Journal of Law, Religion and State - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2012

The present paper attempts to answer the question: what accounts for the persistence of Qur’anic schools as separate schools operating at cross-purposes with the Nigerian state in the provision of education to millions of Muslim children officially reported to be “out of school?” To answer this question, the paper traces the long years of mutual isolation between the state and Islamic institutions, particularly in northern Nigeria, that was at first a product of colonisation, but subsequently a reflection of state failure to meet its obligations toward a people struggling to come to terms with the loss of their cultural and religious values as western influences became pervasive. The paper suggests that by remaining faithful to those values, ideas, and practices that hold together the cultural-religious essence of life, Qur’anic schools and their owners fill a void that neither the new religious elite nor the post-colonial Nigerian state has been able to recognize. The paper expresses concern, however, that although culturally-relevant, the bond between Qur’anic schools and their communities further isolates young generations of Nigerian Muslims from constructively engaging with the state. An inclusive state policy on education based on constructive engagement with the hidden clients of Nigeria’s submerged Qur’anic schools is what the country needs if these schools are to play any future positive role in education.

The present paper examines the issue of the extent of autonomy that religious minorities enjoy in the area of education, specifically in determining the curriculum that children belonging to religious minorities are required to study. Although there is an abundance of scholarship on the topic of exemptions from educational requirements, I am particularly interested in exploring two issues that are relatively neglected. The first regards the different types of rights based on which requests for exemptions are being made, specifically whether requests for exemptions based on religious liberty are different from those based on culture. I argue that requests based on religious obligations often take a more categorical form than claims based on the cultural aspects of religion. As a result, mitigating measures that fall short of exemptions, and which may be able to resolve claims based on culture, cannot resolve claims based on religious obligations. The second is whether the interest of the state in promoting social solidarity justifies, at least in some circumstances, rejecting claims for such exemptions. In examining claims for exemptions in the field of education, liberal scholars usually focus on the interest of the state in ensuring that citizens are self-sufficient and in instilling democratic values in them. The interest of the state in maintaining social solidarity is often overlooked. I argue that the interest of the state in maintaining social solidarity must be weighed separately from its interests in self-sufficiency and democracy. I suggest guidelines for assessing the effect that granting or rejecting a particular request for exemption may have on social solidarity. These guidelines include examining whether the exemption is requested by an individual or by a group, the scope of the exemption, and the nature of the educational material that the exemption covers.

In this essay, I elaborate and defend the internationally recognized human right to religious freedom. I then pursue the implications of the right for government’s exclusion of same-sex couples from of civil marriage.

The paradigm of American K–12 education is shifting as the institution of local educational polities, each responsible for its own “common schools,” faces competition from programs of school choice. Although charter schools and related reforms are generally studied in terms of quality and equity, the rise of consumer sovereignty as an alternative to political sovereignty as an organizing principle for educational governance has much wider rami­fications. Paradigms of choice have already begun dramatically to alter religious education and its relationship to public schooling. Moreover, because these paradigms rely upon consumer preferences and the aggregation of those preferences by markets, the shape of religious activity in state-subsidized schools will be determined increasingly by consumers and producers – parents and schools – rather than by political actors. Government is likely to find its ability to limit and guide religion/school interactions substantially, and increas­ingly, constrained. In making this argument, this paper draws primarily upon examples from a small but instructive religious sector in American K–12 education, that of Jewish education. It discusses the direct deployment of the charter-school form to provide Jewish education. It then assesses ways in which shifts in the public framing of education from one of politics to one of markets has transformed public school politics in school districts dominated by Orthodox Jews.