Abstract
Dutch-born generations of Muslims have been studied extensively, with much attention directed to their religious identity construction. Now that third and fourth generations are being raised, the question of Dutch Muslim parenthood has come to the surface. We take Islamic children’s book as important research material that contains educational attributes but also mirrors contemporary parent-child relations and parenting styles. The literature on Islamic children’s books is scarce, yet divided. Some state that authors of children’s books succumb to ‘Western’ secularist and consumerist norms. Others laud them as patchworks of cultural hybridity. We take up a position that does not fully square with either one of these viewpoints. Based on a participatory discourse analysis of four books we conclude that they epitomise the complex and multi-directional ways in which Muslim family identities are formed and negotiated.
