Education and Freedom of Religion or Belief: An Essential Relationship

James D. Holt is an associate professor of religious education at the University of
Chester (England). This post is based on a presentation given at the ICLRS 32nd International Law and Religion Symposium, 7 October 2025.

On my office shelves is a copy of the Rodin sculpture La Cathédrale, depicting two hands. I often begin presentations by asking people in the audience to try to recreate the image. What usually happens is that people try to do this by themselves but quickly find they can’t. In fact, it can’t be recreated without somebody else because it depicts two right hands. To me, the sculpture is symbolic of interfaith engagement—of the need for different, distinct entities to create engagement and relationship. But the sculpture also represents the relationship and engagement between education and freedom of religion or belief: You can’t have freedom of religion or belief without education, and you shouldn’t have education without freedom of religion or belief (FoRB).

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Torah, War, Politics, and the Supreme Court: The 2024 Military Service of Ultra-Orthodox Yeshiva Students Bill

Moshe Jaffe is a constitutional law adjunct professor at the Academic Center of Law and Science in Israel and an adjunct professor at Cardozo School of Law. He is also a SJD candidate at the University of Michigan Law School.

Introduction

The tragic events of 7 October and the subsequent war in Gaza have reignited longstanding tension in Israel regarding the draft of Ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students. This issue has been impacted as well by recent rulings of the Israeli Supreme Court, which have brought the matter back into public debate. This post aims to simplify this extremely complex issue and guide the reader through developments leading to the recent bill currently being considered by the Knesset. Given the brevity of this post, its focus is on recent developments and specifically on the 2024 bill rather than a comprehensive historical review.

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Freedom of Religion and Belief in Turkey: Recent Challenges and Recommendations in the Context of European Integration

Dr. Özgür Heval Çɪnar is an associate professor in law at the University of Greenwich, School of Law and Criminology

Introduction

Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, from which stems the tenets of pluralism, tolerance, and open-mindedness, is one of the most basic freedoms of a democratic society. Several international human rights documents safeguard this freedom (e.g. Art. 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR). Turkey is a signatory to these conventions, but in practice, it has rarely lived up to its obligations.

The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – AKP) came to power in Turkey in 2002. The AKP pledged to introduce freedoms and, during 19 years in government, has made some significant legal changes in line with the political criteria of the European Union (EU); this was because Turkey started the accession negotiations for full membership in 2005. However, it has failed to address many restrictions related to the freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. As a result of this failure, Turkey was named in the 2021 report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom as one of the countries where the most serious contraventions of religious freedoms take place. In this article efforts will be made to understand the situation as regards the right to freedom of religion and belief in Turkey, concentrating on the most topical issues.

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