Dilemmas of Religious Education, Freedom of Religion and Education in Cyprus

Abstract

The boundaries between secularism, democracy, pluralism, and religious diversity cannot easily be demarcated. Bringing democratic and secular values together with religious pluralism, accommodating different religious communities, and acknowledging individual rights is a great challenge for many societies. In parallel, religious education (RE) in state schools has been a controversial and unresolved issue. On both sides of Cyprus, RE is organized in a mono-confessional way: while the Christian Orthodox content of RE is linked with Greek national identity in the Greek Cypriot South, Sunni Islamic RE is linked with the Turkish national identity in the Turkish Cypriot North. On both sides of the island, the compulsory and mono-confessional characters of RE, as well as the national curricula and textbooks that are used, are a source of conflict. Within this context, this article explores the way RE (Orthodox Christian, Sunni Islamic) is organized in Cyprus and to what extent this may lead to an infringement of the freedom of religion and freedom of education.