Mira Al-Bitar, Ruba Mansour:
The lives of peoples between the Atlantic and the Gulf have been filled with religion and religiosity to varying degrees, the most intense of which is now in Syria. Religion has become everything, i.e., it has become both a goal and a means. Religion is a nation, politics, law, economic and educational policy, school policy, and then a social one, and a source for defining right and duty. There is a group that is right and groups that are wrong, to the point that the quality of religious affiliation has shaped the quality of the human being and has reached the level of citizenship and its definition. Elaborating on the topic of life being filled with religion is unnecessary; the Syrian individual feels, sees, and touches this. It is generally observed, globally, that progress is inversely proportional to religiosity, and directly proportional to backwardness.
Therefore, examining the problem of religious education in schools is unavoidable, given its relationship to both progress and backwardness. Schools are the factory of future generations, and the more advanced these generations are, the more advanced the nation will be.
Does the teaching of religious education have a place in schools? No matter how sensitive this issue is, it must be discussed with complete frankness and clarity, especially in societies characterized by religious, cultural, ethnic, or other pluralism.
Here, it must be emphasized that eliminating religious education from schools is not a translation of the annihilation of religion, but rather a dedication to the school’s civic, educational, scientific, and intellectual mission. Since religion is a personal matter, it can only be abolished by a personal decision. This matter has nothing to do with the school, just as it has nothing to do with the issue of faith or disbelief and the relationship between them. Schools are not for faith, nor are they for disbelief or atheism. Schools are for education, i.e., for science and, in part, for upbringing. Faith, religions, disbelief, and other such matters are a matter for the family and places of worship, and not within the purview of the school.
Regarding the issue of eliminating religious education from schools, there are opponents, most of whom are Islamists, and supporters, most of whom are secularists. The Islamists’ position is purely religious, obedient, mystical, and sanctifying, while the secularists’ position is purely objective. Let us take the least important issue in religious education: separating students from each other during religious education hours. Civilly, it is unacceptable to separate students from one another. Segregation is a harmful and uncivilized position and practice, and contradicts the correct and beneficial social educational process. Civilly, there is no objection or objection to teaching general religious culture. General religious culture is one thing, and religions are another. Replacing the teaching of religions or religious education specific to each religion, and placing religious culture within the framework of ethics or social moral culture, is something that combats religious discrimination, religious extremism, and then religious fanaticism, which creates generations that reject each other.
One of the most important problems related to religious education is the problem of reality and imagination and the gap between them. The presence of imagination as reality in a child’s perception leads to the decline of the concept of causality in his consciousness, and the concept of causality is the alphabet of science and education, as questions of essence cannot be answered without searching for the tangible material roots specific to the essence of things—that is, transforming the abstract imaginary into the tangible and tangible. Religious content relies on the abstract imaginary, which does not exist in childhood, but rather in stages. At an advanced age, such as high school or university, the child’s failure to prepare him for dealing with abstract imaginary matters leads to religious education being reduced to mere indoctrination and memorization of dogmatic and vague concepts without comprehension. In this case, the child learns not to ask how and why, thus preparing him to accept obedience and submission, thus eliminating his rebellious spirit. This primarily facilitates the rise and continuation of dictatorships.
Education is based on constructive theory, which relies on doubt, inference, experimentation, understanding, and proof. Does the content of religious education books rely on doubt, experimentation, and proof? The student learns the logic of the multiplication table. Do religious education books present anything based on the logic of mathematics? Imagine the situation of a child who hears from a sheikh that the Earth is flat, without being able to inquire about this (especially from the characteristics of oral culture). Then, in school, he is told that the Earth is spherical. This situation forces the child to blindly accept contradictions and antitheses, with no room for rejection. Then, how is the child expected to deal with the concepts of heaven? And Hell, adults here feel intimidation and enticement as a translation of the concept of Heaven and Hell, and how will the situation be with children regarding intimidation and enticement, and who said that intimidating a child is a positive thing, and who said that enticing and misleading a child is also positive.
Religious education generally determines the behavior of the student within the limits of reward and punishment, and traditional civic education also determines behavior with something similar to reward and punishment. However, the difference between religious education with its calculations and punishment and traditional civic education is very large, and is due to the fact that reward and punishment are traditionally direct and subject to man-made values, while the reward and punishment of religious education are indirect and postponed to an unknown and intangible time and situation, which is heaven and hell. Exaggeration and excess in describing the ferocity and catastrophe of hell, and then exaggeration in depicting the gains and advantages of heaven, is for the child a psychological and mental-educational disaster. How can a child deal with houris, young boys, and being roasted in the fire of Hell? And how will a child react to his fate in Hell if he commits a religious sin? There is a big difference between a principle that represents a basic idea upon which other secondary ideas are built, upon which dealings between people are based, and one of the foundations of dealings with people is the principle of Khaldunian-Cartesian doubt. Belief and faith are the opposite of doubt and are not right or consistent with doubt. Principles are universal values that pertain to humans, and principles differ from each other according to the differences between humans. This is what is called “morals,” which develop and change based on reason. How can a child perceive the concept of belief and its rigidity? What is the effect of rigid constants on the child’s mind? Does the child’s mind transform through constants into a dynamic mind? Or does he turn into a frozen object? This is what we experience every day hundreds of times. We experience a large number of adults who are stuck on constants imposed on them, dead masses of flesh in a refrigerator.
Morals are noble values, and their nobility is related to their dynamism, rationality, and ability to develop. Does religious education in school teach the changing moral principles and different human experiences from one culture to another, which allow, within the framework of the nation, the creation of citizens who belong to a nation shared by everyone, regardless of their beliefs? It is unity in pluralism that guarantees the humanization of man, distinguished by the difference in humanizations, the ideologization of minds. And its stereotyping through indoctrination culture, which is presented in a linguistic form that is difficult for children to understand, and relatively for adults as well, represents a distancing and alienation from humanity, and thus an approach to animalization.
The backwardness of these peoples is a translation of the delay in education and upbringing, and the delay in education and upbringing is a translation of the fullness of life with religion. There is no true recognition of pluralism when life is full of religion. A society of religions is a society of the jungle where the strong swallows the weak. It is a society of one dimension, a society of human with one direction and dimension, a society that faith holds by its neck, and faith is always comprehensive and does not accept selectivity and partiality. Either you believe or you… Infidel, and thus faith and one direction is subjugation that always requires the material of violence and wars, have we not had enough of them yet?