What goes wrong in the traditional education of Muslim boys.
After the riots in New Year’s Eve 2022/23, the leader of the German Christian-Democratic Party, Friedrich Merz, called Muslim young men “little pashas”. He had to take a lot of flak for this. The recent hate-filled anti-Israel demonstrations show just how harmless Merz’s term was. I found a different comparison in a radio feature from 2007… The text makes the political failures of the last fifteen years clear once again.
(Manuscript from 2007 converted into written language and slightly abridged)
The sensible one
“I’m not the kind of person who gets into a fight straight away. I’m more the reserved type.” Kenan is 17, lives in Berlin-Kreuzberg and is currently attending a pre-vocational school. The young German-Turkish man wants to become a bank clerk, but has not yet found a training position. He therefore wants to complete his secondary school certificate to improve his chances on the job market. He avoids possible brawls. Like yesterday, for example, when he was waiting for the bus at Anhalter station and a group of young Arabs tried to provoke him. “The four of them were saying Arabic words and insulting me from a distance. Two of them wanted to come towards me. In that moment, the bus came and I got on and pretended I hadn’t seen them. I’ve been beaten before and I’ve learned from that.”
Many teachers would like to have a boy as sensible as Kenan in their class. But he is an exception: It is not only at the Rütli School in Berlin-Neukölln that it is mostly Turkish and Arab boys who are the “problem cases”. They mentally say goodbye to school and take out their frustration on teachers and classmates. Necla Kelek, a sociologist of Turkish origin, is not surprised: “When I’m served at home just because I’m a boy – and learn that I’m something special by nature and don’t actually have to achieve that much. I am obeyed. How does that help me? They don’t learn to understand abstract things, discipline and order. That’s why they fail.”
Losers of modern society
Necla Kelek sees young machos as the potential losers of modern society. They are at the bottom of the list when it comes to school grades, and after leaving school a “career” as social welfare recipients awaits them. Kelek believes that young men actually need positive role models to take control of their lives. However, the traditional upbringing of many parents often has the opposite effect. “In a Muslim-Turkish family, the head of the family, the father, is a person of respect whose ideas and wishes I have to follow. He says this duty has been given to him by God. By starting a family, he has promised God that he will raise his family to live according to God’s laws.”
This family law of absolute obedience must be adhered not only by the daughters, but also by the sons. After all, they are expected to follow in their father’s footsteps one day. Pedagogue Ahmet Toprak has investigated how this authoritarian upbringing affects the socialization of boys. He asked young men of the second generation who had married girls from their parents’ home villages in Turkey about their attitudes to marriage, love and sexuality. The migration researcher of Turkish origin was himself surprised by many of the answers: “What I didn’t know was that the men were also forced into marriage – and that they didn’t or couldn’t defend themselves against it.” The sons are generally very outward-oriented, they don’t come home, they do what they want. “And the parents want to discipline their sons with a marriage so that they become calmer and then perhaps lead a settled life.”
The findings of Ahmet Toprak and Necla Kelek make Turkish-Muslim boys and men appear in an unusual light: For Necla Kelek they are – according to the book title – “The lost sons”, for Ahmet Toprak “The weaker sex”. The reason according to the author: “Before marriage, these men had experiences with other girls, be they Turkish, Arab or German. But these girls were too self-confident for them. So they go to their parents’ home country and marry a young girl there who they think won’t put up a fight and will do what they say.”
Hence “the weaker sex”. Muslim men – macho men at first glance, pitiable weaklings at second glance? (In German: Kenan grins. “That’s actually true. I always listen to my father too. If he says you have to do this, you have to do that – then I have to do it too,” explains the young man with disarming candor. And his father has already listened to his father and so on. “My cousin, he’s 23, he’s just bumming around for years. He’s happy. His parents pay the rent. He’s the king at home,” adds Yalcin.
New book on the topic by my interview partner in this text, the Turkish-born educational scientist Ahmet Toprak: Muslim – male – disintegrated. What goes wrong in the education of Muslim boys.
The privileged position of sons within the family not only promotes comfort and a tendency to overestimate oneself, but also a fatal dependency. Necla Kelek speaks of “debt of existence”. Sons have a lifelong obligation to their parents – and to be obedient. “If someone breaks out and escapes and leaves, they live with feelings of guilt that are unbearable.” Kelek wants to make it clear to young people instead: No, you belong to yourself. See what you can do with your life. Then your father will be proud of you.”
Law of the strongest
However, many immigrant fathers still enforce the required obedience – with beatings if necessary. Third-generation sons have also internalized this “law of the strongest” and later demand it from their own children, sons and daughters. In marriages arranged according to traditional patterns, feelings such as love and tenderness don’t matter, says pedagogue Ahmet Toprak. “It’s primarily about the man’s sexual drive – and the woman isn’t allowed to say ‘no’. In most cases, I interpreted these sexual acts as rape.” According to Toprak, the men have no sense of injustice in this context. Not even in relation to other acts of violence, because they think: That’s my wife. “That also means: she’s mine and I can do whatever I want with her.”
For young Kenan, an arranged marriage is out of the question. He asserts that his future wife also does not have to be a virgin. Although he was also beaten by his parents, he wants to raise his own children free of violence. After the honor killing of the young Kurdish woman Hatün Sürücü in Berlin in 2005, Kenan demonstrated civil courage. He was the model for the postcard campaign “Honor is – fighting for my sister’s freedom”. As important as he finds the campaign, in his opinion it won’t really change anything in the minds of people of his age. “You first have to convince the parents, then they will talk to the children and young people,” he says. Nobody would listen to a 17 year old boy like himself. “The hodja of the mosque or the imam, businessmen, people who have studied – they are the ones who are accepted by young men as authority figures.”
Dealing with authority
However, educated and well-off migrants in particular, whom young people could emulate, are turning their backs on the problem neighborhoods. They are also missing as role models in schools, as there are still few teachers with a migrant background. And German teachers, especially female teachers, are not accepted by the young men. It is same with himself, says Kenan: “If I have a German teacher, for example, I’m relaxed. But when I see that he’s Turkish, I try not to make a mistake. With Germans, it’s not so bad if a boy is a bit disruptive. It’s not like that with the Turks. They say: ‘Impertinent’. You feel ashamed then. The Germans always accept everything. The Turks don’t.”
Dealing with authority is obviously a core problem when it comes to educating young Muslims. Social worker Raafat Matar from the New Education Working Group has also come to this conclusion. In his experience, many young men take advantage of the freedoms offered by the democratic system in Germany. “They know that they can even shout at the teachers – and get away with it. They are simply not shown any boundaries. Someone would have to say “Stop, that’s not on here”, says Matar. And a reprimand from school should not mean that a pupil sits at home in front of the TV. “He has to fulfill a duty, a kind of social work.”
In order to enforce such disciplinary measures, the support of parents is also needed. Especially the fathers’. Raafat Matar has been running an Arab fathers’ group in Berlin-Kreuzberg for a year now. At first, the Egyptian-born social worker was skeptical: Arab fathers usually have fixed ideas about parenting they do not let themselves be talked out of. They therefore saw little reason to concern themselves with parenting issues. Without further ado, the social worker brought the Arab Parents’ Union on board as a cooperation partner. With success: the name alone, and the fact that the group is led by two Arab professionals, would inspire confidence in the fathers, says Matar. “Then I organized a big party. The group has now established itself. Between eight and twelve fathers come every two weeks.”
Fathers’ group
The fathers’ group not only discusses parenting issues and problems with residence permits, but also their own changing role in the family. Many fathers, who were traditionally the breadwinners of the family in their countries of origin, are unemployed in Germany. They sit at home while their sons and daughters or their wives go out to work. One of them is Tarek Abu Fattah (name changed). The Palestinian fled to Germany sixteen years ago. Since his demolition and cleaning company shipwrecked, the 48-year-old father of two has been unemployed.
“After we arrived here, the children went to school. After two years, they could read, speak and write German. Then they translated letters or papers for their father. And at some point they realized that their father couldn’t speak the language. When a letter came from school, they could translate as they pleased. And over time, the father realized that he had to do something.” This is how Tarek Abu Fattah describes his own learning process. In his eyes, the fact that all migrants with a lack of German language skills have to attend language courses has made a significant contribution to boosting the fathers’ self-esteem and their status within the family. “Some fathers have taken a computer course so that they can keep up with their children.”
Ignorance is usually also the reason why parents do not take care of their children’s education. Especially since in many Islamic countries there is no parent representation at schools at all. Parental involvement is often even explicitely unwanted by school management and teachers, as they see themselves as the second educational authority after the parents. “Most parents have no experience of how the world works here in Germany. After their arrival, they really need to be taken by the hand and shown: Life in Germany works like this and like that – and not like in Lebanon or Egypt,” says Rafaat Matar, summarizing his experiences with the fathers’ group.
Tarek Abu Fattah also encourages other fathers to embrace new experiences as a man: “In my home country, the man goes to work and has nothing to do with the household because all the women there help each other. Here in Germany, the aunt and sister and mother are not present. And that’s why the husband has to be there for the wife. And I’m happy to help her. Cooking, vacuuming. That doesn’t mean that respect is lost by the wife, or the husband says I feel humiliated – not at all. I feel very helpful and I also feel proud to do that.”
Everyone needs to rethink
It’s not just the parents who need to rethink: the German authorities and teachers also have a duty to do so. All too often, such cooperation fails due to migrant parents’ lack of knowledge of German. Sociologist Necla Kelek considers more native-speaking staff to be desirable, but not the solution to the problem. “I look at German society from the migrants’ perspective and see that these migrants also bear responsibility. Until now, the perception has been that migrants come from poor countries and poor people need help.” According to Necla Kelek, mother-tongue services support the passivity of migrants. In her view, knowledge of German is an essential prerequisite for successful integration.
However, as many educationally disadvantaged immigrant parents speak little or no German, they cannot set an example for their children. Integration work must therefore begin in daycare centers even before the children start school, says Eren Ünsal. The Chairwoman of the Turkish Association Berlin-Brandenburg hopes for a synergy effect: “Parents develop from the friction with their children. The second generation of migrants here in Germany can write books by the meter about it. Because children naturally also have to take the steps that their parents were unable to take. And the parents either go with them or turn away. Many of at least the first generation have made incredible progress. When I think about where my parents were when they arrived, in terms of their thinking – and where they are today: There are light years between.”
Necla Kelek appeals to German society to finally wake up. In the same way that parents release their children, the majority society must also release its minorities into maturity. It is time to finally bring them on board as equal partners – with all their rights and obligations. After all, they are always demanding massive concessions to their own Muslim culture from the German majority society. “Society’s response so far has been to say: this is their culture, they can’t do any other. So they are confirmed in this. You cater to them and build mosques for them, which makes this culture socially acceptable. In this constellation, I see that the sons who are born into it have no chance of ever getting out of this milieu. With a poor school certificate, they have no choice but to marry an imported bride from Turkey and reproduce their social misery.”
Anyone who thinks Muslim youths blame German society for this is wrong. This is at least how Kenan sees it. “All the young people say it’s my fault. I can’t get a job anyway. They don’t say it’s because I’m discriminated against as a Turk. They say it’s because I haven’t done anything with my life. Everyone says: I wish I’d studied. I’m already too late at 18.”
Children: the parents of tomorrow
Eren Ünsal from the Turkish Association Berlin-Brandenburg sees the children of today as the parents of tomorrow. She has therefore developed a training concept for young people, which she teaches in schools in Berlin. The German-Turkish woman works in tandem with a male colleague. This also provides the boys in the class with a male identification figure. At the same time, the mixed-gender team demonstrates how women and men can treat and work with each other equally and respectfully. Together with the boys and girls, they discuss their ideas about honor, love, sexuality and gender roles.
She particularly remembers a dialogue in which a girl asked another girl: “Why are you wearing a headscarf?”
“It protects me.”
A boy then asked, “What does it protect you from?”
And she said, “Well, from the men.”
The boy: “But why do you have to be protected from us?”
At that moment, says Eren Ünsal, she could actually see the boy starting to think: “Wait a minute… why do women have to protect themselves from us men?
For Ünsal, these are “beautiful moments in which we see that such training really achieves something.”
Social welfare anyway
Eren Ünsal is convinced that all young people need a sense of identity in society in order to find their way. Those of them who have little prospect of graduating from school or getting a training place will at some point start looking for their identity. Some then end up with fundamentalist ideas. Or they go through a so-called rollback, which means that they suddenly rediscover their “Turkishness,” whatever that means.” When Ünsal asks young people: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Then you hear many people say in a rather frustrated and ironic way “I’m going to become social welfare anyway”.
According to young Kenan, his peers must first find meaning in their lives. A problem that they also have in Turkey, he says. Student violence is also increasing there. “If you tell them: ‘You have to, you have to’ but don’t give reasons for it, then there’s no point. You have to say: ‘Look, when you work, when you learn, that’s all for you. This is not for us'”. Kenan says his own father was such a role model for him. He made it clear to the son that the father would not have any benefit of the money the son earned – it would only profit the son. “My father always said: ‘You want to live in a nice house with your family one day, so learn, learn, learn!'” Kenan gladly follows his father’s advice.
The original radio feature was broadcast in German by Bavarian Radio and Swiss Radio DRS (now SRF).