This PhD thesis, entitled ‘The Place of Religion in Public Education: Theoretical Considerations’, aims at answering the following question: ‘what should be the permissible room for religion in modern public education under the principle of neutrality’. The fundamental nature of this question requires a structuring and theorization of the interaction between religion and public education in two interrelated theoretical steps. The first step clarifies the general principles (or approaches) guiding the interaction of religion with public education, which are the principle of cooperation and the principle of accommodative neutrality; the latter clarifying the general degree of cooperation between religion and public education. The second step identifies and constructs the dimensions of this relationship, which are ‘freedom’, ‘interest’, ‘instruction’ and ‘support’. In this regard, while considering the permissible room for religion in public education, the primary research question of this thesis aims at setting up a theoretical platform from which one can reason and argue any religious issue or claim that emerges in the course of public education. Hence, this research examines and re-designs those important principles...

The process through which European States and institutions have responded to the social and cultural mutation in the European religious landscape has been met with increasing criticism. Depending upon the interests and the agendas at stake, European instances have been blamed for being too weak or too strong in their policies affecting religion, for being biased either in favor or against religion and ultimately for an insufficient commitment to worldwide religious liberty. This paper aims at responding to criticism through a three-step approach. First, it will highlight the peculiarity and salience of developments in European law and religion, based on the four projects that drove the interaction of law and religion in the European integration process: the human rights project, the single market project, the secular project and the religious project. In this part, I will suggest that, prior to any discussion on the direction that Europeans should take in the future, it is necessary to acknowledge Europe as an extraordinary laboratory of equality and diversity, allowing for an extremely dynamic interaction of law and religion to develop. Second, the paper will underline the concoction of human rights and single market in the making of European dynamic law and religion...