Islamic Education in the Nordic Countries

The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) shared an educational foundation until the beginning of the 1990s, when education was radically changed in all these countries except Denmark. The latter country has a long tradition of private education, which has allowed Muslims to start their schools when they started to arrive to the country. The other countries were very strict in relation to private schools in that regulations and control were strong and subsidies low. This was changed in the beginning of the 1990s, and 20 years later, Sweden had some 15 Muslim schools. The chapter uses Denmark and Sweden to illustrate the Nordic case. The other countries did not yet in 2013 have any Muslim schools, due mainly to the fact that there were few Muslim immigrants.