Kyrgyz authorities seek to restore order in religious educational institutions

Bishkek, March 5, Interfax – Kyrgyz Deputy Prime Minister Kamila Taliyeva announced on Tuesday that a bill regulating religious education and religious educational institutions had been drafted.

“There are lots of poorly educated people among Islamic school teachers who spread religious bigotry and extremism in society,” Taliyeva said.
“It is necessary to set boundaries. People need to know what is possible and what is not. It is necessary to restore order there, ban aggressive propaganda and create an environment conducive to religious education,” she said.

Parliamentary Education Committee member Kanybek Osmonaliyev, the author of the bill, said at a parliament session that “a certain number of faithful people in our multi-confessional country have stopped following the principles of Islam and traditional Christianity in the past few years.”
Experts, who also attended the parliament session, said they were opposed to formulating universal standards for religious education, citing “the absence of specialists capable of developing such standards” in Kyrgyzstan.

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