Through religious education, our young people also learn respect for and an understanding of other beliefs and how to make a positive difference to themselves and the world by putting their beliefs and values into action.

Religious education is demanded by the nation generally and by the instincts of human nature.

I believe that religion ought to be the basis of education; and I came over from Ireland for no other purpose than humbly to represent the necessity of making religion the basis of education, to establish it not only as a part, but an essential part of it.

As to religious education, which Mr. Morley desires to get rid of, it is one of our most cherished privileges. (Loud cheers.) I am not speaking for my own alone. What I claim I would extend equally to the Nonconformists of Wales or the Roman Catholics of Ireland. But I do claim that whatever Church or form of Christianity they belong to, there should be given the opportunity to educate the people in the belief of Christianity which they profess, instead of giving them a lifeless, boiled down, mechanical, unreal religious teaching which is prevalent in the Board schools.

Education to true religion is the final task of the new education.

What we call religion is merely organized belief, with its dogmas, rituals, mysteries and superstitions. Each religion has its own sacred book, its mediator, its priests and its ways of threatening and holding people.

Most of us have been conditioned to all this, which is considered religious education; but this conditioning sets man against man, it creates antagonism, not only among the believers, but also against those of other beliefs.

Though all religions assert that they worship God and say that we must love one another, they instill fear through their doctrines of reward and punishment, and through their competitive dogmas they perpetuate suspicion and antagonism.

In theory, the prevailing pedagogy declares that a sound religious education should "educate the whole person". In practice, however, it is mainly the affective and the conative powers which are educated in "Christian values", with many beautiful results. But the cognitive powers are religiously underdeveloped. Intellect, reason, memory, imagination - these are severely undereducated in Catholic doctrine and thought.

As to Divinity, (on which I had an eye from the first,) l had the happiness of a strict and Religious Education, all along from a Child: Whereby I was not only preserved from vicious Courses, and acquainted with Religious Exercises; but was early instructed in the Principles of Religion, and Catachetical Divinity, and the frequent Reading of Scripture, and other good Books, and diligent attendance on Sermons. (And whatever other Studies I followed, I was careful not to neglect this.) And became timely acquainted with Systematick and Polemick Theology. And had the repute of a good Proficient therein.

My father was a renowned religious scholar (alam-e-deen). He educated and trained us in both educational traditions – madrassah/religious education at home and school, and college/university education. I have received all my religious education privately from my father and elder brother, and obtained a Masters degree in geography from the University of Peshawar. My elder brothers were both men of letters, both religious and mundane.

In the distant past, in India as in many other countries, all recognized branches of learning had had a religious and philosophic bias. Education was not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It was an initiation into the life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.

If the main teachers take a wrong action, it must be questioned. Just because that person is a head of a political party, that does not mean all his statements are right. Islam did not teach us to do so (follow blindly). Islamic religious education should be based on deep understanding of the Quran, sunnah and the earliest of Ulemas. The interpretations must be questioned and corrected if need be. That is the tradition of seeking knowledge.

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being — free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies — and therefore you can find out what religion is.

...education is a spiritual revaluation of human life. Its task is to reorient the individual, to enable him to take a richer and more significant view of his experiences, to place him above and not within the system of his beliefs and ideals. If education is not liberalizing, it is not education in the sense of the title of this book.

Education is central to advancement—of the country, of the individual. But the ulema have fought hard and long against what most today would consider education. For them religious education must take priority over modern, technical education. Only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge is to be imparted which strengthens one’s faith— in practical terms, only those subjects are to be studied, only that knowledge pursued which confirms one in the belief that whatever is written in the Quran and Hadis, whatever has been put out by the ulema over the centuries is true and the acme of wisdom as well as perfection. The education of women, in particular their being awakened to new values, their being trained for new professions, their being awakened to their rights—all this is anathema; it is held to be injurious to them, in fact it is declared to be the way to disrupting society and undermining Islam.