Heeding the Prayer Call at School? Between Secularism and Religiosity

By: Yasmeen Shaheen
@YasmeenShaheenn

The role religion plays in public education has always depended on the socio-political circumstances of the time. Recently, the question of just how much a role it should play in modern school curricula has resurfaced.

Until the beginning of the 19th century, religious instruction fell under the domain of the church or mosque and focused mainly on strict textual memorization.

However, this changed with the stewardship of Muhammad Ali, who distinguished between secular and religious education in the early 1800s.

His aim was to guarantee that the newly introduced secular system would be able to supply him with the qualified human capital required for the renaissance he pursued.

SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION

Since then, Egypt adopted two parallel systems of education: Al- Azhar’s system and the secular one taught at national schools.

However, the secular system was not totally stripped of religious influence; students since then have had to take one religion course every year until graduation.

Egyptian schools currently teach religion from elementary school through Grade 12; Christian students are separated from their fellow Muslims in religion courses.

In recent years, both systems have faced criticism for suspicions of aggravating sectarian tensions that fuel extremist religious thought.

“The teaching of religion at our national schools moves things from bad to worse as it encourages further divisions and widens the already unbridged gap among the diverse religious sects of Egypt,” said Mohamed Eisa Al-Hareery, professor of Islamic history at Cairo University.

Al-Hareery also says that religion classes do not improve ethics and values in society.

A SOCIETY DIVIDED

“The very fact that students are divided during the religion class has a negative effect on them,” commented Mamdouh Nakhla, a Coptic lawyer.

Despite the many Christian grievances of the predominance of Islamic texts in a number of school curricula, there are still verses from the Holy Quran that Christian pupils have to study and memorize through other subjects, such as Arabic.

Nakhla added that fundamental changes and amendments must be made in the teaching methodology, the curriculum content and its status as a pass-or-fail subject.

However, some believe that in a country like Egypt teaching religion at schools is imperative, particularly given a higher illiteracy rate among parents who are unable to deliver the appropriate religious teachings to their children.

Abdelghafar Helal, member of the Islamic Researchers Society, stressed that, “the subject of teaching religion must remain as the basic syllabus in all stages of education because it teaches our children how to worship God.”

But Rania Mohamed, a teacher of religious studies in Happy World School, says that matters of religion should be taught in moderation in order to curb the rise of extremist influence and thought.

This contrasts with the idea that mosques and the churches, and not schools, should be the proper spaces for delivering religious teaching and instruction.

“Removing religious studies is imperative on the account that it graduates a generation of fanatics while rejecting the ‘divergent’ opinions of others,” Head of the Supreme Congregation of the Anglican Church Ekram Lamy told The Caravan.

Similar calls for such an exclusion have also been voiced by political pundits.

Former Vice-President of the Parliamentary Authority of the Free Egyptians Party Nadia Henry called on schools to substitute teaching religion for a subject on “values and ethics” that would leave no room for discrimination between students.

“I am afraid that religion classes, if left out from schools, would make the pupils deal with religion as a trivial matter,” said Ali Qoura, a professor of curricula and teaching methodology at Cairo University’s Faculty of Education.

Helal added that, “excluding this curriculum for the sake of “the values and ethics subject” leads to ignoring the fundamentals of religion.”

As such, almost all conflicting parties agree that the current method of religious instruction is need of greater reform.