the study and teaching of Islam in Western Europe: the case of the Netherlands

Guest Lecture by Welmoet Boender (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).

Everywhere in Western Europe, first generation Muslim immigrants have invested in setting up private institutes for learning and teaching Islam, resulting in a variety of facilities representing various religious schools of thought, not seldomly oriented at socio-religious currents in the countries of origin. The legal-institutional options to organize these educational forms were grounded in constitutional rights like the freedom of religion and the freedom of association. These facilities have guided the integration of Muslims in Western Europe in the past fifty years. In recent times, new programs for teaching and studying Islam have been established at publicly funded universities. This guest lecture will highlight several forms of religious leadership training in the Netherlands and thus give insights to the formation and negotiation of religious authority in contemporary times.

Welmoet Boender (PhD Leiden University, 2007) is Associate Professor of Anthropology of Islam at the School of Religion and Theology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she serves as Vice-Dean of Education of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the formation of Muslim religious professionals in Western Europe.

She has recently published Islamic Theology at Western European Universities. Articulating ikhtilâf in the Netherlands, Germany, United Kingdom and Austria, Brill 2026.