Reducing Islamic Education Classes in Favor of Music and Arts!
A Branch of a Drawn Policy to Secularize the State and Society in Syria
News:
The Syrian Minister of Education sparked widespread controversy in educational and religious circles, following his sudden decision to reduce religious education classes in schools from four to two per week, and to abolish the subject of the Holy Quran and its etiquette, replacing them with music and arts, in a move that many considered an uncalculated educational gamble. Observers believe that the minister has placed himself in direct confrontation with the conservative religious movement, after this decision, which was considered shocking in a country that has always given religious education a wide space within the curricula. (Arabi24, 10/5/2025)
Comment:
This is a new shock received by the people of Syria with the Ministry of Education's decision to reduce religious education and Islamic culture classes from four classes per week to two classes. In favor of what? In favor of music and arts! It becomes clear that the educational aspect has not been spared from the secularization policy pursued by the new Damascus authority. The four classes that were allocated to Islamic culture are originally much less than the required amount that should be allocated to Islamic upbringing, as it is less than the average of one class per day, and yet it was reduced by half! It was natural that this decision would provoke the religious people of Syria who love their religion and who expected that the fall of the regime of crime, immorality, and vice would highlight the Islamic identity of Syria, and not marginalize it.
The most dangerous thing in the scene is that the protests focused on the demand to maintain the four classes without reduction, so that if the authority fulfilled their demand, they would leave satisfied and happy with their victory over the aggressive minister! However, the state's duty in the field of systematic education is far beyond just four classes. It is not the issue that there are few classes allocated to religious education while all other culturally-oriented subjects have no relation to religion.
The principle in the policy of systematic education is that its primary goal is to form the Islamic personality, before the goal that is next in importance, which is the student's acquisition of the skills and competencies that qualify him to choose his scientific specialization at the university level, or his profession or craft in the labor market. Accordingly, the duty is to allocate to Islamic culture and Islamic sciences no less than half of the curriculum. The issue is not just memorizing surahs from the Quran and teaching prayer and fasting. Rather, the duty is to teach students summaries and introductions to Islamic sciences in general, in order for schools and universities to produce Islamic personalities who deal with all of life on the basis of Islamic creed and in accordance with Islamic concepts and laws, not to produce people who carry Western culture in the fields of society, politics, economics, civilization, philosophy, and legislation with a margin of religiosity in individual and family behavior only. This battle that many sincere people are fighting now for two classes, despite its expression of jealousy for religion and the future of generations, is very limited. It must go much further than that, so that its demand is to establish systematic education based on Islamic creed, and its policy and goal is to produce Islamic personalities equipped with all Islamic sciences.
More importantly than all of this, the people of Syria should realize that this sin of the Minister of Education is only a branch of the great sin committed by the new rulers of Syria, which is the policy of secularizing the state and the country and establishing rule by disbelief, so that the achievement of the revolution of the righteous people of Syria is limited to merely overthrowing the criminal clique that ruled the country for half a century with fire, iron, and crime, while Syria remains a secular, functional state and a member of a regional system subordinate to the international system led by the Pharaoh of the age, America.
Written for the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
Ahmed Al-Qasas
Member of the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
