Educational Content and Practices regarding the “Religion of the Other” among Christians and Muslims in Greek Thrace

Abstract

In the area of Thrace (NE Greece, by the Bulgarian and Turkish borders) lives a community of some 100,000 people of Greek citizenship, officially recognized since 1923 by the Lausanne Treaty as the “Muslim Minority of Western Thrace.” The children of this Muslim minority can attend minority primary or secondary schools, where half of the subjects are taught in Turkish by Muslim minority teachers (religious lessons included), while the rest of the subjects are taught in Greek. Those Muslim minority pupils who wish, can attend the public school, in mixed contexts (Christian, Muslim, and others), where all subjects are taught in Greek. In public schools, in the case of religious lessons, pupils can choose between a) staying in the classroom during the Christian religious lesson, without being examined, b) leaving the classroom, and c) attending the Muslim religious lesson, taught by a local Muslim teacher. In addition, in Komotini and Xanthi, two Islamic seminaries (medrese) are operating under the supervision of the local muftis, having the status of gymnasium-lyceum, while in the town of Xanthi, a Christian ecclesiastical gymnasium-lyceum operates, under the supervision of the local bishop. The precise content of the lessons taught in all schools regarding “the other and his/her religions” and the teaching practices and views that the teachers try (or do not try) to cultivate, have never been subject of research until now. This chapter presents and comments on the main points of the discussions I have had with Muslim and Christian theologians teaching in secondary schools of various types in Thrace, as well as with the headmasters of the ecclesiastical schools and the Islamic seminaries.