Kamil Pasha

The deputy head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate insisted yesterday that, despite people’s reference to religious requirements to keep their daughters home, there was no religious reason for not sending girls to school. Rather, Islam demands that every Muslim, men and women, seek knowledge and science from birth to death. Society’s discrimination has forced women into darkness, he added, with the result that society also cannot educate good men.

He pointed out that the Directorate wanted to lead the campaign to educate girls. In 2006 all employees of the Religious Affairs Directorate contributed 40 YTL from their meager wages for nine months and succeeded in covering the school expenses of 2,309 girls until the end of the current academic year. (click for article)

It is worth mentioning that the AKP government also has put into place a program that pays mothers in poor areas of the country to send their daughters to school. The money is explicitly paid out to the mothers once a month at the post office, rather than to men in the family. One observer in the east noted, however, that while every month there was a line of mothers at the post office waiting to pick up their payment, there was another line of men outside the post office waiting to take the money when their wives emerged.

This policy, along with the introduction of eight years of compulsory schooling, as well as increased enforcement of labor laws has led to a reduction in child labor. (click here)

Tags: Education, Religion, Women //