Religious Education in Uzbekistan today

Rahimjon Abdugafurov (Namangan State University, Uzbekistan) [BIO]

Email: arbi76inn@yahoo.com

 

ABSTRACT:

The law on the religiously-affiliated educational institutions that is adopted in 2003 has had a tremendous impact both on the financial well-being of such institutions as well as the ways in which they conduct teaching and learning. Especially, eleven madrasahs of Uzbekistan now have computer facilities and other modern academic technologies that are characteristic to secular educational settings. Instructors, who mostly graduated from well-known madrasahs of Uzbekistan, now use multimedia to teach religious subjects such as the Koran and Hadith, in addition to languages, logic and history.

As the new law gives graduates of such educational entities the same status as the graduates of other secular institutions, high schools, colleges and academic lyceums, they may go on with their further or higher education in secular institutions if they choose to do so. Considering this fact, new secular subjects, such as natural sciences, information technology and modern languages, Russian and English, were also added into the curriculum. This change has had a positive impact. For instance, the arrival of teachers who teach It helped both students and teachers in utilization of academic facilities.

The availability of the choices for students, who want to acquire religious knowledge, has been a great stride in the educational system of Uzbekistan. Especially, financial assistance that is similar to tax exemption in some countries has enabled religiously affiliated intuitions to enrich their academic environment.