re study

the clansman

for the best part of the last 2/3 years i have been learning about islam in religion class. i am not an islam....nor do i realy concider myself a member of any church at the moment. i have nothing against them and respect their right to practice a faith of their choice. i also respect their dedication..ie praying 5 times a day and hajj....but i came to wonder why did i have to study that religion in such dept? i asked my father what he thought. he said well isnt it good to have an understanding of peoples religions? i agreed. but then that brough about the question...should in not have learned about many faiths in that case? spent so long doing islam and i have no knowledge of any other religions...bar the catholic church. i feel this is the case for many junior cert students like me. you only study one world faith. i think all the major faiths should be covered in less detail than just one of the teachers choice in large detail.

Nevyn

Yes there should be a more diverse program but at least it has started you questioning and you can start to research other faiths yourself.

Did you not raise this topic with your teachers ?

stevenmu

It's been a long time since I did religion class, but back when I did there was no set sylabus in place and each teacher basically did their own thing, is that still the case ?

I'd guess that with Islam being the hot topic that it is, courses would tend to focus on it to try and keep the whole area of religious studies interesting and relevant. I suspect that there's also an element of political correctness to it, trying to teach people that islam isn't all about jihads and destroying the west.

I'd imagine that other religions would be treated similarly if they generated the same amount of discussion and coverage as Islam currently does. Most of the time when I was doing religion, the teacher would bring up a topic, often something that was currently in the news and we'd have a class discussion on it. I'd imagine that doing it today, we would be mainly discussing Islam, any other religion simply wouldn't generate the same amount of interest or discussion.

edit: Also, I agree with what Thaedydal says, the process of learning about and analysing another religion is probably much more usefull than being thought bits about them all.

Sapien

the clansman wrote:

i am not an islam....

Perhaps three years isn't enough.

the clansman

Thaedydal wrote:

Yes there should be a more diverse program but at least it has started you questioning and you can start to research other faiths yourself.

Did you not raise this topic with your teachers ?

no. i only thought of this yesterday in the exam

the clansman

Sapien wrote:

Perhaps three years isn't enough.

or as i should say, i am not a muslim

Zillah

the clansman wrote:

for the best part of the last 2/3 years i have been learning about islam in religion class. i am not an islam....nor do i realy concider myself a member of any church at the moment. i have nothing against them and respect their right to practice a faith of their choice. i also respect their dedication..ie praying 5 times a day and hajj....but i came to wonder why did i have to study that religion in such dept? i asked my father what he thought. he said well isnt it good to have an understanding of peoples religions? i agreed. but then that brough about the question...should in not have learned about many faiths in that case? spent so long doing islam and i have no knowledge of any other religions...bar the catholic church. i feel this is the case for many junior cert students like me. you only study one world faith. i think all the major faiths should be covered in less detail than just one of the teachers choice in large detail.

I think its wonderful that you've learned so much about another religion. When I was doing Religion in school, it was usually a pile of generic "Ooh lets love all the world" nonesense vaguely related to the bible. What I would have given to actually sit down and study other cultures rather than sing songs.

And I think your teacher chose Islam because, like it or not, its a very important religion these days. Islamic extremists are attacking the West, the West is attacking extremist Islamics, Western people get confused about the difference between Islam and fundamentalist Islam and end up blaming everyone.

If we could take what you know about Islam and shoot it straight into the heads of everyone in the West it would go a long way towards a more peaceful world.

Bare in mind, for many people their understanding of Islam could be summarised as "Them arabs with the bombs"...