Who is Asma Claassen?

Asma Claassen was born in Haarlem, a city close to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1968. In 1988 she reverted to Islam. Since then she has been committed to anything that has to do with Islam, education, Islamic identity or society.

After obtaining her Gymnasium diploma, she studied Russian and Arabic at the RUL.

After this she followed various halaqaat for 14 years and passed on the knowledge she had gained about tarbiya islamiyyah and tajwied to many other students, especially first generation Dutch Muslims.

In 1997, together with a few other pioneers, she founded the first Islamic toddler group with Dutch as the official language (Ababil). She then worked for 11 years as a (Islam) teacher and identity coordinator at two Islamic primary schools in Schiedam. In 2004 she obtained her teachers degree and at the same time she received a number of certificates in the field of Startblokken Basisontwikkeling and Piramide, several early schooling projects.

During her work in Islamic primary schools, the lack of Islamic children's books and teaching materials was noticeable. To fill that gap, she herself started writing and translating several educational Islamic children's books for use at school and beyond. In 2005, when the number of books started to increase, she and some colleagues decided to set up her own Foundation, Publisher for Islamic Education, suvio.nl, for which she developed the Islamic History method, among other things.

In 2008, an additional activity was added when she became an editor and later editor-in-chief of the first Muslim newspaper in the Netherlands, MoslimVandaag.

From 2009-2012, Asma Claassen was a board member of the Muslim Information Center in The Hague, the first Islamic center for converts set up in the 1980s by Abdelwahid and Farida van Bommel.

In 2010, Asma Claassen was hired by the Islamic School Boards Organization (ISBO) as an Education and Identity Expert to help strengthen the identity at the schools affiliated with the ISBO.

She wrote the identity policies for various schools and developed various teaching methods, including the Islamic Teachings curricula for grade 1-6, Al Amana, which has been used with great satisfaction for years in a large number of Islamic primary schools. She also provided parenting courses at dozens of schools to hundreds of enthusiastic parents.

Between 2010 and 2015, in addition to being a board member, she was also one of the regular female speakers at Centrum de Middenweg in Rotterdam. In that capacity, she also set up the first-ever mentoring project for new Muslims.

In 2015, her best-selling book, A Sex Education Method, “O dear! I am growing up' for boys and girls, in which the then new mandatory core objectives of 'sexual diversity' were included, fully designed from an Islamic frame of reference.



Also in 2015, as part of the series 'Bil Qur'an Ihtadayt', Fahd el Kanderi made a report about her that went viral during Ramadan. In the same year the TRT also broadcast a report in the context of the popular program 'Degisen Hayatlar', which aroused much appreciation for her work, especially in Turkish circles. It was followed up in 2019 in the form of the program 'Ihtida Öyküleri' on Diyanet TV.

From 2016-2020, Asma Claassen was an external assessor during the final assessment of students at INHOLLAND's Teacher Training Program in Islam.

Since 2017, Asma Claassen has been director of her own educational agency 'Islam-Wise', as a project under her foundation SUVIO.nl, and she uses all her expertise in the field of education, upbringing, Islam, citizenship, NLP and the development of children's books. and teaching methods in order to fully meet all your questions and wishes in this area.

In March 2017 the Islamic Curriculum 'Long Live Islam – a maxi method for mini-Muslims' for toddlers and preschoolers was published, in which play and stories are central. This method was issued by the ISBO.

In 2018 she followed the Bayyinah Dream Program with Nouman Ali Khan in Copenhagen. She translated the popular educational program, which enables students to master the grammar of the Qur'an in a very short time, into Dutch and managed to obtain the copyrights for the Dutch public.

Between 2012 and 2019, Asma Claassen also organized the National Islamic Knowledge Quiz for the groups 8 of all Islamic primary schools, for which the students had to delve into Islamic themes such as the Life of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) and The Islamic History of Europe in order to qualify. can come for the coveted grand prize: An Umrah with one of their parents.

In the same period she also organized several study trips for school boards and teaching staff to various educational organizations in the Netherlands and abroad.

In 2019 Asma Claassen successfully completed both her NLP Practitioner and her NLP Master Practitioner training.

In 2020, Asma Claassen was mainly involved in setting up the ISBO Academy and developing the monthly ISBO newsletter.

In the same year, the Amsterdam student association ISA made a Podcast entitled 'Conversion, Islamic Education, Politics and Activism' in which Asma Claassen was interviewed about her activities.

From 2020-2021, Asma followed SIMODO's sign language course two times to be able to communicate better with the deaf and hard of hearing community. She also regularly lectures to deaf and hard of hearing Muslims through the same foundation.

In addition to her work as an Education and Identity Expert, Asma Claassen has regularly given lectures at various other Islamic organizations and mosques in recent years. As an expert by experience, she also regularly gives lectures and courses to converts and counselors of converts. She first did this at Centrum de Middenweg in Rotterdam and later mainly through the New Muslim Women's Support Center, of which she was one of the founders.

In recent years, various municipalities, universities and research bureaus have also been able to find Asma Claassen and gain her expertise on various issues related to Islam, upbringing, education, citizenship, discrimination and identity.

Currently Asma Claassen is studying to become a qualified mBraining/mBit and islam based NLP coach.

Finally, Asma Claassen has also been socially active since 2016 as secretary of the board of the Islam-inspired party NIDA, which started in 2014 as a local Rotterdam party, then won a few seats in other cities such as The Hague, Almere and Amsterdam and subsequently in 2021 decided to continue as a political and social movement under NIDA 2.0.