ANALYSIS:THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the Saudi Arabian government will seek to open a school in Ireland brings into sharp focus problems inherent in the relationship between religious groups and our education system, writes RONAN McCREA
Irish education, though largely State-funded is, for the most part, controlled by religious organisations. More than 90 per cent of primary schools, for example, operate under the patronage of the local bishop.
The religious patrons of these schools have the right to promote the religious ethos of their school. This ethos can cover the use of prayer during the school day and the presence in classrooms of religious symbols such as the crucifix, whose presence in Italian state schools has recently been held to violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
EU employment law has provided an exemption from the principle of non-discrimination in employment to allow these schools to discriminate against staff in order to protect their religious identity. This exemption was inserted into Directive 2000/78 largely at the behest of the Irish Government.
There are, of course, limits on the power of religious organisations within the education system. The state has the right to insist on certain educational standards and can prescribe the curriculum to be followed. Nevertheless, the current nature of the role of religion within the Irish educational system is extremely problematic.
First, the State’s approach undermines the rights of parents and pupils to religious freedom. By using State money to fund religious schools and failing to provide for a religiously neutral alternative, the State effectively requires those of minority or no faith to receive their education in a context where a particular faith, with which parents or pupils may disagree, is exalted and actively promoted.
The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled in the Lautsi case that to require children to be educated in classrooms where crucifixes were displayed violated their right not to be subject to state-sponsored religious proselytism in the education system.
The reality of the Irish educational system goes way beyond the situation condemned as a breach of religious freedom in Lautsi.
Not only does our system violate our European obligations, it is also contrary to any reasonable reading of Article 44.2.4 of the Constitution, which says: “Legislation providing State aid for schools . . . shall not be such as to affect prejudicially the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending religious instruction at that school.”
By permitting entrenched religions to run schools, the State cannot refuse the requests of religious groups, which may promote values contrary to liberal and democratic norms, to run Irish schools.
Almost all religions, including mainstream Christian faiths, have controversial views on matters such as gender and sexuality. However, Wahhabi Islam, which is the form of Islam endorsed by the Saudi government, includes teachings which contravene the basic norms of democratic societies.
The Saudi regime does not permit the construction in Saudi Arabia of any non-Islamic religious structures, actively subjugates women, and advocates the death penalty for homosexuality or for leaving the Islamic faith.
Saudi-funded schools in other countries have repeatedly been criticised for promoting prejudice against non-Muslims and anti-Semitism.
The idea that the Irish education system could become a vehicle for the transmission of these norms is abhorrent.
Our system of denominational control of education makes it difficult for the State to refuse an application to establish a school from a government which actively supports gender apartheid, homophobia and suppression of religious freedom. If Catholics are free to establish State-funded schools, why not Wahhabi Muslims?
The only solution is for the State to realise that the publicly funded education system is no place for the promotion of particular religions. Only a religiously neutral State education system can protect the education system from becoming a vehicle through which democratic values are undermined.
Furthermore, the separation of religious and State education systems will also protect the free conscience rights of religions which may otherwise be forced by the State to promote, through their schools, ideas such as gender equality in which some of them may not believe.
It is perhaps inevitable that in the longer term our European human rights commitments will force us to live up to the values of our own Constitution in the area of religion and education. It would be better for the Government to take steps to embrace religious freedom for pupils, parents and religious organisations by establishing a religiously neutral system, rather than to have change imposed from the outside.
A new system would avoid the shocking scenario of the promotion in this State of the anti-democratic illiberal values of the Saudi monarchy.
Ronan McCrea, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, lectures in law at the University of Reading